Eyes

The oceans have gone away….

Way beyond that sacred sky

I see eyes…. Eyes….

Eyes of the stars

And the breezes are deep

And all the ships have sunk

In the petals of the bluebell sea

In the harpsichord of some ghostly pale mausoleum

And in the green deserts, you had built me a house

But the house became eyes….ah….eyes

And in the desert nothing grows but for eyes….

And in the river nothing flows but eyes….

It’s cold and lonely out here,

But I’d rather mind my own business,

I’d keep the fire burning

And I’d make my babies strong…..

The flood and the drought breeds eyes as well

And the wounded soldier bleeds in your guitar

So that long after all these I’ll see a kingdom

Where the King, the Queen, the Jack and the Ace are blind…..

My hands are frozen, yet I have to write

My sword is broken, yet I have to fight

Soldiers and windmills all the same

I’m sad for Quixote, and I see a flame….

And in that flame there’s all my life

Marching along the edge of a knife

My faith is broken, yet I have to sing

For my Lord and for my King

The stars have set the night on fire

And before long I’ll light my pyre

And I’ll see you in my twisted dreams

For the smoke is cruel, or so it seems….

All of a sudden I’ve lost my rhymes

I’ve lost my words

I’ve lost my battles

And the eyes are everywhere….

In the frost and breath

In the stale damp cigarette-reveries

In the pages of all the Holy Books I had written for you

In all the midnight charcoal graffiti of my bedroom walls

When everything becomes mad

When the wild flames leap up from the night sky

When the doorknob watches me with its ten-million-year-old cold gaze of death and steel and harmony and silence to eat me up…. To swallow me down the gutters of the unwritten dog-eared history books and my serpent skin is ripped apart by the by the dark dancing shadows of the chrysanthemum leaves on the yellow streetlight fog of my windowpane and everything becomes mist and bereavement and the sacramental waters which we throw up the moment faith makes us sad for Jesus and Ezid and El and Ka and for the final Hallelujah for nightmares naked in the cold and I have to lie to my own flesh and to my own mother and to every other thing till my bed sheet flies away to the moon which is now hidden by the glowing embers of the clouds…. But never to my eyes…. Never….

I had promised to write a poem for you

Now it’s upto me to keep that promise, you know

And I won’t keep my promise

I won’t hide my promises in a treasure trove

I won’t bury my promises deep into the skies and give you a treasure hunting map expecting you to dig out some rotten corpse of poetry

No.

I won’t write a poem for you

I will write you through a poem

Through this poem, perhaps

I will create you with my sighs and with my flames

I’ll chisel and curve you with my hopeless tears that never flow

I’ll burn you with my very own blood

I’ll create you…. I’ll be your Creator, your God, your Father, your Son, your Holy Ghost

I’ll fill up your skies, your oceans, your rivers, your everything….

But not your eyes

It’s for you to sketch out your own eyes….

Like two dark and endless wishing wells of time –

Holier than your breasts,

Holier than your flesh,

Holier than your Faith,

Holier than your Hope,

Holier than your Love

Holier than your Mother…..

And as for the child who mourns for the morning star –

Show him those skulls and skeletons

that dangle from the black petals of the Lotus that blooms on the Blue river of wine and poison and death and love….

And you’ll get that sweet scent of pain that plays hide and seek with his cold breath…..

For everything has eyes

Everything…. Everything…. everything….

Even the child’s chocolate wrapper flag that flutters proudly against the sky

and declares war against Heaven.

And I loved you once

And I still do love you….