The auditory imagination - Shyamli's four poems for this time

I would like to preface these poems by saying that Shyamli has one of the finest ears I've come across in quite some time.

1.

They walk amongst us,

though you see them not-

or just barely so.

Feeding and feeling

blindly about,

Stealing kisses under the mistletoe.


They’ve watched you

glisten

in your bath-

they snigger and leer

at your nakedness-

with nothing to hide,

and nowhere

to hide it.


Your porcelain mask

serves its purpose no more.

Even I,

see through the redundant shell-

transparent,

it fails to lie

as it did before.



So, throw away

the silver-cuffs

and scatter

the shattered reflections

around.

They’ve seen your wretched hate

and despair

and now know

there is nothing uglier

to be found.



Your foul fell stench

consumes their living breath.

Your expensive parfums

even more so.

And the scents so lavishly

lathered on….

don’t cleanse,

your sinful compromise.


Now burn that flimsy cloth

to its last bare thread,

it doesn’t disguise your

gaping scars.

E'en the courtroom filled

with cloaked gentlemen

jest,

about your

foolish pride.

and all your attempted altruistic delights.

How far will you run, woman?

In what darkness will you hide?

To conceal

what everyone already knows.

As I said once-

in me you should never confide.




2.


SOUND the bells

and spread the dreary news.

The poet inside me

is now dead.

He either left

early this morn

or is hiding-

lurking in the dark

gallows of my mind.


I’m blind now

to the beautiful shimmers

or the spectrum

that I would so zestfully

chase.

No melody makes me pine

and grieve-

for lovers I so easily would leave.

No stones, no brooks

no carnal pain

leaves me now but in disdain.


So sound the bells

and raise the cry -

the poet inside of me is dead.


No longer is there

that tug inside,

that unexplained and childish hurt.

I’ve grown up!!

I’ve grown old.

Thus the poet inside

me won't wake up.


I fled- left him behind

for something that I thought shone

much more

My beauty,

sexuality.

became the only

things I owned.

I tried my best to be someone else,

now my life itself plays the temptress-

to everything mundane, ugly

and tasteless

it says, come, abuse me!!

abuse me!!

The poet inside

me is dead,

is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead.







3.


Creeping slow-

it will rise.


Escalating every moment

of this sightless

skillful, sinful

Dance.


Spiralling

in and out,

Of the madding crowd.

I stumble

Drunkenly away -

It clings on…

tighter.

Coiling- snake-like,

Leaving me gasping

For a fresh draught of

Sanity.


This time, Jealousy…

Just a

drop

of the poison.

Breeding

hate.















4.

The flight.


You wait for me.

Fluttering among the

Steel birds,

Your dress-


Sun-kissed,

Like the sea breeze

you smell still -

I remember, still.