Monday, 16 June 2025

Float along


That pressure gauge you think

Is inside your head

With its needle in the red

Is only a phantom.

 

It’s just a crowding of

Thoughts uninvited

Knocking incessantly

At your mind’s door.

 

That cosmic tick tock you think

Is counting you down

To judgement hour each day

Is contrived too.

 

Time is indifferent

To moments both meaningful

And trivial.

 

Its nature is to flow

And all you need to do

Is float along…

Tuesday, 3 June 2025

Decline

 


Entered the maze of memories

and retraced steps seeking

a clear pool of the familiar

and the unchanged, for the tired soul

to drink strength from,

so it could carry on…

 

Lost bearing in the dimness and

lost footing blinded by cobwebs

and fell through to the past…

 

Looked around and saw

the familiar had declined

and time had corroded

the contours of things and people

into obscure contorted masses.

 

The reserve of strength hoped for

had run dry from years of munificence

and I didn’t have enough

of what it needed to resuscitate.

 

I sat a few moments in its embrace

and left lighter than I’d come

with a promise that soon

I‘d come back holding

the tiny hands of the future

for one last hug.

Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Lifetimes


In a fraction of a lifetime

I’ve aged many

Friendships supposed forever

Have long frozen in photos

I can barely recognize

Memories once light and effusive

Have turned black and viscous

An undifferentiated mass

That evokes nothing

Mind fastened to glowing screen

With endless things

Enslaved beyond redeem

Promise and potential abandoned

At the altar of expediency

A restless soul rendered inert

By the sheer drudgery

Of trudging along interminably

Conspiracy

For my school friends, a group of five, that we call...


Conspiracy

 

Against what? You ask…

In this world of each on his own

We conspire against estrangement

Against disaffection with life’s dispiriting echo chambers

That judge us short

A soundproof room

We come here to yell and swear

An asylum for idiosyncrasies

We conspire against the world’s indifference

Where things are pronounced stale by the minute

A constant, like a buoy

We conspire against obsolescence

Friday, 16 May 2025

Walking Islands


This city is an island

And me an island within it

I have my back to you

And indifference painted on my face

Lest it reveal some affinity

I suppressed long ago

The line of my lips renounced its curve

Lest it indebt me to empathy, or worse

Invite you to probe

The hollowness of my being

No!

Share your soul’s abundance

With those equally prosperous

I shall savour my emptiness alone

You are too normal

To be worthy

Of the hell that I’m in…