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

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.