Beautiful and Damned

They give me bouquet of compliments for the poems I give birth to.
Poems which portals to a world of lulling serenity,
Poems tainted with the words of drear with which they resonate,
Poems which makes them question my audacity for painting their hearts blue.

But they aren't aware,
I'm a poet with a tortured soul.

I walk on the shards of grief.
As I walk, my wounds get bigger,
Bigger than my body through which the devil takes a peek
As I walk, I shed my smile, tinted with smudged tears.
As I walk, my body withers away into specs of dust,
Floating up to the horizon, till it become invisible.
As I walk, I cry from my eyes to my feet,
From my feet to the streets,
To the gutters and the seas.

I'm afraid that they aren't aware,
In this world,
In order to shine, you have to set yourself on fire.

                                                                         ~Milind Gautam