Tuesday 22 November 2011

through charm-bracelet songs,
find the land of the torn,
the beings of darkness,
lost, love-lorn.

find defiance, lost faith,
tear through in mad haste.
love the gypsy-carried child,
and watch starlight go waste…
Perhaps this too, is real.
Maybe it is hard to believe
That these cold, foggy mornings
Of self-doubt and fear,
Really exist.
Maybe it is hard to hold on
To slippery hands
With slippery hands.
Mute voices of silence surround
Your screaming deaf echoes
And your mind whirls.

You cannot escape from
The web of deceit
That left you frozen
And still,
Like dewfall, lost
On a stormy night.
Perhaps, this shall never pass;
Maybe because this too, is real.

Saturday 5 November 2011

Moving

I have gone back to the packing up and moving. It's just as bad, because I didn't really want to move. To make up for it is the fact that the new place seems very nice and the new roommate, very nice too. Let's see how that works out. I'm looking forward to not ever having to live alone again (provided the one I live with is fun). Sigh... my room is a mess, I have wayyyy too much stuff than I should. What to do... such is life.

Friday 28 October 2011

If I Write Them Words Down...

If I write them words down

Will you read them again and again?



Will the same birds fly to the same homes?

Will the same flowers bloom?

Will the same sobs haunt us?



The same tears will not fall,

Nor the same leaves.

The same waves, they shan’t break,

The same brushstroke…



If I say the same things over and over and over

Will you hold them real?

Like true hands in a glove…

Warm… like love.



The same love hurts

Like the one sun that rises,

Sets.



If I say the same thing over and over and over

Will it come true,

Like you?

Friday 19 August 2011

Lavender Lotus




On a tremor-clad day
Of acid flashbacks,
You hear velvet footsteps
Walking down violet halls.

You follow the smell
And find rose-strewn trails,
That lead from
Room to room
And begin when they stop.

You taste laced peppermint
And lilac dreams
When you follow the sounds
And they lead you to you,
Turning into strawberry echoes.

As silver  raindrops paint
Your window panes moist
And damp mushrooms swell,
Your shadow snails up to you
From dark blue alleyways of pain...

Thursday 18 August 2011

The Months ~ Linda Pastan

 January


Contorted by wind,
mere armatures for ice or snow,
the trees resolve
to endure for now,

they will leaf out in April.
And I must be as patient
as the trees—
a winter resolution

I break all over again,
as the cold presses
its sharp blade
against my throat.

February

After endless
hibernation
on the windowsill,
the orchid blooms—

embroidered purple stitches
up and down
a slender stem.
Outside, snow

melts midair
to rain.
Abbreviated month.
Every kind of weather.

March

When the Earl King came
to steal away the child
in Goethe’s poem, the father said
don’t be afraid,

it’s just the wind. . .
As if it weren’t the wind
that blows away the tender
fragments of this world—

leftover leaves in the corners
of the garden, a Lenten Rose
that thought it safe
to bloom so early.

April

In the pastel blur
of the garden,
the cherry
and redbud

shake rain
from their delicate
shoulders, as petals
of pink

dogwood
wash down the ditches
in dreamlike
rivers of color.

May

May apple, daffodil,
hyacinth, lily,
and by the front
porch steps

every billowing
shade of purple
and lavender lilac,
my mother’s favorite flower,

sweet breath drifting through
the open windows:
perfume of memory—conduit
of spring.


June

The June bug
on the screen door
whirs like a small,
ugly machine,

and a chorus of frogs
and crickets drones like Musak
at all the windows.
What we don’t quite see

comforts us.
Blink of lightning, grumble
of thunder—just the heat
clearing its throat.

July

Tonight the fireflies
light their brief
candles
in all the trees

of summer—
color of moonflakes,
color of fluorescent
lace

where the ocean drags
its torn hem
over the dark
sand.

August

Barefoot
and sun-dazed,
I bite into this ripe peach
of a month,

gathering children
into my arms
in all their sandy
glory,

heaping
my table each night
with nothing
but corn and tomatoes.

September

Their summer romance
over, the lovers
still cling
to each other

the way the green
leaves cling
to their trees
in the strange heat

of September, as if
this time
there will be
no autumn.

October

How suddenly
the woods
have turned
again. I feel

like Daphne, standing
with my arms
outstretched
to the season,

overtaken
by color, crowned
with the hammered gold
of leaves.

November

These anonymous
leaves, their wet
bodies pressed
against the window

or falling past—
I count them
in my sleep,
absolving gravity,

absolving even death
who knows as I do
the imperatives
of the season.

December

The white dove of winter
sheds its first
fine feathers;
they melt

as they touch
the warm ground
like notes
of a once familiar

music; the earth
shivers and
turns towards
the solstice.

Friday 12 August 2011

Sonnets on a Tabletop

Eyes reflected in dark, shadowy pools
Glistening; like yesterday’s tears.
Pensive, stubborn, swirling like those
Dumb moths around a flame.
Dreams breaking standard roads
Building new alleyways of pain;
Like smoke from the just-lit stick,
Taking different paths every time.
Will you remember, lover,
Or will you forget?
Those questions, those words,
Those sunsets, those moons-rise?

Like yesterday, like today,
Like today, so tomorrow…

Monday 8 August 2011

To Manipal


You come to me in a wave of the sea; throwing me off-balance and filling my nose and mouth with heavy salty water. You come to me in the hot, humid air of sunsets; slapping my face like a baby’s sloppy kisses. Hot and humid, like night-time tales. You come to me in evenings of nude, lewd green; splattered so luxuriously that it seems lecherous.


You come to me when, least expecting, I await someone else. And you whisk me away, like a moth by a flame, like clichéd expressions of love, hot and sweaty.

I try and remain guarded, building walls around, building fortresses around, to bottle myself in and you out. And yet, you find me, exposed and vulnerable, and get at me with your cold, clammy fingers. You, Manipal, come and get me on sunset evenings all the time…

Tuesday 2 August 2011

On Shell Scripts

In darkened rooms
With scent-laden heavy air;
Your smell, all-pervading,
Like coffee fumes of black.

Here the wizard chants,
Like goldfish showing off tails.
Lines printed in shell scripts,
Poetry from cat files.

Expressions of regularity
Strung from unwoven threads,
Songs of the sea in shells
Their echoes nullifying tidal waves.

Psychedelic swastikas in
Blue and orange, fontless;
Like silent audience,
Like the symbology of love…

Thursday 9 June 2011

Coffins for Heaven


(for innocent mistakes)

Mistakes like a virulent rash
Kohl-streaked cheeks, rimmed red eyes
Table-top conversations
Answers without replies

Bee sting wounds from troubled talk
Daytime soirees peppered with lies
Heat from unheated wounds
Questions without replies

Mayhem minded sleepless nights
Filled with voices, resounding cries
Rivulets of wandering pain
Answers without replies

Gruesome endings to fairytales
After numerous failed tries
Giving up, living on
Questions, answers without replies

Friday 3 June 2011

Loss

My mamma’s a pretty one.
She’s pink today, wearing pink,
Her giggles like tinkling bells,
Or summer water gurgles,
She’s big around the middle,
Nana says it’s my baby sister
Or a baby brother, perhaps.
My mamma’s a pretty one.

She’s not playing with me now,
Moaning now and then...
There’s grime everywhere
And so many people too.
She doesn’t look at me
Or at them either,
I wait for my new baby friend.
My mamma’s a pretty one.

Where’s Daddy, I wonder
He’s gone, they say.
Looking at me with wondrous eyes
Daddy’s away, they tell me.
I wonder why
He must make the sick people well
Sick people are sad
Is my Mamma sick?
But she’s such a pretty one.

It was so hot in the wide open field
When they thrust fire into my hands.
And so hot now
People, so many...
Leave my Mamma alone, I wail
She’s ill, don't you see?
But they don't go...
And they don't stay...

Whispers, just whisper around me.
Mamma! Look at me!
Where’s Daddy?
I want Daddy.

They look at her.
She looks at me.
I am one.
I look.

 My colleague lost her husband in an air-ambulance crash
(http://www.dailypioneer.com/341522/He-left-home-in-haste-but-returned-dead.html)
There are no words to console her, their families, and families of others who lost their lives. A day passed, a week, a month, and slowly a year will have passed... and the little child of one will never know his father. He ended up with the worst deal because he didn't even understand he was supposed to be in pain.
This lifetime...it's unfair.

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Defeat

I could rage like an ocean misplaced
And send storms your way,
Clobbering everything in my path to dust.
I could send out messages
Of winter trains,
Stories of faith and trust.
In all hard fact, I could even
Enchain you and hold you tight,
So tight that you can’t breathe.

I may wait, miserable and cold,
Like a mutt in the rain,
And wait for you to see me.
I may leave passing notes and tears astray.
I may, however small,
Even send out a prayer each day.

I would want different stars for me.
But as you lie in my arms and gaze
Into her eyes,
I’d still lose…

Monday 21 March 2011

Elemental

My love,
My love is not blind,
Nor intangible, nor sublime.

My love is like a flame
That singes when touched,
That spreads with abandon,
All consuming, all enthralling.

My love is like a wave
With no breath underneath it,
Nor ground over it,
Shapeless as an ink-spill.

My love is like wind
Lilting at your caress,
Ravaging at your ire,
Mesmerizing in its form, its touch.

My love is like the sands
Shaped on billions of tender stories,
Slipping through your fingers,
Disappearing… shifting…
Slipping away…
Now here, now here no more…

Friday 25 February 2011

Prayer

Come, little girl,
Let me ease your pain.
What is it that happened?
Did you fall down?
Or did the bully around the corner
Be mean to you?
Come, little girl,
Hush now, in my arms
You shan’t be weak anymore.
Did you lose your way
And were scared to not find home?
Did you shudder, little girl,
Were you lied to?

What is it,
Little girl,
Won’t you tell me now?
Won’t you rest your tired little heart
And shed those tears on my bosom?
Your bonnie curls,
With wet tear-streaked edges,
Are matted against my skin.

Hush now, little girl,
Speak to me and
I will comfort you…

Love, you say,
You fell in love?
With the blue-eyed cherub
That won’t love you back?
He doesn’t like your flowers?
Doesn’t play with you?
You love his angel voice,
His dimpled cheeks?

Oh, little girl,
What have you done?
You’ve stirred the hornet’s nest
Of life…
Oh, little girl,
I’m afraid; I can be of no help
For though your five year old self
Should turn fifty
Love shall only hurt.
Love shall only hurt.
Love shall only hurt.

So cry, little girl,
Sob your poor heart out.
And I shall pray that
He’s washed in your tears
And reborn unto you...

Monday 21 February 2011

The Season of Potions

Stranded winter, frosted rose
Lit aflame by your breath.
My girl, you’ve left a trail
Of melted frost
That leads to your liquid womb.
Oh would I love you,
Like the sound of a sword
Slicing the cold wind.
But I’m afraid.

I’m afraid of the smoke,
The only letters form question marks.
My girl you have wounded me
With a summer afternoon
Raining towers of heat.
I have time till the smoke-stick burns out.

Sheltered spring nights,
When I could chase your naked form
Through wine tunnels.
My girl, you’ve left a trail
Of anguish and
It leads me upwards.
And I’m climbing your smoke trails,
Tracing your moonlight,
And framing you halo with kisses…

Void.

I lost a very dear friend three nights ago. Sarbatrik (known to all of college as Sabby) died on the spot of a car crash, drunk driving. Sabby was a vocalist in Anamol’s first band. The first time he was asked about me, he’d said “She seems to be a very nice girl…” and he’d never made me feel otherwise. When asked to leave the band in third year, he’d messaged Anamol… “Keep on rockin’ in the free world guys…” He’d read “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Off the top of my head I can remember only that much…


The rest is a dull dull ache, he was a nice guy. Nice people don’t die, they mustn’t. He was a friend, how can someone die on their friends? Sabby sang “Stairway to Heaven” and he gets to go there, I’m sure… This here is his last post on FB.



He ran away… and left us all a void. Life’s a bitch, I HATE this feeling of loss.

Monday 14 February 2011

To The Woman Who Sang To Jolene

With her flaming locks of auburn hair,
Ivory skin, and eyes of emerald green
She’s a temptress.

You, however, have dull black tresses,
Tangled on most days.
Bronze skinned and onyx eyed,
The one you think of as ‘your’ man,
Was never yours.

You do not have magic or myth,
You are normal, sometimes weird.
What does a man do with pleasant
Or courteous, when there
Is no enigma?

Jolene is a fairytale,
Every chapter a poem.
She is enticing as a breeze, with
Promises to lead to distant lands;
She’s mysterious as a veiled palanquin,
And charming like
The skies at dusk.

You’re klutzy, you drop things.
You announce hunger, fear,
And pain.
You plead with her to salvage your love.
And your dresses are boring
You do not know how to seduce…

Jolene glides in-and-out on
Tiny, pitter-patter feet.
Clothes become fables on her skin.
She doesn’t have to beg, she chooses.
When she brings men down to their knees
With a look, nothing more,
They peel off fables to find
Exquisite passion.

Your man was hers
When she was made.
You were allowed to borrow him,
Think, woman,
Has he ever told you
That you’re pretty,
The way he talks about her in his sleep?

You cannot compete with her,
You shouldn’t even exist.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Oblivion

In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos (river of unmindfulness), the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. The other four rivers were Styx (the river of hate), Akheron (the river of sorrow), Cocytos (the river of lamentation) and Phlegethon (the river of fire).

The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life. In the Aeneid, Virgil writes that it is only when the dead have had their memories erased by the Lethe that they may be reincarnated.

Come, you shroud called Death,
Let us dine tonight
In my quarters.
Why don’t you bring your bride?
Melancholy, I've heard
Of her many virtues.
I may bring along my wishes,
If I could pick them up.
Once I have had my share
Of the waters of Lethe
And blissful oblivion has set in,
Let us take a walk along
The paths that Acheron traced
Down far into the nether world.
If thou should insist, I shall dip
Into the stories of Phlegethon,
But wilt thou believe my innocence
Even afterward?
When my lamentations mix with
Those of the Cocytus,
Pay heed, for a woman
Of true soul laments but once,
And in her voice, thou too Death,
And thine minions shall find salvation,
As many mortals have.

Our travels will have ended by now,
The stories told,
The waters of Styx will be
Called upon to perform the ablutions.
And when the water has dropped off me,
Oh death, what would you know!
When the water has dropped off me,
The droplets shall become
Wishes again.
In life I hath held on to him,
In you death, I shall he.








Tuesday 1 February 2011

Another Blog!

For all those people who look to me for recommending books, I hope to be of help at http://cupandchaucer.wordpress.com/

I'm also trying my hand at Wordpress, hoping it goes well. So read the books I recommend. Discuss and debate, watch and learn, and stay tuned :)

Friday 21 January 2011

Screams


I turned here,
There and all around
Built my towers
From molten wax of angels.
Acid rain spurted
From ripped gashes,
As beliefs kept drowning
Into pools of self doubt.
Were you listening then?
When I spun songs
For you, only you.
Or did you, like other strange men
Were letting the phase pass,
So acid could pour again?
Harness my thoughts,
Before ‘Dear Diary’ too
Closes its doors and
There’s only a candle to write…

Thursday 20 January 2011

Gemstone Dreams

When the pale candle flame flickers
Ever so slightly
And the shadows of water shift
To form sapphire landscapes,
Let’s meet in the dark caverns
Of perfumed grapevines.

Tell me then,
About the muse of the unfinished painting
That clings onto your collarbone.
On our way back,
We’ll follow the garnet trails
That you left to lead us back
Did you know, then,
That we’d be lost?

Leave the windows open
And I’ll show you
Through emerald leaves
The dance of the pixies.

If you stay the night
And the morning too,
Then we shall make poetry
Out of amber sunshine.

The skyline becomes a
Shifting mirage.
Black onyx eyes stare dazzled
Over the veil, through
Purple palanquin windows
With amethyst drapes.

As we wander down to the rippling
Foam on the lazy pearl coastline,
Take my hand and feel the surf on your feet
When clandestine pain shall
Leave you, I will love you again,
Even as she watches us.

When it all ends,
When you walk away.
Trails of my rubies, dripping one at a time
Shall faithful
Follow you
Into the agate night,
To the diamond stars…

Wednesday 12 January 2011

In the lost town of strange maladies, dawn gardeners grow frosted roses.
Tulips bleed colour into leaf cups of desire.

Have you heard the winds howling back at wolves, naked, rugged?

Wisps of black smoke licked the orange tongues of flames.

Don’t you blame blue for your pain.

Is all this light bleeding for salvation?

Vice-peddler, did you see the green-tongued snake? It was charmed.
Were you too? Or were you faking it?