Epiphanies...

To brush aside those
Unclear dreams that hung hopefully
All night by the pillow,
And type, merely type
One’s breath out
All day…

To stare at the blank walls
Of coffee shops on Sundays,
To find in them a mate
That cannot speak.
To memorize smells of
Favorite trees
To sit tight-lipped
And recall the touch
Of a distant breeze…

Can you determine?
Can you think?
No soul, no heart
Not even a hand for you.
Just a whim
Like those
Cigarette smoke and rings…

The desire to parcel
Life off in glass bottles,
Across oceans, across streams…
Disown pain, weakness, bitterness, spite
For that drip-drop-drip happiness
Incidentally, a taste you may not like…

Book-marked

Cause And Effect-

The best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

Charles Bukowski

Sway With Me-

sway with me, everything sad --
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things --
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shell
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you:
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving.

Charles Bukowski

Finally it rained! ;)

Quarter to nine in the night

A rocket-fast rickshaw

One possessed rickshawala

Clouds and heavy drizzle

The wide wide Pusa road

A zillion speed breakers

Half-a-zillion pot-holes

Two cups of boiling tea...

A plate of hot noodles

Three samosas

A Dhokla

Chutney of course

Two crazy girls

And a grand feast on the rickshaw!

Gone with the...scissors...

For all the water she sprayed on my finely combed hair, my ears had become unusually warm. Even crimson…no red. I felt strange sitting wrapped in a white plastic sheet. It was finally my moment of reckoning after good ten months or so. I saw her gearing up with the scissors now. An uneasy smile broke on my lips, as my eyes met hers in the mirror. ‘Don’t chop a lot of the length.’- I made a last minute plea…well almost. Swish, swash, swish…and the first long lock fell into my lap. For once, I reverently admired the strand that was mine…and something welled up in my throat. She was going about dexterously, feverishly with the scissors. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the huge light over me. Too late…too late...

The spell broke with the hot blast of the dryer on my face. Over and out. I looked hard in the mirror finally. Not bad. Interesting. Can I say…good? I was almost pleased.

And then, as I walked out, I saw those many strands lying abandoned on the floor. Poor souls. Brown and fine. I touched my hair…recalling their smell and their touch. Gone… :(

Embers...

Those embers aglow,

Uncertain, Unsure...

There...just about it.

That sad hostility,

Mocking that confusion the other feels...

No lessons learnt,

None left to teach.

Why does it happen this way?

I wonder...

Annihilating together,

Perishing asunder...

Lets begin again,

Set them properly to fire,

Or put out that whimsicality,

Their half-stitched, orangish attire....

Gifts

Take a little hope tonight
And keep it in your fist
Till I open it
The next time.

We could sit and talk for a while,
Leaving the Sun to rise and set
A hundred times,
Smile and think of floating memories
Of happy days,
Of happy hours,
Of Journeys of thousand miles…

Draw for me a new sunset then,
With rays everlasting, truthful, fragile…
I will carry for you my bag of moist colors
To weave that promised, new sunrise…

Fragments

The wind that blew through the heart of the sky
Breaking the clouds into a dozen
Anonymous pattern…
Tells me to let go
And trace the scattered pieces of Life
Wherever they lie…
To just keep a handful of Time
And live uncounted days
Like eternity’s happy embrace…
Here it is…life…always.
There…it never was.
To breathe was never enough,
The rest I am incapable of….