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As July passes.

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I saw the city melt last summer. All its noise and infinite detail pooled at my feet in a simple mess of concrete and glass. It slowly crept forwards before whisking me away into the depths of an immaterial place. It felt comforting to be swept off my feet. Worldly rules became weightless, swirling into the same inseparable shades of grey that I was wading through in silence. This night was not to be reasoned with. Rhythm had no reign here either. The hours were locks of charcoal hair, unravelling in even the lightest of breaths. In this impenetrable vastness I heard the floods of the desire crashing against walls that were slowly giving way. The torrent moved so quickly that right in front of my eyes its frothing rage froze into an undisturbed stillness. Wisps of doubt crystallised into unshakeable belief. When the mess of grey and silver retreated and gradually froze, the streets didn’t look the same. The corners weren’t quite as sharp and the bends seemed to turn without end. ...
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Transient

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On a damp February morning, I found myself in the kitchen again. Letting the countertop drain the last ounce of warmth from my palms, I stood immovable like the air that was pressing against my chest.  A dull thud broke the silence as each second passed. The leaking faucet was shedding hefty tears in remembrance. My eyes glazed over as I watched the clock on the micro w a ve, while its garish digits rearranged themselves like clumsy children in a school play. They spelled out half past four.  Oddly, the street lights were out cold. The ground and sky were melting together into a thick black ooze that entombed everything in its path.The darkness was so profound that it filtered into the room like swelling beams of sunlight.  In one corner all the pots, pans and glasses were cuddled together in a confusing heap, lost in the depths of a dreamless sleep. Instead of fixing myself a cup of coffee, I stood there adoring them with envy.  Maybe if I stood still enough, I too...
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Marionette

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Drunk on the savour of the nightly bloom, I’m drawn deep into the settling fog. I don’t know where I am or how far I’ve strayed, but midnight feels farther than dawn. The wind has hummed itself to sleep, leaving an awkward silence in its wake. Now it’s just the echo of my hollow footsteps and the sweet scent of October in the air. Shattered blades of moonlight stab through the crevices in the clouds. As I walk through its dappled light, I fade in and out of existence, before a sudden flash of lightning carves right through my tepid daze.  But I do not bleed. My wooden flesh does not grow weary. Maybe my nerves of string are too tangled to tell. My blood once knew its way through the valleys of my skin, but now, it’s frozen still. Why can’t I burn at the gentlest kiss of light, in a million shades of amber like the autumn rain? Or blossom like these Alstonias, to greet every dull eve with ethereal grace? Will I ever be unwary as their flowers, surrendering to the will of every s...
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Still.

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This bridge to the bus stop knows my frenzied footsteps well. It’s a dance I do everyday.  But today it stares at me like a stranger, it’s never known me to halt midway.  Faces pass by in a flurry.  They all have someplace to be.  In its last breath the dying winter tells me, even January is making haste to leave.  Maybe even I should head home now, the sun is getting low. But I want to stand here and let life go by, I feel no need to hurry.  From its tinsel towers I’ve watched this city preen, on the ground I’ve heard its people scream.  But from this bridge I see life itself, in the river of tarmac and gasoline. For is this life not a highway, where stillness is met with death?  Where the soul is too nervous to look around, too wound up to take a breath? I know life is a highway, because it’s been mere moments since we met.  But before we can let ourselves be seen, you’re another memory to forget.   And though life is a wide open highw...
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The Incurable Affliction

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I’m afloat in the pale, red reverie that separates dreams from daylight.  Evading the daily rebirth into sameness, it is in this undecided delirium that I thumb through the pages of my life.  And as I do, clarity cuts me deeper than the papercuts.    It burrows beneath my skin and gnaws on my bones. Then it ties my tongue and siezes my vision, before stealthily settling into the depths of my soul like a cold, calculating creature of the sea. I must lure it out and spear it right through the heart. For that, these words must cut deeper. But as the pages flail and flutter, the sentences seem to be struggling to drag themselves home. The words hang on as long as they can, before collapsing under the weight of the author’s ineptitude. Before I’m drawn back into a slumber, I pry my eyes open. The unremarkable glow of this early winter morning is meekly attempting to colour the walls of the room. A familiar cooing belts out from the niche underneath the window, where a pig...
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The Lily Livered Recluse

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Dear Unknown, My eyelids are heavy and weary, yet too timid to embrace each other. Autumn whispers shyly through the netted window. This damp, dismal night is lit only by the sickly glow of flickering neon letters perched atop a preening building, screaming in shades of electric red and yellow. But it is in this horrid limelight that I speak tonight, to an audience of famished trees, elusive crickets and the anaemic winds of October.  Through half open eyes I watch this vulgar vista contort itself into hypnotising swirls in the murky puddles that litter the construction site below. In the haziness of a sleepless reverie I could see a reflection of myself in them. These puddles were cowards too, skulking behind a veil of unintelligible obscurity, distorting anything that remotely cared to pry beyond the surface.  I think back to the drivel that I have spilled on these pages. Brutish brushstrokes I have smeared canvases with. All those stuffy verses and crude colours never stood...
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The Trickster and The Fool

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Dear Reader,  There’s something grotesque afoot on the rain-drenched verandah floor.  A broken wing of a dragonfly is erratically wandering about, as if in a frantic search for its now flightless, maybe lifeless owner. The obvious perpetrator is underneath - a contumacious ant, coloured bright red by a churning rage that refuses to be confined in such a mortal being.  I silently cheer it on. Not unlike a dragonfly and its wings, time too is unpredictable and menacingly beautiful, feigning stillness by moving blindingly quick. The spirited ant reflects our fate - a frail creature battling a gargantuan foe, celebrating every inflicted wound, even a severed wing.  Knotted veils of rain now drape the landscape, peeling it into distinct layers. Within a few moments, a feeling of ineffable warmth envelopes my senses. Reality refracts and smudges into painterly realism. The painfully metallic scent of the world is replaced by the intoxicating fragrance of nostalgia. The eve...
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