Coffeeshop Talk

They are clamped and nailed.
A demand of a purse, is too huge a demand.
They part, occasionally.
Words do not follow.
But they let down their guard, occasionally, too.
To whom, you ask?
To their loves, you say!
What pretence you put, you know it so.
Well, to strangers, I say.
To people beyond their lives.
They open and flood.
Absurdity, you claim, irony, you claim.
Natural, I claim.
Only in the coffeeshop, there is:
No judgment or remembrance.
Kinship, Friendship, you rage.
The imprint, the constant rememory, I rage.
They fasten at prophesized reactions.
They are afraid of the eyes that speak.
The mouth that recognizes.
The mind that concludes.

An Acknowledgement of Truth

Do not complicate, it is a simple
Concept of a cup.

At the pits or climbing, but rarely climbed and conquered.
You yearn for sight.
Unless you are that water droplet,
You never reach the summit.
You can crawl upwards and feel the resemblance
But you can never be.
You may hear their bawling or taste their angst
But you may not deny the replay;
The reproduction, the mise en scene, the cinematography.
Of the actual.

You sneak behind, standing at the
Angle so you see through their glasses.
You forget and indulge in role play.
You may flaunt your learned knowledge of wine reservoirs
But even at that angle, through those glasses
It remains unfathomable.
You dip your toes in the water and smell their chlorine
You may almost be a Godiva for one or two
But you are not the water droplet.

I cannot comprehend Wealth in your mansion
With a pool.
The Hutu and the Tutsi cannot interpret Peace in my land
With a government.

Tin

I have not tried the taste of floor
Because I glisten and
When you or they drop me
Plain and unwrapped
I pray to be less shiny;

Nor have I pressed my bare body on the courtyard.
I am almost unbearably bright.
Silence beckons.
I create experiences for myself.
Even this is too orderly.

I have not swung on trees;
I’ve not fought for my country
But I am not empty?
Because I am a newborn.
I must stop reasoning.

I have not slid down the falls
Or licked the tiles of the pool.
I am not filled either?
I cannot feign rust the truth is
Start writing.

Dark Eyes

And you do a little dance,
And you follow the lines so well,
And you perfect the rouge evenly,
And Explosion is drumming in.

So you are tender, graceful, mild;
So you nibble, giggle, tilt,
So your eyes shine when you speak,
So Explosion contains.

As he gave a firm handshake,
As he had a perfect knot,
As his smell controlled the beats,
As he mingled with Explosion.

But you swung from one lamppost;
But you faltered with the odour;
But you could not be a fool;
But you long for Explosion.

Voice to Angela's silence

From Angela’s Ashes, my all-time classic:

“The women are gone to the cinemas, the men are in the pubs, and still Dad isn’t home. Mam says it’s a long way to the cement factory even if he’s a fast walker. She says that but her eyes are watery and she’s not singing anymore. She’s sitting by the fire smoking a Wild Woodbine she got on credit from Kathleen O’ Connell.”
…
“The women are coming home from the cinemas, laughing, and the men, singing, from the pubs. Mam says there’s no use waiting up any longer. If Dad stays in the pubs till closing time there will be nothing left from his wages and we might as well go to bed. She lies in her bed with Michael in her arms. It’s quiet in the lane and I can hear her crying even though she pulls an old coat over her face and I can hear in the distance, my father.”
…
“I want to go down and get the Friday Penny but Mam is sobbing with the coat over her mouth and Malachy says, I don’t want his old Friday Penny. He can keep it.”

You said you’d sterilize my blood tonight

You said you’d sterilize my blood tonight.
Was it oil on the floor, gingerly
I sat on the grinning swivel chair.
Her leather red blinds and she is pregnant.

Lifted; the view here is different?
Metallic grinding, fluorine, Whiteness.
Her wheels spun on the floor, they screech, they yell, they hurt my eyes.
The tubes in my mouth tremble.

Water squirts, you scrub, you wash.
She is pregnant and shiny and she stays;
I screech, I yell, I hurt her eyes with the same scissors
I jab her leather I unearth her cotton.

Becomes limp with my blood.
You bleached, You tried, I do not blame.
I pulled the tubes and felt the rawness of my skin
my organs my naked body
stained with blood the mirror

How can you help when yours is a purple
Of sinister shade
But you are the doctor
You said you’d sterilize my blood tonight.

Between the Gulper Eel and the Blackbird

Unaffectionate to them I would say.
You are being euphemistic; it’s cold,
somewhat unreachable.
The white fluffs obstruct, they restrict.
And you enjoy it this way-
The very way you enjoy those blurring lines as you sway-
And as you leap too, pushing back them wings.

I see soles, they have many colours.
I see hair, they have many colours but Do you find the windows?
Jet Black, Chestnut, Sapphire against White, but
Do you find the windows?
I search, sometimes strands cover, sometimes-
I could almost see but the glass obstructs.
They way you want it,
As the way you soar further.

We’re identical, in more ways than one.
We are, We all are.

The first of more.

I am young, idealistic and hopeful. Much as I wish I’m not, I’m often more superficial than the honest, bare-it-all self that I want to be. Through poetry, I attempt to proffer my views, think, and reflect in our intangible world. This blog shall be solely dedicated to my self-penned poems, and perhaps prose too. I hope you’d enjoy some of my writings and it’d be wonderful if you could drop me a line to share with me your readings of the works, the ones you abhor, those you have or have had an intense, intimate connection with, your own poems, other interesting works, and the like.

I’m behind the mask at liningrubberdust@hotmail.com.