Electrons vibrate in the air,
Musty and foul in his lair,
Spiders crawl up and rats march the floor,
He gets a knock on his door

Flashes of memories linger,
His heart pounds with anger,
He crumples in anguish,
Death was his only wish.

The daily digest bore him with the rituals of rage,
The day masqueraded as time ticked for his age,
The radio blurted out static messages,
The speeches were of rage.

He opens the door, infallible and absent-minded,
The figure stood 8 feet tall,
Cloak and scythe, the usual routine,
Red sharp eyes peek out with an icy gaze,
“You wanted to take a shot?”

They found him dead on the floor,
He took up more space than he ever wished for,
Flies congregating where once there was a face,
Today the photos show his daze

He was the star of the masquerade,
The news of the digest,
People marched by in a parade,
The tortured soul laid to rest

Vijaya Balan (2010)

This mortal vein
These mortal eyes
This mortal skin
These all will die
This fading light
These fading dreams
This fading hope
These hearts that scream
This burning lie
These burning fears
This burning soul

I shed no tears

The dirt on my fingertips tells me I’ve been living my share of life.
Barefoot weather under forests boussom and twilight’s singing.
Passer by on agile chronicles of all perfectly ordinary everythings
slips off at the hint of fraction, contradiction, restriction.
Short and Primal-Stooped can nothing but ordinary days
be spent wandering: lessened by the shell of much disgrace.
Found no where but the ground we tread, and the blood we’ve bled.
Calling out to stones or Screaming at the air,
To find our names in the pidth of every nothing we have yet to see.
Often the clue of exactly why
we paint on the face of every
needless, ditty, grotty, blathered, ******, accursed, body ****** like a worm into the cold ground
to be eaten by time as a morsel.
Oh what a blessed blessing be it to be Mortal!

The days blur betwixt again or not.
Jumping up and down across the expanse
go Jack and Jill and all their twinkling droplets
of their painful of water.

For if earth is mother, Sun and Moon are Son and Daughter.
As weeks go by without number
and the sands shift and time winds on to
Rob and plunder. All man’s devices are ripped asunder.

All remains as it has always been under the sky so old.
The masses cry in pain in the winds so cold.
Fall away from the wall.
As morals breath flies from him like a raven;
without call. No end, no death, only a perpetual mechanism
are man-kin who are spent.

Yet so seldom grateful is he for the life to him lent,
and such a fallacy is this.
Never forever is the endeavor forever together.

the desert heat surrounds me
my mind slowly baking
for the moment i am free
my mortal vessel aching
as my soul grasps at fatal misconceptions
a mystic door left ajar
locked in a state of introspection
i stare into myself from afar
all these colors all these things
what do they mean
to mirages we cling
a cryptic reality remains unseen
passed off as a silly whim of youth
neither tears of woe nor tears of bliss
these are the tears of truth
brought by knowledge's sweet kiss
ask me not why i cry
ask yourself "how too may i?"

I am hollow
I am rage
I am mortal man in cage.

I am peak
I am chasm
I am grotesque ******.

I am hot
I am cold
I am broken, all told.