In Stasis

In the silence between ringing static,

Where all thought and feeling is mute;

There drifted pieces of our splintered sun,

Suspended in a sea of stoic stillness...

We looked up, we whose feet scratched this earth;

Feigning divine mechanics in the arching of necks,

Arms flailing like leafless branches swaying in wind,

As shafts of lightning and thundering claps

Crowded our sky with dark, damning clouds.

In the cold of our stasis, death’s breath was warm,

And the million eyed monster that haunted our dreams,

Was but a puppy yapping in a void of confounding darkness.

The world was a dog spinning on its tail;

And we the fur bristling on its coat,

Registered static panic with jaws jarred ajar-

Oblivious to the signs punctuating our fears,

That something unseen was growing in our midst.

2015

An Era's End

Once we walked on earth carpeted with gold;

sat round breathing fires that lit away the cold,

where hot whispers of moments come to fold,

spread tales of winds grown stale with age.

Then came a day for the turning of the page,

when our house would rise hissing in flames

at the hands of alien bandits aided by our kin...

Winds stand still on the back of flapping flames,

as forests faint at the decimation of their lings.

Mountains double in pain at the passing of sanity,

as invisible hordes of numb faces

witness the unfolding of our demise.

Now here in the ashes of this, our final hour,

stand we of the nacred tongue- helpless, forlorn;

watching in sunken silence-

the festivity of fools clowning on sacred ground.

2015

A Macabre Event

I saw a canvass of wombs ripped agash by jagged steel.

The dark dirt, stained by blood and birth water,

was maroon and covered with rotting foetuses;

discoloured, beflied, and numbered in the dozens....

They filled the still air with the stinging stench of death.

It was a sight to turn the gods fast on their heels.

Vultures landed and scampered off in fright

as a bleeding sun, fading in a dull red sky,

drew with its dying breath the only cloud left in the sky:

a desperate attempt to escape a horrid farewell.

In the midst of this sordid phantasm,

there stood still he of the jagged steel-

Tall in the centre of his morbid theatre...

The last of the toothless creatures dangled

by a foot in his vicious grip,

wailing wildly to an empty dome.

Its mother’s body was still framed in the posture

of its delivery;

the final gasps of life quivering out of her body

as her severed head rolled downhill like a deflated ball.

Insects burrowed into the soil in frenzied motions,

hurrying away to the safety of a convulsing earth:

But rivulets of blood followed their fleeing bodies,

and the villain, sated with his macabre feat,

was the very picture of irreproachable ease.

2015

A Man Bedevilled

When a man is tasked beyond his station,

and cast in role that will grind his fibre to pulp,

Sometimes he will have it in him to leap over a

rushing rapid and escape an end as a beast’s meal;

Other times he may find his weight rather feathery.

Like when he wakes in the twixt of blaring wildfire,

eyes stung blind, and chest too stuffed with wanton soot to

scoop a long enough breath to keep the senses above panic.

Then he may find manhood a force too formless to summon. 

And worse, the gods too indifferent to lend a staff to lean on; 

for gods have their mind, and mortal concerns  

are as valuable as pearls in a child’s palm.

When a man finds himself thus beset,

neither Reason, nor Faith-

for all their fine bearing on the spirit, can conjure a miracle 

to reign in the wailing winds fanning the flames.  

Only Fate, with its wry, twisted, humour,

can whisk Chance from beloved slumber,

and cool to an ember,

the greedy flares baying for his flesh.

The man thus beset,

holding onto feathery being by nifty thread,

must find peace in surrender,

Only when unburdened by the fixity of form,

is he truly free. 

2015

Battered Warriors

We hold onto our scars like trophies:

Token momentos of causes we purported to fight,

Just so we could have wounds to display our valour.

We stagger to damp homes emptied of children’s cackles:

The scents of cheerful cooking linger only in distant memory.

Our fate summons mixed omens:

in one shell looms the inevitable spectre of doom-

a dense black smog, jungle dark and mute;

in the other soundless sparks of hope flicker,

dotting the dense smog with yellowy dots of fire.

The young grit their teeth as the old anxiously chew on lips.

Their eyes are dead and hollow;

shrivelled carcases of tailless tadpoles floating in dead water.

 

Is it a jinx,

this battling for ends that lead to new wars?

Are we headless chicken flapping frightened wings

in a tightly sealed ring, lapping circles in paroxysm?

We are warriors without nations to protect,

Our fists thirst for victories to quench our hearts with respect.

2015