A Sofa in a Room

The second coming is indeed at hand.
I watched the moon flicker blue behind thin twilight clouds in the city of thousand thoughts.
I drove by a woman unsteadily cradling a bouquet of fragrant flowers - on a street corner with no takers.
I wandered the streets in search for a sofa, a sofa in a room, a room in a clutter, a clutter called home.
I met myself, at every corner, from years past and years thence, shuddering off the spiders of moldy memories.
I watched machines doing mechanical things in robotic repetition; boys stealing kisses; men mauling mistresses; women pecking men - all masquerading meaning.
I saw raindrops marching in yellow reichs on shriveled flowers of christmas-lit silver oaks.
I reached out and found myself again, in a gentle smile across the table; in locks of blonde hair in a faraway land; in a pair of soft brown eyes at the breadth of a breath.
I grew my nails long and they stretched out farther, divorcing my fingertips.
I thought and thought, wave upon rising wave, on the night the moon was largest.
I crashed on my rocky shores and crumbled to sand.


Through long labor, I delivered myself, heaving a fresh sigh in this strange old world.


Jun 27th, 2012.

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.