1.10.10

It is what it is Dec 8 2009

It is really over when you realize that this spiraling down staircase aint ever gonna end. And then you shout into it and say Goodbye waiting for its echo to reach you back, which never does. How much difference does it make to actually climb it down only to return back. Do I have the courage to actually head down into the abyss?

And you see ghosts gathering
preparing for a feast
they can't cherish.
Still, just for the sake of it.
It is then you know
You are too deep into darkness.

And it doesn't end
it never ends
It is what it is
Was, Is, will be.

wtf Dec 17 2010

What do you do when you don't know what to think, what to say, what to write; and to make sense of anything you want to think you need someone else's side to it [which btw is inaccessible to you]. In this screwed up mess you get so deep down into the shithole of your Ego that eventually nothing makes sense. And the entity which is you gets into the act of playing a ball game inside your head. And the other voices get excited and go haywire. After a million phone calls and umpteen messages, and a series of conclusions that change in intensity and polarity, you just center on one point and that is buy your terms with waiting [which you know you can't because a lotta things are passing you by]. So you just pass out. Amidst these opposing voices there also lies a voice that wants to say 'SHUT UP'. But, no body hears it. It is then you know this is how it starts..After a while you wake up with a terrible headache and a hangover which ,you know, never had a positive side to it.

Releasing the Shutter Dec 29 2010

Going away

With every click
A life freezes
Two deaths by my hand

Through the lens
With one eye closed
An unfathomable frame forms

For a second
Waiting for a digital proof of existence
Death quickly turns to life

And as a smile reaches the eye
Captured freedom takes a flight
Only

To come home

Afterglow Jan 24 2010

The Circles of confusion
get bigger
and all images slip away

as the wave sweeps
through the perforations
of my dissected mind.

Washed out,
I stand still
with the sand running beneath my feet.

As the blood in my veins
gets in sync
with the air of defiance,

I gather
the remains of the day
and return emptyhanded.

My Political Action of the Day Jan 25 2010

A question mark,
made of smoke,
in the swish of my freshly shampooed hair,

settles on my raised brow.

An anchor drops,
in a Walcottian fashion,
from the tip of my eyelid

on my Vctorian doormat.


Dissatisfaction instigates
a pregnant pause
as I stare at my perfect finger tips

and bend down to pick up yesterday's newspaper, soaked in dew.

Somehow Feb 1 2010

I sit and read poetry, listen to songs, watch movies, all to not think,
Somehow, I end up thinking a lot more, and its all about you.

My feet feel confident that I can do it all alone.
Somehow, my hand misses a hand, and it belongs to you.

I wait for the day to start anew and wait for it to never end,
Somehow, to not wait for an other day, coz I know it wud be without you

I find shoulders to rest upon, hands to hold, voices to chat with,
Somehow, I know its just like your perfume [which is nothing like you].

I feel happy I can wear a smile while sleeping,
Somehow, I wish someone saw it, and I wish it was you.

I know there's nothing to say,[ Having said it all]; nothing to do, [having done it all],
Somehow, I know its not enough, and I wish I knew what to say and whom to say it too.

[Then,
perhaps
I would know
and
it would be
You
Somehow.]

Not Made From Words Feb 11 2010

Words don't make meaning
[differ]
It is same from one hemisphere to another
And does not mistake colour for light

An Atom Bomb can be mistaken for White noise
But Meaning remains the same

And falls onto us
Ruining everything

What remains is meaning itself

But, there lies a possibility
in its non existence

Its like giving birth
Knowing the forceps are in the hands of Death

...

Words flow like emotions
But sense is crude
and lacks sensibility

...

My eye looks out of my camera
right at the sun
only to get dazzled

But the click results into something

And my memory registers
An image

of the Empire of the Sun

...

A borrowed phrase
And a collage of words
in sync
produce meaning
ready for consumption

But, I am not a Poet

[Hence, Therefore, Herewith]

This is where I end my poem

I need a new word Mar 25 2010

An elastic
it isn't
that would snap back
to retain its shape

Not a salamander's tail
that would grow back
once cut off

but, lets not revel in examples
the point is
you can't cut a shadow with a knife

Ah! Damn! Why can't it be simple
like the two headed engine
or the Second Coming

Oh! Did I use any metaphor
In plain English you wanna know

You don't need many expletives to make a new language

one is enough

[And this ain't a mathematical equation
that can prove itself by an equal to sign]

For Once Mar 25 2010

Do you know what it takes
to eat my own words
and chew on them
to suck the bitterness out
and present the shit
in a platter with a beautiful smile

what would you know
you don't speak with your mouth
and your words are not yours

I never question why Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
but i think he fell because he wanted to see how he looked sitting on it

but dont take it as a warning
in fact dont take it at all
just like it doesn't matter if Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

Still There....Mar 26 2010

I flip my chappal up in the air
with the tip of my toe
and wonder at the uselessness of the moment

a little nostalgia
and the fundamental question
catch up with each other

incoherence
and of course something i don't understand
bundle up together to form a pillow

i dream of an adrenaline rush
at the cost of speeding at full might
and my sleep ceases to be sleep

i wake up to find a few ideas
sitting on my heavy eyelids
making it painful to see the details

Then? huh then nothing
i just look outside
wear my glasses

and ponder at the clumsiness of each slice i cut
Humming a tune I can't recall from where
And its only then it occurs to me

that the book i was reading last night shut by itself
and i was still in it.

Among other things May 20 2010

Among other things

You think it was then
that everything fell together, and you found your lost self

You think it was that touch,
the wordlessness that made it all seem right

Or it just might be in words,
a single line that made sense, and gave meaning to it all

probably some 'thing' else
among other things
you know it best

but, you know it's not about what you saw
or what you did
or what you felt
or what you made someone feel

not even here
in this curiosity
to know
for what its worth
to live
to not die
to know what it all is

it doesn't matter if someone died
or someone lived

or whether you raised the *'overwhelming question'
snowballing towards it

because
there is only one thing
the tight rope
without gravity
beneath it

where hungry stomachs
converge
with hungry minds

and all that hunger hangs like a question mark
round your neck

and you just freefall
clutching onto

the thread
that connects it all

knowing
that is not it
*That is not it, at all.





[** Alludes to The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S.Eliot]

27.9.09

In Between Oct 16 2009

Of all that is in between
and all that is outside
there is something that belongs
to neither/nor
in which there's nothing at all

As transience seeps
back through hot sand
and removes all traces
of that which was

what matters is what's lost
what is there is not all
a single echo - For? For?

And time witnesses
patiently, as we fill it up again

while lighting a candle and blowing out

26.9.09

An Inverted Reality

When laughter dies an early death, what remains is a menacing silence. But, a picture makes no sound.

Watching the City of Photos, I have begun to see the camera as a box full of contradictions. It is said that it offers possibilities, but I think it offers equal possibilities to those in the frame and to the eye behind the artificially enhanced lens. I almost wonder; woudn’t the city also want a place, in a silent frame, that hides all the noise and reveals only its ageing landscape; as it bears the brunt of its civilization waiting to be lost in an outdated digital frame. Perhaps that’s what the director intended to say when she exclaims- “it’s as if the city never existed except in these frames”

When I raise these questions I am overcome by a feeling similar to that of early photographers who captured light in a box time and again, knowing that it won’t last.

What are we to decipher from an image that speaks of both a dream in the backdrop; and a barefoot reality staring right into the flash of light? Is this contrast funny? Or, is it sad? Is it a philosophical question or an answer to a pair of dying eyes that found immortality only after death?

As the camera whirrs into life, what we capture is an inverted image that forms inside it. It is beauty in it ugliest form. We laugh as we can’t relate to the fact of a skinny, more rib than muscle-show, twenty something young man, evidently on drugs, posing like Hrithik Roshan [or was it Salman Khan]; waiting to be captured in a frame that offers spotlight even if it is for a fraction of a second. And to stop that laughter we need a photograph of famine victims, huddled like a family, looking ridiculous with a colourful backdrop of a majestic tomb of desire, to take us to the gravity of this ostracizing reality? Could we not see the striking similarity between the hungry ribcages of eyes that searched for food and others that sought identity? After compiling lives full of chaos in an orderly fashion, in beautiful luxurious albums, have we failed to notice that while some choose to get clicked for a different life in the frame; others have stopped living outside the frame?

Maybe we assume ourselves to be the inverted reality of an image that is being formed elsewhere, waiting to be developed, while we wait to be washed out like a negative.