You open your eyes to the calendar

Waving its flippant leaves at you

To get you out of your slumber

So you can start anew

You haven't penned a word since late June

You say you've got nothing

You're cured of every wounded piece that made you

Yet your eyes still search the ceiling

As your brain exercises fivefold, 

How you could be a tortured poet

If you're no...

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I have been to one funeral my whole life

I might've been around six, decked in all white

Since my memory fails me today, I resort to humour

I joke about avoiding funerals, for white is not my colour

I thought I was blessed for as long as I was a kid

Away from grieving adults, away from wooden coffins

But now I worry that a chain reaction is due 

It looms over me, the enor...

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O golden child with golden eyes,

Cushioned by your skin is a ball of sunshine 

Behind that face, those curls, that smile,

In every little step along a well-defined line.

O golden child, in a blink of an eye, 

You've grown up only to be left behind.

The butt of the joke, always losing to time, 

Surrendering your brain to your cubicle as you're greying inside. 

O go...

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Children of the Earth are born from chaos, not hope,

For that is what creation has always been.

Disruptive, disorderly, disorienting, until it grows 

Into something only a mother can glean. 

Chaos is where it all starts, 

The making of you, a blissfully unaware child,

Aglow in the warmth of the sun and the stars. 

Play. Pause. Rewind.

Play 

In the crib with a p...

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Rose tinted glasses, sugar rimmed eyes

Sparkle in the blackest of midnights,

Awaiting the ascent of the limerence cloaked daylight.

A shameless greed lingers

In a body that combusts 

Upon the faintest of touches.

Behind the mask of nonchalance, I continue my desperate pursuit

Of treating every inconsequential moment as a clue.

In dazed stupors, I grasp at straws t...

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Rumors of an art thief waft through the air, 

Pungent, inescapable, like tar creeping up to your nose.

Fear rustles in the artists' lairs as they congregate in despair, 

Gazing at their life's work enshrined in paintings, poems, and printed scores.

It's been moons since the artists last protested,

As the patrons of the town remain impenetrable.

For the art thief doesn't stea...

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Love thy neighbour unless thy neighbour is an alien

But not the kind that hovers in a UFO, since that may command genuine fascination.

The kind that admires the same sky as you, eats like you, wears a skin like you,

The "human" kind, just with a different abode, tongue, and hue.

It is the feeling of othering others in an otherwise flat human hierarchy

That gives you a claim to ...

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When a girl is born with a hand upon her head, 

She's pinned down by a green ribbon 'round her neck

And a river of shame that flows through her breasts.

But it's her hands that continue to bloom, 

Soft and warm as sunlight christening June, 

Born to create, condemned to servitude. 

But it's her womb that invites public scrutiny.

An under-studied double bind of artist...

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From the land to the sea, 

There are stretches of olive trees growing from cinders 

And a watch of nightingales humming Persian poetry,

Drifting skyward, looking for the big man who would perhaps lend an ear.

Atop the clouds, there's an Epicurean paradox 

Instead of the big man. 

Head cradled in his hands, he witnesses pirates from plundered docks 

Ravage his gold-stricke...

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I triggered a dent in the pool
Because of all the coins I'd tossed, hoping they would be eaten
By the ghoul who makes wishes come true,
So he and I are both well-fed.

But my world is small and ambition boundless,
I realize, as I stare at my potential,
An arched sunbeam, a half-hearted caress,
A constant reminder seeping through the walls of my shell.

But I can't make peace with what I'...

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I saw a silhouette plant seeds 

That I wanted to plant. 

But that mystery of a person wasn’t me.

Those weren’t my hands

Which beneath the soil had them buried.

I saw dreams ignite in a fervid pair of eyes,

But those eyes weren’t mine, 

That spark wasn’t mine,

Even though the dream was all mine. 

I see people honing their poetry,

Poetry which to me solely bel...

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The other day I caught myself staring at your image,

Embedded in the cliff-side pools,

Surrounded by flowers and foliage,

Miles away from you.

Your skin porcelain,

Flaws hidden,

Eyes clement,

You didn't even seem human.

And maybe you weren't.

You were perhaps just a concept,

A concoction of evanescing pigments,

Who swam away, leaving behind no remnants.

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I awake on a bed of roses, 

Whose petals crunch like orphaned autumn leaves.

A ray of sunlight towards me approaches,

Dancing in the light are muddy speckles aplenty.

​

I can feel the air around me toy with my locks,

Which is as feeble as your grasp on my hand.

But I hold on

To you, this very second, this very moment.

​

The mere sight of you cloaks my disillusion in d...

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I think about the moments that people deem pivotal,

Humbling, eye-opening, their shortcomings, a blaring reminder,

And how they overcame it all, how they stood tall, 

Even as their spines withered like parched flowers.

It feels aspirational to live vicariously 

Through lives that whirl past quicker than an agitated eddy,

But my reckoning has been the privilege I carry with m...

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My lover planted flowers in the valley of my breasts

Where his teeth had grazed.

Adorned with nascent flowers, white and green,

The valley turned hollow right as I breathed.

He had been fishing for something to eat,

He craved a piece but stole my heart in its entirety.

And never returned it to me.

My lover set sail 

With a purpose too profound to explain.

His j...

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I never learnt my mum's favourite colour.
Maybe it's the shade of maroon that adorned her bridal fingers,
Or the green that has weaseled its way into her dogmatic beliefs,
Or the blue that symbolizes her unrequited pursuit of peace.

I never asked my dad if he wishes he could go fifty years back in time,
Spend his childhood, basking in the privilege of being an only child,
But in a less bro...

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He witnessed the rise and fall of the tides,

Leaping over the sea that seemed so milky in the moonlight.

Gloating over its graceful strides,

The rumble of the colossal sea was all he could hear that night.

The stars twinkled in the darkness,

And the moon in the blackness

Gazed dotingly at him and his boat,

As he was carried swiftly afloat.

How long had he been at ...

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You walk out in the quiet 

Crash the crowd though you're shy 

You, a young boy, eyes mystified 

Look astound, but cross a mile 

Bruised knees, no end in sight

Trembling in your shoes, you take flight

But your past lives stand in your way 

Their irked sighs cocoon you in shame 

You march ahead with a brave face 

You meet yourself, grown by a decade

Now you're...

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I dream of my teeth falling out 

One by one as if to relay a prophecy 

A frozen face with a gaping mouth

Through the dead of the night I see

Fragments of my grandiose delusions 

Racing towards the sea

Wherein I’ve buried everything I revere in seclusion

Today, the sunk costs float unabashedly just to taunt me 

And I have been chasing in vain

Through gritted tee...

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I walk a fine line

With a clock enshrined

Between damp palms intertwined.

The autumn crisp, 

Prayers on lips, 

On marooned beds, I climb uphill.

But orphaned leaves of the fall

And people who crawl

Seldom stand tall.

And so, the sun's wary glint 

Smokes my brittle shins.

My knees give in.

Deepening sighs, 

Rust-riddled signs, 

The woods...

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I count my worth in loaves of bread

And parts of me I discernibly shed

Morsels, crumbs, granules on my plate 

Unveil a mirror with a crestfallen face 

I gorge on sugar that lasts only a few nights 

I wait for it to decay my insides 

Like love, a gaboon viper nestling in my womb,

Ravaging every thought, being and soul, core to root

I revel in the sliver of potentia...

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I heard that there were arsonists 

Roaming about the streets

The other day, torching buildings down 

Bit by bit to the ground.

I was, at that time, lounging in a verdant field, 

Plucking the choicest berries 

From bushes lush,

Relishing their juices to quench my thirst.

Coffined in a bubble of oblivion,

Lost was the difference between bullets and amorphous phantasms;

...

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Faith is fear with wings

It soars high as my breath quickens

As eggshells tuck safely into my shins 

As I kneel, seeking recompense 

I make peace with convenient fantasies

Like a film reel, unspooling per my instructions

Till I inevitably slump into my hypocrisy 

I am a heathen without the conviction

A gold rush of beliefs

Cheapened by my constant negotiations 

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I feel time passing like nails on my skin

Piercing, commanding, but ephemeral

It floats by while I'm left to singe within

Nursing echoes that ring true like spells

Against the auroral skies my head bows down

But never hangs heavy

Evergreen vinyls, abandoned hometown

You still lurk in the shadows of my periphery

I see you when my hands cradle my head

And when I'...

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