The Quiet Art of Being

When I hold your hand, my friend,
I know the days are golden and will never end.
We'll sail through thick and thin;
I draw my strength from somewhere within.
I'm so happy and complete;
It doesn't matter if I lose or win.
I forget to fight; there's no appetite to compete.

But the day you left me, my friend,
I was shattered; I couldn't pretend.
Sadly, the world for me had fallen apart;
The way you hurt me broke my heart.

Days were long, nights lonely;
The bed lay in darkness, weeping and moaning.
My breaths were heavy,
My hands forlorn;
Moments dropped dry as the pool on the lawn.
I was scared to dream
Of a fresh new dawn.

But time has taught me to begin anew,
To see the world in its different hue.
I walk alone, yet feel no void;
I've found the peace I once destroyed.
The silence no longer weighs me down,
Nor does solitude make me frown.
I've learnt that life can still be a winsome whole,
Even when there's none to befriend my soul. 

Born Anew

When I hear these waters
rolling down from somewhere
I imagine it as a hidden place in
a mountain where treasures are stored,
tears of joy roll down my cheeks
For all that I have lost,
 have learned.

When the softest light falls
upon the earth from somewhere
I imagine the sky,
wisdom dawns within me,
teaching me peace.

When darkness falls
and the day disappears
Somewhere I imagine
to be nature’s memory,
wisdom, tolerance, and acceptance
are born anew.

 

The Gap

 Silence, words, silence.

A thought, a doubt, a requiem.

A daydream, a nightmare, the stories.

The void, the voices, the echo.

A whisper, a scream, a sigh.

The heart, the hurt, the hope.

A tear, a smile, a lie.

Love, violence, wealth.

The truth, the mask, the mirror.

The distance, the longing, the loss.

The question, the answer, the silence.

Between the

words—

you, the other, the gap.

The Applause Has Faded

 

I don’t remember when my mom

stopped feeding me, when she stopped

cleaning me. I vaguely remember

when my father stopped walking me to places,

when my parents stopped scolding me,

when they stopped teaching me maths,

physics, and geography.

I remember the faces that smiled

because I giggled, the hands

that clapped when I finished my food,

when I learned to say

A, B, C.

And here I am, that same child,

now a man writing poems in silence,

learning the lessons of life;

cooking, eating, taking care of my health,

talking to walls, pressure cookers,

furniture,

and the pages of history—

all by myself.

The Boat That Stayed

 

With my boat, I am going nowhere.

The sails, the mast, the boom lie still,
though the wind keeps pressing against them.
The rigging and lines have grown weary;
even the keel and rudder seem tired
of carrying me nowhere. Hence tied.

There is an unspeakable sorrow
in knowing that tomorrow,
when another dawn breaks,
I may still be here—
anchored to the same place.

Around me, the waters awaken.
The port stirs to life.
Other boats slip quietly into the morning,
their sails catching the restless wind,
their hulls gliding towards distant horizons.

Every dawn seems to renew them;
every morning gives them another beginning.

But I remain.

I am in a fix—
caught between staying
and setting myself free.

Perhaps I should sell the boat,
let someone else take her out to sea,
let another hand hold the wheel,
another heart trust the wind.

Yet how does one sell a boat
that has carried so much of one's life?

So I sit here,
listening to the water
and watching the others disappear
beyond the harbour mouth,

wondering whether my boat is truly anchored—

or whether
I have simply forgotten
how to sail. 

The Words

The same words,
different verse—
fear, joy, love,
bitter, sweet,
punched in and out
of sentences,
of days,
of lives.

They have said it all before,
yet mean something new, tragic, or fun
each time they return.

Love once meant forever;
now it means letting go.
Joy was once a song;
now it is the quiet flow
between two sorrows.
Fear was once a warning;
now it is the shadow
of things already lost.

Bitter and sweet—
two words we keep apart,
though life has always known
they belong together.

We keep rearranging the words,
changing their places,
changing their clothes,
hoping perhaps
they will tell a different story.

But the words remain.

It is we who change—
we who grow weary
of giving them meaning,
we who discover
that every sentence
has been written
with a little of ourselves.

The words.

The same words.

Different verse.

And now, I'm exhausted,
I have nothing left to say—
except perhaps this:

sometimes silence
is not the absence of experience,
 it is the experience of absence.
Words can neither heal, nor harm
They can neither hurt, nor charm.

It is what remains
when the words
have finally told
the truth.

The Unwritten History

 

To understand our story,
you must think as we do—
in minds thick with blankness,
where words lie submerged,
waiting like bubbles
to break the silence.

I have nothing to offer
except my willing hand.
You may travel through time and space,
across the seas, across the land;
I shall walk beside you
through every night and dawn,
and wherever your journey leads,
my hand will hold you on.

But there is no promise of words.
I cannot rest until you deliver
what lies hidden beneath the silence.
You will have to think as we do,
feel what we cannot utter,
and gather the scattered fragments
of what we have been—

for only then
can our unwritten story
find a voice,
and our history
live beyond us.

Je ne suis pas cela.

 

Je suis — jusqu'ici,

 tout va bien — mais 

avec cela commence 

l'histoire du corps 

et de l'esprit ; 

cette fiction est

 la source de toutes 

nos misères.

I Am Not This

Till I am it is okay

But with that the

Story of the body and

The mind begins

This fiction is the source 

Of all our miseries.

The Banished

 

Voices crowd into my head.
The weather is overcast and grim;
grey clouds obscure the sun.
Characters, structures of every kind,
swirl through my restless mind.

I'm torn between here and there,
belonging nowhere,
except among the corners
of the Globe Theatre.