Loneliness

could only be felt in
a place where no one

knows me,

where the ghosts I see
think I’m more ghostly.

I’m at the same time

enjoying my invisibility and
trading it for immunity

to loneliness.

Loneliness only invades when
the people I know turn a blind eye

to me.

The Full Sense

I’m half known,
like professional news anchors, with
only their voice and noise
remembered, sometimes (with luck)
their faces. But never their names.

I’m half scented,
like unsold withering tulips at the mall,
waiting for city butterflies to drop by,
crossbreeding them with
smudge and progress.
Symmetrical wing patterns, with pollens
unevenly furnished on the legs.

I’m half visible,
like sweating aged women selling raffle
tickets in the deep noon heat:
fake pretty faces masking
genuine ugly solitude. Pity
is costly. We care more about our sticky
summer bodies than the wrinkles on
their uneasy autumn skin.

I’m half tasted,
like underheated chicken tandoori,
a bite of cold with
two bites of warmth,
trapped in a loaf of meat that
should not be called food.

I’m half touched.
A pair of arms always extends
from behind, holding my chest, as if
we’re ready to skydive from the ground
level. Not venturing downwards, but
forwards. The horizontal threatens me
more than the vertical. As-if is the way you
used to touch me. And others. For if
you touch me from the front, you’d be
appalled by a different image reflected in
my beautiful brown pupils.

I’m half past,
half present.
And my future is
half lived,
half predicted.
Way past knowability.
They live their lives with senses
half shut, half unborn.
I fully feel,
turn fully maudlin.
I see images with my ears
and hear the voice with my hands.
Quite mixed up, but all make sense.
Senses spread out and
the self dwindled,
as everything that exists
has to be felt,
in the body.
Such as
a spare body.

BOREDOM

Even my thoughts bore me, like an unread
poem in the manuscript or an overwashed
face towel by the the sink,
waiting to fall

any time.

Blood may amuse me. Bleeding opens my
eyes and stains everything I see with a colour that
doesn’t exist – everyone is colour blind,

except the blind.

I do nothing to stop the blood, but watching the
stream soak wet my sideburns, like
a drop of ink diffusing in the water, or
a brush on a Chinese painting, which makes you
miss the empty space more than the painted scenery.

Or I will put my hands on both sides of the wound,
making it wider,
tearing off the tissues

as if
dividing a loaf of bread for the hungry.
Pain, I do feel, but it’s nothing like the

penetrative boredom

I hear every minute. My ears are
the most soliciting organs –
they welcome every sound and
offer no doors to the noise.

That’s why I’m bleeding, unable to tell if
the red comes from my ears or my hands.

WALKER

I walk distances that do
not exist on maps.

Sometimes, I surprise myself
by walking too far,
to a place where mountains
become giants and the sky
befriends the land.

But sometimes, my feet
go numbed. Neither could I
proceed nor retreat.

I squat next to a
dead cockroach, exposing
hairy feet to fluffy clouds.
Squashed shell and bursting guts.
It portrays the beauty of death.
It flips over its body with its last breath,
like an acrobat doing
stunning tricks in a circus.

Death! My neighbour – you tell
me it’s not about energy. It’s
all about fate when I’m
fixated at a spot,

like a
mashed insect, not able to
expand its map anymore.

City of Sameness

A man’s chest without nipples is

a city with no landmarks.

A massive, empty and hollow haunted house

filled with sobs of loneliness.

The desperate compass fails to

point to the heart for the dwellers.

We all get lost.

People become invisible to each other in

the landscape of the chest.

Names are trivial,

only the touch matters.

Perhaps, we do not need our eyes, nor nipples.

Live the life of the deadly blind and

soothe the skin of the living ghosts.

Every city looks the same.

Every body feels the same.

Everybody has the same.