Even though it was clear-
She was dressed to impress
And to re-write more authoritatively
The tattered script
And the battered role
That was her story,
I remember not
How she looked;
Or how she felt;
Or what she said
Or what in essence
Was her sartorial sensibility
I remember only
An abstract arrest…
A loss of contact…
After touching upon
Her pathetic and desperate need
To impress and redress.
I sit alone in a room full of ghosts
Each one of them claims to know me the most
I know not who I may be
As each one of them screams their image of me
So shy! So bold!
So hot! So cold!
You’ve got it all right! You’ve got it all wrong!
Pathetically weak! Incredibly strong!
I sit in silence
Absorbing the noises
Till a momentous insight
Reveals them as choices
Choices I made a long time ago
I chose to let them stay
I never let go
Just as I made them then
I can make them now
So I get up and leave this room full of ghosts
How dare they claim to know me the most!
Over Time
Will you care
To feel
Even for a moment
All that I have felt?
Over time
Will you be curious
Wanting to know
What fashioned
My mind, my space, my thoughts?
Over time
Will it matter
To you
What words composed
My concerns, my beliefs, my angst?
Over time
Will you be interested
In knowing
What seduced me to live my life
My way?
Over time
Will you see
Non- judgmentally
My reasons
For war, for strife, for dying?
Over time
Will you be accepting
Of my ideas, my visions, my dreams
And more importantly
Will you be living them?
Over time
Will you understand
My motivations
For leaving behind a legacy
Different ( a little better)
From the one left behind for me?
Yes…
I would’ve liked better teacups
But here you are
Nevertheless
Forsaken or gifted
Standing before me every morning
And so…
Despite a petulant will
Everyday I grow to love you
And everyday
I get acquainted
With your unexpected beauty
Love and Beauty
You’ve taught me
Are not mere affections
They are the gifts of our attention
Joys that we receive
Not in our hours of need or merit
But in the generosity of our receptiveness
They’re never destinations
But journeys of long, slow acquaintance
Of discovering
And getting to know.
Another day in the life of thought
Sieving
Separating
What is
What is not
And as thought thinks
That INTELLIGENCE must have a form, a purpose, a design
Its own purpose
Is to structure my mind
Thought knows not what it can’t apprehend
It understands the finite
And not things that have no end
Discontent with accepting things just as they are
It looks over the near, in search of the far
And so as thought must
So thought does
Structuring my life with lofty bricks of beliefs and values
It fates its own end
By empowering my acumen to choose
And finally
When all that is something
Will eventually wither away
Infinite INTELLIGENCE will come my way.
Screaming silences
The thoughts in my mind
I can feel their angst
But words are hard to find
I struggle with words
They forever evade me
Messiahs of my thoughts
They forever fail me
Them thoughts pound my head
Demanding release
“We need to be said
Let us out, please!”
Their expression, their release
Is my reason to be
For if not my thoughts
What is my legacy?
So don’t dismiss me in a hurry
As someone with little to say
It’s a matter of time
Before my thoughts have their day
For now they stay imprisoned
A lack of choice
Locked in my mind
For want of a voice
That’s all they need
Just the wealth of words
But till they are freed
I am as you know me
A person of few words.
I can sense something awaits…
My attention, my love
But all the plaintive voices I hear
Seem theatrical and screechy
Scripted and programmed
With no trace of truth.
This thing that awaits
Is silent in its sorrow
I strain the ear of my ear
For the sound of a sigh, a pulse…anything
But such is the din in my mind
That my ear cannot hear my own heartbeat.
I woke up with a sigh
To meet today
Today is what
Today has always been…
Unpredictable and moody.
It’s a child of the seasons
A fickle temper is coded
Into its DNA.
And so, it will provoke me
(Like it always does)
With something or the other…
With the memory of a lover
Who it swallowed up
Insidiously on one such today
That I can’t recall having seen or lived
It must have slipped by me…
And who now remains with me
Partly because he’s a committed man
Who’s met and lived through
Many todays
And like me
Has endured the weight of every today
With its accompanying aches and pains.
We’re here now
Still together
Because we saw through
It’s whimsical ways
And chose to ignore its treachery
This today is no longer mine or yours
It belongs to Us.
This gift of a conquered Today
This gift of familiarity,
Friendship and forgiveness
Is really the gift of having met
And survived
Without escape, without excuse
Every Today
Everyday.
When the lights go out
So do all differentiations
Everything gets absorbed
In a rich velvety darkness
The night is a great leveler
It swallows up all distinctions
The day’s convictions dissolve in the night’s cabernet
And everything that was something loses its grip
The expectation of the night is total surrender
It claims from you your all
All the sparkling acquisitions of your day
Stand shrouded by an austere night
And it doesn’t seem to care
About all the things that decorate your existence
As it falls like an ink blot
On the script of your life
So while the day adds to your life
Things for the mind and things that matter
The night subtracts
Reducing your prized possessions to mere amusements.
I stand in the darkness of the night
Strangely redeemed…
As light exits and things lose their ‘edge’
I find that ‘I’- am still there…
In and through the absences, I prevail…
My only gain… my total loss
My only strength… my vulnerability
My only society… my solitude
To possess requires so much effort
To enjoy all that there is-
none.
To become rich requires so much effort
To be enriched-
none.
To solve a problem requires so much effort
To watch its passing-
None.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 