What I Want to Tell You

You are the greatest poem I could have found.

You are a sunset bathed in purple, a prayer of longing across the sky.

You are the sound of rain against my window, and I’m afraid you forget it.

Here’s what I want to tell you: I know you’re afraid.

I know you’re wading through the solid chaos of a life,

Impatient and unsure, blundering through darkness,

And I know you’re disillusioned, and I know you hate it.

Baby, that’s all of us.

What I want you to know, really, is that it doesn’t get better.

Life is always going to be callous, and strange, and so unbearably short,

And so terribly long. And what I want to tell you,

Is that we’ve got one chance at this. A single shot,

And that should scare me, but it doesn’t anymore. It gives me goosebumps.

It excites me, and I want it to excite you. We’ve got one shot to live this.

There’s very little formula to it, actually.

All you can do is wake up in the morning and go to bed at night,

Drink chai on crisp winter days, buy new shoes when they wear out.

But I want you to be content, not with washed-out days and tentative nights,

I want you never to postpone a date or sleep through a meteor shower,

Numb yourself to pain or think of taxes. You’ll be fine.

I want you to watch the stars even when you need to rush,

Sleep in on a Monday after watching a Sunday sunrise, always

Get wet in the rain. Be a desert of thirst. Always ask for more.

I know you’re afraid, and I want you to be okay with that. I want you

To fall in love a hundred times (even if it’s not always with me),

And I want you to fail, at least at ninety-nine of those. I want you

To have the courage to let yourself hurt.

I want you to talk to the moon when you’re alone. To never take beauty for granted.

To laugh at yourself, every day, and yet be goddamn proud of yourself.

I want you to be as kind as you are, but I want you to watch out for yourself, man.

It’s okay to screw up. It’s okay to get lost, to spend a day in traffic,

To have made a mistake. Forgive yourself. I want you always to forgive yourself.

It’s okay, as long as you take life by the collar, and promise me to live the hell out of it.

I want you to feel this in the small of your back, rising up your spine

Like truth. Like a winter chill, or like joy.

I want to tell you more than a flimsy paper can hold,

More than a midnight conversation can possibly balance in itself.

I want you to be responsible and sensitive and have the balls to walk alone

If everybody who walks around you is an asshole. I want you to do the right thing

Even when it’s the toughest thing to do. I want you to smile at strangers.

I want you to go on a thousand road trips, to have a thousand sleepless nights.

I want you to get drunk even when you have a job interview the next day,

And I want you to shrug your shoulders if you break your phone. I want you

To know what’s important, to love people even when they’re broken and lost,

To love yourself. I want you to get lost in a forest, to read under a streetlight,

And get on a train without knowing where the hell it goes. I want you to feel

Like you’ve made something of yourself. Like you’ve grown, like you have

An ocean-full of memories for every drop that you’ve decided to live through.

Rumi once told me, with shining eyes, to let the beauty I love be what I do.

Damn right I will, man. And that’s all I wish for you too.

I want to tell you to defy all the pain in the world.

Screw history. Screw philosophy. Screw law. And screw your fears.

For god’s sake, be happy. Live the hell out of this life.

A little void.

I’m afraid I don't have the right words anymore.

I feel it all so fully, so intensely, with every pore of myself. Every moment that passes me by, I reach out with stretched fingertip, aching to trace its veins, its rivers, its endless blue sky.

Oh, cruel irony, that forces me on. 
Oh, helplessness settled at the nape of my neck.

I want to have the right words. 
I want to hold on. I want to know I am living well.

I am afraid to know the truth. I am afraid to die. 

I am afraid to live.

I’m a little lost, and I've been here before, and I will be here again. I know it is alright, because I have been submerged before, and I have risen every time, hair thrown back with salty spray and dripping face panting at the sun. I manage to make myself proud, day after day, even when I think I will not be able to. The world makes me proud. The sky is a reason I have for going on. Red leaves on a winter afternoon. I live for little stories, round stones, dog-eared books and smiles. I search for beauty, and it sustains me.

I’m afraid of someday not swimming back up. I’m afraid of the quicksand at the bottom of the ocean, the helplessness that can escape from deep corners of myself to fill up the seas and skies, the space and the voids.

To the world

Faced with all the seriousness
all the theories and the counterarguments
to Life, all the deadpan walls of text
sitting darkly against the light;

smilingly sometimes I open my jackets
and let in the joy. I'm still able to.
Listening to new music on a Sunday afternoon,
feeling the gushing waves of wind that slam doors
on the vastness of my skin, my hair.
Conversing with Cummings in the corridors.
Deep inside me, how my heart beats
to the nuances of Times New Roman, 12.

It'll be okay, won't it?

The grass is green, the horizon is lapping
at my windows, and the purple November sunset
will stretch across the sky in glory, glory, glory,
today evening. It will.

I might not always write great poetry
but you must understand I feel it, always,
in my bones; I might not be able to prise apart
my festering flesh from my bones with
the knife of wisdom, but I know, I know
I will find essence in the marrow that makes me.
Nothing tangible, perhaps, but something,
something that marks out the freckles on my
skin of gold, that lights up my tawny eyes
in sunshine, that makes sure I find poetry
in the beastliest, most brutal corners of existence.

I will find birdsong and seashells.
I will live this life (I want to)
so desperately well, so marvellously fully.
My poetry begins and ends with the I because,
because, it is all I have to watch the world through;
morality, temperance, knowledge, will they escape me?
Am I doing this right? Please, please
let me write romantic poetry as long as I live;
I love Eliot but I want to look at the world
with the eyes of Wordsworth.
Or at least always find a river from which to write from,
fields of daffodils to trace along my arms, and in the darkest
mountains, a leech-gatherer to advise me well.
Please, please, let me out of cities, let me live and not languish,
let me carry a box of rain and a yellow watch, let me escape from
time that passes like a slow-burning cigarette on a chilly evening.

I might find nothing new, travelling this world,
where every path is worn out, and some paved
(with the dreams of the downtrodden). But
please, please, let me not give up Hope
just because all the evidence suggests I should.
Let me take pleasure in every step I take,
every candle-lit evening, every stranger's smile,
every horizon I make my winding way towards.
Let me.

An Ode to my Spectacles

You and I, I must say,

have quite a love-hate relationship.

Since the fifth grade, I've had on my nose,

some goddamn plastic frame or the other.

You know, that as far I can remember, I've looked at the world

through a blurry frame. Through a clear-glass separation,

 a distance upon which I am dependant,

without which - what? I can count the number of fingers

laughing friends put up, but you know, you know -

the world looks to me like a watercolour painting

that hasn't been penned in, like a foggy day,

like raw confusion: and you know

how uncomfortable, insecure I am

how I pride my ability, in every other way,

to See. 

To see, to see, what does it mean to see?

Clarity and confusion balance, stumble,

on a single vowel that stretches across the sky -

the sky stretched out on a windy day

sometime last year over a classroom.

Atticus stood in a deserted, waiting street

and my literature teacher was solemn.
He pushed his glasses to his forehead; 

they slipped down, and he dropped them in the street. 

In the silence, I heard them crack. 

Atticus' glasses gave us room for a host of metaphors -

his wisdom, his ability to see clearly, more clearly,

than anybody else in Maycomb. Atticus' glasses

gave me hope for my own glasses - if life is poetry,

then my glasses are a metaphor for my vision,

my discomfort with blurry sight, an allegory.

If I'm writing this story, I gave myself glasses,

in a character sketch you will find them,

inseparable from me, adding all sorts of

interesting connotations to me as protagonist.

O spectacles, sitting regally,

on pimple-spotted nose,

result of prescription sheets shouting

Myopia, Astigmatism, little bleary-eyed child,

O spectacles, extension of my physical self

since age ten, how I hate being dependant, blind.

How I instinctively fiddle with the plastic frame

when I'm awkward with my hands,

how, when I cry, little salt-water droplets

sit on you like dewdrops, waiting to be wiped.

O spectacles, I do apologize,

for leaving you on the bathroom counter today, unloved.

Me, I take you off my weary nose only at night,

when the world is cloaked with darkness.

My personal watercolour painting of the world

will never be penned in, lights large and looming,

ink blots spreading across the canvas. Without you,

my eyes will show me only a constant foggy day,

an image of chaos.

Transitory: Three Poems

“What do you think, O Monks, is rupa permanent, or is it transitory?”

“It is transitory, Reverend Sir.”

“And that which is transitory – is it painful, or is it pleasant?”

“It is painful, Reverend Sir.”

“And that which is transitory, painful, and liable to change – is it possible to say of it: 'This is mine; this am I; this is my self'?”

“Certainly not, Reverend Sir.”

“Is feeling, perception, volition, consciousness, permanent, or transitory? Is it painful, or is it pleasant? Is it possible to say of it: 'This is mine; this am I; this is my self'?”

(Buddhism as Philosophy, Mark Siderits)

1. I have travelled far and long,

and I have seen the oceans, and

lay upon their shores. I have felt

the fleeting fire of a snowflake

upon my tongue, but my god,

it is nothing compared to the

countries of your body.

Don't talk to me about

impermanence of form -

don't talk of consciousness.

We're a tangle of blankets

and bad memories, a pair

of lost birds, a microcosm

of all the chaos in the world.

In your arms, there is no

consciousness – don't you see?

There is feeling, rising up in me

like smoke, there is perception,

and there is all the permanence

of the world, suspended on the

tightrope of desire.

We are young, and there is

a long way to go. My life

is not your life; nor is yours

Mine. This am I, this is my self.

And that is you, beyond the

border. Don't pretend like

you know me. Don't pretend

that we understand each other -

we've known each other a few

fumbling hours, for god's sake.

I'm nothing new. There is nothing new

here, today, in the bright lights

of a pulsating city; but our grandparents

would never understand. Our parents

would try, and fail. Life is moving

fast, and we take impermanence

in our stride, we hold on to it

and use it to our advantage.

Imagine if I were forced to spend

my life with you. We are young.

The impermanence of form -

is drilled into us. I know about it

already. Don't read poetry to me.

This isn't a poem: this is life.

In this scene, you and I,

are on a bed. Or a couch.

In this scene, one of us

will always be able to back out

in time. Before it gets

serious, real, threatening.

We're a desperate tangle of limbs,

an amalgamation of reason and passion,

a mess of innocent desire and paradox.

We will unravel before we grow roots,

before we sense moss. We will unravel

because, O stranger, there is no permanence.

The years are slipping by – learn to slip by

with them. It is painless, this partition, there

need be no history, no memory at all.

O lover, you are not mine, nor am I yours.

Your corporeal form wrapped in mine:

let us make this distinction of souls clear.

2. The clock on the mantelpiece

sounds the same as it did, all those years ago.

The pictures are fading faster in the sunlight.

I have watched the sun rest on the taut string

of horizon, from this window, a hundred times.

I have watched my hands grow old, and I have watched

yours. I feel the lines, like webs, across my face my arms

my hands and legs my once-beautiful neck, and I can look

you in the face and tell you this corporeal form is transitory.

We're constantly reading about love, watching it

being overused in the advertisements, like

Christmastime or puppies, or God. You and I,

have watched each other from the blossoms

of our youth to today – what is this? Where are we?

What am I to expect from you when all we have

is the ransom of memory, a thread from you to me,

stretching farther and farther with every day, every sigh.

I know the backs of my wrinkled hands, now, like I know

the backs of yours. I have seen your precious face,

every morning, for years – and I want to call this

Love, like we did in the start, but I can be honest,

can't I? We are used to each other. We don't know

how else to be, who else to watch, where else to go.

It is too late for options. Too late for romance.

Too late to know if I made the right choice

when I chose you. We have contracts and agreements,

tangible (in the photos, in the grandchildren's sparkling eyes),

intangible (in society's quiet, decisive conditions about marriage);

but all set in stone. Permanent. Our love is eternal.

My god, we're going to be buried together. Isn't this

what we always wanted? This isn't transitory -

it isn't painful – it isn't pleasant. This is mine;

this am I; this is my self – because it is all I have.

Your body, and mine. The privilege to watch

the ravages of time. Our feelings, perceptions,

our consciousness, volition. Some days, I can't stand you.

Some days, I feel lonely when I drop you off in the car.

Either of us might go first – and then the permanence

of your goddamn face will disappear, a clean slate.

I'll be a newborn again. Innocent of the malice

of love, of eternity, of unbearable lightness.

Love, as a necessary evil. Love, as salvation.

And to think

that I could have chosen

Christmastime, or puppies,

or God.

3. O my little monk,

huddled under white sheets on this grey morning,

what can I get you to drink? Listen: raindrops scrape

against thin walls. There's another sliver of eyelash

on your porcelain cheek; make a wish,

beloved, unfurl your dreams into the wind.

Someday I will look back and search for meaning

in memory: let me set the scene for posterity.

Four walls, sound of rain, palewhite hands in mine.

A swollen bookcase, feeble smiles, prescriptions

and medicine drawers, bills for chemotherapy,

shuddering roof against onslaught of sea from sky.

One little figure in bed, bald, huddled in white.

I want to hold each raindrop

in the hollows of my hand, and fashion them

into oceans for you. Oceans are permanent,

infinite and alive, but what of the oceans

of your eyes? Your form is transitory, fragile,

a solitary silver feather caught in a cage

of shatter-glass bone. Your fingers, your scars, your

breath warming my shoulder: transitory. Your body

against mine, the mole on your cheek, dark curls

against the valleys of your collarbones. Your arms,

limp against the harsh white of bedspread.

Your body, painful. Liable to change, lapping

against my life like a singing wave, unsure, unsteady.

Your smile, my endless blue sky. Your eyes,

watching me unfold my life a step at a time.

Your thunder of life in a corporeal frame of flesh.

The endless rhythm of heartbeat against my chest -

it is transitory. Is it possible to say of it:

“This is mine” - can I accept the flaws

that come with your particular perfection,

smile at your apologetic smile, and say:

“This am I”? This is where I am,

in the embrace of your momentary

corporeal form, split-second reality.

For this life – is it transitory? - yes,

by god, it is ephemeral and fleeting and yet

it is the only thing that is eternal. It is liable

to change, and mutate, and writhe in agony,

and it is the only constant, our only hope.

This life, it is painful, I know, as do you.

I will go through it all again if I have the chance.

Every desperate tear that I have ever shed. Every heartbreak,

every gut-wrenching, white-knuckled time the doctor said

'We don't know'. Don't worry, doctor. The answer

doesn't lie in your files.

Sketch of a night

Whirlpool of faces sounds arms voices:
smooth sound of African Jazz rising up
settling down like liquid under my skin.
Sweet nostalgia of warm lighting, live music,
new friends dizzy with dance and drink.
Sweet seductive smell of alcohol
floating like a feather in the wind.
Winding up in unfamiliar arms, hand
in sweaty hand, head on a new shoulder.
Walking in a daze through the swaying crowd.

Later, careening down the stairs with dancing thoughts.
I hear histories repeat themselves in my voice, bleary eyes.
The feather floats, stays with us on the streets, in the car.
Sitting straight and suddenly quiet, I look out the window.
I'm curled up tight in my mind, twisted driftwood.
Regret and yearning sit, heavy and unbearably light,
in the nape of my neck, countries of my body.
I woke up in the morning with watery eyes.
Inebriation and quiet memories leave
a strange aftertaste in my mouth.

Nostalgia

Sometimes I am afraid I write too much about the Valley, talk too much about it.
I'm sure people get sick of me, you know. I'm sure I come off as strange.
I'm afraid that I'm so used to saying beautiful things about the Valley, that I can't see it for what it is any more. I'm afraid of the next time I go - what if it isn't everything I hold it to be?
I'm afraid of thinking about it too much, to be honest. I'm afraid of putting it down in words and images and sighs, because I don't want to steal away any of its magic.

And then some days, when I'm stealing away the last hour of sleep in bed, a liquid ache settles in my bones. What is this, prose or poetry? I don't know. I'm afraid of being overly sentimental - and I'm afraid that someday, I won't be. A liquid ache settles down in me, and my body hurts to be so far. So far in both space and time. My body hurts, I lie in bed and hold it to myself, my knees my arms my wavering heart. I'm on the precipice, somewhere important, it's a boundary a border an edge. I might cry. I might cry, and I don't know where these tears come from, and I try to pin it down, travel deep down the lines of my body to remember.

When I start to remember, that's when I ache.

I sit in class sometimes, paying attention, writing notes. In a cold windowless classroom, I might turn back for a second to listen to someone. They've raised their hand, they're talking about Shakespeare, they're talking about Hume and how he contradicts Plato, they're talking about how power distribution is the foundation of all political activity. This is where I want to be. This is what I want to learn. I see myself grow every day. But when I turn back, sometimes, I realize that I'm not there, I'm sitting in the library on a magnificent golden afternoon. The desk is under a window, and the window looks out onto a pond in the administrative block. I can see artwork on the softboard outside, and everybody who passes by and sees me smiles. I smile and wave. There are pink lilies in the pond, and a frangipani tree. Delicate white flowers have fallen on lilypads, on the gravel around the pond, and in the water itself. They float. Next to me are books which opened up so much to me, so many ways of thinking. These books are the reason I'm in this college right now, genuinely excited by Plato and Hume. My bag is on the floor, some books in the damp sunlight on the desk. I'm sure I'm working, but I rest for just a minute. I float.

One of my hiding places was between two shelves in the library, on the floor. Light filtered through shelves and dusty books, and nobody saw me there unless they looked. There were poetry books there, and I curled up in a corner, a part of the wall the straw mat the white shelves the books themselves. Pablo Neruda and Vikram Seth, Eliot and Wordsworth, obscure German and Native American poets - they all sat with me, silent. They let me discover them, devour them; in turn, I let myself be devoured by them. I let myself be devoured by their words, and then by the delicately worn books themselves, incurably romantic objects. I let myself by devoured by the library (curled up in corners so I was a part of it) and by the forest that surrounded it. I have been devoured by the people, the trees, the sky of that school.

I don't know what to do with the great swirling sea inside of me.

Today morning in bed, I felt like being kind to myself. I let myself remember. And when I let myself relive whole days in the Valley, everything comes alive: mornings where I wake up myself with the birds and the dawn floating in through my windows, evenings where I detached myself from the laughter and conversation to look up and watch the sky, Orion winking at me through the clouds. There's too much to remember, and I know that forest like the back of my hand. Every winding path, I can trace it on myself. My footsteps remember the uneven terrain, the steps, the rocks.

All my life, I will write about the Valley. I will write about the Valley even if I mistrust my writing, because that is all I can do when it hits me like a punch in the gut. It's all I can do when I look back and remember days filled with magic that seems unreal from where I am now, from where all the world is. It's all I can do because I am exhilarated when I think of the Valley, and I am unbearably sad, and Sylvia Plath told me that I will be okay as long as I can wrench a piece of hurt and beauty out of my life and put it on paper, that I will never crawl back home broken and defeated if I can make stories out of my heartbreak. I will write about the Valley because from where I am in my life, those seem like the happiest days that I will know. I don't know why - was it the people, the trees, the sky? Was it what those rambling paths awoke in me?

I will write about the Valley all my life, and I will search for ways to go back. I will go back, I know it, but it will never be the same, and that nostalgia (straight from its Greek derivative, "the pain of an old wound") will sit with me, both heavy and unbearably light, for all my life. There will never be enough to say about it. I will make paintings when I miss it, and fashion critical thinking essays justifying why Valley is home - although the answer is here already, solid and tangible, sitting inside me and smiling.

There is a liquid ache in my bones my voice my mouth my hands. There is a liquid ache, and I might spill over. How to explain that this is not rhetoric, this is something real and alive inside of me, a fire and a flood all at once? Perhaps on somebody else's tongue, these words will represent only pretense, artifice. On my tongue, these words are a desperate plea to the gods of expression. On my tongue, these words are all I have. Pause. Breathe. I have to go for class now. I won't let myself think of Valley for a few days - too much of me is ragged and fluttering in the wind right now. Let me gather myself, so I can begin again.

The Nature of Desire

Words float down the breeze

to me. Across windowless cold classrooms.

'The nature of desire is such'

he says and I give myself

a cold hard look,

'that it is never ending'.

'The nature of desire...'

I test it on my tongue.

An earthy word, stable,

that settles like dust

on the sensual sound

of 'desire'. Wisdom

perhaps is the greatest

vice, gently pulling you

from side to side, open

to the storms of the world.

Screw this. I don't want

to know. (Who am I kidding?)

To know, to believe, to

understand, and then give way

to yourself to grow. I want to

be wise, and yet I also want to

possess you, and everything you

stand for. And not only you,

and not just in that way. I want

to hold on, desperately,

to every moment, every sight,

every limb of mine desperately screaming

'desire'. I desire beauty. I desire life,

and knowledge, and joy, and youth.

I desire every galaxy, every photograph,

every deep-veined leaf floating in the wind.

I desire - and I sit, on the other side

of the mirror, watching. I sit 

in the eye of my cyclone, listening

to myself think. I lie down 

in a golden field at sunset, and

fashion rhetoric from my words.

'The problem of possession', I say.

'The existential angst'. The grasses

lap like waves at my feet, blown astray

by the wild, wild wind. The sun rests momentarily

on the taut string of horizon, a deep orange orb

against sky.

I languish

in a fragmentary existence.

Ready to leave

I am ready to leave.
I have been ready to leave
for the longest time.

Still, dust-laden roads
line this city. The conversations
are tired; the sky a weary shade.
I am a stranger here.
I know only that pulsating screen that pulls me
like a planet, a dangerously divine orb.

My story gave up looking for nourishment here.
I lit it up from within, a vanilla candle in a ceramic frame,
casting a midnight dance of light and shadows,
upon the walls of my mind, within the belly of Time.

But I have a home (although it's not here,
in this deeply-bricked complacency
I hate within myself). I fell in love
with a forest at the edge of a city,
a thousand miles from here. And
that is where I will belong. For even
as I languish in the heart of a city
I never loved, my plot lines escape me.
They flutter in the cool wind of a Bangalore evening,
beneath the gently waving trees. My plot lines
are fragile, ragged, wild. They write me a poem
loose on a breeze, a vagabond of Love.

Now I'm leaving home, physically,
(and so in my mind, too). As I pack
my bags, brush my teeth, get into the car;
as I drive past the streets I never held close;
I must also leave what is home in my mind.
I will have to call out to the wind,
go rambling down loved paths to call back
my ragged nostalgia, my fluttering joys, my plot lines.
It's a relief to have found a place I can always return to.
It's strange to leave my house,
and not head to my valley of yearning.
It's strange, but I must do it anyway.
Who knows what I will find on my paths,
what deep-veined red leaves, what feathers,
what polished round stones, what stories?

It's good to keep moving. It's good to have hope.
It's a beautiful day, and I hope tomorrow is better.
I hope to find within myself all the magic I have sought,
and I hope to have the strength to keep seeking.

I'm ready to leave, it's good to keep moving.
I'm tip-toeing, balancing on a well-settled life. Packing away anchors,
(in my mind and out, in suitcases and backpacks and memories)
sipping the deep form of ocean from the hollows of my hands.
Now I'm putting up sails, bright yellow against a swaying shade of sky.

Where the poetry goes to die.

There is poetry in me.
In the gravity of the black alphabets
I am able to make sense of.
(I tell myself).

The windows mist up,
clear. The green outside
is fresh and crisp; waiting
on the clear wings of dawn.
But on a cloudy day, sometimes,
when I forget to be living a meaningful life.

I see the absolute
futility
of a human life in search of beauty.

(I tell myself)
There is poetry in the feverish chaos
running in the wrinkles of an aging face.
In the cynicism that punctures
something important within me.
There is poetry, also,
in the deep well of stillness I feel in the wild.
And in the pulsating power of a harsh screen
that pulls me to it like a planet, there must be poetry,
in the malicious bubble
of complacency and lethargy
that fits around me like a glove.
There must be poetry in this maelstrom.

Some days, the storm is raging and the light harsh.
In the meandering mess of this mortal life,
in the rolls and loops and webs of stories,
relationships and people and arbitrary memories,
in the faith you must put in your existence
in order to survive, yes, make it through
another day, in the existential struggles of
crossing the road or having a meaningless conversation;
the futility hits you hard. Where it hurts.

What if
there is no poetry there?
What if I am able to, really, see the world
without the overbearing cloak of beauty
that I assign to it, surround it with?
"See the world for what it is" -
do you know what dangerous advice that is?
I sleepwalk through the hours. It is a desperate attempt
to hold on to sanity and purpose. I dive,
wade through the days and float through the nights,
hoping to come across an island, a salvation,
a catharsis to this ever-growing sea in my soul,
a veritable ocean of ephemeral silences, senseless rhythms.

Grace

“If there is a knower of tongues here, fetch him;
There is a stranger in the city
And he has many things to say.”
[Mirza Asad Ullah Khan Ghalib]

He will say what he has to, of course,
but to learn to listen, that is the greatest trial and joy;
To know of love, that insidious stranger,
that magnificent word, to fall
willfully and with the grace
that love demands, and the surrender.
For on the other side
of reason and rationality
I often forget something important.
With all of my logic, my caution,
my 'self-awareness', my exhaustion;

Sometimes I still wade through my days
and float through my nights, and emerge,
dry driftwood,
untouched by the the ocean, caressed by no wind,
tossed wildly in ecstasy by no frothing waves.
I am, but a stiff white skeleton of what I might have been.
Safe, safe but with no grace. I learnt how to live
once, under the bowers of towering trees,
but in the callousness of rubble and city lights, I forget.

There is no grace
in the passing of time without the giving of myself, broken as I might be,
indiscriminately. There is no grace
in holding back, deliberating,
forgetting where a day began and where it is ending.
There is no joy in living this life if I live it hollow,
if the echoes ring back to me in my fragile dreams.

I worried I would forget
the massive vulnerability
I hold in myself, so carefully.

But it is a joy
to know that there is still grace.
There is grace in the newness you open within me.
Grace in the delicate fumbles in the dark,
in the wonderful awkwardness of
freshly born lovers. There is grace
in the notes of your classical guitar,
resting on my skin like gentle drops of dew.

There is a stranger in my city,
and I wish to know him. I will learn the tongues
and wait in the rain in a blue dress.
I will open myself to the skies, and my skin
won't be burned or numb. I want to feel the drizzle
slide off my arms, and I want to feel a thunderstorm
beating in on my worn-out door, if it has to.
I want to hold every moment
in the hollows of my hands,
and partake of it well and deeply.

And perhaps when it passes
I will let myself pick up the glass fragments
of once-seamless hours, and hold them up to the light;
watch the sun break through the dust, and smile
at the grace of life.

Tears

Words rumble and roll down mountains of youth;
Down valleys and rivers and gurgling brooks
until they come to rest in this darkened pool.
It is still and empty
and
the magnificent thunder of silence
rings in my ears.

I wept for the stranger in the photograph.

Stand as high as you can and hold the sunbeams in your hand;
isn't possession all you want?
Irrelevant human.

The tears were so silent. So sudden.

Pick up the shattered glass pieces of your life
and hold them to the light.
Let them tell the story you're afraid to hear.

My face, my neck, and my collarbones.
Wet. The ridges and curves
it took thousands of years to perfect.
Atavistic mechanism activated.
Watch the lights and the shadows
dance in the belly of time. Impatient.

Hold my salt-dried face in the hollows of your hands.
Let me cry if I need to.

Someday, I want to be
a poem that would shake you.

Grey

In the chaos in my mind, there are images, fleeting.
A yellow window with shadows flitting.
Footsteps. Leaves. Bad decisions.
Later, sitting on a pile of chairs,
I could be the last one left here.
The crumpled edges of clouds float by.
The leaves forget to flutter. I hold on
to the armrests, grabbing them tight.
I'm in a ship, unsunk, yet
floundering in this maelstrom.

The meowing cats and graying sky,
violently loud to my silent mind.
Momentary madness.
And everything gets rolled up
and punches me in the gut.
It's heavy as iron. Rusted and raw.

Sunday afternoons are the worst.
One doesn't know what one is waiting for.
Everybody is a mystery. Everything obscure.
Freedom was always the colour of the sky -
Until it faded into a pale, washed-out grey.
The clicking keyboard. The bent back.
Unable to really look up, to see. To change.
To run like the wind into faster days,
instead of easing into the future
like pickle leaking out of a labelled glass bottle.
Staining the mantelpiece a shadowed blood red.

What am I doing? I should be doing something.
But I look around, and it hurts even more.
The lives, so many, hollowed out,
like the deep gorges carved on aged faces.
It makes no sense. The ache in my chest,
it deepens. Homo demens.
I drift further. In my mind, even further.

When I'm desperate, though, it's easy to console myself.
You see this mess? It isn't me.
I live far too meaningfully.
My real life isn't here.
It's by the swaying trees
far away. Where the sky is blue,
and the birds sing anew every day.
And I'll watch the clouds from there:
By the fields where the dogs lay.

Numbness

A hundred, a thousand
neatly folded slices of history
carelessly packed by grimy hands
handed to guards, deposited in yards
and street names and numbers zoom
past wobbling bicycles
the day awakens lustily.

A hundred, a thousand
cups of tea
a veritable ocean on the stoves
of a thousand squalling kitchens.
Early morning hands unfold the papers,
bleary eyes peer through warm tea vapors.
Sleep swollen mouths sip, pause.

         what
                    and he died
          again
                         cheating
      and lying
                          we died
again.

Sip again. Swallow.
What does it take for a man to give up?
For a spirit as wide as a sea to hollow.
What does it take to kill a child? Hold down a woman?
What does it take to steal, to lie,
To die. To kill.

A hundred, a thousand
stories we tell. Can you imagine
the sheer power of newsprint
deliberate and dark
holding tight behind walls of alphabets
stories of infinite endless unspeakable violence.
Day after day
                  after day
                           after day
                                       after

and we are numbed, blunted
heavy thuds leave no impact
sharp jabs provoke no pain
we have layers and layers
of middle-class protection, of artificial conscience

We have lives to live.
Lives to lose.

So we read
halfheartedly about
Suffering;
watch it on the screens
keep it fresh with the coriander leaves
in the fridge, cool
under the children's mattresses
behind cobwebs in cupboards
hidden under the scream of the pressure cooker.

Someday we will do something about it.
For now, fold and live.
Fold and live.

Getting Lost

"The art of losing isn't hard to master,
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster." (Elizabeth bishop)

Beginning after ending is so strange,
Going the whole way, learning and unlearning,
Growing and shrinking. Believing. Losing.
In psychology, they say
development is not linear -
it takes the form of a spiral.
Can you see it?
You, in the roller coaster of your life.
Constantly in flux.
Progressing, then regressing.
Before moving on, you must assimilate.
You must consolidate.
And yet, you might go right ahead and do the stupid thing.
After learning better, you might fall harder.

So be patient.

Sunlight slants through the blinds,
A yellow gloom rises in the room.
I feel the soft-footed nostalgia of a thousand things
that are yet to happen. My heart swells up like a raincloud.

I'm a little lost. A little found.
A bit of a square peg,
and yet a little round.
Who I was is now folded in flowers.
Deliberated in memories unearthed in weaker hours.
Who I was became who I am,
before I could lose myself again.

A man bears beliefs like tree bears fruits -
And love and life will grab you right by the roots,
Shake up each and every one of your truths.
What remains? Spiraling onward,
Weary traveler of time,
Be patient.

Stand up to your full height in the storm,
            and succumb.
Let the wind take you where it may,
Let yourself be blown away.

Let yourself be found,
In the art of getting lost.

Life lies in the gentle caress, the fierce passion
of Love. In the vulnerability of living and losing
and living again. There will be a thousand endings,
I assure you, there will be a thousand beginnings.
A thousand truths you and I will reach,
and a thousand more we might lose on the way.

Let yourself get lost.
In the depth of the darkness,
in the eye of the storm,
you will be found.

So be patient.