Wormwood and Yellow Carnations

Where my heart used to be

A deep dark chasm now exists

You sucked from me my breath

And stifled the beats of my heart

You swallowed up and muted my voice

And took away the blinking of my eyes

You played with my thoughts

And burned up my memory vaults

You took away the inner “me”

And left a hollow core to grieve and rot

You deflowered my pride

And vanished with the hymen

You were the blood on my sheet; you stained my life

I held on to air when you left and let go

And now there’s nothing to hold on to

Six years and a decade

How do I cope with this pain?

The tear in my soul makes me hold you in disdain

But I have to be strong for my unborn

So I’d burn your memories up at the end of this line!

A Moment’s Conquest

The sea keeps erasing the prints of my feet

As its waves crush against my legs

The rippling tides caress the hairs on my feet

And the salty breeze thrills my soul

Possessing me, putting me into trance

I feel a presence, then a chill

Making my back tingle

I see the sun falling, gradually

Leaving its residues, and fragments

Scattering across the sky

The clouds filter the fragments

Into assorted streaks hues

Pieces of which bounce off the surface of the water

Oh how I wish this sunset would last for a day

And a day for five and three-sixty hours

Ah, how the prince in me aches…

After burning for all of half a day

Its splendor is displayed in the blink of a moment

The transience of time

I awake from my trance

As the fumes of darkness diffuse through the atmosphere

Chasing away the scenic scent of sunset

The Storm Within

She sits in the dark night with her eyes raised

Staring into heaven’s shadow.

She stares ‘til the black sky tenses.

The sky’s blackness morphs to a dark orange-red hue.

The disquiet of the heavens stirs the stagnant air.

Fuming in disgust and protesting to her intense stare,

The air morphs into wind.

Wind bursts out and awakens the earth’s crust;

Dust becomes a painting on all life.

She continues to stare, 

She doesn't blink

The sky squirms

Her eyes are the vents to her fury

Her anger tortures the innocent night’s sky

Her rage yanks out the breath from the wind

As trees fly, the heavens begin to cry

Its tears splattering as blood from a severed artery

Her eyes are stung by heavens tears; she blinks.

As the heavens weep, the cries of the skies louden

Every scream triggering a radiant steak across the skies

The boisterous wind crushes her down

As heaven’s tears cleanses her.

As the raging furnace burning deep within her is doused,

She turns to him and whispers

A Call From Beyond

Tears drench my hardened face

As you are lowered into earths belly

She violently pulls me towards you…

The clouds are a tattered lace

A call from beyond

…I hear your voice beyond the dirt

Memory is a flood inside my brain

Erasing all the sanity within…

The sun emits rays inert

In here, I don’t belong

…Lingering feelings within a lifeless soul

Your love, your care, you loved me whole

A wretched being, but you looked within...

Poisoned darts of rain

A call from beyond
In here, I don’t belong

Let me be as cold as you

To journey with you beyond the gates of life

For in this world I do not belong

In that world, you do not belong

Let me hear your voice call from beyond

In Search Of A Hero

Sun rises, sun sets

A day rises, a day falls

A year appears, a year dies

And my people continue to seek a hero

A hero to plead their cause; to understand their desires

Who will that hero be?

Where is he?

Where is our hero?

My people need a hero who’d bring justice to the afflicted
One in whose palm justice finds comfort
My people need a hero who’d dirty his hands with the poor in the field
One in whose mind walks a craving to understand their plight
Let the hero show himself by writing down the numerous wrongs
And with each wrong, apply a belonging right
 Our hero should not only be the voice crying out for the oppressed
But also, be the hand lifting off their stress
He shouldn't only feel for their heart-searing hurts
But also, be a soothing balm, calming their sore spirits
Let that hero accept the miscarriages of their fathers
And comfort their mothers with an assuring embrace
 Are you that hero?
Would you crush all defrauders with a chain
And shackle all destructive leeches till they bruise in pain?
Would you decapitate all degenerate and heartless hearts
And yank out the hearts of unkind and brainless heads?
Can you?
 Let the hero come upon us like the rising sun
And show his full splendor at midday
Let the hero be the mild rain that caresses our soil
Enticing and coercing unwilling seeds to germinate
Let the hero be the wind wandering the sea shore
Blowing away all worries and heartaches in that moment
Let the hero be a rose, whose thorn pricks a lover
Reminding us of love entwined with a scolding power

Where is our hero?

Where is he?

Who will that hero be?

We need a hero to plead our cause; to understand our desires

We continue to await that hero

A year appears, a year dies again

A day rises, a day falls again

The sun rises, the sun sets, again.

In the Shadow of a Streetlight

Strange

Quiet and deserted

Lonely

Forsaken and haunted

Hunched

His head bowed

Rusty

He cries

His screams are a silent ‘shrill’

His tears, unseen

His tears and screams touch

They conceive heat

His face glows as heat grows,

And expands

And explodes

Littering the street

With its bright orange blood

~IBleed~

Tears of a Fatherless Son

You hardly read to me

She always did

She spoke to me

Making me feel wanted, and loved

She asked why you were always busy

You said it was to make my life comfortable

And that when I arrived, you’d be there

My underdeveloped heart gladdened

It filled with expectations of seeing you

I just couldn’t wait

The doctors pronounced me premature

For I was in a hurry to see you

I was overwhelmed with joy as I heard your gruff voice

For I knew you were the one

The one in whose arms I’d mature

I loved my first encounter with you

You were so scared to hold me

Thinking you’d damage my developing bones

I remembered how she giggled

When you delicately wrapped your arms around me

I especially loved you referring to me as junior

And I looked forward to spending my life with you, senior

But, it’s been 19 long, lonely years since…

Accumulating the sporadic times I spent with you

Would not even amount to two years

What went wrong, daddy?

What went wrong?

Anytime she reminded you to spend time with me

You asked her of her existence

But she needed you too

To complement her existence

And anytime I cried for you

You told me to look forward to our quality times

Could you explain the “quality time”, for I know not what it is

Was it the 4 weekly minutes of you asking “how are you?”

Or my formative years spent in the midst of strangers

Your guidance was a desire I craved

I needed you to show me the way

To spank me anytime I misbehaved

And to laugh even though my jokes were dry

I needed to know about men from a man

Those dreams at night

My sticky pajamas in the morn

Those eternal, tormenting emotions

The angst, the lust, those youthful desires

She tried, but she didn’t really understand

You understood, but you didn’t really try

I guess to you, I wasn’t important enough

I might sound ungrateful

If so, please pardon me

Cos I am truly grateful for all you did

Your money sent me to the best nursery school

But I wasn’t nursed to my satisfaction

You provided me the finest basic education

But my basic desire was for you

Then you locked me up in your former senior high school

Leaving me with that obnoxious “school father”

You even bought me trained home teachers

But my most important teacher should have been you

After I graduated top of my class

You image was absent from my graduation pictures

I am educated and there is emptiness in me

I can’t boast about my dad, for I know not who he is

I know you aided in my birth but I know not who you are

I doubt you can hear me say all these

But I wish you could hear me say all these

I wish snippets of my voice will drift into your fading consciousness

My heart aches as I see all those tubes plugged into you

The breath in me drains as I feel your cold, lifeless hands in mine

Oh, how I wish I could comfort myself by reminiscing about our happy times!

Alas, I find no memories

I want to scream at you for depriving me of your love

But I wish I could give a part of me to see you arise

I wish I could have just one extra day with you

I love you dad; I think I do

But I miss you more than the opportunity I had to love

PS: This is a plea to all guys to consider the responsibility of being a father before impregnating anyone. And to those that have children: please, be a responsible and loving father. Do not deprive them of your love which essentially involves the time you spend with them.

Tortured Souls

He loved her, she knew.

She loved him not, he knew.

They both settled for friendship.

Their friendship blossomed.

And he was glad,

Glad, because he thought there could be some love hiding somewhere.

Then came the day,

That day she told him she had found a Man.

Cursed be that day!

Was he also not a Man?

Cursed be the day she told him the Man had proposed.

Cursed be the “YES” she claimed she told Him.

Cursed be the “I’m happy for you” He told Her.

And Cursed be the day They got married!

All those times, the love he had in his heart

Felt like it was being squeezed out, little by little,

Till every last drop of love was squeezed out.

He felt he had no love to give,

And was incapable of accepting another’s love.

He became alone.

Alone and tortured,

So tortured, he severed all ties with her (and her new life).

Now here they are,

Sitting face to face,

In his house,

In his couch.

He became teary-eyed as he learned from her

The trauma she went through.

He felt for her.

And the love was coming back.

Should he remind her?

As she spoke, he could feel her anguish, her pain.

A pain from which she would never escape.

A pain he could do nothing about than to offer his shoulder.

He drew near and she placed her head on his shoulder as she sobbed.

She was trapped in a tortured world.

He was trapped too; in her tortured world.

She was haunted by her memories.

He was haunted by her pain,

And his desire.

The desire to dry her eyes with his lips,

The desire to kiss her pain away.

Should he?

He thought against it.

Maybe later,

After he had helped her withstand the torture,

After he had helped her conquer the pain.

For now, he would be content,

Content with being the shoulder she could cry on.

Let Me Heal

In my bitterness I ignore you

My hate, so amplified,

I do not hear you cry

You heard when I whispered

You now scream and I refuse to hear

….and it continues

How much I yearn to hear you cry

To see you fall and to catch you in my arms

I want to pretend

But I’m unable to

Myself is on auto-pilot

I wish to disengage…

Please give me time to heal

Broken Soul

He called me his son

I called him my father

He told me to be wise

So the one taunting him

He’d put to shame

He accepted me as his son

Yet I kept breaking

Breaking his heart into pieces

Trampling upon his heart

Not meeting his expectations

I disappoint him

Forgive me my father

You keep forgiving me

You gave me multiple second chances

Yet I continue to disappoint

I make you grieve

And bring shame to your name

Forgive me father

To rely on me

To trust in me

To place a bet on me

Its difficult, suicidal

I know

I wouldn’t, if I were in your place

But

Oh father,

I need your help

I desire your discipline

I yearn for your guidance

I crave your thoughts

I plead for your forgiveness

Father, please

I need to change

I want to change

To regret and to repent

Your laws

I need to love

To cherish and to obey

My father,

It’s you I need

To make the most important

The most important person

In my life…