Nothing

Borrowed from http://rukhiya.blogspot.com/2010/08/nothing.html ... where thousands of miles away, the quivering tenderness of a woman's pint of murmuring blood resonates with the epileptic beating of my own diffident, too easily trusting, hopelessly dreamy heart:

[ Stumbled upon this one. Written not too long ago, I think ]
Now. This moment here. I want to write.Writing mustn't be a want, it must be natural, but I am unsure of using the word 'mustn't'. Must and must-not are just too exhausting to peg onto my fingertips. My thoughts, my only constant companions were waiting, floating like huge gas filled balloons on a lake, and now that I wish to rescue them they have streaked out into their original darker colors. Sometimes I can't draw comparisions and my metaphors and similies are absurd.

I've been thinking of many things, new and old. Several words have redefined their tight meanings and settled in new voluminous formless clouds. Several people have come and left, and some keep coming and going. Each time, they alter something, misplace a thought or two and in the end I am comfortable about gaining on more misplaced thoughts. One more feeling which will perhaps make the knowledge of myself more understandable. I've been thinking of you and I don't fear reading this a little later in my life. You could become more than you are by then or become several times lesser. Who's to say. I couldn't believe myself though it was me and entirely me who froze in time and then one day wore summer on her sleeves. I outshone my own dullness and thus proved that I can let things go.Of course I have you. You, who seem everything. I do not see you yet, as a God. I see your absence, like a crater in my soul. Like something that grew on the surface of my soul has been removed.

But then, there is hope. Hope, is so new, so surprising in its magnitude. The moment it stepped into me, it paralysed several doubts. Hope itself, is so scary though. Why do we have a word like blind-hope, isn't all hope blind or isn't it hope that blinds a person? I am yet to know if my hope can see. I am on the course. The course which is blind, uncertain. Things I love must guide me.

Then there is courage, another word that is acting strange. I had known it, yes. I have called myself courageous on several occasions. This time though it seems to empower me, silent. I feel strong, and it has got nothing to do with muscles and their girth. I am returning to the words you said, Hope. Yes, leave that to me. Rather, let me have a share of it. I might as well hope. I do not see anything from here. Several years hence I do not know what this will looked upon as. If you read this now, I do not know how I will be looked upon. Perhaps, it'll fall as a pebble in a sleeping lake, or perhaps it'll come as a tide. Somehow I think the world must've been upturned. I think we might be hanging from the ground and water too hangs from the sea-bed, perhaps the air around us is thick oil and it lets us be. I cannot justify it though.

I now think of countries, warring, divisions. I think of living in a country that is not mine.I think of you outside your country and I do not like it. I think of us, in a room and getting bored of each other yet I long for your presence. [What is getting bored of each other? We might not talk too much but too much is what makes things boring.] Imagination or hallucination or whatever they call it is wonderfully spacious. It is never too small to hold the zillion figments of my future, the real and the unreal one. I claim that I never write what I do not see. But I do, I fear I will today too. Since I have some invisible part of me stay with you and it tells me the experience. And it scares me that I've given my senses, my perceptions to you, to stay with you, to be guided by you.I cannot, though, give myself entirely, or so I tell to give my unseen ego a temporary pleasure. I can see it smile from a nook, seems more like a mock. On a nice winter day when it can't snow since I live on the uncomfortable latitude it rains and that brings enough pleasant weather to me. I have been willing to continue but I fear I might recourse it, lest I say too much. I have quite forgotten the repercussions that follow a fountain of speech. I look at myself near a fountain, gathering the sprinkling water. I would like that. I might strike out or go back on a word or two. I might write an opaque poem. I might stop a rain. I might stop the Earth from turning. I might want you. In acknowledgement of the calmth you've brought to me. The calmth that envelopes all the words I have dug up from the mud. Beauty is too heavy and pompous a word to convey the subtlety. I wish to live.Like the passing of a night, I wish to die.

Winter in Buffalo

[Random images transliterated into rhyme
Splatter, like midgets, on the windshield of an eye,
An observant, memorizing, recollecting eye.]

Snow -
Falling muffled, like a thick, plush curtain
Or frail, in a walled alcove, like rain
Snowflakes -
Jubilantly whirling around streetlights
A swarm of middle-aged, wayward locusts
Snow dust -
Rippling, like wind-borne mist on asphalt
Interplay of its waves, paused to a halt
between random tracks of dogs, men and rust...

In a purple twilight land,
Where darkness descends at tea-time
Like a flooded, impatient waterfall
on a beach of dark white sand.

Dec 7th & 11th, 2010.

Under the White Moon’s Shadow

Under the shadow of a white, waxing, mammoth moon,
Looming over distant square edifices,
Fall has creeped onto the shoulders of leaves,
Peeling away green,
Revealing petulant yellows
Mortified by licks of rouge.

The slanting sun rains down
The last of its light
Taming the breeze, brimful
Of the first real chill of the season.

A lone white toy glider
Somersaults,
Owning the blue endlessness
Of fall’s cloud-less evening.

Swaying alone among the sea of grass,
I christen it the ‘Soli-tree’
As the yolk of october sun recedes,
Behind it, through it.

Flamboyant dawns etch images
Permanently,
On pixels – that struggle to diminish
Noise, in ruby rainbows at dusk.

Sometimes, after one has been,
Places where one has to be,
Joy and peace in life, cease being a measure
Of what will life be like, a year thenceforth.

Sometimes, after one has done,
Things that one has to do,
Wayward wind wafts a random fountain’s spray
Painting partial rainbows where one ambles onward.

Sep 21st & Oct 17th, 2010.

High-Pass Filter

Dates.
Does it matter much if you can’t recall ‘em?
That day, when clouds painted the sky in odd patches,
Faint drizzle sharpened the fall foliage,
Grumbling drivers huddled in their hatchbacks.

Names.
Does it matter much if you can’t recall ‘em?
That noon, when an odd girl in cowboy boots, hair flowing,
Walked into this lunch café, unsure of the menu,
Wanting to be, somewhere she could slurp.

Clothes.
Does it matter much if you can’t recall ‘em?
All those times, when your eyes rested softly instead
On curling hair, on an unusual dirt-less sole,
On the lilting strings of a fluted conversation.

Receipts.
Does it matter much if you didn’t keep ‘em?
The first this and the final that,
The day you couldn’t find the way back,
The post card that never reached you...
.
.
.

Leaps.
Does it not matter much if you still feel them?
A certain song bringing your heart to your mouth,
A memory twinkling embers into oft-brooding eyes,
A goodbye coursing like blood through your veins.


Sep 27th & Oct 10th, 2010.

The Lost Voice

I must pull it out,
From the maze of scattered answers
Interspersed with cluttered questions.
My singing voice has been hiding,
Its timid tales untold.

So much has been,
From that purple-pink pre-dawn
To the raging rising of a warm fall sun.
From the jagged cracks on the flat river
Where the sun,
Slicing slick shafts through multi-tiered clouds
Painted the water iridescent green
And somber blue…
To the sand, creeping into hang-nails
With the intimidating rise of oceanic waves
Smelling of distant, day-old crabs.

Meanderings have recycled my being,
Afresh, to the last sedate molecule.

I now dream... despair not.

Sep 14th, 2010.

Stories of a Day

Souls are like lone pebbles,
Oval, batardish, mud-swept.
Or a week old motley bruise,
Blue, burgundy, sickly yellow.

Sometimes, the dark night,
Casting shadows into uninhabited rooms
Smiles
Like a perfectly curled white lily.

A silent, abashed, sorry tear,
Rolls down with a gleam –
The gleam that is signature –
Of pearls,
Of soap bubbles,
Of patience.

Slow breeze whisks away,
An unasked question –
And sprinkles it on the stars,
On the distant, half-hearted moon.

Insomnia explains itself –
Quietly, effortlessly,
With an imperceptible smile
Lingering into dawn.

Manifold voices -
Of a color-splashed day;
Smells of helpless longing –
Punctuating a pair of pupils;
Fall –
On an attentive eye,
And are serenely dismissed.

Crude earthiness wins,
Hands down
Over patient dignity.

Misgivings vanish like smoke
The air blooms with laughter.

Answers are rolled up
Like tongues,
And swallowed.

Among so many stories told,
So much randomness said,
Flirting is overlooked,
Confessions are lost in translations.

One whimsical heart continues,
Its tipped preference
Awaiting a better day.

July 11, 2010.

Epiphany

There is this unusual moment,
When acuity of perceptions epitomizes
And oft-read verses, never really understood,
Breathe their many legends
Like permeating whiffs of stardust
Entering my being through my ears.

The scent on an infant's breath,
The crinkled eyes on an honest smile,
Melting inebriety of dark chocolate...
All - moments of pure unadulterated beauty.

And history, with its many deceptive twists and turns,
and countless revisions and derisions,
Seems suddenly stripped of all gaudy apparel.
Everything makes sense, every single thing,
Each fabricated lie, each untold truth,
Poignant joy of stringed instruments,
Infinity of the universe,
Secrets of life...

I even know,
[Unseeing]
How metallically liquid,
The brown of my eye looks,
Serenely flowing and filling
The dark depths of my pupils.

June 22, 2010.

Trust

What makes the old wiser,
Isn’t so much the things that happen,
But those, that halt short of just happening.
Those disturbing lines we save as quotes,
Come not so much from backpacks filled with memories,
But from piled platters of putrid promises; unkept undertakings; unfulfilled pledges.

The slick edge in a precocious gaze,
Sometimes,
Cuts deeper than blades of gray hair,
Leaves you more exposed than a cackle of ridicule.

You perhaps wish you could un-know –
That it wasn’t the guy who brought you cookies to make you smile,
But he, who never wrote back when you reached out -
That taught you of the hurtfully feminine vulnerability... of trust.

A shy corner in my hollow chest quivers,
[still tenderly trembles when it thinks of you]
Disseminating shivers of baffled goose-bumps…
You cross my mind in rainbow hues –
Pacing though the mist,
Eerily like a chameleon.

June 22, 2010.

A Place called Home

Memory lunged into me,
Like a sweeping gust of west wind,
Memory of the slow scent of skin,
The liquid comfort of a once omnipresent embrace.

The beeping crowds in the square are stilled,
The commotion of day, for a brief span, stalled,
I am left suddenly void, vacated –
Ghosts of things lost have me moth-eaten.

In this consuming terror of desolation,
I wish I could hide again, cocooned,
Like the infant I once was,
In your belly, your arms…
.
.
…O Mama!

June 7, 2010.

You

There are certain spaces,
Certain empty vacuous corners,
That reek of ‘something-missing’.

Drowning dark of night,
Dreary dearth of light,
Scarcity of laughter,
Paucity of beauty,
Chewy blandness of old bread –
All,
Worm into me,
And I am left – a rotting guava.

In absence of rhyme,
In brokenness of speech,
In wide-eyed uncertainty,
In silence,
Knowing, unknowing…

I long,
For the 'something-missing'
That I hope
Is you.

May 24, 2010.

Discontent

[A strange morning, with strange beginnings and folded-put-away remembrances.]

Spirits, out of Pandora’s Box,
Have slowly, softly,
Fluttered back –
Perch on my arm,
Rest on my nose,
Nestle in my hay-laden heart.

Spirit of disappointment,
Spirit of disillusionment,
Spirit of being-wronged,
Spirit of feeling of being wronged…
Spirit of sorrow,
Spirit of forced meaning,
Spirit of utter loneliness…

The calm and composed,
The serene and content,
The peaceful and poised,
The happy…
Where are they?
People of the Promised Land…
What color are their eyes?
Question-colored? No.
Beaded, glazed, stoned? Of course not…

How amazing is childhood,
[How amazing ignorance]
Full of so-much-to-be,
Impossible possibility –
Laughter,
Joy,
Love infinitely…

May 11, 2010.

Follow Poet, Follow Right

Poetry, verses, song…
Haunt my vision like longing,
Intense, painful, obsessive.
The image of a verse,
[persistent]
Pirouettes, teases, pries…

I must write of this silhouette,
Wrapped in worn out wool,
White and frayed.
[An old woman?] hiding her face,
Her face and the heavy weight
Weight of history - strapped to her frail heart,
Pain pinned to her chest.
She breathes easier now,
Now that I have her sorrow
Transmuted and transmitted,
In undulating rhyme.

Poetry, verses, song…
Haunt my vision thus, like longing,
Until I have it down,
Painted on paper;
Carved on canvas;
Worded on wood…
In the settling flash of sunset,
Noir silence of night,
Even the hullabaloo of noon,
I must have –
The poem penned.

May 10, 2010.

Doomsday Reprieve

[‘Let the elements hold their peace,
The sun, its hellfire;
The moon, its borrowed hue…
Stall the rampage of chaos,
Until that hour.’]

What hour?
When is the hour?
The hour when we are allowed grace,
Grace to recuperate,
From having to keep lying.
The hour when we are allowed the dignity,
To break down and not feel ashamed,
From the hurt of knowing our ignorance.

And then the grand sorting,
Right on the right, right?
Left…left.

Tell me I will for once, in that fated hour,
When I look through – know what you think,
And you what I.
In the long-sought attainment of certainty
This life may finally make sense…
All else is but gravy,
For even the anticipated drama of hell
Will be heaven after...
The meticulously veiled chaos
Of this living world.

May 5, 2010.

A Red Tree

Nothing does a better job of impressing into human mind – the ephemeral nature of everything beautiful – than a leisurely bike ride through well-kept suburbs in the spring, especially when you do it one week apart. The shallow ease with which trees strip off their apparel is astounding. Week 1 = nude. Week 2 = white/ pink/ magenta. Week 3 = green. And then others take their place. It is almost as if there was a beauty pageant, with participants allowed to bask in the adulation of crowds by being able to flaunt their beauty at clock strikes separated by merciful, memory-diluting time. It reminds me I must take time to stroll by the lake soon, if only to once again experience the inebriating aroma of wild-flowers.


Something I have come to love here is perhaps an outcome of people in general having the leisure time and money, because I find it hard to accept that it’s due to base statistics, or (an even baser) inherent difference in dispositions. That thing is the possibility of finding some deliberate human effort at romance and magic ever so often. I mean what could be more tender than a wooden bench circling a cherry blossomed tree, or compete with the classiness of a wheel and axle bucket laden well or even something as small as a wind chime on a classy tree. Yes, I am a sucker for the illusion of magic.


Yet, yet… here steps in memory – the spoil-sport. Despite the almost painful intensity of pure beauty around me, I long to see a red tree.. Having come from the land of Sambal* soliloquies in february and Flame of the forest* frenzy in May… I know the magic of red trees. Tulips jus’ can’t compete.

So, friend, find me a red tree… and I shall trade the moment for a heartfelt smile.

May 1st, 2010.


*Sambal = Silk cotton giants aka Kapok
Flame of the forest = Poinciana (local urdu name Gulmohar)


And other memory-racking local trees are Palash (butea frondosa), Floss silk (local name Buddha), Jacaranda (local name gul-e-neelum)and many more...

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