oh consumed copious quantities of the fairy tale drug in the afternoon today and then exhausted by tragedy and farce collapsed into the stupor of the calmest black that is unruffled by the incompleteness of the stories that lie jumbled in my mind like the narrow lanes of the old quarters of a timeless city and through which at odd hours lovers and thieves move with a nervous stealth. I woke woken up by ma and in that moment opened my eyes in a dream inside a dream and saw for a fleeting second that time of fairy tales when its neither dark nor light, a suspended hour of magic hung like a lamp from a tree in a far corner of an oriental garden under which the first born has hidden the most valuable belongings of his childhood at just such an indefinite hour when a hole is dug that is filled up by little hands that will soon never turn a page in a fairytale anymore and for whom this secret consigned to the deep is at the same time an adventure and a departure, a time when something ends and something begins, and where this treasure lies like the oldest and the smallest coin in a jingle of coins in the pocket of the old itinerant salesman meandering around the yellow or whitewashed houses whose women sleep in the afternoons with their ears to the street so that the moment they hear the rusty drawl of our merchant they can rush out to exchange for old clothes useless items of grace and beauty. It is a quarter whose streets are traveled by donkeys and traders and their cocky apprentices whose robust claims about the wonders of their wares and distressed litanies at the offer of prices far below a bargain open and close days like a east facing window of a tropical climate whose well worked hinges never creak but suddenly on a day will come off and hang for one whole day like round spectacles from the eyes of an old old man who has slipped into sleep with a book in his hand in the arm chair in that bright fork of light that shines bright into the room in the afternoon facing which only the old can sleep because they always sleep as if inside a dream in a dream.

im stupid and more suddenly
than how sudden it dawned on me that im stupid
i felt this cold creep on me
by the marge of the field and
i was sure of it
by the time i walked back to the bath
to cold water and disinfectant cream
that ive strafed myself a cold chill grief
grievously misunderstood
the portent in my gut feeling
and poured a bucket on this foreboding
now with fever and assorted pills
covered from head to toe
my bum to bed and nose to the ceiling
i rue this certain ill my stupidity

This season began when the dogs curled up in the sand in the late afternoon, when the sun on the field seemed like lovers of a long long time in an embrace at the end of a long day at years end trying to forget a year long agony just before the lights came on and we sat around the tv. Me my skin turns to chalk and my wet palm I run over it to wipe the marks that my nails have left. Mosquitoes gather with the gathering black over my head and moan a solemn hymn of thanksgiving; for blood and for human beings. The nights are cavernous deep and when I shout after you just before you turned the corner my voice echoed how much this night is lonely. Seeking warmth thirstily I wrap my fingers around the two rupee cup of tea like I can forever enclose this warmth and touch pink carnations to bloom on my pale ashen cheeks. The tiny blades in the air nip the skin off the lips and I suck onto them pondering the taste of blood through a very thin film. and I am entombed in layers of wool packed like a box for the Christmas eve but no theres no toffee inside. A dry heat kept from the dry cold.