Veins

There are some people who blend beautifully into your life. That terrible beauty that takes over, and having taken over continues to grow algae-like over pools of once uncontaminated moments.

She was beautiful, no doubt. Her voice had the burst of freshness of freshly plucked mint on parched morning afters. And so she came into my life. I took her by hand into the freshly painted memories of my mind. She built and rebuilt the fractured fragments of my imagination as my skin itched, the purpled veins underneath growing darker. And she would brush her fingers over my furrowed brow, "it will all be alright", she said.

I watched as she picked up wooden frames, tilting, sawing edges, I helped her even with sand paper that razed my hand. I saw myself being innocuously shifted out of the refurbished frames. Quite inconspicuously at first, just an ear or a foot until it was hard to see that they were my frames at all.

And those purple veins grew thicker and longer over my swollen fingers. Stretching, spreading, spurting new tendrils, throbbing at the joints till they ached.

Finally, one day, I found a blade. What does it take to wash purple stains?

Icarus

And suddenly it scared her
The absence of foul smell
The smoke
The heat
Of burning feathers

That empty space
Where dreams resided
But a hole in the sky

At least he had feathers to melt.

Spots

I see spots, she said.

And everywhere she went, red, yellow and greenish blue spots, little, huge and just about average, throbbed sore and aching before her until she practically peeled her eyes away from the pulsing spots.

They followed her everywhere, the little, huge and just about average spots. They screamed at her from shiny billboards in flashy golden lettering, A Potion to Magically Straighten Your Hairs, and Snakes and Shakes, hissed the shady store down the street. From recieved to expresso, from goverment to grammer, the spots kept bubbling and bursting belligerently before her. So she pricked them and she poked them till she very nearly choked on them. The Es and the silent Ts dissolved in tiny pools on her now very moist pillow. Tired of splashing about in them she got up and left all in a huff down the street, round the corner, way past the shady store and stopped in sudden wonderment when a quaint little man from a quaint little shop waved out to her most exuberantly!

And as she blinked, adjusting still to the spotless little shop, what should the quaint little man hand her but her favourite book!

Eyes all alight she hugged it tight and ran all the way back home, not stopping till she was quite out of breath. And opening only now the brand new dictionary, she lay snuggly down between the crisp white sheets drifting into dreams of spotless shelves and spotless minds where all was well with the world and the letters fitted in just right.

Embrace

The tension of distance explodes in friction 

As two feet learn to dance again
Stumbling, fumbling, hesitant and clumsy 

We try at least to walk again
Chipped nails and speared tongues 

Our voices quiver in uncanny dissonance 

As the familiar is dug out of forgotten crevices 

Of a mind that had long drifted on.

Faced by the stark plurality of worlds 

Mirrors shatter as reflections stain
The strain of reliving every detail, 

Every blemish, every look, every touch, 

Every last word
Is every bit as shattering as is euphoric
And yet stung, battered and bruised 

Our war scars are dearer to us 

Than the smiles appearing with the suddenness of a rainbow, 

Lost before we can be quite sure.

Harmony, accord and treatises of peace 

Can only be black or white we realise 

As we trail blinded by mists of greener dreams and fantasies
The skin we tear at in the name of boundaries 

Is raw and slowly turning a dull shade of soft purple mornings
And we rub our eyes spreading out memories 

In thin films till they can't be told from the blotchy mascara 

That remains somewhere on a finger nail gone unnoticed
And we stretch cracked lips till they primly purse
Drawing blood and not the smiles we sought.

Eyes lowered in remembered chivalry 

We depart 

Lest the bitterness pull us deeper into an embrace
And we walk away 

The whispered silence following us.

Butterflies

Puffs of white cotton clouds
Swam across a brilliantly blue sky
And they had lain there
The morning dew wet against their faces
Watching the flitting specks of yellow butterflies

Drawing the curtains she paused at the sight of her reflection
Her eyes strayed to the lines he had traced on her neck
Raw and still red at places,  she winced as her fingers brushed over them

With a deep breath she turned away
Scattered light infiltrated the gaps
And fell on broken glass
The long trail of broken shards ended in a pool of glitter
Dimly shone in the fading light
Lay a glass encased wooden frame
Craftily captured and artistically glued at three points
Were three yellow butterflies

Snowdrift

In darkness swirl little specks of light
Dim yellow like embers ready to burst  into flames
And yet contain themselves
And float in the empty darkness

Grief only ever touched me from a distance
In the day she watched me from afar
While I watched my world being taken by storm
She watched me quiet and deathly long

And as every storm must come to an end
I watched my world being lightly peppered with ashes
And she watched still while I thought it was over

But the ice had yet to melt, the jabs were still to come
"Do you even remember him?"
And I bled afresh, stung by another broken voice

Finally she walked up to me
Let me curl up in her lap and break
If you can be at peace with grief,  I was

And so in darkness when I watched the little specks of light
It is her I remembered
As I stuck out my hand
Waiting for a little light to settle
For a burning snowflake to touch me now 
And see if I cared

Tender Is The Night

Tender is the night

And all the people sleeping under

Glass walls cage us all

Lips open and close

And produce sound

Meaning is in the mind

Eyes become interpreters

And we are misled

Triumph is in chaos

Chaos that shatters

And draws blood crystals

Crystals that shine in a reddening dusk

Dusk that closes in the arms of  morning

And parts in tears

Tender is the night

And all the people sleeping under

Silent dreams whence calm comes from

That silence noise

And settle on wet grass

Only to turn the world

A deep shade of purple

And recede unto the unconscious