return to poetrydust
Ruins
Broken portraits
Peeled wallpaper
The atmosphere in these ruins
I eagerly savour
My fingers run gently over flowers
Carved beautifully into wooden walls
Dusty fingertips trailing aimlessly
As I slowly walk down these empty dark halls.
Creepers have slithered through the broken skylight
Curled its way down, stretched over the floor
Green vines softening the sharp edges
Adding age, beauty, maybe more.
My worn-down shoes are poor defense
To the tiny fragments of stabbing glass
Once half of a whole skylight dome
That allowed the gentle kisses of the sun to pass.
Now splinters of daylight shine through
Harsh kisses no longer caring to be gentle
With fascination I admire these broken spaces
And from this place its secrets I’ll dismantle.
Whispers of yesterdays haunt my every nerve
Stories woven from the undertone of fiction or raw truth
I shiver a little, thrill a little
And wondered if my intrusion was a little uncouth
I’ve walked on the last piercing piece,
As I move on decayed tiles, from skylight to hallway
Into the lonely mansion to keep it company
The rooms, the dark spaces take my breath away.
Memories have escaped through the cracks in the wall
Only the past’s shadows still linger in this place
Furniture is dust and laughs have faded away
Tears and history leave only a trace
Sometimes I feel like laughing for them
To throw my head back and express what they could not
Painted eyes staring at me from those wrecked pictures
I don’t even know if I should bother reading for pleas
Between the lines of those posed-portrait features.
I shiver from the chill, and yet
The whole house exudes musty
warmth
even in these halls
It saturates the echoes of my steady steps
Sunlight breaks through the collapsed walls.
I peel my weak shoes off my feet
They dangle loosely from my fingertips, they aim for the floor
I look around, desperately wanting to stay
Wanting more.
Funny how I feel so alive in a house so dead.
But in the end, I do it
I resist the urge to huddle in the corner
I bring myself and my shoes to a wrecked wall
Knowing I leave this place no longer a foreigner.
I bend down, my fingers reaching for my feet
I reach to where my skin and the grass meet
I wipe off the glass, the dirt,
the sand and the blood
And tread my way gently to the other place I call home.
---
Note: This poem, which I still regard as somewhat unfinished, took me months of agonizing. I finally realised what was 'missing' in it when I talked to one of my online friends. Here's what he said, and I happen to wholeheartedly agree with him:
Comments:
You need to relate the living presence of the poem
by making her active in it and aware of her surroundings as more than a passive dream from
which she can wake without concern, you need to make her concerned through her active
participation in the vision.
you see the visions are not bad, they are very good, but she does not have
an active part in them and this makes the piece less alive. - Manikatt