April 19: Song of Smoke

burning eyes and guilt

(even though everything is okay,

everything is okay tonight)

thankfully nobody can read

your fingers laced with smoke

today the sun was the lightest hue

a singular clear orb set against

a sky made only of clouds 

grey and smoke

everything is okay.

it isn't hopeless anymore.

fragments of a moving life

follow you like stains

sometimes when you hold

the cigarette between two

hesitant 

fingers, you forget that it's

you;

your eyes follow me in the dark

my days are sandcastles 

next to your seas.

April 18: It Matters

I know it's hard that
everything matters.
I know it burns you
that I nitpick, catch on to
'inconsequential' things that
you say. It burns when I bang
my fists on the table and tell you
it matters what you eat what you
drink what you smoke what you
wear, what you put on your face
what you put on your hair. It matters
what you write what you cite what you
choose not to fight. Goddamn it, it does.

It's hard for me too.
It's hard because none of us
will ever be able to make the
kind of difference we want,
never be able to truly find
the right blend of meaning
and reason, never be lauded
for all the things we secretly
want to be lauded for. It's hard,

because the world is the strangest
carnival I ever did see, by far the
most neurotic psychosocial fantasy,
the worst kind of nightmare that you
don't know how to flee. It matters,
despite comfort. It matters, despite
the fact that yolo. Because this world,
this beautiful magical fucking scary
world, it does not live one life.
This world lives a hundred stories
every second, a hundred heartbreaks
and a hundred secret tears of joy, this
world is larger than you will ever be,
and yet it's only, only as large as you
choose to let yourself see. Only as kind
as you will let yourself be. Only as wise.

April 17: Ode to Angie

"Dull Gret: We come to hell through a big mouth... I'd had enough, I was mad, I hate the bastards. I come out of my front door that morning and shout till my neighbors come out and I said, "Come on, we're going where the evil come from and pay the bastards out"... You just keep running and fighting, you didn't stop for nothing. Oh, we give them devils such a beating. " - Caryl Churchill, Top Girls

O Angie,

you big baby.
you sick child.
you image of
everything that went wrong here,
in this particular hell, this apartment,
this schizophrenic society where
ambition
forgets to be kind
and change forgets
what it needs
to change.
You are woman and
forgotten, woman and
fallen, woman and
fighter.

You scare me.
You are the big mouth of hell
and you are the devil's desire,
you scare me because you are
larger than life, and yet
so
small.

The spectres that haunt you
give me hope. You are the
big mouth of hell
through which the women
can walk through and fight,
finally too angry to stand
another night, you are the
devil's desire
that will carry us through
past tonight, do you know?
You are the world
in an angry child.
You have so much
to fight. Not just
the men and not
just the devils.
Women too,
mothers,
angels.
every
day.

Demand
more for
yourself.
Demand
more for
us all.

April 16: Loving, & how

I'm afraid

that too many people equate

growing up 

with forgetting 

how to love

innocently

shamelessly

bigly. Wisdom is not always

kindness, & well, intelligence

definitely not always wisdom.

I'm afraid

that I too am not able

to love like the ocean.

Not perfectly, contained

in all the right boxes, but

big. wide. liquidly. 

I want my loving to be

the colour of the sky, &

as shamelessly willing 

to cover the world. I can

forgive myself for not loving

the right people the right way

the right amount the right time:

but I will never forgive myself

for not loving strangers enough

not giving enough birthday cards

flowers poems hugs notes & smiles.

I'd hate to be afraid

because people around me are afraid.

I'd like to love fearlessly even if I am

loved fearfully. I'd like to love bigly,

always. innocently & shamelessly,

no matter how old or cynical I get.

April 15: My Little Date

I might be blundering a little, falling
more than I thought I would. Perhaps
the darkness is throwing me off, pushing
me too hard for me to balance, hang on
to things quite right. Sometimes, I'm
afraid of silence. Of solitude. Last night,
I had a little date

with myself. Quiet, and yet so loud.
No white tablecloth, no roses or candles.
Only a wooden floor facing the bright
windows of the library, only a single
strip of sky and two stars, only a plate
of sandwiches and namkeen. Only a
phone resting on tired knees, playing
soulful strings to myself. Only the wind,
tousling back hair and the leaves of potted
plants in the vicinity, only the strange looks
of passing strangers. Only the smiles I could
give to myself. Only the smiles.

The music grew bigger and leaked out
of its bubble, until it filled the collegescape,
coloured everything a warmer hue, floating
into my badly-lit corner and rising, soaring
past petty worries and little aches, my bent
back and clenched limbs, the weight of the
world in the bags under my eyes - the music
painted everything lighter, named it all brighter,
called me moonshine and firewater, touched me
until I tingled, brown freckled skin over bones
and dreams, as tall as mountains and as deep as
the sea. The music grew so big I couldn't see it
anymore. The music was inside and outside, the
wind grew louder but more silent, and I flew.

The sandwich was divine. The corner was serendipity
in form. The moment, though trivial, was incomprehensibly
large; my little date with myself was a sonnet to solitude.
I had no white tablecloth, no fancy restaurant - I was dressed
baggy, unprepared, on the ground with throat to the stars.
It was all I needed, to tell myself
hey. I love you, man.
I don't need a white tablecloth or a black party dress,
the bright lights are enough, the dark sky more than plenty.
Life itself is all I want to aim for - life itself, my friend.

April 14: It's late.

The poetry called out to me all my life:
sometimes quiet and sometimes loud,
it nudged me as if from a river, water
rushing through my fingers as I tried
to escape - poetry called out to me, yes,
but it never asked me to stay so late,
never told me the clocks would fall
asleep before my eyelids drooped,
never told me that moss would grow
in my bones and I would have to let
it blossom, and hope for wildflowers.

I can say it, say it loud and say it
low, I can hold a hundred mirrors
up to myself and watch the reflection
of golden sun white out any image that
I should see - I can wear a hundred masks
and pretend each one of them is me. All
that you need to know is
I'm trying to
break even
with myself. Perhaps all I will achieve
will be hollow and paper mache. I might
lose the sound of my name. I am taller,
taller than the weeds in my backyard,
taller than the marks on my wall that
measured me once, taller than the lies
I never thought I would tell. The night
goes on, and doesn't end. It's late, and
my flesh is complaining, muscles and
bones aching with the ticking clock
and whirring fan. It's late, and yet I
must be awake. I need myself here,
wrapping the night time like a shroud.
Upon ache and sorrow and misplaced
wanderings.

April 13: Hope

The story of a single walk -

one of many, in the dusty, worn

streets of Dharamsala, amidst monks

and foreigners, trinket-shops and cafes,

constantly surrounded by misty rain and

mountains:

as if in a pop-up card or a picture, the deep

radiant shadow greens, the colour and bustle

of a tourist city, the particular midday smiles

of travellers in transit, resting tired bones here, on

this restless mountainside, searching for sunshine

and salvation on endless roads and reclamations.

Turning left before the monastery, three small figures

swaddled in bright woolens walked up an empty path.

 

The mist gathered before us, and we were okay

with getting lost. The great elsewhere murmured 

from the mountains, and cobbled streets and brick

walls led us to residential buildings, small gates and

open sky filled with smell of pines. A solitary rooftop

under construction - we paused; rubble, grey concrete

and iron rods marring our cityscape and rural views.

We turned our backs to the occasional passersby, and

we were silenced, pine trees and quiet buildings now

opened up the horizon, mountains filled the foreground 

and faded into shadows, the humming city was still, a

river flowed. The sky brimmed over, and a world

unravelled itself graciously

before our simple wanderings.

We were silenced.

Sharing conversations and a smoke, we watched

the world anew. Snowpeaks hid behind mist, and

smiled. Sunlight was gold and white, and darkness

of exhaled smoke rose up and vanished. We were

born again, resting on the horizon like three baby

sunsets. Intoxicated on mountain air and stillness,

we walked those winding roads, through cobbled

streets and alleyways, jutting pipes and steep steps,

climbing and jumping, shuffling and stumbling, I

held on to the parts of the city that offered itself to

us that afternoon, complex corners and wildflowers,

prayer flags emerging from every mountain peak

in that blessed little town. We found our way out

of our beautiful little maze, 

onto an empty, wide, cobbled street. To my mind,

the people smiled and were still, as if in a photograph.

The shops were bright and cozy, incense wafted through

the air and conversations were warmer. As we turned to

leave the little paradise we had discovered, I chanced upon

a sign on a fragmented little wall. Somebody had spray-painted

an arrow in the direction from which we had come - bold letters

in blue stood out against moss and rock. The sign said one word,

hope

April 12: Rituals

Evening on the football field
is purple and gold, clouds settling
around goalposts and hills, the orb
of sun resting precariously on horizon.
Me, in the business of finding joy,

standing amidst high socks and studs,
even grass and kicks, hair desperately
pulled back and held with bands and clips.
Oversized t-shirt and oversized shorts, oversized
heart and smile in minute body of skin and bones.
Me, in the business of desperately holding on to
joy instead of sorrow, finding meaningless rituals
to anchor myself against so I don't float away.
Breakfast every day, and class on time - 6 pm
on the field, convinced to run, clench teeth and
fists, hear heartbeat thudding in it's fragile cage.

Sometimes
I regret that I can hold on to meaning
only through these rituals. Perhaps I should
throw my computer, have conversations only
when they are truly meaningful, and eat when
I'm hungry, not when I'm supposed to. Rituals
are a desperation instead of a reclamation. I did
belong to effortless truth all my life - I'm not yet
used to working for joy. To discipline and dates.

Sometimes
the evening surprises me, and standing on a field
surrounded by skies of purple and gold, truth comes
effortlessly, in a continual gust of wind that pulls my
hair out of its tangle and my heart out of its cages, it
seems to be calling my name, a single vowel of longing
etched across the clouds - running and passing, I notice
myself smiling. The shadow of the wind tousles my hair
even when the gust is past. The shadow of a smile stays.
I will have dinner after a bath, and then I will work. I will
sleep before it's too late, and embrace the ferris wheel of
everlasting days.

April 11: Weekend Preludes

It began with a singular catastrophe -
a hilariously awkward coincidence, a
quietness that sat in my heart like a
melancholy familiarity, a silent loss.

Determined to make music
of my weekends, I resolutely
walked on, dust and crowds
gathering on my sorrow like
vultures - I called the sun my
friend and sweated with a smile.
If happiness wants to play catch,

I will run after it with
all I've got. I promised myself
this, I owe myself far too much.
Travelling alone in the streets of
Delhi - mysterious, narrow-eyed
and wide-laned, callous and kind,
pulsating, pulsating with life - I fly,
soar above my trembles and tears.

I plan with a vengeance, phone calls
and messages, a grid and a map in my
mind, until I am prepared. Looking out
various windows, wind tousling back
hair, I can see that I need this. I needed
the soft music and wine in coffee mugs,
the darkness of night sitting on me like
a shroud; I needed the silence.

Now, I need noise. The metro whizzes
past, and there's always someplace to be -
old friends and new, the crackle of beer cans
swaddled in a checked shirt, glugging down
in turns, between giggles and conversation.
The sun beats down on Connaught Place
despite curtain of clouds, and sets my skin
on fire. Laughing and walking, intoxication
and reclamation. A strange mix. The streets are
nearly empty, and so are the cans. Beer and sun
wrote hope on my arms, and winding walks down
darkened Delhi that night settled gentle joy like
dust in my hair. Street lights and April showers,
every word said in jest and yet, every word carrying
the weight of days of darkness and stagnation. Hope,
gathered in pools of lights on rainy flyovers, folded
into the warm blankets and hot showers of a home,
offered in fragmented smiling exchanges over tea.

I never knew I would find hope in dusty Delhi streets,
in weekend preludes lightly brushed with alcohol and
independence, in emptying my mind of the foliage
that grew there for days. Salvation comes sometimes
in cities - I smile, and I can make music again.

April 10: The Memory Pot

"Memory is not a keeping

but a forgiving, the thresh and burn

of what we cannot salvage" - Leah Silvieus 

Today, working and reworking

moments as if on a potters wheel -

changing my mind and putting both hands

forward, gently lifting this massive mound of clay,

the whirring wheel, the squelch of splatter

earthy on my arms, smelling like rain.

I cannot wash the remnants off,

they dry on my skin

and crack.

Perhaps this is memory -

everything I could not fashion

into a piece of art. Perhaps this is me,

how I hold memory, paint over peeling

clay, painful to the touch, and call it

beautiful;

perhaps the memory of tonight
can only ever be of remnants: your scent,
the tender smiles, the mahogany moon -
everything about your arms that I could not
salvage
while I was there, holding on too tight.
Perhaps I will save the scars as well as the
shadows of stars, pack them into brown letters,
and write left-over words in black pen.
"Once", I will write. "If only".