Quiet, not dead

Bereft of hope, the good old wind abandoned.
The sand was sad, the mermaids were silent.
They hid with the waves under the rough reefs.
A pale reflection of the distant moon
prayed and sobbed, begging the sea not to sink.

I'll die for you! a young sailboat mumbled.
I offer you my life! an old sailor screamed.
Since when are you a coward? A twirl asked.
With tired, weeping eyes, the sea curled in fear.
His tears were thick, his body was trembling.

'The ocean never rests', he remembered;
and feebly he walked towards ailing shores.

Religious pamphlets on a winter day

I'm sure you've seen them:
stacked flat religious pamphlets
like glossy butterflies neatly arranged
on a makeshift table
in the midst of a frozen cotton-like winter day.

Have you noticed them?
On one wing,
a bleeding heart stabbed by thorns burns in the wind
on the other,
a cursive whip shapes the words "HE died for you"

People also tattoo these things.

Those pamphlets, they cost nothing,
but they make me itchy, they make me watch my ticking wrist
and polish my impoliteness with a carefully sketched pearly grin.
That is, when the voices of the lord, like talking statues
annoyingly insist "I" take one.

And they start to sing about Jezus.

Those glossy butterflies, if they ever perch on my hands
they eventually end up crushed like paper meatballs.
I heard they make excellent food
for hungry domesticated dragons.

A hungry domesticated dragon or a fireplace...
I wished I owned either one of them. But I don't.
Which is one of the reasons
why I avoid tattooed butterflies.

You see, it's not easy to keep up the pace
of those paved, fast treadmills they call streets
and feel a fossil's heartbeat and cursive whip
become alive and curse inside my pocket
like a crushed meatball in the rush of a frozen cotton day.

The empty bottle

A chilled draft of darkness cracks the ghostly curtains.

Like a burglar, it crawls and tiptoes into her room,

Leaving lingering traces of olden mud behind.

A miserable, empty bottle rolls on the croaky floor

and hides under the dusty, massive teak table.

It peeps at her despair with pity:


She curses the night, spitting rambling insults,

splitting her sanity into horror and blight.

Her odious words sound young, rebellious.

She's not yet a woman, no longer a child.

The ocean in her eyes lashes her vision

and memories pour out like pointing knives.

Like that empty bottle hiding under the teak table,

She too, got to know about misery too well:

The cruel rage of a reckless man

On a starry night at the seashore,

Gripped her life with lust and drank her breath.

Now she soothes her shivers with songs and sketches.

She draws bleeding hearts as fetching clutches

Breaking through the chest of headless babies.

She composes slurred, frantic prayers

She strums thunderstorms, random hurricanes,

With a broken cello and ravenous chants.


Yet, in her ocean,

in the very depths of her torn eyes,

an angel,

an ailing angel hums loose verses

of drown innocence

and sunken lullabies.