I

I light the last smoke
with the half-black topped match.
The last smoke, the last shot at
a wild, slender dream.
And I wait, I wait
I wait for her to walk by
again barefoot beneath the cover of the long wet grass;
walk by my side and brush past my skin
just to feel what I felt
in a dream unseen.

Do you know her?
Do you know where she lives?
Do you know I love her?
Do you?
Does she?

I strive to wade on through
the labrynths of these words,
these words she spoke, these
words I believed.
These words that built
me dreams that hurt.
These words and more that still swirl in my head
like the soft turn of whiskey
on a dark, parched tongue.
I strive.

Do people live only to die?
Do people need to kill
dreams to exist?
Do people hurt?
Do people know?

I lay still on my back,
running my hand through my long wet hair,
awaiting her touch, awaiting her feet,
awaiting her smell;
awaiting my dream.
I am the safe-garden
where she locked a lonely boy,
her face is his life,
his life is his dream,
and I am the ruins of a little boy’s dream.

Rogue sat for days in his garden trying to find ways to tell her goodbye. The midnight gold in the sky refused him light. Rogue sat and refused to cry. Rogue was brave. Their were wells that were filled with dreams he wanted to see. To live. In his garden he was safe. Very safe.

Once he was surprised to find her by his side. His ‘brain was trying to remember her name’. He was searching. He was scared.

He was too late. Fast forward to the present.

Rogue sits for days in his garden trying to find ways to tell her goodbye. Rogue dreams. He dreams of walking barefoot in summer, casting a shadow on her face, so that she can stare back in his eyes. She is his salvation. He sits and wakes the memories that broke him down, held him straight and spoke to him now. They were all he had left of a dream that was not real; for dreams aren’t real. He sits and waits for dawn. He sits with a glass of whiskey and some smoke in his mind. He is real. he is here. He is rogue.

She is beautiful. She didn’t say goodbye. Maybe that’s why she still drops by to meet him in the garden. She never enters. She just wishes he would stop sitting there. She even cried for him. He never cries. He only dreams. He dreams that she would step in for a while. It may seem like a stretch, but its thoughts like this that make him breath even today.

All of their history had little to with her face. She was a 'mistery with violins filling in space'.

(A) boy

A boy lies listening to old melancholies;
once shared, once heard, and crumpled;
with another boy.
The ripples in the spaces, that never made sounds
drew them nigh in sticky summer afternoons and
they grew, cancer amongst hunters;
hunted in their own dreams;
chosen murderers.

A boy gifted a boy
a ‘pillow of dreams’
in the soft night that came with stars for them to choose within.
They chose different ones
each with their own blossoms of faith, hurt and cobwebs
and ocassional deal of cards, with their own time for boys in space.
Like ‘good men’ the boys understood
‘spaces between friends’.

A boy sped across an ocean
riding an unikely star.
A fountain, he was, dragging out fears
meant to be his own private war.
Scared of the spirits
he met the pale shadows
and hid his obscured dreams
to rescue a little boy whose smile pleased the weather.

A boy lay silent
in his own grand prison built of dreams he chose not to see.
He traded his life
for a lopsided smile
that he kept safe within the colours of his mind.
The flowers still bloom in his untrue garden of hurt
and he takes his last tired shower,
his only space in this lonely night.

A boy missed the bus.
A boy hurt.
A boy never cries.
A boy sat alone and spoke of memories to
a boy.
A boy loved.
A boy, just a boy.
A boy, only a man.

Boys

Three boys and a bigger boy sat under a tree on old newspapers. The bigger boy spoke of flash bulbs and lights and shapes and sizes and bigger men. He spoke of the work before the calm flute gives way to the raging guitar. He spoke of ‘the warm thrill of confusion’ and pleasure better than good sex. Three boys listened to the big boy with quivering eyes.

Their conversation continued through different bends and turns. They got news of another boy awaiting them elsewhere, where they should have been, but they were not. They continued to weave through their words. Sitting positions changed. And many cigarettes were smoked, for they were old enough to smoke, and many a drink of tea were downed in traditional earthen cups.

One boy sat on his hunches and was getting excited. The other was lost in thought. The third kept humming ‘bring the boys back home’. It played loud and clear in his head and he could not express the swell in his chest as the choir raised their voices, a toast to despair.

As they spoke of tragedies and portraits, their eyes settled down in monologues. There eyes spoke with fervor as their mouths ranted on their hearts. They had hearts. They were goods boys. The bigger boy spoke the most revealing paths and ideas, entrapping the three boys. And the bigger boy showed them why they were still boys, and they knew that he was not so big. They were all running and chasing and escaping from their boyhoods; and they were not really little boys, but they were boys.

The boy lost in thought placed his arms on the shoulders of the third boy, and fingered his lips. The other boy awaiting them was getting impatient, for he was only a boy. It had started drizzling. And the song still played loud in the third boy’s head.

‘bring the boys back home’

endless

been trying
to fly away on the sound of waters
rolling in amidst voices that keep buzzing within.
shallow glowing of white light
lines converging where your image now stands,
your smile like a
butterfly with broken wings
sleeping on the broken flowers
left behind to wait in the wilderness
where a shadow burns
as calm insanity rages within a painted face
of the shipwrecked friend, unknown dreamer of nightmares.
fleeing from reason
dying to be able to dream again and
the laughter still echoes in your eyes with
friutful memories of all the doors you left open behind
to walk back in other seasons to find the garden
still there waiting in a life unkind.