Of all the red apples

Of all the red apples

Of all the red apples, rotten and ashen in moonlight, collecting memories off the grass,
there was one that stared up at the velvet sky, wondrous and unaware.
Ripe, crimson as angel blood,
dripping with nothing he could remember.
To clasp to his breast as memory.

Of all the king’s men, none seemed awake.
Riding stallion after stallion over
mountains of rusted iron in the night;
quiet as steel before the anvil wakes.
None, except the king in wait of gold.

Of all the lions feasting on a gazelle,
The yellow rectangle of NatGeo,
stared at the empty couch in front; the one
the feast was for. A mother-less starving cub lay beside,
steadily out of frame. Till flies hovered over him by the first rays.

The opal eye, stone like torn pages, his wrinkled skin moved
towards the button.
With the buzzer, appeared a door.
Stumbling over the broken ledge,
he fell his fall
and slept like the baby who never tore pages.

As white- noise filled the darkened room with the hum
of the television, the montage swerved to the city lights,
concrete luncheons and soliloquies dancing,
like petals in the first rain, proud like an unseen blood-stain,
a crouching tiger by the curb with no vein to lust the pain.

Of all the red apples, one was born with a crease.
With no one to devour his flesh and bone, he rolled down
the mildew and pebbles, rolling the hill around him like
a blanket, till the rot and halt.

The last act

The last act

Severed. The slippery truth
like feather, swallowed, peacefully,
rain and dust,
And as hollow as mirror, things held their breath,
with the splash of a distant wind chime
things died like echoes

Gone like vultures in fear of a birth,
the christening was the warm foam from the stains of coffee,
we left ignored,
And while the silence fell,
like a small uninhabited circle of lamenting stage-light,
the garish eyes of the protagonist sang in the din
and made childhood rye-field dreams float,
in the eyes of all

All was not lost. Not the war atleast. The riches flowed
down the streets in a grim crimson, the poor fled in the epiphany of joy.
The city lights lay hunger wrought that night, the underbelly like violins gazing,
at the burgeoning moon, with new-born waters learning to swim

The druid, while dreaming the strangest opulence,
metered and sewn, into words, a creaking door
severed its hinges in full view of insomnia-stung-red-eyed-god.

The ovation was loud and clear.
And so was the lull. The asphalt waited till the last act.
And then died with rain.

Tangerine nights

The image melting into mirror, the doe eyes gaze like the lone drop of dew
of night,
silhouettes, chasing, panting, claiming at the top of their voices, there are shadows now,
drawing eyes,
red rooms and films in repose, of more orange shadows than silhouettes, moonlit
till the curtains and applause,
And outside, a lone leaf has grown on the bare tree to the song of the sparrows, hears the wails from the window, of shadows captive,
dug away from the girl in the orange scarf, taken, shaken and strung

broken echoes of these thinning walls,each have names, rhyming with the sound of silence, comfortable
and listless in wait,
of a time when birds circle, in and out of clouds, and cobblestone coffee mug
shuns all souls and indifference of the street,

The matchsticks speak, of the daydreams and landscapes only words could paint,
a smoke ring cirles the fly and a blue neon halo beckons the photographer again,

An orange shadow of windowpanes and cars, flailing specks of mud, imprisoned in the picture,
the girl’s almond eyes gape at the shutter through her tangerine scarf,
the shadow stolen, and the clock still ticks unevenly same, a dungeon of dreams draped in a red room
awaiting paper notes and plastic smiles,

The silhouettes all agthered, leaving their swords and words behind, and gently crept walls

The pictures had dried and the amber sun ambling in the horizon shone in unison of joy, as the shadows flew back to the toes and kissed her almond eyes, the blue neon shadow was already drying,
in a dungeon of dreams, draped in a red room
awaiting paper notes and plastic smiles,

cellar door scar

cellar door scar
A night, weighed down into existing,
by hazel clouds without tears,
turning the moon into a nail-clipping at their behest,
There, the illumine finger of the night,
moon-drop engaged shining ring finger,
the sun lay beneath the hazel cloud asleep,
the cushion of oceans abound,
yet the rising was in the wake, a sleepless pair
of eyes reddened in fraught remedy for life,
It was only the taste of ink, thrown into the sun’s mouth
by the frayed-coat poet as the fountain of his pen
flailed, impotent and frowning at the brightening sky.
The smell of an old yellow crackling notebook then,
And he remembered to look down
The boy’s eyes told stories undone and unheard.
The sun, looking through lashes and bleary eyes saw the scar
under the belly of his hazel cloud,
and then the one torn into the asphalt below.
The poet escaped to his cellar door, leaving another scar through
his frayed coat, leaving time alone on driftwood,
yet the poem was now a wondrous spider spilled like ink on paper
no longer crackling but faking apart.
The boy’s eyes still shone and the poet was proud of his scar, looking through same lashes and bleary eyes that the sun did.

The Dozing

One where the nest fell,
and then the shoe followed suit,
followed by another,
quite uneventful, the day said as he sipped
on rain in full view.

And the dust gathered in no hurry, drawing
a sheet upon the time lying deceased
as the distant window blared advertisements
for watches.

The ageing floorboard made no bone of the
pain in his shin,
no pain was worth his voice that creaked
in silence and wait of the apocalypse,

The oracle said it would save the day,
and sleep would be restored.

Confidante

I like talking to walls mostly,
and find mirrors under their skin,
They don’t smile much,
or scowl when I turn,
like a coin waiting on the sidewalk
still on spin,

Their ears are yours alone, for
a moment atleast,
Wail, shout and howl as you may,
these walls haven’t yet learnt,
to stalk your words to the feast,

A feast for strangers,
whose mouths are tongue-less
and hunger wrought ,
gobbling all you say,
not a single morsel dropped,
just another sun,
unborn in the dark,

But how long will it be this time?
before the writing’s washed off the slate
and the wall?

How long before the wall
shall hold again
your mirror as bait?

Your words are naked now,
making their way to all
roads and ears abound

Only because you looked
within and never
without…