Palm Prints On Pale Walls

It's true that the brassiest people are missed the most when they're gone
I remember how she always linked her brows when she looked at one
Partly because she couldn't see well
And partly because she didn't like it when kids mumbled
Or stumbled at all
She was one of these people with that yell too loud

And laugh even louder

Her words rushed out like a spring down the mountain
And her wild giggle, it resembled a fountain
Of curt goodness; with a glint that could jostle the glee of the sun
And he, that lean boy with a cigarette pursed
Between his thin lips, a walking display of bravado
They say he spent his childhood constantly nursed
A scarce child, bound to a faint shadow
Used to hide in hers, as she looked for him
With angst in her chest, herself beside
A piece of her own, so terribly missed
In the few seconds when he's out of her sight
"I didn't do right by her", he says,
Terribly shaking down to his toes
"At least she didn't suffer", I'd like to say
He cries, he wails as he bangs his head
Against a wall, unbreakable and abiding, taking on his grief
And unspeakable rue
"In the banquet of life not everyone gets to fill their plate of happiness"
I'd like to whisper into his ears
But words don't rush to one's aid, when most needed

Hey, brother with fingers so long and slender
Your shadow, it's fading away

It's you that seems to crack as you hit that mute wall
Your nimble crumbs, fragments of your soul
They crumble and fall
They pile on the floor, mountains of guilt and yearning
"I'm sorry for your loss", is all I could muster
And I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry.
Though it sounds so light against the heaviness that you feel
With all my prowess and zeal on paper
I'm still learning how to weigh my words
Against the pain and the wounds I venture to heal
I'm sorry that I can't gather all your pieces

There is one resting six feet under
And I still wonder, whether the last thing she said to me

Was the one I remember

Her words burning as they hit my cheeks in that cold night
"I'm still upset that you didn't show up."
Their last lines always echo through pale walls
Their last words grow heavier, no matter how light
All the letters dripping with almond oil
The ones always soiled with my lack of emotion
They never call in amid this commotion
Brother, I only have my own shoulder for you to cry on
But even that I couldn't give you.

Her name is Erum and her prose was heavier than the will of a dying man.

His name is Ryan, and he had a death wish at the age of 23.

Her name is Katia and she's the embodiment of water.

Imagine if flowers grew out of your head, through your nostrils and ears, for every thought that decomposes, improperly contemplated.  

Herzschmerz

Corazon Espenado

I'm utterly drenched in shame when I recall

How contemptuously I handle the maladies of the soul

It shows on my remarks, my phlegm and indifference 

As I pat their shoulders, while quoting my reference

"The world has 7.4 billion humans" 
And he's just one a*shole, so buckle up, woman

But my words of rebuke, all borrowed from the books
They never assuage, I could tell from their looks
They gnaw at their hearts, so left in the open
Draw out the rage of the bereft and broken

"Aren't you so cautious to make
The calamitous mistake 
Of forfeiting your all ?"

I just think it's opaque
To fall head over heels
Well, I'm sorry that I do
You gotta admit
That it is all true; to fall, in essence
For the gist is to kneel

And I'm sorry that I can't
Understand how you feel

That I think it is just too troublesome a deal
This infinite loop of repulsion and zeal
10 seconds of bless then 10 seconds to Mars
Where y'all begin to hass and fling with the stars
All the frays and malaise
The bight and the chase, what a farce, i'd say
How love is such a haze
Lo, if it crushes your lungs
Sits your heart ablaze, as it evidently does
Perhaps it's not meant to be

And not worth all the buzz

"You will die alone, surrounded by old cats"

Perhaps I verily will, my friend, forlorn 
But it is not I that cries and still moans 

Halves

Things cut in half
Always cause uncalled damage when handled by unpracticed fingers
They have
No strength to grow whole, so they take the toll on whoever tries to mend them

Half lines, the best parts are titles of books never opened
The rest of which are left untold
Half loves,
The better half is furled in a pod ,forgotten how to sprout
The bitter half lingers
Half bouts, part of you wants to run away from
Half apologies, they don't erase the guilt
Half eulogies, they are still dead
Half smiles, powdered with dread

Half lies, you still could outrun the bane

Half truths, an iceberg of pain
Half the miles, walked towards another person
Half clutches, clinging unto connections
Or letting go of the burden
Half glances, half mentions
Half dances, so half the tension

You pout your lips, relax your tongue, hold your breath
Take exactly half
A sip

Of everything

Of nothing

Even kisses are split between your lover's and the lips of regret

Sometimes
It ain't worth a dime to finish feats all the way
To lay down the lyrics before the rhymes
To run and embrace what you desire the most
So you just let slip away

Sometimes
It's for the best to only look at your reflection on a shred of glass
On a clear puddle after the rain
Extending your hands to  touch
Disturbs the harmony
Smudges the only image of you that is true
To what you wish to be
What you wish to stay as
Your heart could whisper a truth all along
Yet your limbs and tongue

Could still disobey

The Mirror Crack'd

It pains me a great deal to see you in such a state of distress.
It pains me more that you don't wish to tell me why you are suffering thus.
It pains me further that I can't do a thing to make it less
Crushing.

But It's killing me that I know.
I know I'm the reason behind it all. Or partly so.
I've known it for a long time.
It pierces my heart when I pretend to be looking away while you gaze at me eloquently.
It breaks me inside out when your eyes try to beat your lips into saying a thousand words
And I have to interrupt you to make a joke before it shows on my face
That I know it all.

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I"ll just walk away like we never met , if it will make you stop hurting.

Zeno's Conscience

This is a collaboration. I withheld the name of the co-poet out of courtesy.
Because it was more of a private conversation.



"I see you in your tower, made of wet cement
Right on the edge of the beach that meets the ocean 
And you laugh at waves that crash into you as though 

They're not breaking you down"



Your broken giggles are only solaced by soft frowns
As you peer through the dusty bars,
High above where you could whisper to the stars at night
"Are they trying to reach through, loud children of the vast blue ?

Or do they wish to bring upon my fall?"



"And in your arrogance you spill yourself like oil upon the oceans 
And light yourself aflame
You rage as the oceans underneath you wave indifferently
And the fires you set make your blood boil
The grinding of your teeth like a train screeching to a halt
The world that you leer over, the waves that break you down, all completely indifferent to your turmoil
You look to the stars again assuming that they too are concerned about your angst
And this time you shout
'These armies of the endless cyan
They seem to march hand in hand 
They demand of me what I cannot grant 
That their simple ways I understand' "



"Must be nice"

She thinks, as she lays on flimsy sheets painted indigo
Her remains burnt ashen, the last of her embers fusing with the main
And the waves chanting in one breath a soothing lullaby to kill off what's left of the arson

"Must be really nice, to be colorless"

"With such ease, this infinite bulk of transparent things
Would woo and appease , absorb the light as it feasts on the darkness"
"Lo, the infinite sky, the infinite blue
Rhymed so well,
Except for the vortex that lays in between,
That is I"



"But her I was naught but distraught 
Brought about by her inability to see, 
That what she looked down upon from her tower 
Was what set the oceans 
Free"



Looking at heaven from her place atop the ocean
Swaying in motion, so mesmerized and hooked
She forgot her arid scorn and so-valid condescension
And opened her eyes,
She truly saw, for once
One could draw a line so they could better define the far horizon
But the infinite, the nought,
What lays in between

They, in parallel, traveled
The boundaries unraveled

The further one looked.

For a long while I've been terrified witless of you.
Because on the day we met I got this weird pang in my stomach; I know what it means. I have complete trust in my guts at this age, you see.

I can't escape you.

I'll go around, and around, and around and I will still bump into you at some point on that mobius loop of illogical magnetism. 

11:28 pm

I hate you so much, I can't stand your presence, yet I still believe that I'm bound to you, somehow.

It is so very ,very scary; how my intuition is never wrong.

عيون بيضاء

فقد جسيم، يا صاحبي
ما ألمّ بمنكبيك
لكن الجفا قابع في حنايا الذات، وتكلس الجنان
عندما يعتري الحبّانَ

بعض النوائب، لبلية كبرى
وجه لم يتقن التكلّف، ذاك الذي ولدتُ به
محيىً يتنزه عن تزييف الأسى

حسٌ سقيم، من الصعب أن يبرى
و سيماء تنشغل بكي ثوب الرثاء
يبلى غير ملبوس
في مجالس الحوب
قلب كليم
فقر السيول على أرضه العقيم
لم تورثه غير جلمود

تقمص الدماثة ،يا رفيقي المكروب

حِمل قصيم
فأنا كما أنت
مهمومٌ، 
أرتجي سكناُ و تعزية، في كنف الغثاثة
ولكني اكتب، رغم تبحري في غياهب اللوعة
وبساتين العلقم
لعل ذي الأسطرَِ تمسي
عِذرة

قرأت مرة
أن بعض الشعر من ضروب البلسم

You truly could never die when a writer falls in love with you.

Small Hands

Sometimes I stop listening, when you start talking about your life
And just look at you, reflecting
So small and scrawny, like your shrunk existence is an apology
Treading softly so as not to disturb whatever peace you think
Was rife when you stumbled in
Always fumbling within your loose smocks for things to say
During long pauses of silence
I pretend to be amused by your attempts, the nervous tone in your speech
But I look at you and wonder how you managed to escape 
The reach of moroseness groping for your heart

You still smile, pleasantly so
One Prometheus that got away

I look at you, and wonder
How God plants the seeds of strength in seemingly barren land
You,
Should've broke years back, when life hammered the last nails
In the casket of your youth
Perhaps some are born with a natural knack for defiance against despair
See, resilience, in a world so unfair allows the small ones to slip unnoticed

But I look at you, and I dwell in shame

At how I frequently break and wring in desperation
Thinking that God has tested me with too great a plight
And too frail a might
I am weak, I say, as I cry alone in the still of the night
I have no will to live
And nothing to give
And this is just the beginning
Of the end

Veronica was right, when she decided to die

I
Didn't wish to leave on my own, I just wanted to want to stay
And I stumbled upon you
How you suffered, more than anyone I knew
How your heart is old in age yet your eyes are so bright
Like a sun been around for a billion years
How words trickle from your tongue like they want to ring in ears
And yearn to be sung like a jingle
How you wear your heart upon your sleeves, and never have to look for words
The way you still sparkle without trying

One could love you so much

Or else has to loath you for being a living reminder
Of their unworthiness
Of their greed
Of their ingratitude, and indolent attitude
Expecting things to be given to them as a natural right
How you find the greatest happiness in delights
So little

One forgets to notice them

How you want to live and live, for a lifetime and yet still want to live some more
Terribly
Awfully
Desperately 

One can only pray that life treats you  with grace

House Of Cards

Faith in another being, is so hard to restore, once it crumbles

Like a house of cards, so majestic as it soars

Yet a mere flick to its feet and the whole construction
Would fall into shambles

There is no coming back from there

What took years to grow constant, could disappear in an instant 

See, between a pair, it is only fair to ignore vicious stunts
If one is to enjoy the bless of harmony

With time, it could be done, and with a bit of patience

Forgiveness, though, doesn't come along with forgetfulness 

You could forgive the deed, too trivial to disturb your conscience on sleepless nights

You could move beyond a spar, but could never forget that the intention

To inflict a scar, so foul and sable, shall always linger

A ghost
With a shadow
Sitting at the furthest seat across the table

How is it that you never learn, building sheds in your heart from branches and shreds
To so "accommodate" people

Praying to God as you rip your chest open, to allow in the wind of benevolence
With tears at the brink of your valleys that your little town of paper doesn't burn
Upon catching a spark of incited rage

Burn to ashes
And turn to dust

How is it that you still look at your reflection with doubts in your heart 

Fumbling about your limbs to find fault with your own
How the notion of "trust"

You've grown into guileless idylls from Utopia

Perhaps such a trifling fray shouldn't have sat you apart, you say

And perhaps you are just being human, so habitually prone to error and folly 

Though you think, in this duo, you've got the greater share of virtue

It is God that forgives all, it's true
And bits of His clemency were placed within the holly 

So it seems, there shall always remain an Albatross of guilt hanging from your throat

No matter how hurtful ,the seam on your neck

And baneful, the garrote

But how is it that you are still so haunted by your past losses

Your flaws and short comings, magnified
The morbid echoes within the chambers of your mind,
Confused and amplified
That you never thought
You had the right to walk away ?

"Oh I'm a mess right now. Inside out."