Apathy

The yellowing sheets are spattered
crisscrossed with fragmentary outlines
stirring around dispiriting accumulation of
disconnected beginnings middles and endings
as regular tortures seem on vacation
when I drove myself insane
tormenting an intractable self into confession
by and large the usual estranged stuff
cleaning up the mess
making sure that love was stale
and there was nothing nourishing in memories
exonerated from this bruising combat
without a score to settle
without reparations due
without hatred boiling in my heart
is there a way of existing
that will make all this nothingness
truly nothing?

Read more...

Counterfeit

Pain, its imitation, seems to be in nature of crown
a spire, a halo, here not simply to grace or embellish
but to express, to symbolize, only a measure of
how narrow and cloistered my life has become
a hackneyed conception of self and yet enthralling,
with whom I can share the failure of the moment
and in whose rejection, I annihilate my own…

Read more...

de novo

Images begin to contract and then blur, at the sight of
trivial remains that had marked the passage of seasons
torrential washed concrete walls are immaculate, gleaming
as much with malice as with remembrance, some nails
were driven through them, no picture had been hung
in the empty backrooms few scratches, black scuff marks
allude to games, too bare to be faced, that is all.

In the darkness striped with light that comes through gaps,
amidst the smell of stale smoke, dirt, and fragrance of soil
I feel repelled at certain somber reverberations
yes again, the scuttlings and squeaks of rain
a contemptuous-sound-tinged coquettish invitation
mingled with individual noises of horns, vehicles,
children’s cries, multiplying to a steady rhythmic throb,
soft beats, vintage, a creation of sun and heat, once
we were audience to its drama and ode-singing chorus .

Inside the room as the evening grows teary
no abyss opens beneath me at the sight of emptiness,
the rain outside rises in its raucous crescendo, unobstructed,
falling with unexpected passages of emphasis, altering pace
and without being wracked too much by memories of
the handsome rugs, tables, dishes and chairs
once jointly owned by you and me, now yours alone
I furnish a new place of my own.

Read more...

alter ego

We might have separated as easily
as we’d come together,
that relationship never going beyond
leaving faint impressions, and me
content to be
just another of her failures, catching glimpses of her
in other people, picking echoes and fragrance of
an aborted familiarity
the months go by,
we remain together, wondering if
a lover would somehow resolve this deadlock,
or another vocation,
psychotherapy for both of us.

whatsoever little spirit smolders on
in me is visible, only on her
it provides for us
to assault head-on
what we take to be
our demons,
I can never leave her, nor she me,
not that is until
an outright disaster makes it simply ludicrous
to go on waiting
for the miraculous conversion of
the other.

when I throw open
‘em benighted windows,
stand in the breeze
preferring to breathe
fumes from within, I know
I can outsmart her
with the aid of logic, analogy
and assorted techniques of
condescension.

I had lit her once
held her tightly within lips
and with a flick of finger
I’d thrown her out
she wavered awhile
then smoked fiercely, combusting into
an ashy cylinder
scoured by the wind
I believed all these reversals, recoveries,
all this movement of hers,
to be the evidence of a game,
a petite specter
audacious and determined
I liked that idea -
she burnt herself out
I haven’t really,
not quite yet.


pS : this is the first time, I’ve scribbled something without a single drag of her , not that I’m trying to quit or something, just that its been raining and I’m too lazy to go out …
I know she kills slowly but then as they say, who’s in hurry?

Read more...

putrefaction

This vertiginous mood, transcendent heat, a life reaching its climax and visions of decay heaped on decay. The placidity with which I’d waited on events fading away in the daylight. I lay mummified on bed for hours at a stretch. Parts of me are built to be awake and yearning to be both absolutely still and moving everywhere at once. The most ordinary sound outside seems oppressive as a bayonet rending my head. Even a beam of sunlight filtering through drawn curtains, intolerable.

I neither act nor withdraw, I simply wait. I do wait. There is the twist. As the tart taste of past prickles my mouth, I am beginning to recover just a little bit of optimism. Perhaps the experiment which never ended, is only beginning, it exceeds my understanding. My self-dramatizing mind had waited for more excruciation but something is different which forces me to recall those other startling and baffling metamorphoses I had witnessed. In another transition, I must have changed already in ways I dont yet know but I have with me my solitude. In the silence I can hear myself think. I’m making an effort to see and hear beyond the quicksilver talk of my mind. It is the surface, which leads to depth, lurching into blackness and vulgarity.

In this feeble yet euphoric state I’d envisioned only general scenes blended from million repetitions. The accusations, the stuttered insults, the invisible blows of abuse and torment that rose up to my tingling, jangling ear. The shrieking fight over the mildew somewhere, which was grey blue and deathly. Certain dreams, where people hadn’t named names, they had merely shown up with bruises, and informed that they were sorry, slouched and grimaced in such a way as to exude, I hoped, regret.

That is gone. What has taken over is daydreams, suddenly copious, reentering the life I had lost, not that long ago. And the the knowledge that it’s too late and so the distress, settled, bearable, sans pain. I remember me as a palate of conflicting colors, crimson in love with splotches of green, ultramarine in spirit or permanently mauve, with dark toppings and hazy strokes. I wasn’t seasoned; few more colors had to arrive, grays and purples. I was a mess. I know I am exacerbated, reduced to precisely what I’d been leery of at the outset. Now I am something faded but perfectly acceptable. I see no color outside, only glitter and I have long since reasoned, I would likely prefer authentic enthusiastic meanness.

I remain an amateur at life, smelling like a walking cigarette, flushed, perhaps alcohol induced, relying on my skills of misdirection, awaiting symptoms of infatuation, which sends me into paroxysm of exhilaration. Then I would throw my head in musical bliss, pounding fresh melodies. Presently everything around me is in its natural order; a life basking in artificially created atmosphere, undisturbed by the sunlight on panes, the same dusty lamp glowing on the table. I do write, it has no conclusion but just dribbles off in much the same way it begins. My imagination keeps on getting noisier and noisier as I get quieter and quieter.

Read more...