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The day I learn how to write a poem

I will go stand on the rooftop

and shout your secrets to the universe

hoping to get back some of mine.

The day I learn how to tell a Manet from a Monet

I will dance around in my room

to the tunes of Chopin and Bach.

I will dance to whatever rhythm I like.

The day my lines turn out to be artistic

I will call upon Pollock's spirit and

learn how to throw paint around,

I wish to draw you on the sky.

The day I learn the art of forgetting

I will remember you for the last time,

feeling your presence in whiffs of a perfume

and (the) weight of your lips on mine.

The day I learn to sing

I will regret all the times

you had to listen to my off-beat tunes

and remember the way you smiled.

The day I learn to master the art of dying

I will stop myself from remembering you,

jump off the ninth cloud

and reach the Earth flying.

I wake up

to find a face staring at me

in the mirror.

I don't recognise him and we make love

till breath lasts and my body,

restless, comes to a halt.

My heart races to find him again.

Hands on my face, looking for something

like a thirsty man in a desert lingers on his stomach looking for water.

My love, I know you are waiting at the other side

but I am unable to reach

my legs twined in thorny bushes,

my eyes stuck on the fingernail of his thumb,

the slant of his chest heaving with desire.

My heart, beat slow, don't let this pass.

Longing stays, I lose the boy in the mirror

water clears my vision

I find my eyes staring into themselves

looking hard in the brown hollows,

beauty disperses as I see

hatred floating at the corners.

Oh heart, run fast and stop soon

let this go away,

existence is pain, so set me free.

A poet accuses sorrow of being slow

slow but radioactive, always decaying yet staying

I accuse you of leaving, while I walk backwards

tomorrow will be same as yesterday, today is a new day

today I remember you with all the flaws

today is the day we will meet again, part again

love again, say it all again

you want to do it all again?

no, leave again, go, run again

my hands are branches cut off trees

with dried leaves still intact

rose bushes come with thorns

no beauty is without it's hazards

there hangs a sign on your collarbone, Highly Perishable

I am an installation in a corner of an art gallery

nobody stops to look at me

there a scratch on me, chipped off while being shipped from Paris

a handling defect

I am not the valuable kind

some other artwork is the centrepiece

I am the dust gatherer, one that completes the count

nobody stops to caress me

I am not a Rothko, I am not a masterpiece by Michelangelo

I am me, a superficial speck of dust on your reading glasses,

the bookmark in your unfinished novel

I am that handkerchief you forgot in a metro coach somewhere

today was the day, now tomorrow will be today in a few hours

and we are/will be strangers again, almost (at least).

stories in my head

I don't want to speak of the stories in my head,

so I will tell you other things.

A boy goes to the museum and weeps,

standing in front of the Nighthawks.

A girl cuts her long hair and

afloats them in the river.

A mother prays for somebody's father.

//Silence prevails after I have screamed,

it's still an open cage with stainless steel bars.//

(Again and again i fly back to square one,

and once again i regret my decision)

To grieve is to waste salt,

and i live on ration with an almost empty jar.

(My lungs oppose to breathe the shards of pain in)

Grief changes colours in my sleep,

and it's sunlight yellow when i wake up.

(Sun enters my house once it starts setting)

On nights sleepless i spin sheets of silk,

in the mornings I dig graves to bury dreams with the silk shroud.

(metaphors are lost on this situation,

my home is a home,

can't call it a battlefield,

nor it is the war sung of by bards)

My love is a foriegn invader

and you are a soldier in the defending army.

(My truth is the greatest threat to this sand castle,

and i am still in love with the illusion of happiness).

a dark one

Today it's a dark one, moon has eloped with half the stars

somewhere a bird calls in the middle of the night

moths and lizards sing melodies to keep the world awake

in the day when it is silent the forests fall asleep

a fire burns inside a bird and it bursts to ruin the woods

roaming around i find pieces of glass faces i used to put on

i sigh and nobody replies

the birds keep chirping

to see this world i need colour-blind eyes

this poem is slowly growing and trying to accept itself

to my brain all languages sound same, gibberish beautifully said

only that makes sense for us, which we are familiar with.

two tulips can't kiss because bees don't like it

i can be wrong but to prove it you have to understand me

it's hard though but try it you must

sometimes i am not Interesting enough

and my friend cried again because i need you to survive

to her seeking help is a sign of wrong life

i see you have the courage to counter me, but you won't come out

my depression is like the unwanted weeds in your garden of roses

pluck it out, chuck me off, it's not hard to lose me

i am the change you got after this transaction

you can easily throw me down the alley

there are many in need and I still am useful, practically.

i don't know what i am trying to say, but i am sure there was a message i wanted to convey

i lost it while digging in for the words, i shouldn't bury secrets so deep

the remaining stars play hide and seek with white clouds.

leaving the city

You can always leave the city

pack only those memories which make you smile

don't carry the cracked tumblers with you

old newspapers are only to be left behind

next year you would have new places

new faces, new hands and new laughter too

new grudges, new memories and new gifts

but the nightmares will be the same, rotten and old

you can always leave the spots behind

avoid passing by the places you loved with a zeal so wild

and again move on to new haunts to hang out at

but the air is the same, you breathe it in and out

the perfume, wherever you smell it, will bring back a touch like a sliver

it will pierce so sharply, you will end up hurting your insides

you can always do away with the remnants of past

all letters can be burnt, get rid of the names too

soon you will have voids big enough, to hide yourself into

soon you will have the new places to avoid

hurt isn't something you leave behind

hurt is something you carry with you

pain is preserved like grandmother's pickles

and it never rots, because of all the salt it gets from your eyes

too many jars of grief I seal

never am I short of it, no matter what I leave behind

you can always leave the city, but you can never run away from your mind.

Distance

Distance grows

like weeds in pots without plants

manifests the spaces we create between us

spaces where stars don't turn into constellations

but plutos are discarded now and then as per need

Loneliness creeps on you

from toe to head

like vines on trees rotting from inside

leafy stalks eating everything in their wake

loneliness eats upon you

I stretch a shaking hand to reach out to you

but between us are 20,000 universes of silences

Silences we gave each other, because you don't like books

and I don't know how to buy something more long lasting than silences

Distance is a star dying

white and bright,

beautiful death

Distance is the beautiful suicide

of which Ms. Evelyn died

Hundreds of sighs I sent your way

no post offices carry sighs

so I sent them via the distance

here I sigh,

your heart beats in coordination

with sighs escaping my mouth

one by one

escaping

leaving me behind

extinguishing like matchsticks

into the distance

while nothing reaches you

but cold air

Distances are mean

they pull stars apart

but then

distances are the only reason

how so many galaxies

stay in harmony together

/a poem about loneliness turns to a poem about science, if given enough space/

O' God, Lord of Mercy

From streets narrow run streaks of water

to emerge holy on the banks of the revered

heart loosens to see children on streets

forsaken by the saviour of all

your body is given by the almighty

but not your neighbour's

hundreds of lamps alighted in nights

moths die of your burning religion

smoke reaches up till heaven or not?

I know not

but coins don't materialise at God's feet,

I can tell.

faces shriveled like raisins

are raised outside your abode

you who sit revered by humans of privilege

my lord, alight this world

if you can't take care of this all

beauty threatened by fragile ugly counterparts

and tongues held to turn truths to lies

bounties offered to make you look the best

while milk is wrenched off from toothless mouths

frail examples are never taken in account

while talking about those who are loyal to you

while those born in homes, get blessings in yours

hundreds of street bound, settle outside for a coin or two.

Caged

The day I started to call the cage a house

my wings withered and fell off me

I flapped my arms against the bars

and broke my wrists in futile attempts of leaving

your being becomes a prison

you can never get out of the box

the cassette never stops playing

my memories are stored in a vinyl record

I play it everyday, like a ritual

there's bloodshed in my thoughts

my war is longer than the one in Troy

a blind man sings of colours of the world

two young boys hold hands and smile

thrice I fell while I was walking to you

you looked up from the ground twice

I know you too well

I can hear screams in your silence

cut me off, throw me away

I am too friendly for your solitary life

there's this musical note stuck on my palm

the same place you pressed your finger at

boundless seas float into my boat

and in dark whirlpools I drown

this lark laments lyrics from an old song

and melodies of my head never make it to the outside

reading out poems I look at you

you make faces and sigh

but then you sit silent for minutes too long

and every night a musician dies

unheard symphonies are the most melodious

what you get to know becomes ugly after a time

grief sits by my side and strokes my cheek

while my mother thinks that I don't like to smile

people wish me happiness in hollow words

and empty envelopes come my way

words have long left my tongue

my mouth only makes indecipherable sounds.

Staying as long as we can.

i) I sit by his side for hours, saying nothing

just being in the presence of each other.

Staying as long as we can.

ii) Sometimes I feel a little betrayed by words,

words of my own making

and words of others

they fail to tell what I want to say.

iii) It's hard to sit on the rooftops

and not talk of galaxies

while staring at the evening moon,

we still try to be silent as long as possible

existing in harmony with the universe as long as we can.

iv) long trails of salt, leave my eyes

and culminate their journey in my mouth

they taste like sunlight,

they taste like air,

they taste like you,

they taste like nothing.

(of the five above, I know none of the flavours)

v) When winds carry fallen leaves

and bring forest fires to burn the town,

I hide in you, in your memories,

in the silences.

(the silences can't be burned down)

vi) I will leave soon,

you will stay,

I will stop soon

and you will keep moving,

moving on and on and on.

(I will remember, always, the smell of burning leaves underneath which I had put my letters.)

vii) Instead of staying put,

we like to move,

like seeds of dandelions

adrift with the air

to new places and to new people,

to become their way of fulfilling a wish.

(when you can't be your own deity,

be somebody else's,

when you have let your own desires down,

borrow somebody else's)

//many of us live this way,

just existing in the void

as long as we can.//

Desolation

Walls are falling everywhere

The lands once divided are merging together

This is the evening of losses

My feet hurry to meet those who are running

The concept of time is a vague one

Notions of love are so unfamiliar

I crave for the warmth of small baby hands, tiny fingers curling around mine.

Beautiful faces melt away

My conscience loses interest in your talks, I run away

The magic of sound loses its charm

For twenty days I wept

A harp ruins the silence, only music saves the day.

I throw letters in the open fire

paper pieces fly away, poetry on wind.

Running behind me are dreams that we saw, now the carcasses reek of grief.

Body positivity is a figurative device

I might as well be a terror to world peace

Three petals remain when I realise,

she loves me not.

There are no speed breakers,

when you start to drive on the road to depression.

My pain is a magician hiding objects in his sleeve.

You clap at the magic tricks,

my arms hurt

the hidden stuff is heavy.

Yesterday I broke a finger

while pointing in the direction of my sorrow's origin.

There aren't enough words to describe this

and I have run out of metaphors.

Stay for the music

On days when beautiful murals speak up

and air is full of silences between us

I want to hold your hand which occasionally trembles

and tell you that , 'Stay, it's safe here.'

To you I have been sending songs

which he once sent me as a long playlist

titled 'Of disorders and nights',

and your taste in music so characteristically matches hers

that I can't help but worry

that we will end up the way we did in the past.

(you are, were and will be my love,

whether in this body or another)

Am I wrong when I say,

I fall for the same person

again and again?

the only difference is the body,

the eyes and the name.

I know people from their arms,

the pressure which they exert on my body.

(the love they posses is proportional

to the warmth they have for me.)

Being so close

yet so far

I learnt how

stars live together

never meeting

still in love

glowing and sending

love signals.

Where I built my world/

it was your territory

and you let me in there/

as long as I leave you free/in your

circle of

solitude/ you never once came close

enough/ for me to touch those feelings,

feelings you wear on your forearm

as the wraps of the strings she gave you once...

(I know people by their forearms,

and by their gate....

once they change the latter, the former loses significance for me)

/Once you sent me a song different from hers, and I knew I love you

when I devoured whole of the suggested playlist/

Aftertaste

An aftertaste of candy in my mouth,

lost to you, my fingernails, my hair, my feet

tangled in yours, hands holding, a mess

awkwardly askew. Two naked bodies pressed against each other,

looking for what? knows not the other.

While mine can be a search for adherence,

yours can as well be just a need;

a simple human need of having someone to touch.

Call You Mine, I must on some days

but not always. ' We should not meet,' you say

'Oranges on weighing scale, bound to roll off.'

I smile. ' Stupid ' I whisper, a peck here and there.

I hate your stupid analogies

but I love you

and I don't know many languages

but only a half and two.

so in my broken bangla I say,

'Ami tomake bhalo bashi.'

While you slowly skid away, socks on feet

sliding away from me.

Looking for your shoes, a human need.

Between us

There's a table between us

I look at your face, so ordinary

but I keep looking

I wish to find the grief your words pour in my ears every night

yesterday we both cried inside

after the phone call twenty waves deposited hundred grains of sand on the beach

how do I know this?

the same way my mother knows your name

My mother is always cautious of my friends

acquaintances I make everyday

are her nightmares as she has seen me crying over broken bonds

she is curious to know how far have we gone

yesterday...

all this past has made me heavy

like rivers at the end of their journey

I am filled with old metaphors

till the brim of my throat

and words leak out of my eyes now and then

but in no words I can assure her

that thorns how so ever beautifully put

are discarded once they prick the keeper's fingers

that tongues are lethal objects outside kissing

that every nail on the fingers of your hand is an artefact

that my feet are full of nerves knotted from walking behind you

that you walk too fast for me to follow

red in my hand, is a danger symbol

I am sitting on my bed, and pray it to pull me in

I wish to dissolve in thin air

or to be sublimated like dry ice

my god has slept long ago

and my prayers aren't reaching him

his cell phone is off

and he is out of coverage area

today I wept while looking at a pile of candies

somebody saw their lover die in their arms

and ate grief with a metaphor of two synchronised clocks

your scent still lingers at the back of my mind

and I still remember all the colours you draped yourself in

I can't grieve, because they shouldn't know you ever

every sigh is a train to the unreachable station

/I still try to taste you in the back of my throat, but there are old pages stuffed there, with ink scattered around/

Photograph

Inside a photograph I go

to travel to lands faraway

to find frozen memories

and smiles hard

harder than I thought them to be

breaking like mud cakes

with cracks due to heat of the sun

time ruining polaroids

for one is the curse to another

my vision unclear

fog and smoke gathers on my glasses

I struggle to see

cold and harsh words float

in my dreams

I see you

laughing

with that voice of chasms

water running in a creek

smashing against rocks

moving pebbles on the shallow bed

my feet dipped in

cold water washes up to my ankles

where mother tied black threads

to save me from you

the love she sees as a problem

and warns me against you

one after another thoughts

come running, shrieking

like the old coal engine

which pulled the trains

when railroads pulled us apart

and we found warmth in beds with another

and in searching for your face

I touched the other faces with love

and time passed ruining polaroids

fading away the lines of your face

and I drown deep down in dreams

you come back to me

but now only as a shadow

and the love we had is now old

and I am lost in the woods

looking for the grave

I put our memories in

but didn't put up a headstone

lest somebody finds our treasure.

My own God

Our gods are broken in feet

they are standing on pedestals made of dead men

those who you worship are hollow inside

they will break apart as soon as the world catches fire

these dreams you see of saviours

the one who is chosen, who is great

all these dreams will turn to nightmares

and your knees will shiver and break

the very foundation shatters

and glass panes are broken with stones of truth

old might be my lamentation

but this world is unfair and unkind

I don't believe in Gods, not that I am an atheist

I had a god of mine too, but then his temple fell apart

I am losing him every day, every minute

he never knew I call him mine

he will never know

my earth trembles

this ground is sand

and my gods have renounced religion

my faith loses and love wins wars in dreams

long nights pass through me

leaving darkness behind which I then soak in.

Thoughts

I think.

I think and a poem begins and ends right there,

but I would like to say a few more things.

Arranging letters to form words and words to form lines is a good way to escape.

Twenty six alphabets make up for the void in my head, they help me spell it properly.

Nobody remembers my hands while they touch me,

nobody remembers me after they touch my head.

Away to the fields I go, far away.

Ginger juice and salt is what my mother fed me on the nights I coughed.

(leave me oh thoughts so that people stay)

I cough hard and miss salt and ginger

In front of me is a book of poems,

I hate to see my soul etched in words.

I see my body as a poem hated by readers.

A poem starts and ends as I think.

Two hundred days of hunger, my mind goes to places unknown.

Twenty six alphabets fail to speak a language in which I can write,

a language which can truly tell my story.

Words which can show tricks and entertain people are useless.

My mind whirls, I go to fields far away.

Kaveh invokes Keats, and he answers back,

it's all in my head, to think too much is a problem I've created for myself

Somebody said this to me in twenty-six alphabets.

Next year I'll turn twenty two,

one more to go and then one more and then one more and so on...

I count my life in years one by one.

My favourite poet hates blades, she etched poetry on her wrists when she was ten.

Somebody said today they helped me on a day.

I didn't recognise his face.

His face was concrete, hard to read.

It didn't have any of the usual alphabets.

He was lying, I helped myself on that day.

My face smiles and I forget to laugh on her jokes.

My head whirls, I hate poetry which I can't read because letters float.

Twenty-six alphabets away lives my freedom,

and I'm stuck on the twenty-second.

.

The End.

Impressum

Texte: Vaibhav Sharma
Bildmaterialien: Vaibhav Sharma
Cover: Vaibhav Sharma
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.02.2021

Widmung:
To all the desolate souls

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