Poetic Stories

———

C. A. Singh • Sharp Points

only processes 

monochrome:

happenstance duality

the coin toss insists

causality

comes in couplets

double the half

of the absence

dichotomy purloins

colour with 

twinned tunnel vision

pendulum's forked tongue

forecasts polarity

bipartite bargain

fool's gold fortunes

sold to the gullible

and penumbra 

is just a myth 

of all the wanting you,

and the recreational kinds only made it

harder to ignore.

God did not save me from it,

and neither did the stars,

and neither did you.

i take the pills on time but

i take them with liquor;

i’m kissing him while i wonder

what you’re up to.

and as i’m missing you i am praying

i never see you again—

i’ll go for a drive to forget and still be

looking for your headlights

as i drive off a bridge

My home is a hospital

And the walls are stained

As always

The hallways with our photos

The drapes that haven’t changed

Gloves on my vanity

A mask on my humanity

And the patient is a stranger

And it is not, at all, her fault

How she wears her face

Now, I’m no good in hospitals

I've written freely on the thoughts of finding love

and such

yet

when it presents itself

I reject it.

I'm starting to think that beauty,

Is the wrong reason to write,

I want to make an awesome thing,

That keeps you up at night,

Something that invokes an awe,

So incredibly profound,

That you might have the simple thought,

That we should stick around.

But is that really okay?

Am I allowed to want,

For you and I to feel that way?

Or should I just be happy,

With a work that makes me mad,

Because all my words don't seem to work,

nothing eats away at our very existence

as such awful, anxious feelings

of being useless, forgotten, left alone,

emptiness, having achieved nothing;

for many these feelings begin already

to pop up at an early age due to

constantly being told that they are

dumb, stubborn, not worth to try to achieve

what they maybe secretly would like to do

etc.

disappointed they retreat, make no friends,

and soon find themselves sinking in a

pool of no- resonance wherefrom it becomes

ever harder to climb out

all that is left is fear; the thought of looking

ridiculous, of saying the wrong things

of soon seeing appear at the top of the stairs

that horrific phantom to judge them

that fear is an atrocious greedy

phenomenon and yet living inside

far too many of us:

we are a society in pain

I am standing at the port

Looking at the endless ocean

got touched by the horizon.

Bustling,

The ships are floating.

People are boarding

Some homecoming.

Chaos,

Words overlapping words

with the ships' horns

Every sound is unclear.

I,

with a blank stare

am witnessing all events

what more can I do?

What's gone is gone

I can't undo

The ship has sailed

There's nothing I can do.

Yes! I got late

The ship has really sailed

and the wasted ticket

All the flaws I hold like fish in fishbowls

And how my fears dictate my behavior by tricking logic into the equation

And how I have only found love in sacrifice and pain and begging

And how without being useful to someone

I fear no one will ever stay

And the most interesting part of it all is

I have only found this deep truth about myself

Because I wanted to be better for you

Maybe that’s what a healthy relationship requires

Growth, to show up in the way that someone deserves

And growth to show up for yourself

In that very same way

I lie on the curves

of my skull

in defiance

of the cyclones within.

I will eventually wither,

pushed against the storm's sigh

but I hope

my last breath

fills me with starlight

instead of the salt

that dances in the cuts

on my brain

when the days seen longer

than childhood.

I swear the lights

in the sky

are starting to hum

and if I harmonize

I think

family catharsis

these lesions 

bleed thicker

than water

there is intimacy

implicit

in this

inflicted crimson

truth has little 

jurisdiction

what authority 

can draw distinction

betwixt discipline 

and victim?

this 

stiff upper lip

(split and dripping

inherited red)

testifies:

i wouldn't trade caressing your limbic system for all the copper pipes buried peacefully in the walls of communal mobile homes