“Home of Blindness” – Nayana Nair

.

I have to sing
and keep singing,
have to keep begging people to dance within my heart,
within the confines of these bricks,
with the parts of me that can’t die
and parts of me that I wish I still was.
I have to keep inventing reasons and occasions
I have to paint every meaning within me
in the boldest loudest colors.

Because the moment it all stops
I will hear the shouts again.
There is no silence in this world.
Outside, everyday
the fearful children of a fearless god
shout his name again and again.
Asking for reason, for rain,
for roses carrying their name.

I also once stood there, in the dark corridors,
on burning roads
asking god to love only me,
to hold my hand, to save me alone.
It is a very dark road,
the one we take to find
the light that will only belong to us.

And there is only this home of blindness
far away from all the crying and ceaseless hoping
where I can use these eyes of mine
for something more than holding and spilling tears,
where I get to sing for the god within the song.
I worship these walls that hold me in my place.
I worship all of your laughs, all the steps the never stop.

But I am still afraid
because tears still come easy to me,
because even this borrowed light whispers the name of one
who I still hope to reach.
The one who should exist somewhere outside these walls.
But I can only be here in this world of his
if I don’t run to him all the time.
I can be his, without falling short or falling apart,
only if I substitute what he has made for what he is.

“WHERE COLORS MERGE”- Nayana Nair

 

 

As a child, they were, a wonder,

The brown stone bridge and the blue flowing under,

The green withering away on reaching the path,

The fiery red flames spitting everywhere its wrath,

The yellow sun, or orange maybe,

The pink that clouded the hands of babies,

The black cold night and the white snowflakes,

When colors had life, that was ours to take.

And today on the bridge I stand,

With withered white dissolving the pink of my hand.

Where went the colors? the wonder?

Now red is just love or danger.

The yellow just a hideous bright color,

The blue is for rain: for eyes or weather,

The green has, now, no space to grow,

Other colors, with time, come and go.

The people too are colored now

In their cheerful oranges,

Or gloomy blue nights.

In the black ashen hearts,

Or in the red gore fights.

In the yellow sunny smiles,

Or the lifeless aged white.

In the carefree green lives,

And colorful soaring kites.

But you my friend,

You my love,

Are very hard to define.

I look hard,

And guess I might,

But I’ll never get it right.

For you are where my judgment fails,

With your color having neither meaning nor shade.

As I stand at this rationality’s edge,

I see

You are, where all my colors merge.