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Cobble-stoned streets and dark, grey smoke
I smell of old tobacco and longing
Parched lips refuse to budge or part
And I let them be; the blisters on my feet
Cling tight and weep big steaming tears
The ruthless sky above pours out
Liquid steel in furious streams
Every soul is lonely tonight, Can't you smell
Their pungent desperation and bleary eyes
Gypsies will not have me with them
I speak and smell of a foreigner
Hippies crouch together to sleep, I'm not them
Wild peregrine with nothing to give
Nothing to share, no tales to amuse anyone with
No mysteries to drape me, it's just the dirt
Of lifeless machines, ripping and roaring
Grinding hope to a fine, blue dust.

Monsoon

Monsoon has trudged in yet again
The desolate sky bursts out into grey tears
Its wails lash against the panes of my heart
Memories of lonesome days and nights
Flood my senses, as I wait, in despair
For the shrieks to subside into painful silence

Daddy

In your wrinkled skin, I find my nest
Walking into the bosom of a raging sea
When all is dark and dismal, threatening
Your gnarled hand on mine, placed softly
Daddy, I can fight the big, bad world
Your tired hair, all salt and pepper
Your aching joints, the stiff knees
The loose skin hanging in a pouch
From every frown and caress, I draw
Immense strength, Daddy, I am home

At Your Door

I have knocked my knuckles off
And left imprints of skin in blood
I did call out, cry and plead
But your door refused to budge

I shall trace my lonely steps back
Do not reach out for me or weep
I shall return wherefrom I came
To melt into careworn sleep

Nausea

On some evenings, the stillness is broken by pangs of longing for the sky
And then the aching makes itself felt as it pierces the shroud like silence
Yet a heaviness like unhealthy slumbering yellow air lies thick in layers
To fight it would be to engage in its choking, deadening, sluggish depths
The wickedness in me, that spurns the phlegm of homely love, is alive
My bilious reactions, sometimes diluting themselves to resignation
I know not what I seek, I dare not part the blinds and peep, into my dreams
Lest they desert all that is familiar and old, the earthiness, and my nest.

For The Pumpkin Eater

Desolation drills into my mind, boring a hole
As waiting becomes a loathesome consuetude
A despondent head declines onto my arm
In wasted torpor, heavy with metallic pain
After the malaise in my heart settles down
I lift my heavy lids towards the door
A heavenly sleep awaits me, with open arms
But I will breathe, you said you would come.

The House

The whining sal trees with their runaway leaves
Lie vulnerable to the onslaught of furious drops
Of rain, the tears of those who never got to cry out
While in the realm of earthly existence, upon hell.

Their groans, whether of tormented souls or trees
Cloak to perfection, the raised voices in the house
Soon even the whiplashes drown in the chaos
Of the tempest outside, the tempest within rages.

Bitterness refined to pure loathing, black as the night
Spotted with crimson drops of blood, on her white back
As shackles of all civility shatter to smithereens
Outside, the sal trees, in green robes, weep.