an apple song

they say dying by suicide should not seem like an option
(in a world where we would rather admire silent suffering)

“you shouldn’t have” “i wish you knew that i cared” —

a person is like an apple with layers of lives lived and unlived
in the course of a simplified reality
(not for you to decide or decipher),

when they die by suicide (no one commits suicide),
the core is still not empty,
in their absence, your words are not solacing,
they are empty vessels (cyanide seeds of pilgrimage)
that mean nothing to a non-existent god.

i read that there comes a time when you realize
that you do not want to die anymore
but you’re just living the memory of wanting to be unalive,
to be buried in endless despair, so as to placate
the familiar need to stop it all.

i wonder if my skin is as supple as an apple’s —

if i cut it and square it for your consumption
(social media consolations and memorials),
would it bleed or would it not anymore?

would it hurt or would my lips quiver and pause…
to the sweet perfume of a fresh wound?

my blood clots at the thought of an apple
that may not be as sweet as it may look —
so shall i choose a pomegranate seed
to bind my life and plant it near my empty heart
(no space within)?

when i wish to return to what i knew best,
i feel the pull towards knowledge that this fruit
is yet to accumulate me, still to ripen before the fall comes.

.
© Anmol Arora

Image Source (Sebastian Black, Concerning taste let’s ask the apple: Hey apple sliced in half (muzzle). Hey you of black seeds and rotten core (whiskers,nose) of yellow skin, and stem split twain (mouth), of etc and also of etc. Who left you here on the round glass end table (head)? Are you sullying up the Eileen Gray ​“piece”, the Heath ceramic mugs (eyes)? Or are you, like the film of dry coffee, (pupils) adding just the right touch? Think about it. I’m gonna take a nap and if I’m sunlight when I wake up I’ll alight on you. But if I’m still just meat with arms I’m gonna move you (ears) over by the couch., 2016, Oil on linen, 60 × 45 inches / 152.5 × 114.3 cm, Unique)

Linking it up with my prompt about and on apples at dVerse later this evening

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your love took all with it but this sweet pain

Kitchen Windows in Summer Heat Painting by Lynne Cartlidge

your love took all with it but this sweet pain,
you rendered your sleek spell in this neat pain.

the skies are split open by the heat’s rage,
i smouldered to the whims of this elite pain.

you dropped all pretense, spilled my discreet truths,
i am left bloodied by our defeat’s pain.

you are not my soul, not a complete stop,
i won’t be richer by your deceit’s pain.

all this loss made us change our concrete ways,
still i lost you to this obsolete pain.

do not go to find your past life’s street-mark —
Priceless, you’ll no more love your heartbeat’s pain.

.
© Anmol Arora

A half-hearted ghazal — linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at WRT

how we hug

 

Friendship Flower Abstract by Marita McVeigh

he hugs me with a gap of two and a half meters,
as if to keep us both from hurting each other —
the slight embrace becomes a star-filled cleft
where we have shared eggshell dreams & thick-
hard seeds of pain, that have seen many trees
shed their leaves in the last(first) circuitous seal
of the earth in an all-evasive-expanding space.

she hugs me in a sudden jerk of the arms that
connect in prompt patterns, overcompensating
for the years we did not care to know the other —
this proximate touch is a meteor hurtling towards
the ground but disintegrating on the way, we have
held those sweaty hands as an adhesive for our
obvious choice to find peace in this orb-like space.

i have hugged them with a mark of disobedience
towards the yields of my isolation, with a rigorous
demand to perform the proverbial need for human-
connection, as if an entanglement of network-wires,
i have figured out that the way to my consolation
&satisfaction is to suggest&seek all i desire, to know
sums of my matter, the auguries of my life-space.

.
© Anmol Arora

Day 26
(Inter)National Poetry Month

after sunset

Dusk to Dawn 3 by DAVID M. KESSLER

the single lamp glowers
like a stray dog caught in dishonour —

smoke rises from the lips of a cracked
sky, engines backfire, our staccato breaths
hold our words near, by each other’s side,

as we reflect over the absolute need
to be detached from people, from every-
thing, like the smile of a wicked flower
that is about to fall to pieces —

our tea turns colder by the minute,
our talks do not have the urgency of life,
we are sailing our friend-ship without
its anchor, uprooting planks and prod-
ding needs and exchanges, required
of us — the emotional labour doesn’t
have an eight-hour ending period
of a working (not for me) day,

so we slurp, &gulp down the remains of it
from our vessels — all the words strewn
between us like aimless ash of a charred sun.

.
© Anmol Arora

Day 25
(Inter)National Poetry Month

grave news

Old Age, Sickness And Death by Brendan Kelly

death lifts its shroud
but there is nothing to be found inside —

who would i mourn?— i have no
temporal recollection — childhood-
paper-cuttings are fading, news-
print almost illegible — i do not
know how to react after someone
dies —

i bring a veil of pallor on my face,
my candy-lips quiver, a heat passes
through me, as if to denote the contrast
of my temperature — blood rushing
as a reminder, but life exists within me.

so i close my eyes, &heart — let moments
pass before it all starts to seem ordinary —

unoriginal, repetitive, coming daily
unlike some newspapers.

.
© Anmol Arora

Day 24
(Inter)National Poetry Month