Flowers

Spring flowers have their characters –
Demure daintiness of daffodils
Serene shyness of snowdrops
Frank friendliness of forsythias
Contagious cackles of dandelions
Mysterious magnificence of magnolias
[And even though it somehow hurts]
The callous crimson of tulips...
Are but one time performers,
Like us,
In the perpetual schema of never rehearsing time.

April 26, 2010

We are 'Us' through...

We are us,
Through our senses,
Our perception of realities.

Were you deaf,
You would never know,
The overpowering pain –
Of a grief-stricken wail.
The contagious mirth –
Of cackling laughter.

Were he mute,
He could never really convey,
While empathizing or dissenting,
Even while gazing and smiling –
The significance of sentient silence.

Were she blind,
She could never receive or perceive,
The sudden magic of blue-bells,
The wild red of setting sun,
The winking slant of waning moon,
The subtle shades of a look –
Lust, longing, love, helplessness.

Were I bereft of intuition –
The smothering scent of spring,
The sudden aloneness of a moment,
The studied silence amongst twitters,
The watchful gravity of a gaze,
Would fail to merge…
The slow fear of an unanticipated intimacy,
Would escape me...
And in the wide wingspan of a single point in time,
I would fail to be afraid.

Yes we are us,
Through our senses,
Our versions of realities.

April 24, 2010.

Losing Integrity

Into the noticeably detached otherness
Of hitherto well-cherished relationships,
We breathe in and breathe out remembrance.
Frantically groping, catching
At sand slipping out of our useless fingers.

Sometimes, we all have to live to watch
Watch love as we knew it, fade away
Watch bitterness replace remembrance.

Self-awareness is such a bitch,
It makes you watch your cruelties.
It makes you want to die,
End yourself before
The inevitable execution of certain deeds.
It captures your video, as you hit the ground
And break to pieces, at the bottom of your mind.
It shows you the end,
The sordid unhappiness of the long wrong road
The only road ahead.

It makes you question your integrity –
The only treasure you (think you) own.

It eliminates alternate possibilities,
Decreases probability of probabilities.
It slowly seals the crevices of light
That once lead the way to your dreams.
It makes you see what you want,
And then shows you what you’ll get.


‘No, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
You might find
You get what you need…’ *

April 18, 2010.

* The Rolling Stones

Adaptation

Something is different
Unfamiliar here.
Like the clouds,
Floating so much nearer,
So much more snub-nosed,
Than those back home.
They don’t puzzle my sight anymore…
Jus' like I no longer perceive,
The illusion of flat-walled-ness
That the subway stairway
Used to present,
The first few times.

I have to wantonly yearn
To withdraw…
From some nook of my memory attic,
The subtle difference
The careful distance
Preserved,
Etched on a tablet.


If only our interpersonal familiarities,
Were as adaptable
As the mutating antennae
Of our physical senses.

Apr 10th and 15th, 2010.

Salt

Days are evening gray
In sullen rains –
Bored rivulets laze sinuously
As the dissolving soil
Thickens them into muddy goo,
Making it harder,
Harder to walk,
Harder to move forward.

Beauty hasn’t been enough lately –
To startle me,
Take my breath away,
Lure.

Salt.
That’s what it abruptly came as,
To my imagination –
The taste of skin.

My hand holds my hand,
Stripping off all color from star magnolias.
Nothing chases me down the road,
Work, lab, phone calls…
Nothing draws me out of this corner.

I am braver though, than the rest
I seek redress in petty poetry,
In carving crooked half-clothed verses
And plastering them
Like neon signs
On a flashy bar entrance.

I am braver though, than the rest
I allow my hand to pull me out,
Through my hand and sit,
Cross-legged, face-to-face
And look on into darkness,
Meaninglessness of life,
Through the holes in my eyes.

I am braver though, than the rest
Than the best
I will fake a smile,
Fabricate a reason…
I will hide the secret well.

I will let the veil stay,
Covering the meanings they think it hides
I will let the veil stay,
Lest they see their frightened faces
I will let the veil stay,
Over the mayhem of men in mirrors
I will let the veil stay
I will let them pray.

April 7th, 2010.

A Small Matter

So small a matter.

I lie hunted and crouched, in this dark corner of existence… by slick, merciless, blood-shot loneliness.

I perceived two faces today, an unseen one tattling, and a guilty one confronted. The tattler confounds me for its (seeming) pre-meditation; the guilt-ridden from its inability to transmit comfort (what it seemed to want to offer). I writhe in this corner and the air spatters me with nameless emotions that jerk around and squeeze my being.

So small a matter.

Months… yes, after months, I suddenly remember dying… dying back in those times when matters weren't so small. Being near-dead is hard work, full of suffering.
That’s what people do to you, even those as insignificant as lunch-time friends, few month old passers-by.

And haha… So. Small. A matter.

Perhaps…. That’s why nature comforts. It never says anything. It never deludes you into a comfort zone and later jerk you around. It doesn’t lie. It doesn’t fuckin’ lie.

April 1st, 2010.

Ugly

‘Reason’
What a cheat this concept is.
It deludes you,
Into thinking, that like apples,
People fall with gravity.

People fall,
They jus’ damn fall.
Taking me down.

Why?
Why each time someone falls,
Others get sucked in
In the dimple left in space?
Perhaps the common air we breathe,
Perhaps our invisibly chained conscience.

Dropping down from the trees,
This shallow land of trolls,
Is somewhat ugly.
They told me to ask not,
For whom the bell tolls
It tolls for me...

April 1st, 2010.