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

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all the noise and reveals only its ageing landscape; as it bears the brunt of its civilization waiting to be lost in an outdated digital frame.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.

*

to fill up


a completely blank sheet of paper
is not just a great temptation
but a task
that once undertaken cannot be undone

the ink cannot stain the paper
as it stains your fingers

it is confusing to decide
whether to do justice to the sacrifice of the tree
or to the words that emerge on the shore of my mind

like those shells on the sea
that are precious only when found

not only is it dissatisfying
to reach the end of the completely blank sheet of paper
[that was]

it is unnerving to realise
that the bullet you thought you'll shoot
had decided to make the pistol itself its tomb

it is then you face the necessity of a
full stop
a comma
a semi colon
or a run on

Letter to a beloved

I write because of an inability to write, to express what I feel for the very fear of not feeling it once I write. This state of irony has made me numb. Not to others only but even myself. My beauty has eluded me. In fact I sometimes feel so old I can hardly recognize myself. It is as if I have caught rust-the rust of routine as Marquez would have said.

Yes, I know I write in the past, but the present has become a thing of the past too. Too many times I find myself doing things I did earlier and swore not to repeat. I keep on finding solutions and yet don’t have any. Side effects of a love withering I guess. It makes me wither too. I see it raining outside but all I feel is a sense of incompleteness. Nostalgia fills you up. But, what I have is not nostalgia. It is future, Emptiness in my future. My lost rhyme of future intrudes my present and my past. Loving for me has become so alien now. I used to make a big deal out of it.

Now, I am caught in the web of my own fancies. But, the mirror is cracked already yet I cannot see beyond my reflections. I have climbed down from the tower. I board the boat to the other side. I don’t drown but neither do I reach the other side. The boat moves round and round and round. It doesn’t sink. And that is why I sit to write knowing that no one can ever read this.

[Borrowed originality]

If [Borrowed originality]

If I could know everything
And know I’ll forget it all

If I knew what it is to be young
And also how to grow old

If I could surge like a river
And look as calm as the sea

If I could be everybody
And know whom to call ‘me’

If I knew an answer
And could still question me

If I knew what the end is
And could still leave this incomplete...

The memento of time

The memento of time

Behind the thump of reverberating beats,
Drumming the mind,
Behind the throbbing ecstasy,
Sighing in naked thighs,
Behind charismatic words,
Hiding lies,
Behind the blinding speed,
Caught in wheels of light,

There is God, there is religion,
There is love, there is sacrifice,
There is darkness, there is light,

As time becomes a beautifully ugly rhyme
The background music of an interlude
A succumbing numbness
Making
Everything defined

360 days forgotten in a single second

An incomplete nothingness
A philosopher’s careless lie



An ‘I’ for an ‘I’
Making the whole world blind.

Twins

I divided my consciousness into two
One followed the woman in black
Other the man in blue

They moved round and round
One heading up the road
The other down

Running after the fumes in a hurry
One wanted to bottle it up
The other to let it be

They shed all that they wore
One kept a feather
Other a sole

I noted their thoughts in varied forms
One displayed parallel lines
Other circles all along

There was a smell that guided them
One thought it was a leaf
The other eternal snow

I could only feel just one
And it was neither
Nor anything more

As they neared a meeting point
One tried to turn back
The other got stoned

But, now they were free from will
They were sucked together
Into the shrinking hole

As my consciousnesses got confused
Which followed which?
Who was who?

I realized there was no smell
No woman in black
Or a man in blue

As I divided consciousness again
I did notice a certain leaf
And some snow too

I took both and burned them
But, the smell seemed familiar
Like a Déjà-vu

Smell of smoke

Can you smell it?
Something burning, overdone, burnt.
It comes from far away.
Perhaps, the other side

The air seems heavy
As if carrying death.
But I can’t see,
Can’t see my own end.
I am choking,
But, exhaling something.

Its smoke!
Yes, all round, on every side.
It’s not the night
But the colour of smoke.

I am paralyzed
Even though there’s a snake inside.
I have become pain itself,
My bones are like dust,
My skull is about to split
I am unperturbed.

Beneath my shiny white skin
I am only ashes within,
Surrounded with smoke,
Boiled, burnt, yellow yoke.

Lost Rhyme Of My Future

...

Lost Rhyme of My Future


A storm has escaped the prisons of reality
Come o beloved let’s meet, abducting eternity

[Like the silence that lurked in the street
As the first swish of serendipity passed by
Taking away light from each house of greed
And leaving behind an abyss without an alibi]

Where can I find your being?
I find your presence everywhere

At times;

I see a beautiful stranger in my reflection

An inaudible laughter reaches my core

An invisible caress takes away my pain

I see colors in a black and white frame

Exquisite warmth chills me to the bones,

I walk away from my house in search of a home

Tonight, naked I shall walk
On this damp earth that just lost its virginity
Feeling the wetness of the sky
Tasting its sweetness
With my hands held high
And my head upturned
Eyes closed searching my insides
I’ll search six feet under
I’ll search each hole in heaven asunder

In search of you
To complete myself
In search of my reality
And get out of this perpetual dejavu

Tonight I’ll welcome the ghosts of my past
Tonight I’ll read my own cards
Tonight I’ll walk without my couture
Tonight I’ll lust the present’s heaving breasts
Tonight I’ll search all dimensions and transgress
To find the lost rhyme of my future

..

Your Birthday Gift

Your birthday gift


I stand with an upturned lip
I stare at my slanting feet
I thought I’ll give you the best gift
Alas! I feel lost in the mist

Of broken smiles and powdered faces
Of compressed sighs and shackled graces

And a tear trickles down my glazed eyes
Leaving a trail of charred cries

It lurks in a corner
I wait to take it back with me
It’s invisible among tinsel wrappers
And glitter of fashionable philosophy

I had thought I’ll give you the best gift
But then the child in me is cruel indeed

No one told me what you like
Honestly I did not care inside
I painted a face
As I see yours in an embrace
Marveling at its accuracy
I completely forgot its utility

Now I feel ashamed
Something in me has been unwillingly framed
If only I had thought
What would appeal and what not
My gift would have starred
This movie starring labels of all sorts

But does it count?
What matters? My reality or your frown
I only wanted to give you the best gift
Now I take it back, away from such intricacies

...

Twisted

....

My smile froze as I looked at you

Instead of a freshness of reason

I saw a blind old man

Bent with pain, blind with repulsion

Hate came from your eyes

Malice from your words

And I saw crimson fumes

Coming from your heart’s hearth

Will you hurt to heal your wounds?

Will you be the one to run?

Will you throw away what you have

For what you did not earn?

Do you seek pleasure from love?

Is it a one ended sword to you?

Whatever you think it is

Ignorance will neither hurt nor heal you

Where is your amorphousness?

Where is that soldier?

Did he choose to hide,

Now that the battle's affecting his life?

....

Harvesting our Inheritance

....................................

Harvesting Our Inheritance

Plowing the land they fought
Sustaining the drought
Sowing a seed they sought
A revolution of thought

As hands they were diverse
United by a single purpose
Sealing a dream in seed of time
Striving for freedom of mind

They did not sell their pride
For a role in caged limelight
They sowed the seed in a fence
Protecting it for independence

But the fence became a creed
The minerals sucked by weed
Unable to germinate in need
Buried in soil slept the seed

The tillers lost their existence
In time making a difference
The plowed land is in reminiscence
Of their effort as our inheritance

Our task as farmers is to unfold
A revolution not green but gold
Reaping the dream they sowed
Harvesting a fenceless abode

...................................................

A Horcrux

...............................................................................................

Battered eyes spoke of a farewell
Of innocence departed in reminiscence
I saw in them merciless beating of desire
Tortured to chastity of immaculate coldness

In a scurry with rats
She and her ethics lost their matrimony
And since then she became ugly
Having auctioned her feelings to purple liquidity

As I observed more, I saw
Dried tears in a kerchief
And blotted letters of love boasting of her obstinacy
Her voice was similar to a fake orgasm moaning of ecstasy

I witnessed death as cold and hard as life
I witnessed life that’s no more than death
Her eyes of a still born were carried very well
Her crooked smile still managed to cast its spell

Each night she stripped of her soul
Folded it and kept it safe
As she got ready to suck, (suck until no more aware)
Desires of different tastes excreting their wares

As a new hardness explored her softness
Greedily counting the worth of her act
And in the morning packed with dried semen
She was thrown with the other things in a plastic bag

I saw her horcrux writhe in pain
As at dawn she tried to attach her soul back again
She had become a shadow without a name
But everyone knew her womb’s exact depth and fame

...........................................................................................................