fix

oh i am done with you here
before in my ears it is whispered
there are things you will never have
neither our lady of the marmalade
nor venus of velvet in short
desire for the desirable
the once and the foreseeable
past and future of love
for how are we now
never tired of waiting
and how are we now


this can be unthinking
so naturally bemusing
that ying laughed with yang
and did all things rhyming


your knickers with flowers on them
are van goghs to stare for hours
i cant hazard that portrait
in which your silhouette is stark naked
but for where you have the blossoms
obscuring the road to heaven
i cant see your shirt in the skies
cant see your chest in the clouds
nor your feet on the hillside
or the windmills of your blouse
but im not blind
i am not maimed
there is salvation when the lights dim
i grab at it in the dark

what moves you

she sat

on the ledge

smoking a cigar

thinking of a picture

of a teardrop in the sun

it was neither day nor night

that it is to say it was evening

not early morning not her hour

and the cat could feel the moist tip of all her electric fur bristling and bubbling with a hot eclair

the cat that lay curled up warm in a satin pillow inert respiring enjoying sensations honey and cream

she let a leg drop on the naked side of the wall and rubbed her heel against the mossy side gently 

indulging the itch not hurrying it into the deep cut which in time it would take and the wall would

bear a mark where unmindful 

of the chafing she had escaped 

into prisms and was working up 

and down her rainbow

the rhythm of her sole's 

brushing the damp brick

essential to keep the beat

while she swayed
to a song of forgetfulness

it is true
we all want
to apply the same
lotion day and night
this one the only one
to unguard and unprotect
itching in a straitjacket
this one unbound undressed
it is true we all want
to be in one piece of cloth
only tied to the bed
christs in cushions
quaking and consumed
in intense bouts of passion
it is true this lotion is true
ageless the most revelatory of secrets
and cathartic to its utmost naked
among animals it is vulture
in fruits it is apple
among elements it is the seed
the secret of the heartbeat
in a drop of seaweed
the unmade essence of making
the salve of the burn
is plenty in the field
the free yards of vast golden
and where the children run naked
throw those parks open
let a moist wind gently
bury in dead leaf
all infernal walls
lets light one big fire
and dance around it
like children of the gutters

if anything is worth writing about it is pain and suffering and how for better or for worse our lives are shaped by the constant struggle of attitudes to despondence and desultoriness. and to write about the struggle itself as if it was matter of fact for it certainly is unremarkable. the only thing heroic about it is the silence. for to express anything but calm in the face of adversity amounts to some kind of petulance. and so i arrive at an overwhelming truth, of life as petulance. a constant nagging for some sort of comfort, some relief and some acknowledgement of our entitlement to all that; without a worry for peace for that has been promised us regardless. peace is irrational. why in life seek the stillness which death has reserved for us. why not be shaken up, be exhausted by living that we may collapse, break-down, cut loose to feel alive. and in between if one can remember what one has seen as each pageant winds up then one can use the blank, morbid hours, when all there is to distract you is you or the past or the gray future, to squeeze out these recollections through the funnel of desolation to get at the quicksilver essence of wanting to live and not being able to live without wanting. nor either to want one thing and keep wanting it. havent we all some time wanted to die. but you are alive.

i see blue flowers
in a green bed
outside a beautiful house
but i am a ghost
i cannot come home
i do not go back home
i know not where home is
a castaway soul i roam
i hang on
till i come by a familiar
road in the early morning dawn
and by your gate see
blue flowers smiling at me

then i enter and die
bury me in the green bed
you water with so much love

on godzilla

feeling a twinge of pity after the beast has been defeated and is dying. knowing that it was either him or you but despite that not being able to help the morbid wonder of life leaving the body which arrests one in the last moments of a creature whose death is far more visceral, if it may be described as such in contrast to the human ending which has canons of rituals, social and sacramental, to distract us. to animals, in their untrained tongues and manners, perhaps the death of a human being is liable to evoke the same kind of feelings as does their death in us. a little hatred for the victim and a lot of cruel intent for the prey is a dangerous animal unless it is really only an ignorant disregard and a more basic separation in it of thought and action. human beings when they do mindless things, in the extreme like when they hunt other human beings and then eat them, usually have come to that brutishness after passing through a long, dark tunnel which it would take all the thinkers of the world to illuminate. but the beast is beastly because it was born that way. it has sincerely evolved its fangs, claws, talons and teeth all through the time life has existed to become whatever kind of unapologetic killer it is as a predator. but our evolution, having been of the mind and progressing on it, can at times very clearly seem to have left us at a remove from nature itself, the first principle of evolution. but the so called mute animal is still very much in touch with its nature. a lucky creature whod never have to worry about problems like the artificiality or otherness of life. utterly nihilistic ideas which espouse total destruction that we may build anew. so the sense of life we make constantly bothers us as being artificial because it is not an organic celebration of nature but almost its denial. the idea that better than harmony is control. not so for the beast which seeks no control, wants no domination but kills only out of an obligation to hunger. an obligation which many millions of years ago our earliest ancestors would have felt towards themselves equally like all the creatures of prehistory, extant and extinct. thereafter, however, evolution put human beings on a superhighway to progress on which the brain could surpass all the possibilities of the body, challenge it and shape it. but that departure into just the mind, for better or for worse, has now made us all control freaks and insecure maniacs utterly unsure of ourselves as we try to fit into a manufactured context which mankind has had to create for itself after the departure from nature. now was this departure conscious or did it take wing at a subconscious level merely wherein man has followed his nature as nature had willed it shall be on earth is a question which charlatan sophistry cannot completely resolve nor can nihilism utterly efface. that in the coldest part of nature some warmth  may still be hiding struck me when i saw the man who helped bring godzilla down look upon what he had wrought with a definite look of regret; he was sad godzilla had to so helplessly die. and although it occurred to me, he perhaps had nobler ideas to cherish from the cataclysm so neither did he break off something from the beast to keep as a souvenir of the day when he conquered a giant.

terracotta warriors and horses

a one-handed man
a left with the weak
hand marked man a
symbol of our
amputated times
dispossessed man
meaningful artwork
for those with the leisure
but in mangled bone
and shrivelled marrow
its displeasure and loathing
the time to pause
on the fate of the damned
when the damned themselves
may only lift their heads
to look at the watchtower
as the chimes sound
to note the passing of
another hour

waiting for the parade
to pass waiting to
cross the road silently
pedestrian anger explodes
then as the cheers grow louder
and the floats drift by
like clouds in heaven like
clouds in heaven under gay skies
it's just that
the deafening thunder
that is the clapping in that
the one-armed half-limbed man
has no part to play for
he cannot clap now look
he is a righthand
in service of
the itch factoryman
he isnt handicapped
but going straight from
unarmed to defanged
feels the loss of teeth
like a bleeding stump

nevertheless a respectfully benumbed
not expected to fight
embattled man waking up
with a heavy head hammering home
the pain of dismemberment
he sees in his blurred vision
a pigeon on the window sill
being watched by a cat
on the wall and he cant
take it no more life and hunger
so elegantly poised on
the razor's edge pain consuming pain
endlessly a cause equally and evenly
served by shooting either bird or cat
or both but then he has always
been a bird in hand man who would
never know which to save which to give up
and so wields he in his astral arm
an axe for all and against everyone
a one-armed man-at-arm

making light of demockersi

pithy remarks can have only so much use in times like these -- putting things into perspective. with the recent goings on in the power circuit in the country it would be fair to borrow a phrase which sums up a condition as endemic in india's socio-political destiny as breeding among rabbits --- crisis of power. something that feeds on itself and is a certain black hole that sucks in all the energies of a resurgent nation. as far as the events of the two succeeding dates of 30,31 itself are concerned im sure its in our national character to deal with it and have closure. that is forget all about it until it happens again. although much couldve happened (a jumpy colleague even suggested that some enemy state might have attacked in the meantime) and though not this time much has happened to indicate that we as a country can just take it on our sweet chin and carry on. not bad considering that for at least 4 hours one fine day more than 600mn indians were without electricityc(actually it was really half that number who really experienced the outage, the rest apparently have no access to power, or so claims http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/08/what-was-revealed-when-the-lights-went-out-in-india.html and it makes me wonder).
domestically so common an occurrence as to be a non-event for so many of our countrymen but the magnitude of this one meant that india was like hit by a tsunami or earthquake or both.what followed can be demonstrated in as few as three simple steps which have now through rigorous refining of the best practices at the hogwash school of witchcraft etc become the hallmark of involved governance in our country
> deny responsibility
> appoint committtee
the above steps have already been attained wherein a reshuffle and a fate is to blame-this is not uncommon/unheard of/unnatural stance-later it has been decided that a high-powered committee is to look into the whole thing
> the third step is obviously something miraculous once all three steps are together seen as constituting the most ridiculously silly con one man ever tried to pull on another.
but given our numbers, at the national level i guess this theft of reason is exquisite. an unparalleled heist. which is to say im not too clear about the third step because inquiries are done, reports are submitted, in between, the drivers of inquiry panel members switch the fans on in their cars while they sleep all afternoon as their lords grapple with the most complex issue who, after having presided over the early disappearance of white ambies from indian roads are now finally at ease about their comfort knowing that ministers' cars are only going to get bigger and the convoys longer.
what the lay public will never wake up to though is the truth, rti or no rti. nor for that matter would they find a remedy. all this makes me think that the great indian circus sums it up. we, the people, of india are circus goers who having gaily resolved to abandon all loving care to the winds and yield the field to a gang of filibusters, carpetbaggers, gerrymanderers, horsetraders, double-crossers and all manner of assorted fly-by-nighters kartabwale that they may amuse us with their endless comedy of deft posturing and bumbling performance, will now sit back and enjoy the show.
of course, the ticket is free and we can stay as long as we want. so we do. this time, during the circus, current went. what to do. i suppose most of the audience would be too lazy to now go out and see whatever was the matter. no, they would rather stretch out and wait. or nod off. the kids will start bawling but they will soon have sweaty teats to suck on. on the whole i think it is this attitude that is going to help us as a country. this belief so immanent amongst us that we are in a circus and how lucky we are to be here. for it is entertainment merely and not art or life or one posing as the other. timepass of  a cheap kind, our politics in the theatre of babel.




up and down we go
up and down under
forbearing eyes of
boulder and fair rock
they twist and turn
these roads they fall
away in a flash or
breathlessly rise
grey phantoms
in the night
this has been my
city of fear and
a city of mad lust
chipping away
at my soul but
this city has air
but i never believed
i was choked

factor in stendhal

the innermost whorl
of the rose
the gently swaying lotus
in a secret inlet
a river in the moonlight
dolphins playing in the cool night
taking small shark bites
at each others' glistening sides
in the morning banana shake
and in russia jc russia
pussy riot making rasputin shite it
your red flower is dracula
me a hungry wolf of
the translyvanian winter
we will see god in each others' eyes
while till dawn we devour each other

dour movements on fours

i am complicit in
my destruction dont
tell me better if you
knew nothing else
i am driving
this fast car over
the cliff because if
it is mine i can
past all these many bends
i have followed the road
wherever it has curved it was
like i didnt own the vehicle
i wasnt driving my car
preceded by a yellow board
and a warning in black
my eyes glazed with the tar
i was drifting mindlessly
through a distance along
a route marked in time
and then comes a bend on
the last post let me drive
this beast to its last ounce
and squeeze out the final
leap of a summer evenings
sun in a flash of crimson
till darkness consumes light
and the soul emerges
naked out of the deep
with a crown in its hands
let this wicked breath this
tired panting restless hot
breath leave the need to be
slave to bloods treacherous call
the part i have chosen
fo myself in this conspiracy
involving me is
to dream the dream
from which one never wakes



why i am happy
to the thinking
rather than so
perpetually sad
that it would make
my mother mad
all the trouble
went through with
to spring the lock
complete with the spock
and the pots and pans
that all that playing by
the ear had not
drowned out the whispers
in the ruins she mightve
heard many years back
is that a fear of ghosts
haunts me too but
i hide where nobody
can find me i
hide under the stars


in the middle of the circle
there she danced pretty
ready to be taken
if she was carried away
around the fire that
feeling raged
in hearts of sand and
sweating groins
and the hands and mouths
did unintelligible things



the snake hisses inside
and outside the yelping
of dogs after apocalyptic fights
nothing is visible but for
tiny points of light
in the dark vale of eden
there is no comfort
on this puckered night
no fresh wind will blow
in from the sea to
drive the stench of
green flesh wafting from
the black chimneys
tonight the lack of air
will squeeze the lungs tight
or the soul will sleep
on a deeper hunger
for each dull glow
on the hillside is a witch's lair
where inside cooks she
the goblin in salt and pepper
at a warm hearth by a great fire
and it is them witches keeps
the garden plunged in hollow winter
for she waits for the gullible traveller
for whom she has a story ready
that will turn him to stone at once
if he sits through it
(oh but remember the food is juicy)
but i wont enter il sleep on the snow
or should i force the door
and slit their caterwaul
of witches throats once for all
oh i will never know
i will know only winter
on a wet evening on a hard road
but no i will not dine
at the witches table
not in damned desperation nor
to meet destiny with a sword

pips anxiety

noahs sons were in the army
much before they found out
theyd been inducted
falling out of line aplenty
but hectored back in each time
of the animals saved
they became loyal like dogs
and in cat found honour and life
but having had their learning
in a zoo they were in the final
analysis inadequate in the fight


to the innocence that died
she said you will live again
you shall rise i will
bear you to the world
you are a fruit of
the poisoned tree
to poison you shall return
but i will carry you through
if you are brave enough to ride
i will take you to the eruption
of light when the sun is passing
from one darkness to another
and you will know you cant
stay there though blinded
you will return
so cry cry my innocent
and die die my lovely
weep into my palms


i guess this is it. the crisis of faith. the pandemic though thanfully incommunicable ulcer. after all we are all but one ghost at a time. and peace be upon us we can either get through it or die trying. for i think here even a serial killer does what he does because he believes he is up to some use. and personal is as jutifiable as public if you know what i mean. as in the line is very blurred; when a stripper goes on to become a movie star and doesnt quite abandon her original calling would you call it self interest or is it social uplift. hard to tell. so yes i am convinced kafka and clockwork orange and dr death all needed belief to get by. cynicism may not be faith that moves mountains but its incredulity can make holes. kafka for one knew that. and used it to 
derive some meaning from his life but alas. as for many others, brave martyrs like him. for them that didnt fight to death is collateral. the collateral vision is that we slug it out, pray that nothing happens till it happens, that is, if we are willing and able to comprehend that something is going to happen at all. for it is the collaterals privilege to feel insured. so safe and reckless are both belief systems, the question my friends, again because outside its morning (notice how i retreat in the face of dawn), which to choose and churn into faith for maybe if i can recall thus spake zarathustra that belief is the faith in the known as faith is the belief in the unknown, or the other way round but one of them for sure. 

entitled

she is a bewitching lover
for even when she is far away
she appears lovelier than others
lovelier than the flowers on this bank
of the river lovelier than me
to myself and i wake up and sleep
through the cruel deprivation of addicts
as nothing without my need




this is a good time to
abolish ownership
throw open the cages
and watch the birds fly out
into the silvery moonlight
and release this soul
from the bondage of labels
the commerce of exchange
from profit from loss and
give and take that this
vagabond lust may say
hello to a friendly tramp
damp and cold on the road to rome
and while kings barons and stooges
keep passing by they
have long to go before
they are free of the road
until judgement comes calling
on our woes by the wayside
on the wet hay may the lovers roll



save the dame
tied to the black rock
goblins prey fair limbs
meat for an ugly lust
scheming a calamity
of disemboweled trust
that suns may rise
at the beck and call
of the burning torch
one light enough to
light the world
and the nuns would follow
the lords word



lets allow ourselves
these small illusions
that in the morning
when we sleep
we are debauched but
in love that the lie
may not seem any darker
than the truth and we
pass our lives in the meantime

hectic chromosome

love couldnt withstand
this metabolism what chance
does reason have thus knocked about
that every breath disturbs
the undigested matter that
pestilentially bubbles
in the bilebog of the intestine
and the beating of the heart
is a battle won at the point of death
every breath squeezed of its juice
in the pancreas a corrosive reminder
of what cost it is to be alive


in my line of business, it is safe to say that we have to make with a working knowledge of english. be that as it may we have to use oodles of self-charitableness to even seriously analyse that proposition for every turn of the argument is fraught with foible and charged with fate. fate here seen as a mechanism akin to the  incompleteness theorem in that it is beset with an inherent snag which nonetheless can be defined as the lynchpin of the entire shebang. that is, in mathematical terms, from what i gather, to say, there is only so much which is provable in mathematics, whatever the system, the unprovability of the rest is the guarantee of its opposite in the provable. which is to say in a manner of speaking that is provable which appears so to the most number of people, for anyone who can use the same protocols to come up with something inexplicable has added a limitation to the tools which can in this light be considered as standing on agreement for what if the new articulation was so superior in design as to order a complete overhaul of the earlier consensus. but what then about truth qua truth. of course im no longer talking about my line of business, that is irrelevant suddenly under the blows of the cruel subterfuge of existence, hits that land in the blind dark on the nose mostly. but what then of the truth. does the sovereign, pristine, piercing light exist. that in which everything appears as it is. how far is the perception of truth limited by the vehicle of experience. that truth then appears most true that appears true without appearing true. that is if it appears true then that conception is borne of sensory mediation and thus very very susceptible to manipulation. but what doesnt appear true has a very good chance of not having had to go through some kind of tweaking to give that impression. the human being project had better be thought out all over again.



i will first shut
all the books and
turn all the lights off
till the blind can pretend
they can see and then
then i will prove
the existence of god
the illusory potential of reality
as the best which is so
before it is better

apples and oranges

like a rabbit am i
and i go rabitting
as i please i am not
chasing cups, chips
tokens or butterflies
i am running restless
but i am not chasing
i am running to
the finishing line
not chasing nothing


the sombre tenor came late, too late and anyway i was too obsessed to be able to report in a steady voice the umpteenth tragedy of the workday. it is largely sexual. having said that i want all to think about it; i dont easily commit. there was a short story id once read, couldve been anyone, saki, ohenry, owilde, which climaxed with the man who was a factory man getting his hand grievously caught in the machine and something to do with her being the nurse or something whose reaction is retrospective horror. the moral of the story though was of loves indomitable will. like mealy potatoes, the boy so bullied but never out. never sulking or nothing.

these heroic tales appear vague antique models which have value only in museums, in this year of our lord etc. i believe the last time something like this occurred the world had passed one major bout of intercontinental warfare and was diving head on into another. this story, of the insistent spiritedness of love, was written by whoever wrote it some time before the great depression.

but what happens to office in the time of meltdown. it retains its tragedy. only this time nobodys joking. nobody is nobodys fool anymore. so here the umpteenth tragedy of the cubicle is the closing in, the shrinking as it were of everything. the very spaces which would once offer so much to the participating reduced to a carefully designed set of protocols. the very chairs and furniture that had been the site of one generation's dream filling the next with horror. all the fear and hence all the morbid fascination that had lurked in the locked up rooms of the old offices set free and now filling up all the air with a manic whirr of psychopathy. that is the dark side. the tragedy of the eponymous workday. now i am tired of this. outside its morning.


nb: but what if this story was written in the gd. then too it is a monument to love only much bigger. and obviously my vision is corrupted. it redeems the demons, rewards the troubles. for what is the greater joy between having your faith rewarded and your fears confounded. the believer's felicity and a luck of the faithless.

marquez on that summer

later when the original inhabitants had all died, the settlers would talk about that ugly summer of 12, of the gross desperation of drought. there were fires, 19,216 of them in 5 weeks. but sadly no one died in those fires, for when the birds were falling down dead from the heat, the old men would wait for the sun to set to bury their sons, dead because they were maddened in those hot afternoons in their siestas, leaving their beds, sleepwalking, to go to the disreputable quarters where withered whores would make wild love to them in a daze before choking to death on their own saliva.


hemingway

the boxing matches had come to a stop those days. the boxers would go down to montgomerys and pass idle hours sulking in the heat. the bar could only serve barely cold beer, there were too many power cuts and the coolers were just little boxes keeping the bottles dipped in mildly cool meltwater. the boys from the more informal rings would come and hang out and talk loudly as if they were the men there about some bust up theyd recently had, which was almost always last night. if there werent too many people around the waiter would even sometimes hang on a little to hear one of those stories. but that summer, in 12, no one really cared. things were desperate. the burly fighters, the real fighters just wouldnt get a fight. it was absurd. here they were all pumped up and desperate and spoiling for a fight even for peanuts yet suddenly nobody cared no longer.


conan doyle

as i peer into my notebook for the startling events of the cruel summer of 12, i am instantly taken back to that afternoon when my enigmatic co-signor, stoned on the cashmere rug, pointed at the thermometer tilting precariously on the bureau. 45C it read. i had to get up from my comfortable perch on the armchair in order to actually see what the curious bachelor was referring to and i have to confess that i started upon discovering that he had read my thoughts, again. prior to that interruption, i had been engrossed in the deepest rumination on the recent scandal in which the scion of one of the realm's most influential families was almost banished to political exile but for my friend's extraordinarily energetic pursuit of the real and apocalyptic scam at the bottom of it all, a grand conspiracy involving the water and electricity supply department. my wise roommate had endorsed, with the utmost intimate ease and in his casual manner, my cogitations as valid. the heat had become an issue.

when the time comes

so what i didn't carefully see the face
of the nude descending the staircase
or observe with enchanted eyes
the fair matron gioconda
for me is the dame with the one naked breast
leading the charge on bastille
in the powder and the din
and frenzy of fighting
she was lost when
the dust had settled and
the fires were put out
and now i seek mutinies
insurrections rebellion
wherever she will be
at the head of restless crowds
pouring out of narrow lanes
onto the citadel
drunk on empty stomachs
where spirit is the end of flesh
and love is arson
      

d welcome back smsese split second time

ive fallen in love
ive forgotten ive
passed out
the glass i drank from
is not the one
in pieces around me
what illusion is this
my dream isnt shattered
dont tell me it is
the age isnt over
if you cant handle time
let it kill you
may you die in peace

born vita

my friends please come
to the pit with sand
in your hands bring your
children too and your parents
shed a tear or two
i am done with crying
the loss of heart
is suicide the end of
illusion time


understanding fellow
alas not what you
think he was
who are you
i am he but
he doesnt understand


i have returned from
the city of my childhood
left my cradle went back and
left again after having arrived
with arresting thoughts
on the nature of the returnee
the vacationer if you may
leaving relieved to find no shackles
cutting through the tendons
feeling freedom in the breadth
of the ocean like a crusoe
reconciled to his loneliness
objectively a shipwreck
struggling only
for a personal tale
of loss and renaissance
so desperately not
a story worth telling
forgetting is such a big part
of what i do


tired with mere
obsessing with the fallout
of petty crimes
moral and eventual
all recoverable
but what if they are
that is not the question
here despite the scorn
for jumping the signal
a fly by night
asleep on the journey
escaping as much
the punishment as the crime

only walls

between us
a panzer division
we on either side
of a fiery evil
the evil
of our times


ive kept myself from imagining
so many things imagining is
nonsense it is shit
imagine not dying a rebel
say at age twenty imagine
happy circumstances serendipity
and its place in history
imagine the imagined past
imagine the future
imagine being in the moment
a rebel there all imagination
ends imagine dying a rebel


younger much younger than i
there is all lyric lost and
i am horrified
in sacrifice and suffering longer
than is my lot ive forgot
that love is one buttons push
into the stream that washes
the universe and much before
me have been lost
triers unto secrets so deep
it insults my logic to think
that i hold onto a bar swimming
im learning only to just
stay afloat while those that
would fly have sunk a long time


look im blind
are you a believer
or am i lying
do you see
or am i shying
away from what
you know and what
im hiding do you
sleep past your
waking hour do you
dream before bedtime
you are in
love with me
but so am i
a scent for a pup
i feel a beautiful love
you can sniff out my
dismembered parts
scattered in your search
 maybe my eyes are blurred
because im tired of looking

hurled relieved on hurling

but why would i
talk about that
attraction unless
i was pimping it to you
as a secret so well-savoured
much better felt than spoken of
why would i make it
a crossword puzzle for myself
and be consumed in thinking up
words to fit for it is no mystery
to me but it is no great strength
neither for all that i still
chase after the mantle
of the uncrowned king of lovers
i seek words of a dark charm



not the devotee
id rather be darth vader
and control and summon
at will and summarily
undo the order of creation
i have no piety and
would rather pity than
be pitied instead of
a driver i would rather
be an engine with
a mind of its own
incoherent and never
expected to answer
where i go



the benchmark for hollow passages
is the smell of pigeonshit
in old country houses or
the few still fighting in the city
as birds go missing from the skies
the lament of hyenas and jackals
rends the air and the odd dirge
sung in the dead of the night
becomes a part of that chorus
and is like nothing in the morning

passage for a poet

you are not so forgettable more spirit than flesh but then im an emir of cairo suddenly caught in a reverie at court seeking pleasure is my duty with a cool sense of purpose i carry on but for the sudden moments when sweet molecules enter my body and and in my mind i am told it is something i shall find no more when called back to d'affaires du jardin i go back to pretending that all of it had made me happy then that even then thered been a stated purpose like in the rose for the thorn and that it is something ive always known in this story knowledge helps in better use of the seasons and certain memories are storms

sometimes she would
point it out to me
a heartbreaking sunset
or tell me on phone
of a sky drenched in blood
a fiery glow
she would know better
that someday
beauty my love will kill us
 i nod and inside me wells up
scorn that i do not know
anything its texture its taste
its form nor close my eyes
and i can see it
it is dark in beauty's shadow
i spend my time sleeping
and then i dream
that i have swallowed my tongue
and in that final moment of beauty
i am speechless

rushing back
i had promised
myself the earth
but denied that embrace
wendys mothers kiss
always i have ended
further than
i was at the start
and not ceasing
to wonder i have
sat up nights
eyes wide apart
oh lord you can
end this now
or you can
show me
the way to the heart



the ease
now is the unease
but i love you
no less
than your photographs
are a magical you
bewitching me
intensely in
my lonely hours
on the tops of hills
there apart you and i
there is love
i am not there
and you are not there
but there is love
that will kill us my love
i am not here
and you are not here
but ive seen it
for you my love
ive forgotten myself
in that cool sweat
there was a crucifix
on that hill
i never stood
in its shadow my love
but i did it for you
i scaled a mountain
but i was not with you
i was never there my love
unless you tell me when
for you my love



http://chloe328.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/doisneau1.jpg

some talk of us

i met s quite unexpectedly. not unexpectedly when it happened but curious that he should be there, in hyderabad. he has had roots sent down here by the mothers side of his family. so he has memories and my neighbourhood, he knew better than me. which was as it should be because i was only meeting him for an hour max and it didnt make sense for both of us to know nothing about where to hang.
a city very close to his heart, he said. and not just because it was where he was born and in which he became conscious of his surroundings. he liked the city now, all modern and forward looking and frenetic and founded on retail, growing on servicing. thats the best part he said, in the parking of some departmental store. a valet had just parked his car around, and by the time he'd done that, s came out to declare no shrooms, so no go. leaving now then. the valet pulls the car back out. s says that is the best part. there is always someone to take care of these things for you. cal would take ages to get up to that standard. anyhow, we carried on and went to this other dept store, famous erstwhile as trinetra. his family, right from childhood these memories were, would always pick up all their provisions from this shop. you just called them with the list and theyd have it sent home. the shop has been taken over by this retail grocery chain, and he didnt know where to look for what although they did have the said fungus. i asked s where them days had disappeared, rhetorically. he shrugged, said its all gone.
finally we had icecreams and discussed the travesty of law in mamata's bengal.



ginsberg's minds
they still howl and are dragged still
through the alleys and lanes
where stars fall dead
ash on streets paved with gold
sickly thick grimy yellow
screaming in a hunger
that died long ago
and resurrected the vampire
of a damned romance dead beat
rent not by the ecstasy of light
but cut up in anxiety
full-blooded into the battle rushing
to come back bleeding
it stains the whites of their eyes
and sleepless still they die fighting

counting

the ennui
styled
a journey since
between two ends
it must be seen
as the end of
the purpose itself
of end as
the purpose itself
fishing wishing cycles
why not be riddled
by doubt in the meaning
that is sufficient but
never enough
stare stare at the ceiling
on all sides
there are mirrors



oh you know that thing
when you are in a box
above a raging deep sea
worried only about
your breathing your heart
beating so loudly
oh suicide so proudly
distress of a prestige nightly
handcuffed on the shore
from where into the waters
the key was thrown
therein you drown
till you should pop
your head out
and all would hail
a miracle
bread and butter for you
that no one knows
when is the last time

i cant believe
how that first kiss was
that im now
out looking
that ive had
pieces of that thing
stripped away
by the howling wind
and the plague
of our times
but i am a rebel
of the weak word
offering the last fight
i am biting my lips
oh kiss me for
the first time

a street cur named desire

the first time hyderabad really made me laugh was over aloo parathaas at the rajasthani's. the drum major and stringsense told me about how they had seen the locals chase away dogs. even when the mongrel is a docile one they will raise their fist as if to hit and bring it down with a loud ho! roared out as if it really was some lion and not a common canine. now i havent seen this method at work but me mates promised me that that was exactly how they chased away dogs in hyderabad. believing that the story cannot be too offensive to anyone i thought it fair to see the humour in it and join in the joke. for it can be easily ignored, but at the time i found the demonstration hilarious and we couldn't stop laughing. because it is better to laugh at stupid things than try to be funny in my opinion. unfortunate things have been said when all that was intended was to bring a smile to the lips. we might well believe in the absolute beatitude in being the one that makes everybody crack up but that enterprise is fraught with pitfalls. like waiting for the vendor at work to hand us our free coffee i couldnt help remark to a city reporter i can scarcely claim to know very well as he jostled out space for himself at the counter that in this country we line up for things meaning we stand in a line at counter meaning that it is about as funny as einstein was dumb in brief we indians are only ever standing lining up for things but what is empathy in such terms to one i learnt was fresh off the boat from middleeast. not that it took me hours for that faux pas to register because the girl that accompanies this kid of ours gave an absolute look of horror no sooner than these words had escaped my mouth meaning she completely saw how fucked up that statement was. i got my coffee before him. not that i have been a runaway success in personal magnetism that this episode should make me remember it with alarm. most of the security at work is from my home state which makes me pally with them and to have security play ball is something that can never harm and so i am always the agreeable person with the men in uniform which is an unproven strategy of trying to stay out of real adult trouble, at least one of them. i generally exchange a word in the lingo with my people and we get along fine. there has to be this one mister i offended during initial exchanges or maybe he is plain autistic but this puny guard looks straight through me when i say hi. sometimes he does me a favour and finds somewhere else to look as i pass him. other times he is quite trapped. like he is always trapped when he is posted at the main gate. there his post means that he is right there as i enter office. those are the days of the numb look. but he is trying. one day the moment he observed me crossing the road, he started doing a march up and down the gate. kid you not but a proper military march in all seriousness. maybe he does not hate me so much as he hates his job. i agree that any kind of loathing takes away acknowledgement. that is, we never acknowledge that which we loathe although here the substance of our loathing might be like hammer for stone, shaping us in every possible way. that is also the case with love but there there is the sense that one is in control when one is really enjoying it. but loathing, we do not even talk about and it carries on its chipping. although i have never been able to figure out what was so loathsome in vegas. it did look like a shocking affair what with all the drugs making me feel like the both of them would explode but there was nothing loathsome there if it wasnt the going over the top and excessiveness although they did leave a christian virgin in the lurch. i imagine what was loathsome was what they glossed over in the movie with the drug odyssey. loathing might be the reason why these fuckers were doing what they were doing in the first place. sanity or being and staying sane can be loathsome at times, more loathsome is trying to drink it down or smoke it away among other ways of dealing with it. i have for as long as i can remember studiously avoided finding an escape in them items but i have definitely looked for a ticket whenever i have hit it. if one is getting high because of sadness and the other is getting exuberant for it then it seems to me that neither mood is in its nature. but what is all in the mind, how long does it stay there and how long does it stay the same way.

dawn on the third day

i gather thorn flowers
they are tiny and blue
i count them by the prickles
on my fingers
and tie them in a bunch for you
that is what i do
and id do it still
if it wasnt for you
i have come to
the barren land
so far from you
walk through the lands
you know thorn bush grows
if you come
looking for me
and look they are
roses for you

there is no fear
but senselessness
that im not here
a hopelessness
that i dont care
an aimlessness
of a last decadent age
and on wild seas
dozens of geese
fly overhead