Numb in Time

has it ever happened
that the tranquil turned skin
quite much in a manner
that all you ever felt was nothing

sensory numb and visual blur blended and wrapped in an endless time warp


have you ever felt at home in the middle of nowehere

Felt in Words

i could keep writing forever


that's what feelings do to us
don't they
that's what we make of feelings
don't we

we have never been able to quite make peace with feelings; how we feel, what we feel, why we feel

overwhelmed in happiness and in sorrow
so much so that we pen it all; every bit of it, every last of it
in the hope that we might finally seek respite from the seething gravity of the scalding truth



and yet here we are, humbled in words

The Privilege That is Poetry

poetry isn't everyone's
for, poetry isn't usual
not even for the ones who could play words at will


chapped hands rinsed in bad blood
a thousand wars waged at the length of a mirror
teeth stained ugly, gnawing through the hollowing spine
soiled nails cutting through clenched jaws and clamouring ribs
the entirety of a Renaissance honed; skin revolting bones


baring it all by the typewriter
that isn't just another everyday

poetry is privilege

Speaking of Love

why is it that we actually fall for what makes us uncomfortable and then seek to run away from it?

why is it that love is such an inexplicable paradox?

Another Forever Affair

and then

yet another mere mortal was etched in a forever 

men may come and men may go 

the gods they make are unscathed in death 

Forgive. Forget.

you could forgive

could you forget though 

if only 

Grammatically

between your ideas of love and lure
lives crumbled to bits and shreds

so much in the name of grammar

The Summary of a Forever

pages of love written, torn, re-written and ripped again
unendingly hoping this would become a novel
essays of intimacies lived and re-lived, imagined and re-imagined
raunchily desiring the sultry daylight was for actual
paragraphs of existences shifting spaces back and forth
gradually choking on the flesh and the bones between acceptances and lunacy
chapters of desertion sipping in, one last time and one more
audaciously dreaming of penning the differences of the buried from the dead


                         - c'est la vie -

O Oedipus

have you ever loved a mother

have you ever loved the woman in a mother
have you ever loved the mother in a woman


how did it feel

they say words are an alchemy
but sometimes
words cannot suffice for the wuthering storms wrecking your insides all the way down to the entrails
or, maybe sometimes
the goosebumps are better forgotten in the skin, the quicksands drowned beneath


have you ever loved a mother

i once did

have you ever felt the peace of a dead midnight in the midst of a wreaking havoc
have you ever watched the flight of freedom even as the worlds came crashing by
have you ever drenched the betweens in love and in lust at the crossroads of a frozen time

i once did

every time our eyes met across the melting pellets of ice pressed hard between the vanishing lips
every time my fingers felt the scars from the time they cut her open
every time her being stood still to the goodnights at the doors of my bare ribs



i once loved a woman and a mother
i once loved the woman and the mother

Mademoiselle

there is something about the smell of the rinsed hair strands of a woman
a maddening intensity somewhat familiar somehow intoxicating


she used to have it too
maybe she still does

the hollow stained walls and the breached blanks can't tell

Life, My Darling

life, my darling, is poetic
one too many a skin cramped for spaces in the numbered lifetime of a forever
you could only pretend to fathom what lies between and what runs beneath but never quite really decipher


a life at hand and too many deaths at bay
do you live or do you survive