April 18 : Tomorrows

Sleeping, eating, watching, learning.
Falling, laughing, waiting, hurting.
Sometimes
wanting
(things
like flying to the end
of where the earth meets the stars
or your eyes meet mine
and the stars all collapse
and letting go
you know
or strawberries and things)
sometimes wishing
(that today was longer
or tomorrow shorter,
little things
like matters of life and death
or big things
like milkshakes and smiles).

And today
this moment
is only mine
and that lends a certain freedom
to the cages in which I live
alone.
And today
this moment
is now alone
(this here)
and jumping into the sea
holding hands with you
is always the best thing to do.

It's a tough business
responsibility
(entailing trust and reliability
and patience and wisdom and love
and well, who the hell
knows what that is)
so we will think about that someday
when we grow up and
stuff.
But for today
let us cycle to the end of the world
(or the street)
let us read with hot chocolate in our hands.
Let us cuddle in warm blankets
(sing to me, please)
under the stars in a distant land.

And maybe I don't want to remember
the things that must be remembered.

We'll yawn in the afternoons
and yell at strangers on the street
we'll be silent when it's dark
and be lonely alone.
And because I'll have to trust you
(and be patient and wise)
because dependence is for those
who know themselves enough
to be faithful. That's why I'll
love you (like I love the moon,
from afar) but leave you
when the stars are out and
I'm tired of today.
Tomorrows,
I've learnt,
are better walked into alone.
Saner calmer bigger truer.

April 17 : Almost Rain

It might rain.
In the telltale shimmer of
dying flowers, the
petals on this polished floor
scratching against the wooden door.
Clanging bottles. City sounds.
In the bottom of my glass
(when almost nothing is left)
all I see is your resentment
(those eyes, oh, the knives)
Perhaps that's my fear, oh dear.

Monosyllabic and cynical
the line of conversation
hangs on a string so loose
that my words never seem
to reach your ears.
Or yours mine.

Thunder against the windows
fluttering leaves (and lives).
I'm afraid to say
what I really want to
(there will be no entanglement
this illusion will shatter
once taut, our strings will
break with a touch and that is why)
I am afraid.

The wind rushes at the walls
with the anger of a thousand horsemen
and I clench my fist
under the table
and I tighten the knot
of my legs till I can almost
feel nothing anymore
But I smile at you gently,
comfortingly. Because that
is what you deserve. My love.

Lightning
and then it's all so bright
blinding
for a second your eyes
for a second you seem to
understand
and the flash passes and
I might die
here in this booth with you
tonight.

The night is dark
my insides are dark
and I can feel the searing pain
in my eyeballs
only when I let my lids droop.
I might just collapse
into this night
(and then will
my dreams and ambitions
and fears and nightmares
all compress into a point
somewhere where I am
or was
and create a vortex
sucking everything
into the infinity of darkness
that my presence left behind?)

The glass panes rattle
with the effort of staying whole.
So do I
perhaps (hopefully), so do we.
Sitting unburnished
in the dark still night.

April 16 : Don't Worry

Don't worry,
we all live like that.
Slowly pulling out days
from the wad of chewing gum
that is our life.
Stretching them until
they are taut
and suddenly,
they break away
(quite suddenly)
into unknown tomorrows.

And patchworked timelines
of fuzzy histories
live behind us
into clean, new days.
When all of us has been
broken and ground
into the ground
all that will remain
will make you shudder
but keep you sane
in the sorry state
of sanity that the world endorses.

And glasses of water will be drunk
and many stale meals eaten.
Cross legged some will sit
but we will sit on our haunches.

And those who run as a way of life
will never be able to stand the paunches
of men who gave up (or tried and failed)
and decided to sit down.

So, dream.
In concrete jungles
and inane conversations
piss-stained walls of remorse
silent voices once hoarse
days and months and
lives gone by;
old drops of bloods
on sanitized sheets
and ashes on somebody's
mourning mantelpiece.
Grieve silently
for the sea,
if you can.
If you know how.

April 15 : This Porcelain Evening

The moon sits fatly

in a hundred puddles

in potholed roads and broken hearts.

The city feels old tonight,

It doesn't seem much will go right.

The seams of this moonful night

sit taut against the rest of our lives.

The sky is low above our heads

grey in a melancholy way.

Your soul sits quietly in a corner

further away from either me

or you

than I have seen it before.

Where are you?

You run through streets

dark and winding

evading me and

grinding

the sidewalk with

calloused feet,

through murky infinite streets.

Break this porcelain evening apart

all it will take is a nudge

or a look,

the wrong kind of words

or the right kind of book.

Don't be afraid,

touch it, the moon

tonight it is yours alone.

See through me

into your own infinity

I never wanted to bind you,

I never thought I could blind you,

All I wanted was to quietly

walk behind you.

Someday when you reach

the end of yourself

and begin the arduous journey

back home

know that I will be at your bedside

with your head in my lap

and your eyelids

(with the universe, or a single moonlit night

encased behind your dark, thick lashes)

will droop 

and I will catch your consciousness

in my loving arms

I will never let down your expansive soul

if ever you let it fall

unto me.

April 14 : Of a childhood

Of a blood-red bottlebrush tree,
of a sturdy little house,
of mangoes in the summer,
and the occasional mouse.

Of lemon shaped soaps
and smiling goodmornings,
of somedays and maybes and
tacky fairy wings.

Of footballs and markers
and silly bunny ears.
Of long car drives
and sometimes angry tears.

Of poetry in the night time
and dancing in the rain,
of long forgotten holidays,
and an old grandfathers cane.

Of dreamy eyes and films,
of books, salads and shoes,
of laughter and rugs and beer
and shorts and pants too loose.

Of grassless gardens all year,
of paints and ideas and poses.
Of happy children and schoolbags,
hugs and tangled hands, and roses.

Of a beautiful mother,
Strong and brave and wild.
A Good Man for a father,
Happy nostalgia of being a child.

April 13 : Oceans

I know it looks like I'm here,
dealing with my life.
But really,
I'm far away
I'm quite alone
in a distant blue bay.

My toes are blue
(but my feet are beautiful)
my hair flutters gently
(so silky, so long)
around my body
(so perfect in the blue).

The water is still
as I float. Empty.
There is beauty
somewhere here
I have known it before
seen the reefs and the fish
the smooth rocks
I have seen the underwater
in all it's glory and color
I have known the weeds
counted the leaves
exotic and majestic
the starfish and the shells
to the great grey whales
the purple sunsets
with wine-haired mermaids
and white backed gulls
I have known the beauties.

But today
beauty perhaps
(for once)
will not suffice.

Today I want no color
(just the endless blue of wavering dreams)
no fish (no life at all), no rocks.
I want only fluttering sand below me
and everywhere else, undulating blue
(today, I'd say, I don't even want you).
I will float
(half-conscious and numb)
I will float
(a flying rag-doll, so mum)
I will float
in the oceans
of my sad finite soul
(I try so hard to put away
the mountains of my
infinite wild heart
for today, just for today).

And today I don't want to find anything
in this sea (not you and not me),
today I perhaps simply want
to lose myself for a little while
in the gentle rocking rhythm
of this serene unending ocean.
Perhaps I need it.

April 12 : Happy nights

Slowly and steadily we shall descend
into delirium. It seems to be more
a sense of falling than of rising.
The night begins, arbitrarily
at some point in twilight.
The lamps are lit,
the glasses full.
Suitably dressed, we are,
bedraggled and harried,
the days are long.
And on sofas which see
the days of our lives move
steadily, steadily on;
we now sit and cuddle
the pillows whose fabrics
we handpicked once.
The lighting is yellow,
the music is set.
And so we settle into
known patterns
of nights that never
seem to happen to
anyone but us.
Happy nights, full
(like our hearts)
of laughter and talking.
Of beautiful music.
Eating and drinking,
we talk. Smiling, we sigh.
And it's 3 am but it's too early
(always too early) to ever get
away from this room. If you crane
your neck you can see the stars
(although the stars are really in our eyes).

And someday we will look back, so happily,
and a part of us will sit in the twilight. And
we could not possibly have chosen this
(most of us), but here it is. And if we had
a choice, we would choose us. And we
know, we know just where it hurts, we know
where to prick with maximum efficiency. We know
how to drive each other up the wall, but we know.
We trust. We fight, but we (always, always will,
not dramatically - but just because it's how it is)
we stay. And we stay happy, because we've figured it out.
And the nights move on, and perhaps there will be days
unhappy and nights so long they never end,
but as long as it lasts, this time, let it fill us (the edges
of our infinite souls) and complete us,
if only
for the future (and the past) in which we might
have to remain incomplete.

April 11 : No Man Is An Island

I always thought I would sail across
frozen oceans alone
(when I needed to).
And the stars were mine alone
(when the night smelled of
dreams and fresh rain),
and somedays with fairy lights
could not be shared with the world
because the world could not
Understand.

I laughed with people and smiled
a lot, and I loved thoughtlessly
and I believed in goodness -
but the sky was mine to keep.
That, I would not share with
stupid people. I would share
conversations and sitcoms,
sarcasm and some books,
but secret notebooks of
thick paper where I stuck
butterflies and rainbows
and rose petals and poetry
that was mine alone to love.

But No Man Is An Island.

And so maybe I can live with
the world and also
keep it at bay,
but when she came,
smiling and loving
the things I loved as mine
(mine), she came to stay.
And we found some and we
built some (and we made it up
inside our cloudy heads)
and the ship we will sit in
is yellow and flowered
(since No Man Is An Island
and thus we need to sail across
frozen oceans) and not alone.

And dried palash flowers
tangled in sea-dried hair
we will cross all them oceans
brave adventurers that we are
(together), on a ship made only
of joy and smiles, and wisdom
(that came through pain) and
love. And we will eat fresh
strawberries and we will smell
like rainbows, in purple sunsets
we will sail through life (only
our flower-tangled hair will
fly in the still oceans and
the seagulls will know us
from afar).

April 10 : But in the real world

We are not free.
Not at all, not even
a little bit. We cannot be.
Inside of us, perhaps
we have the possibility of being free
(and then, only as free as we let ourselves be)
but in the real world.

I talk of constrictions set by society
and boundries and limitations and
the place we are born in, I talk
of death and natural disaster, but
more than anything
I talk of the crisp green pieces
of paper and how freedom
(of walking and talking and
living and doing what you want
because you love it)
does not exist.

You can eat what you want
(if you can afford it)
and you can go wherever
(as long as it's within
your budget, ladies and gents)
and you can read and write
and you listen to what music you like
and you can have just as comfortable
a blanket as you wish you to sleep in
and you can have the freedom, too,
to explore your potential and learn
and fill up the spaces of what you can be
and achieve and give back to the world,
yes, you are free to do this
(oh wait a minute there).

And you can tell me that
I'm not as rich as Him or Her
but that doesn't stop me from
doing what I want and love and
will achieve because of determination.
And I agree. I don't want to work for money.
Money doesn't make you happy, I like
to think. Idealism. Philosophy. Morals.

But what of he who drinks
from a trickle of dirty water
what of her who can live only
by living in a cage and selling
all that she has apart from herself
- her body - and what of
her children, condemned,
who were born in a brothel
(and for what fault of their own)
and have no food for the day
and what of the father whose baby
died in his shriveled arms (curled up
right next to his broken heart)
and of the man who had to throw
his mother (how much he loved her)
out of his one-roomed house so
his children could live to see
a better day
what of he who freezes to death
wrapped in a blanket only
of frostbite and frozen tears
(while somewhere we sleep
with air conditioners on so high
so we can cuddle in thick velvet blankets
in the peak of summer, warmth)
what of them?

Maybe inside of them they are free
(I hope with all my heart that they are)
but in the real world.

April 9 : Of Cages And Obnoxious Paint

And aren't we always confined
to cages (that we ourselves
have made, struggled to reach
and then locked ourselves in,
with the finality of passing
from a world to the next -
a gentle way of saying death)
and don't we always rot
in places which aren't really
where we wanted to be -
but are, still, somewhere
which in our ambition we
mistake as better than nowhere
(although nowhere specific might
really actually in some sense mean
everywhere, in all it's majesty)?

And I struggled to open that
bright yellow tube of paint
and I pulled and I teared up
I bit and yelled and scratched
I tried to cut it open with a blade
and twisted it up till it was a gory
mess (although it still looked beautiful
to me, lover of paint) and halfway
through this I checked the label
and it wasn't primary lemon yellow
(that was the color I knew I wanted)
it was really yellow ochre, and the outside
was simply a lie, inside it was a dirty
mustard, nowhere near a yellow at all
but still I fought, unwilling to accept
defeat (ah, human nature, is it not?)
and thoughtfully I let my face arrange
itself into the sorrow of not getting
what I wanted (although it wasn't true).

And what is it about us that makes us this way
fighting for things which we really (deep inside
and sometimes outside too) know aren't what
we need or even want or will accept at all?

And I've shut myself up in cages and
I struggle, sometimes, to remain in them
and why do I want myself to be constrained
when in the end I want to be somewhere
else (not here, perhaps not at all), and
inside I really know it yet still I let
myself bleed. And for what?