tonight is
a cave
with a
hundred thousand bats
eyes
watching me shout
tonight is
a slave
born in a
wasteland wasted
to mindless
peons
I crave for
daylight
tonight is
my shackled dream
tonight I
seek you
how many dark canvases
in this gallery?
impossible to know.
only the holes punctured
by inhabitants trapped
behind these frames
show glimpses
of the walls.
pray tell me,
how many houses
on this street?
only the shuffling
of the wind’s feet
and the holes
in the walls
left open by
watchers of the dark.
if the elements are guilty,
so are the ants.
they carted away immense loads
and left these quotidian cracks.
if the elements are voracious,
so are the termites.
i could hear their mastication
after our shouting and fighting
have tenderized
these burdened walls.
if time is the culprit,
so is the dust.
i can feel its descent now,
a slow, steady ashfall,
covering the floor,
our shoulders,
our ears,
forcing us to speak
through the faculty of tears.
i have a cousin on the front
and another,
and another.
they exchange ammunition
and retribution
for sins they’ve never done.
but we are all blood brothers,
for when the clouds darken
the rains will shoot forth
from our ruptured veins
to show the righteous
what crimson is.
please tell me about Loneliness,
for i haven’t seen it for days.
it used to stare back
with eyes that have ceased
to burn through the looking glass
and the few feet of space.
i couldn’t bear to look
at it’s pale emptiness
and so i decided
to avert my gaze,
and watch instead
its shadow on the wall
when the sun creeps low
and sneaks in through the window
to stand behind me
to hear my supplication
to illuminate the voices
staring from the walls.
