I, A Book Of Poems by Osman Welela
I,
A book of poems
Osman Welela
Copyright 2013 Osman Welela
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Thank you for your support.
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Contents
1. “ “
2. A Divine Passage
3. A Smile That Hurts
4. Curtains
5. Dreamless Sleep
6. Falling Into the Sky
7. Heaven
8. I
9. Left Alone
10. Lesson
11. Necromancer
12. Painting in the Dark
13. Shackles
14. She Comes in the Dark
15. Stranger in Your Eyes
16. Sunshine
17. The Thousand Words of an Accidental Painting
18. Voices of Gods
19. Where the Sky Ends
20. Wise Fool
About the author
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1. “ “
Some might think I've gone mad,
Or rather sentimental and sad,
When I say I feel an absence,
In everything I experience.
It's like I'm not touching the world,
With the fullness I seek to find
By every one of my lacking senses;
A needful space that is only acknowledged by so few in all its unclear essences.
It makes no matter,
Since I might truly be a nutter;
And besides, what is reality,
But a collectively agreed upon property,
A worldwide acceptance of our perceptions,
A general rein on every other imagination.
I'm not saying I don't see the sun,
In all its golden glories;
Or the beauty of the moonlit night's darkness,
Rather it's as if my barely known heart,
Is missing a part,
Held by somebody I've never glimpsed,
Someone that might only be in my head,
Waiting with a heart that will just fit mine.
I know how ridiculous it must seem to almost anyone,
All these wishes that seem to be better left off dead,
But hope, as I sometimes say, only costs the world,
And besides,
There is one thing I can be sure in these foolish imaginings;
I will never get used to it however much I try,
This place that is so " ".
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2. A Divine Passage
Cold, bone trembling silence;
It's the first thing you notice.
A small village with dirt tracks,
A magnificent city with lanes of dragon-tears,
It makes no matter;
Like the sleeping Blood desert in summer,
They are always silent;
Then you see the figures standing not much apart.
Statues come first to your mind,
Clothed like anyone of that land,
For even a tree takes a tentative step
With the wind in a dance that will never stop;
But even as you get closer,
You will leave that thought forever,
With, probably, even some of the first shredded pieces of your sanity,
And some of your own lies of your frailty,
Since no mad man could possibly imagine such poses,
Figures that would shame a nightmare's nightmares.
Your mind claws at reality's slippery surface,
And you try to look at only one face,
A poor effort to dim the insane horror;
Air that somehow escapes to be in your chest moves loose strands of hair
Across a face you shall never forget;
The first tingling of your feeling about coming close begins to surface, a clogging regret.
A hole that is the only recognizable thing
Of a mouth that is so dry looking,
You can just imagine,
It could make even a rock swallow in sympathy with just a glimpse of its miserable existence;
But that is not what makes your frightened heart stop,
It's the eye's that nip
At your conscious mind's memory,
As the faces before you shake your soul beyond your ability to give a stricken cry;
The shriveled, eroded things,
With blood and fluids flowing from their four corners,
Pink fluids that form in fact,
By the rough contact
Of the only things that move,
The too-dry eyelids that even now open and close;
Those eyes are the things that finally make you realize,
Connect your scattered thoughts as one,
As you finally know what it all means.
Like a child with fresh wounds,
You clutch the imports to you in a spark,
It's all a track.
As a mere man leaves footsteps on his wake,
This avenue of lives you see,
Is just a mark of a walk by beings,
Who have long left the ranks of men to pass the halls of gods;
And so whenever you find these you must tremble,
For you are in the presence of a divine passage.
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3. A Smile That Hurts
Dreams disappear,
When at last I see clear;
I watch you in his arms,
Hear your laugh between all the faces.
You make your slow way to me,
Each of your steps sounding a soft background to my heart's first cracking piece,
My face is straight with not a blinking eye,
As I stand to receive the title of 'ex' that seems long overdue.
All my foolish expectations slowly die,
And I sadly realize
That you have finally found what you have always wanted,
The thing you could never be sure when it was me that you held,
As I look at all your bright emotions,
In a smile that hurts.
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4. Curtains
Curtains,
Showing only the shadow of our true selves;
Tricky things,
Not showing much or revealing too many things,
They guard our thoughts,
Making it easier to listen to our own lies,
Believe in our own reality,
As we try to make it through the commonness of a dreary day.
What would happen to all?
If they didn't safe keep our secret thoughts, what disaster would fall?
Or what revelation would shine
From that terrifying gamble
If you speak the truth of your heart's tale?
Betrayal, it might be,
Or inner peace,
A lucky few might even get that illusive thing called love,
Or the odd bit of enlightenment to others,
You can't know like many others,
If you don't take the most frightening of risks,
And part your unseen curtains.
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5. Dreamless Sleep
Tiers squealing,
White lights blinding,
And pain I had never imagined to feel so raw and so clear;
These are the few things I last remember.
When my scattered conscious drifted close again,
I was surrounded with faces most of which I had never known;
I could not move,
But I felt every touch they laid on me;
My eyes weren't open,
But I could see as my body
I tried to speak out,
But none could hear me as they wept.
I won't bore you with the passing days,
I shall only say I could tell who most cared for me even without them shedding any tears.
My bed was a little disappointing;
Even as they carried me to my hole which was freshly waiting,
I never believed any of it to be true,
I cried out to them even through my quickly filling resting place,
Only when all the people I knew left,
And my neighbors’ chilling welcome made me start,
Did I notice the stop of my non-beating heart;
So, with a scream of silence, I realized my dreamless sleep has begun at last.
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6. Falling Into the Sky
I lose my head,
Feet leaving the ground,
Everything turning upside down,
I slip into a treacherous spin,
Into the void that opens with their words,
My skin bleeding from their burning stares,
As their sick faces at the end reveal,
By the light of truth that finally shines on the lies they tell;
Treachery!
At last lying nakedly,
Making me hate the truth more than the ugly thing it uncovers,
As it finally peels off precious ignorance’s covers.
I open the unreal wings of self-deception,
Still not knowing which way was up and which way down,
I try to drown myself in my own lies,
As theirs lie in tatters,
I believe my own stories as if making live dragons,
Which lie slumbering in the coverings of my imaginations.
And when all fails, I fall,
Finally not caring for the betrayals their looks tell,
Not caring which way the darkness with its beckoning embrace lies in turn,
Seeking the emptiness that awaits ahead unknown,
I tumble empty,
Falling into the sky.
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7. Heaven
I have never been
To that place that none now living have seen,
In many a tongue its glory writ,
But I think I have felt it,
In the thought of a child,
As they hold onto your hand;
Or even in the fierceness of their trusting hugs.
I think I have sniffed the hint of its essences,
In a fragrance all children have had,
In that unknown scent you find in every child,
Making you want to breathe them in even as it tightened your throat,
It's as if the touch of god hadn't worn off yet,
A fragrance that makes your breathing stop,
As if in remembrance of the past you can find now only in an unseen wound of a rip.
I have heard the phantom of its melodious sounds,
In the care free of children's laughs,
Curving the corners of the hardiest men's mouths
Into a smile that unknotted any of the coils that wound around their hearts.
And I have seen the shadow of its brilliant beauties,
In the white teeth revealed in their smiles,
And in the shine of their earnest eyes,
In an honesty that hurts because deep down you know it fades.
I can't claim to have been to that place,
But I like to think I can see its hints in a child's face,
Those hallowed halls of no remembered return,
Heaven.
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8. I
I take in a breath,
I open my mouth with no teeth,
I feel the burn as air touches my lungs covered in a watery film,
I scream,
I eat,
I shit,
I sleep,
I plunge into a place no one knows for sure, into that dark deep.
I laugh,
I hurt more than seems enough,
I cry,
I feel the night turn into day,
I wake,
I go back to a world I start to hate to the bone,
I dream of dreams that feel they should somehow be more real than the world,
I fool myself into thinking that every one of them will be after my days end.
"I am!"
I try to scream,
I hear the silence that answers in a tone that seems too loud,
I hear the echo of the sky and the indifference of the ground.
I say I love,
I lie;
I live,
I die.
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9. Left Alone
I feel your tears stain
Both sides of my back's skin;
I know a sudden sense of being free,
Realizing you can never come close to me;
I feel a lightening of my heart,
As I understand we are falling apart.
I only want to hear the soft tearing sound
As the wild wind runs through the empty house undisturbed,
Drying your tears from my skin;
Just want to be on my own.
I see your eyes through the veils of unshed tears,
When you finally understand the sweet melodies
My heart used to make were only the sounds of a caged bird.
I only want to hear the silence of the wind,
Hear the echoes of my footsteps in the house,
Feel your empty space at my side;
I know I might regret it later,
But I can't explain it any better,
I want to taste being with just me,
I want to be left alone.
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10. Lesson
I must admit,
A knife in the back and to my heart
Wasn't what I expected,
When I lowered my guard and trusted,
Looked in your eye,
And fell precariously in love.
So this is what it means,
To be betrayed by the one for whom you shed your tears.
Was I too trusting?
Was my devotion too frightening
For you to take it seriously?
It must have looked like a raging fire that would kill itself eventually.
I think I understand,
I know now no one can ever be had,
We humans have lost touch forever,
We are meant to live for our own end as a mere scavenger.
Anyway, with my hand in your chest,
I think I understand at last,
With blood running up my arm,
And my cold smile meeting your wild eyes as you struggle in alarm,
I'm finally hoping I've become your best pupil to learn,
This beautifully horrid thing, your life lesson.
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11. Necromancer
Bone creaks,
As rotten flesh slips,
To remain in the ground,
The ancient bed of the dead.
Only to be heard by one who knows your plight,
Silent screams pierce the night;
Knowing that pain doesn't leave
When death's arms clasp you in their cold embrace,
I call on to you my eternal children,
To rip the earth open,
And come to answer
The call to serve your master.
My lips let out an inhuman breath first,
That even death shivers from in fright;
A thing of true darkness graces my hidden features,
A smile that mocks
Death's in its forgery,
As I say,
Come to me,
Commanding you to rise
From my cold city's doorsteps,
The dusty hidden darkness of a necropolis;
My will moves in the night's silence,
Come to me
Necromancer.
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12. Painting in the Dark
A drop of paint,
Coming from the nowhere of left or right,
Sharp and uncaring as a bloody knife,
Staining the white canvas of life,
We only notice,
Or choose to only notice,
Above the uncountable layers of the past,
Which we never actually forget,
But rather refuse to let our knowing see the light of day.
Our brush starts its journey,
The paint unnoticed by most while it starts to run out,
From the very moment our hearts start to beat,
We paint in the darkness that surrounds all of us;
We know there are others,
Although we can't see theirs,
We know they paint the same painting as us.
Even as we refuse to remember that we all die,
We, all of us, strive
To make ours better than the rest,
Wanting to outdo the past,
Telling ourselves we want ours to be meaningful,
Our need of wining burning like something frightful,
While deep down,
In the dungeons of our hearts where, only to our eyes, we keep our deepest thoughts open,
We all know the 'meaning' could only mean something for us.
While even as we know the canvas we paint on will suddenly end in the darkness before us,
We refuse to think our paint running out,
We tell ourselves we are important,
As darkness hides our work of past,
And the futures wait,
Hidden behind the blackness
That covers their twists and turns,
Where we might bump into the brush of another's,
Either to push them of their canvas into the darkness,
Or make a drop from both our paints,
That may paint its own canvas.
So, we work,
Knowing nothing of the horrors that lurk,
In every shadow, every dark pit
That surrounds the light of the now we never part;
Knowing nothing of the consequences of our actions,
Or even failing to realize we repeat the past as we make the same mistakes,
We work in the present's spark,
We paint in the dark.
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13. Shackles
Free!
Even the word reminds me of a bird soaring beyond the moving limbs of a tree,
Is it so wrong of me
To want to feel so alive,
To want to leap or just jump away,