My heart

‘Love never left me.’

But—

the actor did

And the salesman did

And the singer did

And the OIC did

Then the liar did

So did the puppeteer

The assassin said

That THEY just did what they did,

a PAST, indeed!

‘Love never left me.’

Hey, I cut myself

a little scratch on my tanned skin

a little hope lost from a bad dream

just a cut on my left hand it seemed

so light I didn’t notice 

Here was a lie constantly fed by an American spoon

just a scratch from a childhood game

came to me as a great excuse

Perhaps, a cat ran loose.

Silly you with all these colorful bracelets

a mere fashion to hide the scar unfading

why?

Have you been crying?

well my tear ducts opened and collapsed an ocean of water but could I truly say? 

From a bad dream

just I screamed

Nope, it wasn’t a wound

just a lie

      somewhere I heard 

this tear was hard to conceal

rather showed how “another try”  

so close enough

to let me die.

Hey, I cut myself.

Fooled for a year

Called to wait you at the bus station. You never came and I cried in the cruelest bus station. Like a child orphaned with trust and hope. You married the girl named heaven and forgot my name now dwells in oblivion. I held on to the line that screamed ” I promise you day by day we’ll hold hands.” And in my dreams I was downtrodden,  insane and guilty of the longing buried in the deepest. How to please you once became my goal so I toiled, toiled and toiled the soil. I was happy but you weren’t–who blamed me for all the lies and deceit. Don’t kiss me to start marking your territory. This life no longer threads in your pity. Even if your mouth’s open no, I’ll kill it. This I go without the thought of you to never be fooled for a year or so.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

The panic attack that kills

Danes, you’ve drunk too much caffeine

Now your mind’s everywhere

It crawls down to your spring bed

Then jumps off the window in

Suicidal state

A tranquilizer for a good night’s sleep

But none was fine indeed

No medicaments for the torture

Your brain can contain turbid

Images like whirlpool

Danes, Danes I wonder if you know

Worms are seeking for your weakness

They mean drowning you in defeat

Hype you up in panic

Irritable and anxious in a space

Where there’s nothing called a

‘panic room’

Danes, Danes cover your ears 

And don’t hear their sins 

Whispers at the back of your lobes 

Sending you dangerous roars 

Danes see the warning sign

That calls for a red alert 

It’s the panic attack that kills.

 

He never knew I was a writer

He never knew I was a writer. Or that at least I write. He knew I studied Literature but he never asked what it was. He didn’t know I loved books but he knew I read. He never knew anything until I told him so. Still he never knew anything because he dared not to know. 

Stir fry my body like that of pork fresh from a newly slaughtered pig. Include my fingers and toes to add you the blazing chills. So that when you eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner your mouth will remember the infinitesimally rotten taste of the body you emptied thrice when you closed the door and left without a thinning word. Cut my limbs and put them onto a barbecue skewer then steam them til they wrinkle and complain. When you’re done, peel off my skin. Turn them into an armor and wear them like it’s popular; en vogue. So that the next time I throw back the hatred you gave me, you’ll not perish but you’ll reek with the irreparable blemish.  

He never knew I was a writer. Or that I still am. He never knew how he came to be the words in my poems, the voice in my poetry I relentlessly listen to and sing at noon when it was the hottest and at midnight when it was the coldest. He never knew I wrote about him; us. Still he never knew why I couldn’t do that anymore. For what these pens and journals were for? When they were persecuted by their own coordinates and momentum?

Even after our marriage, he never was open and willing to know all about me. But I knew all too well about him because all those times we were together I tried learning and knowing all about him. Rubbing the rough edges of his skin, strumming the holes in his heart and blowing his inborn tattoo of hatred and insecurity off his body.

I knew I was a writer. I still am. But my hands, the pages in my notebook and the ink of my pen no longer recognized him. They could no longer be moved by his slightest thrill.

Many times I became exactly that weeping writer his heart forbade to view.

Do it with a different body part

I’m at the point where I don’t believe in penetration love. Because I have been penetrated by love all too many times that makes me think just like ‘love’ it has lost its meaning. Surrounded by mosses, formed scabs, new skin is sewn until they no longer exist. When I hear about the words ‘making love’ makes me run away from an allergy I couldn’t even scratch. All those nights and days of cold and hot we made love. I made love to you. But while I was enjoying every second of it there you were looking at the white ceiling thinking about someone else and something else. So making love is not for me. And I will not be that same stuffed animal you fill with lies and tomfoolery. Always getting either a platter of your hatred or a box filled with exaggerated excuses. 

But if in case, I survive yet another heart surgery, know that I will not make-believe. 

My fate will uncork before me. I’ll just watch and wait for what it will offer me.

Because.. 

Again,

If another man shows up and asks me to ‘make love’ with him, I will not laugh. I will not be reluctant to tell him to just 

“Do it with another body part”

In a way that’s totally different from what I used to have; used to receive. That way I can accept a new and genuine love. A love I long have tried to evade. 

Stop this nonsense now

 Too much self-pity;

insecurities have driven you

all dirty in a game called

touch and stain

So much for trying to reach

the bullet train on a platform

that’s thrice farther than your 

hair

Stop this nonsense 

cos you have just become a pathetic

rubber made in a crowd 

of parasitic nobodies

Don’t buy that sewing machine it

won’t mend you anyway

You see  

stop this nonsense it’ll

take you somewhere

far incomprehensible

than today

Don’t look for his shirt on a sale

full of assorted clothes

you won’t find him there 

neither will he find you in

a store filled with nothing

to spare

stop filling your neatly woven basket

with things like despair

he will only look at you triple

with a big laugh of

your pain

so stop this nonsense

that’s the damnedest thing to do

Now just stop 

this nonsense

I’m telling you what to do

before he does it so. 

come on make up your mind

and don’t just try

to get yourself a fix.

I repeat 

stop this mischief now

or you’ll lose your way

around this

nonsense.

just stop it,

Will you?

 

 

 

My shower of a lifetime 🚿

I would take a shower with a  bottle of goats milk, a bar of papaya soap, a sachet of shampoo, Zac toothpaste, a body scrub and the cosmic thoughts of you that will traverse far from here to there.

Frankly,

This bottle of goats milk was needed to soften and neutralize all judgments thrown and lathered when I stayed beside you and gave you not a house but a cozy home to rest for free. 

To scrub my body with loofah was like removing a quarter of stain from the memory of you. Like blades of grass bereaved by the gleaming drops of the night’s dew when you yanked my worth easily.

Papaya soap to whiten not my skin but the streak of feeling emotionally divorced with you after our prolonged lustful kiss but denied a peaceful made up when we juggled more fights in a row.

11 mL of shampoo could murder any uninvited pesky parasite from adding flesh to my already sewn disquietude when you killed myself who adored you.

Zac toothpaste to disinfect my mouth from the unwanted taste of your estranged lips when you lied to me incessantly.

And

A good body scrub to disown every dead skin cell that painted my body after I let you be its painter when I trusted you and you cared less.

All these I’d do to break free from our bondage when you gave up on us and left me in that house full of dreadful scenes.

But

Thank you.

Because in every shower I took, I learned to read every packet I bought in the supermarket carefully to avoid using the wrong product for my body and self. 

To observe the expiration dates for a much safer and healthier bath in life if you decided to leave me any time of day.

To check for  health benefits to avoid a more aggressive and defective partner in the shower room daily. 

And

Lastly,

To listen more to other people’s testimonials based on every product used and ordered for guidance in decision-making.

All these

To enjoy a perfect shower in this life full of hazardous and toxic products.

Because

I realized

I couldn’t settle anymore for any thing non-biodegradable to stay and consume my life filled with intense love and exciting showers.

Go ahead and love some more

A heart is a muscle

Powerful when in use

Constantly

Building

One

after

one

After

one

Don’t let it stifle

Don’t let it shut

Don’t let it rust

For with each loss,

The muscles duplicate

some more.

Consider yourself a castle

When pilgrims stand and

Throw stones at the gate,

Open the drawbridge

Let them in.

If they hurt you with gifts

And leave

Close the gates

for the days of mourning

BUT

When the next traveler stands and knocks

On the same gate,

Open the drawbridge to let her in

Take her gifts and

Let her stay.

Like a castle with muscles

Reconstruct yours with the hardest stones;

The grandest walls

To prepare for the great shows

But

Like muscles in the heart

Rebuild more robust muscles;

More resilient walls

To take the most painful acid blows.

For you Darling,

Let doubt visit but not sleep

Let fear peep but not live

Let worry leaves you

For in every pain; every loss

You

Make a stand to

Just go ahead and

Love some more.

 

 

 

HELPLESS

Shudders in my veins 

make every clock nicks.

Somehow, I learn to ding what’s not and what’s in.

Beneath this scrawny lens,

I find nothing but tatterdemalions cul-de-sac!