I'm terribly sorry.

Criminal

I'm sorry that I broke you
Would like to say accidentally but I knew it was
Bound to end thus, when you ran away first
You gave me the power to hurt you
I'm not good with delicate men, see, I'm a bold lass
I'm sorry
That I stole the little faith
You had in good things happening to
Those who wait
Good things evade those who wait
And run towards those who would stoop to conquer them
Clutch at their throat into submission
Good things happen to those who seek
And I'm sorry that I
Didn't care enough to apologize properly
You will never know that I am sorry
Perhaps I am not
I'm too self-centered to mind the world as I tiptoe around chagrin
And I tried to soften your edges
I didn't know where my indifference hit you
Because I was busy covering my eyes from the impact, see
I've learnt that silence cuts deeper than words, sometimes
And no matter how much I tried to beat myself up with the whips of guilt
My only crime was that I did nothing
A bottle of silence
Convoluted, and half full
You say I contain magic but these fumes dwelling in my empty quarters would occasionally seep, if left in the dark
And they will manage to suffocate your virgin heart if you stay too close
Beloved, my indifferent grin, though brief and cautious, only seemed to have sprinkled salt and sawdust on your unevenness
As I sawed down the last bridge you stopped at its feet, too scared to cross, see I
Don't like dwelling on what pains my nerves ,I
Wring them plenty when I ram the strings of our conversations
Trying to make music of your broken sentences and nervous gestures
You are making things harder by
Crashing on the corner-most easy chair in my mind
Pigmenting my days with consciousness
Making my shadow heavier
Kindly leave, after sweeping off
Your cigarette butts
And waving into thinness the whiffs of your rancid cologne.

This spot is reserved
For another vagrant of the night
That knows better not to knock.

I wonder when is it that I started to
Seek so many ends at the same time
Randomly hug my mother a bit too tight while passing her by and stuff my day to repletion with things to do
Smile at strangers and text first
Ignore offenses and speak my mind
Perhaps it was when I bailed out on our plans and
You passed away, not long after
An unanswered text on your phone
There is so much living to be done on your behalf
So many calls to make
So many hugs to give
So many jokes to to tell, comic books to read
So many Friday prayers
So many paintings to look at, good music and pates and fireworks on new year's and silly commercials to laugh at
I push to the back of my mind the futility of it all as I hasten to live and hurry to feel, tell me
What is the story of the world ?
Do we live as if death is sniffing at one's earlobes at every moment or
Do we live as if death was an invention
Immortals, basking in the glory of forevers and next times?

Leviathan

There is a hint of the tragic and inevitable when two beings of a kind, happen to find their way through the thickets of life towards the burning zest of  mutual attraction, a prelude to a Dostoyevskian novel
I wish I had your boldness
So much trust in your heart being able to stitch itself again and again
Though missing pieces you gladly gave away as a price  for the sour sweet memories,
Like the martyr you are
You tripped many a time and still persevered, walking right back into the storm they call ardor
I could never learn to do that, no matter how many years have passed
I know my heart is too frail to handle the whimsical shifts of gale, I wouldn't dare
Try it, I
Spoil my own like a Chinese vase
You loved her like a raging hurricane, your entire soul at stake, your might
Your youth
Your softness that lies beneath layers of assumed apathy
She was flickering flames you couldn't
Touch, so you tried to quell like the habit of
All the aqueous beings
The Mind versus Heart is such a sour affair
 I'm a still pond of reveries and idle musings, full to the brim with inner conflicts and interrupted conversations with the sublime and fathomless
We stand at two edges of the world
A rift in between
And sometimes I feel that this pilgrimage of predilection that you made
Is a muffled cry for help
See, the worst trap for a broken person
Is being needed
 I don't believe in stars nor do I care for  the science of chemistry
But I still knew, the way one knows their own limbs in the dark
This madness was not a summer rush, beloved
As well as you knew who I am, behind this armor of indifference, behind all the insolence and shrugs
How strange
People like to answer the calls of vertigo despite themselves
It's in our bones
See, I won't stop you,
But you will get too close and I'll push you away
You will find this colorlessness too convenient, and blend with me in ways I won't accept because
I wouldn't be able to reverse
I know that you understand
It's because you do that I can't keep up my pretences and
It makes me feel weak
The kind of weak that makes me shrivel in loathing and hurt pride
I may not give you my hand as you cling to the chasm that is the contrast between our worldly views
But please, do take better care of your heart
There are more like me in the world
And they tend to swallow your kind whole.

Sometimes it makes me mad, how honest my poetry is. It's bare to embarrassment.
I never tell lies, but I rarely dig deep when it's time to tell truth.
I
Know myself way too well to beat around the thickets of my pretenses, it seems. I want to stop doing this, but I want to understand myself and there is no better way than to probe it like that in the dark. My drafts are full of shameful confessions and I don't want to be out there like that.
Glad that this wall of verbal graffiti is one that not many people pass by.

Heiwa

It seems that I've long lost the war of stoicism
Against the resilient troops of my own indulgences
That is, I no longer find it in me to force my dear self
To limp and stagger over the impassable trials of inconvenience
One of the perks of old age
Having gotten the apathy of a child that doesn't care for the world and the wisdom of a sage
Passed through the alternating seasons of
Learned sorrow and hushed rage
The self is of meek shoulders, see
It had to learn to drill its way through the walls of sullen circumstances
Like a rat scrambling for dear life through the rotten wood of a sunken ship
A "No" tastes less sour on the tongue, now
It scratches less harshly on the roof of one's throat
Lies come chaperoned with qualm
Truths rest well under linen and pout one's cushions
For a good night's sleep, quiet and calm
Black and white make peace over boundaries
Shadows are more tall than mean, you stop running away from yours and would rather hide in it from sordid encounters
And light is for kind thoughts, only kind thoughts and balsamic poetry


When enough years have passed you learn that meanness has been dwelling in our marrows since birth
Meanness and a readiness for shedding pretenses, like withered Orchid blossoms
Strange, I have no children but I would understand how a loving mother could bloody her hands to keep her own, sound
Because this body, this face, my skin, struggling to fend the surfacing scars of lost wars
And the permanent ripples of time
These little windows of peace in the kingdom of my mind and these tired bones, shrinking under the weight of living
Are all that I got left in this fray

Thou shalt not get another piece
Of me.

                                                            -Rain

Vibrato

You are Rosin to my strings
Though sombre and eerie like a muddy river
Too rigid for my liking and quite helplessly broken
You reflect the light that shines on your dark skin
Like a punitive truth on naked sin
You ease the brakes on my candid
As I exhaust the spring of my tender words
The splendid honeysuckle of my youthful songs
This flare and glory
Verily ,it would all be in vain
Mere scribbles on a smudgy pane
Hastily fading in the haze
No echoes, no music
No vibrations
Without the comfort of having you
In the smallest pocket of my case.


                                                              -Rain