Psychodramatic So and So

You ever have those days where nothing seems to be going on in your life? Really, you wake up and for some strange reason, your skin feels like it belongs to someone else. There's no great tragedy, no overwhelming crisis, no drama, just an overbearing...nothing. You brush your teeth staring at the stranger in the mirror wearing your face. You have your breakfast, you read the paper full of the usual shit that rains across the globe. Your email account is empty. Your facebook page has one or two notifications but nothing sent to you specifically. Just people who have commented on things you've commented on in the past. Some of them, well, most of them, you couldn't care less about.

You step out of your apartment and the Sun is unhappy to see you, so ups the heat. The wind, that was blowing so sweetly a moment ago, decides it's time to go blow elsewhere. Even the dog in your building that usually leaps into your arms and licks the entire side of your face is strangely subdued, barely managing a single wag of his tail at the sight of you. There's a sense of malaise and lethargy that seems to squat down around you, making everything appear as if seen through a heat haze.

You sit in your home and look around at all the things you could be doing and do none of them. Or even if you do, it's with such a sense of futility or dissatisfaction that you decide it's better not to attempt anything at all.

I've sat at this computer intermittently about six times today. I've refreshed my facebook page, my email about a dozen times. I leaped at my phone when it rang only to have someone attempt to sell me some hair brained scheme to invest in shady real estate in Ghatkopar. I've scrapped at least three pieces that I've been trying to write. One of them was so bad it made my eyes wet with boredom just scanning the first line.

What's missing? Yesterday I was happy for no reason. Today I am not. Am I, are we all, at the mercy of things so infinitesimal that they can affect us so profoundly without even announcing themselves or leaving any clues? What moves beneath the ocean of our thoughts that sends these bubbles up to mess with our surface? What behemoths swim beneath the brine, unnoticed save for the wake they leave behind?

Maybe what I really need is one tight slap. And luckily for me I have a number of people in my life who would love to give me one if they saw me like this right now. Maybe I should just call one of them. There's nothing quite so comforting as the righteous tirade of a loved one towards all your bullshit. I love it. Everytime my mother, or sisters, or girlfriend, or friend starts to lecture me on topics I deserve lecturing, one part of my brain is paying attention, the other is fighting to keep the smiles of joy from my face. They just wouldn't take it the right way were I to beam at them mid-tirade and thank them for loving me enough to slap my ego and sense of self-loathing around like they needed to.

The problem I've come to realize, is that when I get left alone for too long now, I start feeling bereft. See, I'm a psychodramatic so and so. I work my issues out through high drama and play-acting. Nothing rejuvenates me more than making someone laugh with the way I relate my woes with much mimicry and high elocution. I used to be a loner. I used to like it that way. But I'm happy to know that I'm not anymore. I like people, and they like me. And I think I need to stop writing and get out of this house and just run into someone somewhere and make them smile, with me or at me, doesn't matter. Today I need to feel a part of the human race. I can go back to being a misanthropic so and so tomorrow. Ciao!

Silly Rap Song

I need you now I need you
Quiet chaos in my soul let me feed you
let me drive you right up the wall
and make love on the ceiling
you don't understand how I'm feeling, I'm like
Marvin Gaye rewriting Sexual Healing
i'm a puppy dressed in white linen pants
out my mind out the asylum out in your hands
silly rap song this is a silly rap song
stomp your feet pull me close keep clapping along
I'm feeling frisky and when I am I'm full of frisky demands
Shankar Ramen said my love is like a dog understand?
I need to train him not to bite
But I'm off the diggity damn chain tonight
Thought i told you that there will be times
the poet pulls a trigger and my inner tigger rhymes
I'm in and out of my schizophrenic minds, I need to
be in and out of you, filthy damn but it's true
Normal is for normal people baby, me and you
are crazy orangutans caught in a psychotic loop
You were the one that made me this way. You
Can't complain now, baby doll, or train me away
I'm a cannibal out for your flesh, God Lord Jesus Yahweh
This world's full of sinners and I'm its truest Son
Moral as a viper, tequila steady loco with a loaded gun
I have what you may refer to as certain lust issues
Hacchoo! Did I wet you? Let me let the Devil bless you!
Or blow your irresponsibly held wet whistle?
Who let this crazy motherf@*$ guy next to you?
You need an exorcist, girl, to take this tall hex from you.
But for now let's push this whole home to crushed rubble
Let me kiss you on your neck, pick goosepimples off your flesh
with my last shaved, god-knows-when, who-the-f-cares stubble
Tell me you hate me, I'm a frustrating ingrate then hug me
Let the world judge me wrong, girl, you just smile drug me
again and again, do it well do it well, then we do it again
We're going to have a lot of furniture to rearrange
In the morning, for now let's come together deranged
Erotic arranged chaotic massive crises created congrats
Let's make like rabbits skating along on a rollercoaster thats
about to fall off the tracks onto all these other rats
Splat there goes your ex-boyfriend and that other patsy
Hats off to you for getting all my bullshit to move past me
You want me, you want me, I can see it in the way you shiver
cupid ran out of all the love arrows in his usual quiver
so reached into the other right quick, hit your heart your liver
and all the other parts that made them other guys run away quicker
I'm here to take it all girl, even your inner Loch-ness monster stress
I'm here to tell you I need it all, even your need to obsess
about all the ugly little things this world has in excess
but I digress I'm just trying to go half on thirty babies, unless
I am plain crazy and you're not even a little complexed.
Oops there goes the bell, to be continued next recess.
I guess. Yes?

Moving to Argentina

There is a place
where the tango
never ends.
Where the mountain
comes down to play
with the sea.
Where the sky
remembers what it was like
to walk upon the shore.
A place where you and I
have yet to come.
To sands that have never
known the mysteries
wrinkled under our feet.
Where the air moves
ignorant of our scent
but waits for us
nonetheless. Patiently.

There is a place I
wish us to be.
Full of secret sunshine,
nights thick like honey.
Mosquito nets moist
from our tango,
the other one.
The creak of palm trees
standing watch,
and the glow of the Moon,
trying to get
a better view.

Poetry

I have forgotten
where I was,
when they came for me.
I remember a beach
and an ugly sunset
over a lifeless sea.
I remember the children
smiling, and running up
but never into that sea.
I remember wishing
they could.

That was my crime,
that foolish wish.
And then they took me,
to the edge
where the ocean
comes to surrender.
Where all the violence
trapped in every wave,
powerful enough
to defy the Sun,
and shatter the Moon,
sputters and gasps
and crawls cowardly
up the shore,
and licks our feet.

This is where I am to be.
At the edge of things,
looking sideways.
A broken harp
in unfamiliar hands.
An empty cup
waiting for an
endless sea.
They struck me
with hammers
and left me
cracked enough
to let the Light
within.

They made me burn
down everything I was.
Until all that remained
was the hollow sound
at the heart of every scream.
They broke my throat
and poured in the fire.
And told me the truth.
The words will always come
but never to the strong.
Poets must learn to fly
with broken wings.

I wept for joy
at all the pain,
that I turned into
mobiles of words.
I stood frozen,
upon that shore.
I spoke with the
water at my feet.
And it smiled at me
and gathered itself
and rushed back
into the sea.

My heart broke open
and out galloped
all the horses.
Never to return.

Taking a Breather

Taking a break from writing poetry, or rather trying to write poetry. Everytime I start I think I'm going to crack it finally and come up with something as stunning as "Intimations of Immortality" or "Idea of Order at Key West". And then I start writing, with all the usual distractions littered around and in front of me : coffee, books, newspapers, playstation3, new DVD's I haven't seen, internet, fucking facebook! Only our generation could have invented a disorder like Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. No wonder it was us - can't sit still long enough to finish the least time-consuming of tasks without wandering off into another. It would be amusing if it didn't actually mean that a lot of good work went undone or not even begun during all these periods of pointless and fruitless hyperactivity.

Then I finish a poem and read it back to myself. Most times, I have to put the computer aside before I smash it against the far wall. Other times, I kind of smile, and tell myself it's not really THAT bad. I'm getting better. But every time, every single time, I feel like I've written something just barely good enough to be rejected as the lyrics for the next Taylor Swift song. All my poems sound a little too Pop-y to me. (Note, between the previous sentence and the next I checked my email twice, my facebook page the same, and watched the video for a song I like on YouTube. The prosecution rests).

But when I thought about it, pop music, and started to list all the great songs I've ever heard, I took a little heart. I wish I could write like Shakespeare or Hemingway, and we all should wish for that level of skill and intensity in our work, whatever that work may be. However, it is far more important to discover your own true wavelength. I shouldn't try and write a poem like Wallace Stevens or Charles Bukowski. They had their experiences and their education and their points of view that colored the ink they wrote with. I have mine. And that's a good thing. To mine own self I am true. Plus if you've ever really listened to the lyrics of songs like "Edge of Desire" or "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" by John Mayer (Yes, that's right! John Mayer), or any Counting Crows or U2 song (barring some of the new stuff. Sorry Bono, you've kinda gotten a little too pop for me), you'll know that there's some real quality poetry out there disguised as pop music. And I'm just giving examples from the really popular stuff.

This entire week I've done more writing that I've been happy with than ever before, not because I've been inspired or moved or anything so cliched. I've written so much more just because I've taken the time to sit down and write. To not wait for some faerie dust to be sprinkled on me, rather just roll up my sleeves and start digging. I know most of the people that know me find my pieces quite "iffy" and hard to get through. One of my dearest friends told me he checks out about line three, everytime. But then there are those who tell me they liked what I wrote. And those very few who say that they understood what I was trying to say. That means more to me than they'll ever know.

Because I don't want to, and have never wanted these pieces to be private or hidden, or about things I don't feel strongly about. These are little pieces of me that I want you to see, because I know you have these same pieces in you. These maybe exercises or literary challenges for me, but they describe things I know more people than me have faced or dealt with or laughed at. I re-evaluated why I actually started this blog and why I've continued to post here. I want to be heard. I want to share what I know and what I see, with whoever takes the time to read it. This is not for me, these words are for you, and they always have been.

So this long ass rambling piece, was me taking a breather. Hopefully by tonight, I'll be playing percussion on these computer keys again.

To everyone who reads - leave a comment if you can. Let a brother know you hear him. Even if you don't like what you read. I'd actually appreciate a good critique.

To all that read and comment - I'd hug you if I could. Thank you.

Now! Where'd I put that damn cup of coffee. Aha...there you are, you saucy beverage....

Everything You Are To Me

Everything you are to me,
Is a blessing I'll never deserve.
It's that surging swell of desire
That hides in your every curve.
It's the way you move when you're happy
All the singing and dancing too.
It's the way your eyes grow softer
Than mine ever do, looking up at you.
It's in the way you smile at me,
Like a parent to a child.
It's how I feel when I touch you.
Like the end to my long exile.

Everything you are to me,
Is the fuel that pulls me along.
It's your face that I see
Listening to the silliest song.
I know somedays you hate yourself,
When you can barely look in the mirror.
And the world tells you horrible things,
Your dreams evanesce in a zephyr.
I'd break the world for hurting you,
Smash every hateful face I see.
But you would only stroke my cheek,
And whisper, "Just let it be."

Hear my words, Morning Star
and know them to be true.
I'd break all my rules for you,
Just the way you are.

The Heart Rain Sonnet

I was walking along
Another dirty street.
Feeling a little riven,
Cracked, incomplete.
The kind of day you felt,
Sick, lonely, and in debt.
Like a hyperactive
Locked in an oubliette.
If this were a business,
This business of life.
I'd probably get fired.
Come back with a knife.

Then I hear it, my favorite refrain.
First peals the thunder, down comes the rain.

November Rain

The rain came back
For me.
So did the Blues.
Why won't they leave
me be?
The fools.
I open my windows
Pick up my pen.
Open my heart.
I listen to the thunder
Enter my bones.
Open my heart.
Blessed are the weary.
For at least we tried.

Too Late to S.O.S.

If you look closely,
Even stars stand lonely.
Burning holes into
the vacuum around.
Signifying everything
but what they are.
Just fury, no sound.

If this is really hell
Then at least we're together.
Except when I look at you,
I keep thinking of her.
Is it just me
Or are we all just crazy?
Love's hard work,
and we're all just lazy.

These aren't love songs
But beggared breaths.
Taken in this city
of quiet deaths.
Puff puff pass,
This pain can't last.
Leave me alone.

Leave me alone.
But be waiting in my bed
when I get back home,
with nothing
but that smile
and that lingerie on.

The song says
You give and you give
and you give yourself away.
But I think we kid and kid
and kid ourselves away.
Lie in little ways.
Settle into familiar
Ugly little days.

This was a happy song,
Then the blues came along.
Like cold, bloody jazz.
Guitars as blue as
Muddy Waters,
Howling Wolf and
his troubled daughters.
Etta James and
her Demons too.
Little light,
Just me, no you.

This is not a cry for help.
No plea bargain for parole.
I don't want you here tonight.
It's too late to save my soul.
You'd only come running,
Ready to face my unknown.
That's why I locked the door.
And turned off the phone.

Bandra Bachelor Party

Some try to dance,
Some just stand.
Some dream about things
They'll never understand.
Some don't have the heart.
They linger around my Saturday night
A crowd of people, standing apart.

There's a girl here who wants
To dance but hates all the music.
She moves like an assassin,
Duck your head or you'll lose it.
Every thrust of her hip
Every toss of her hair,
Layered thick with seduction
Barely masks her despair.

There must be people here,
Happier than they seem.
Or am I lost in the fairy dust
Of my own little dream.
We laugh at all the jokes
No matter how bad.
It seems our responsibility
To at least pretend to be glad.

I'm too tired to write now
and much much too lonely.
Saturday night lies dying,
Sunday doesn't want to know me.
There's left nothing to do
but crawl into my empty bed.
And dream of all the lives
I'll never touch, before I'm dead.

Why aren't I asleep?

I convinced myself I knew how to swim
and haven't drowned yet.
I told myself I knew how to love,
but was proven incorrect.
Love isn't a white horse, or a rainbow
or chocolate desert
or a mid-day naked dance.
Love is love. It is not like
any other thing.
Nor would it want to be.
Like a rock is a rock
Your love is your love.
What freaks me out,
Is discovering that,
My love is your love too.

Watch thrown into a closet.

I have no words,
I spent them all
Far too cheaply.
On a dirty corner
near a cigarette stand.
You never came,
So I let them drop,
One by one
Into the gutter
Yawning at my feet.
Are we happy now?
I waited. Me
and my watch
We waited.
My watch told me
to walk away.
But I wanted to see you.
And thought it was
just jealous.
But you never came.
Now I don't wear
that watch anymore.
Bastard

Solitary Refinement

There are no echoes here,
No wasted breaths
No misunderstandings nor arguments
Neither pleasure nor pain.
There is only me, and my pen
Practicing our old dance again.

One two three, one two three, one.
Quiet is my home, and clean.
Clement is the wind, and cheerful.
I know many words, and learn many more.
I smile even lost in traffic,
In the crowd outside an audition,
Or in line at the grocery store.

I light a candle for my Goddess
and incense for her pleasure.
I smile and touch her feet and
Ring a silver bell to tell her I love her.
I am as wise as the crows,
and still from within.
I light my lamps to mirror
the orange of the Sky,
and let the Sunset in.

There's a perfect cup of kahwa
steaming beside my book.
I no longer have to search
for reasons to be happy.
I've lived in Bombay without crying
and learnt where to look.

I think of all of us
Abandoned in this city,
I know we'll all make it
If we learn to like the jazz.
The Sun rises in our eyes,
It always, always has.

Another Silly Song

Winter rain upon my terrace
Watching bats flit through palm trees.
Like dreamers who like to dance
Like a flower in a field of honey bees.

These days pass by so slowly
But in a blessed langour.
I dream of her even less now
than I ever did before.

Although I dream of her still
a little.

But this poem isn't about her
This is my song for you.
Because you never walk away without looking
to see me looking back at you.

And everytime you touch me
Your soul takes a hold of mine.
And every time I pull away now,
Separation leaves a bloody sign

When you smile I see it all
Even what they seldom see.
I see the sacred secret pain.
That you wish to share with me.

I see your weaknesses
I see the scars on your chest.
I see the tremble in your lips
and that you hate this damn dress.

We're all broken bits of pieces
My baby, you, and me.
But we are what the angels envy,
When they force themselves to see.

Prophets don't come from paradise
They are born bloody and screaming
They don't come to sit in quiet rooms
But to stand surrounded, broken and bleeding.

You say you want me baby,
What else could I possibly do?
You go your way,
I'll go your way too.

(*Last two lines are "The Sweetest Little Song" by my Prophet of Poem, Mr. Leonard Cohen)

My Kind of Love Song

I may never be what you needed,
Just as you needed it the most.
Or be even remotely what you dreamt
of walking beside, upon that coast.
Hand in hand on perfect sands,
Watching sunsets parade into the sea.
I could never be all the answers
Just imperfect, insensitive me.
I knew all the words I needed to say
and all the right places to touch.
I knew every little ticklish spot
and all the songs you loved so much.
But you don't want that now
There's no glamour to be had.
You can't sit in quiet rooms with me
Somewhere between angry and sad.
There's no perfection here baby,
Nothing like that at all.
I will let you down, sugar
Or be sleeping when you fall.
I love you so much sometimes
Sometimes I can't quite manage,
Sometimes we're making love
And doing nothing but more damage.
I could tell you I'm gonna try to change.
But you'd know I'm lying through my teeth
Who the fuck are we kidding here, baby?
This is a test we never meant to complete.
I can give you days without joy,
Days you feel ugly and sick.
Days I wipe away every smile,
Days I cut you to past your quick.
Somedays I know you hate me
And could sell your soul for a brick.
I'm sorry for everything baby.
But we both know I'll do it again.
You see I love you, baby
I just can't to do it without the pain.
But I make you laugh don't I
Dance, and giggle, and leap for me?
I can be anything you need me to be
You know your soul pleads for me.
So think of me tonight, baby
Because nothing else seems true.
I'm not God's gift to anybody darling
I'm the bargain He struck, for you.

Back in Bombay

My first night back in the Big Stinky Bombay City. And I'm a happy man. How'd that happen? When I moved here from New York, I remember sitting in the plane as it touched down and thinking that I was being exiled from paradise, cast down into Pandaemonium. I stood next to all the people in baggage reclaim crowd like a weeping seraph amongst the other Fallen. What had I done that was terrible enough to deliver me this fate? I carried a fear in my gut that was heavier than all the bags being dumped on the carousel. How would I be able to walk out the airport with this weight?

I knew no one in the city. Every sound it made frightened me. Every smell that came, came to me with a violence my nose was unprepared for. The Sun beat down on me like a judge's hammer, counting out the years I was being imprisoned for. And I wanted to be an actor. A choice of profession that seemed right only to my inflated sense of my own magnificence. How naive and cock-sure could I have been to think that I could make it when so many other equally worthy or more, smashed their dreams to dust upon these raging streets?

I didn't sleep properly for a week. Every night I would paint fantasies upon the ceiling, only to see them all burn. Every night I would lay awake, unable to take a deep breath, like something stood on my chest, right below my ribs. This city told me nothing, it only glared and screamed. It gave me nothing, it only took my dreams and knotted them in the small of my back. Every gaze seemed dismissive, contemptuous, or at the very mildest, gauging. No one looked with softness and serenity. No one bothered to smile truly. Everybody had an angle, and ace up their sleeves, and a big knife behind their back.

It's hard to find love in a city where it's considered a weakness. Hard to find softness in a jungle full of predators. Where does one go to stand in the light, when even the Sun seems a tainted tyrant?

You go within, that's where you go. You dive deep into the heart of you. You find a pool of Serenity you didn't know you even had, in the quiet spaces between your dreams and your tears, fed by neither but sweeter than both. You go within to see the light, you go within to be quilted in shadow against the cold dark.

It is here, in this city of obsessions and despair, and ambition and lust, and hunger, that I found my quiet places waiting for me. It is here, in Bombay, that I learned that I was equal to the task. I may never like Bombay for all it's filth and cracked roads and indifferent officials, and awful weather, and an unwelcoming sea, but for making me a man, finally, I will always love it.

Now I sleep like a baby and laugh like a child. I am what I was looking for, all this lonely while.

Poem from a Crowded Couch

The words have abandoned me tonight
but still you remain.
My incessant thought, my greatest fear,
the shiver in this weary spine,
the fever in my brain.
I've been walking alone for so long
I had forgotten how it felt.
To be held in arms softer than mercy,
drowned in sighs like the prayers
Sufis made when they sang where they knelt.
You're the reason there are temples
where more than hymns are sung.
And the bells chime with bronzed laughter.
Where old ladies smile and clap their hands,
and candles hold more light than suns.
They made me a wanderer, exiled from stillness.
Cursed to stumble room to room.
Chasing mirages under desert stars.
Scorned by the sun, exiled from the sky,
Friendless except for the lonelier Moon.
I should have been born when Khalifs ruled
And poetry floated on jasmine winds
When men held honor in sheathed swords
and saw visions in eldritch flames, as they sat
sucking the juices out of tamarinds.
But here I am, in this city of dirty dreams
and hearts riven through.
Where faith is for sale, and love and honor
mean less than they should. But here it is,
I find myself, lying next to you.

Blessed Lazy Day

Today I did nothing special. I sat at home and read a book. When I was done reading that I read another. Then I felt life was too adult and serious so I read an old Captain America comic book. I love that guy. I had a great breakfast and a better lunch. I thought I'd drink some coffee and later maybe some punch. Buzzed am I, on caffeine and joy, thinking about all the little things that bring me pleasure.

Of course I could complain that there's nothing to do. I have no work to speak of and the universe offers nary a clue. A woman I loved is getting married, a woman I adore thinks I'm insane, and a woman I've barely met is sitting pretty cozy, like a dancing tumor in my brain. Of course I could rave and rant, and complain about all sorts of silly things. But the truth of the matter is I'm pretty darned lucky to be born Arunoday Singh.

And this rhyme scheme wasn't intended, nor does it seem to fit rightly. But I'm freestyling from my soul now, and if the words could rhyme, I don't mind helping them ever so slightly. After all, this here is one of the things I enjoy most, writing, sketching, and perhaps a lot of nutella on a lightly buttered toast. This is the day I shall pick up a pencil and sketch, I've made up my mind. It's been too long since I drew, drowned my sadness in the swirling mist of charcoal lines.

Today is a good day. And I plan to make it better. Like an aquamaniac in the rain, praying we can all get wetter. That last rhyme was a little pathetic, but what the hell? The coffee's brewing on the pot, and the temperature in the room is just swell. Today I miss no one, today I'm happy to be alone. Lying on a couch dreaming, contented sighs shaking loose from my bones.


There are moments that define us, where we discover who we truly are. Then there are moments like these, like sitting behind the wheel of a beloved car. Where the poetry is in the simplicity and goofy smile on my face. Not to be out there pimping my soul, or scavenging for a spot in the rat race. I may not reach the finish line for a while, of that even I'm pretty sure. But I'll cross that mother with a devilish smile, and make her move like heartbreak moves across a dance floor.

You have blessed me Goddess, with this most laziest of lazy days. My curtains twist and dance while the sunlight outside my window plays. And my hopes and dreams decide it's better to shut up and listen to the music. And the future will come when it does, we shouldn't worry that we might misstep and lose it. These moments are precious that's why we call it the Present. Forget the past, forgo the future, lock all your worries in the basement. Today I do the lazy dance, hug my couch, kiss my coffee, and call my book my bestest friend. Today I wish for nothing but more days like this scattered throughout my life, a therapy I'd heartily recommend.

Nargis

"In your light I learn how to love,
In your beauty, how to make poems,

You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art."

There is something truly terrifying about a beautiful woman to me. Something alien and deadly and enigmatic and cold. Her ability to snare my every sense and leave it twitching and snarling and trapped. The way every sound she makes to me seems like a call to prayer. And the smiles, Goddess preserve me, the smiles...

Sounds like bullshit doesn't it? All of it. I've been trying to write this piece since I spoke to her, and all that seems right and proper is the poem by Rumi at the top. I think it's god-damned ridiculous that at my age, a single glance from a single girl can leave me unsettled, pensive and moody for almost two days now.


Was she beautiful? Of course she was. Was she intelligent? Of course she was. Was I charming? Of course I was not. I was like a bull trying to ski on one foot while memorizing the lyrics to a James Brown song and knit myself a scarf at the same time. You'd think at least I would have known to never go up to a beautiful woman and tell her I thought her beautiful. After all these years, you'd think I'd remember. That and to make sure my tongue wasn't moistening my shirt just above the belly button. But you friggin try counting to ten in front of this girl.

Rumi could write a poem like the one above, and all I can write is...But I understand now, Rumi, truly I do. My impulsive lurch towards her is what separates me from you. I'm still mired in the superficial. That poem above will never be true for me unless I stop looking with my eyes. I see only her smile because I am a child, reminded of why I write bad poetry and stared into coffee cups.

There are oceans
we must cross simply to say hello.
Where fears, loneliness, and failure
Are the waves that ever flow.
She sat across a shadowed room,
In a liquid pool of heartless light.
A lodestone for my chaos,
The bloody towel to my every fight.
Across from me and over that sea.
How could she know
what had happened to me
here, on this night?
When she smiled up at me
She broke my spirit and cast it away
Before I sat down beside her
Before I asked her her name
I went to her like a killer to a church,
Hoping to confess, maybe even to pray.
But she broke my spirit in style today.
And took my entire week in her purse
She smiled at me like a child today
And made my charm seem like my curse.

This last piece is mine. See what I mean about bad poetry? Sigh...Goddess bring her before me again, so I might write you another song like this, and make you giggle at your foolish child.

Senseless

Her scent was all he remembered of her truly. The cut of her face, the alignment of her features, the precise hue of her eyes even...all had been reduced to hazy approximations of beauty, that coalesced into firmer images only when he got high. But even these firmer images of her in his head were all unlike each other, variations on a theme, studies in heartbreak. It seems that Mary Jane, too liked to play with his mind now and then. But nothing had ever made him forget that smell - like a wreath of fragrant flowers on a New York summer day, holding all the other lesser smells : sweat, leather, bagels, cheap perfumes, cigarettes and concrete. Holding all these lesser smells close, and forgiving them their lack of poetry - that's what she smelled like to him. A jasmine goddess standing on a midden heap.


How could he forget that? Half a decade and four continents later and he still woke up some days with her stink all over his bed-sheets. How could that be? Did some mischievous imp dance in his shadow, waiting for his deeper dreams to come, and sprinkle her therein? Or did she herself come to him, in the night, while his conscious mind recovered from the onslaught of his banal days. Perhaps love and desire have laws of their own, that superseded the laws of the physical world. He remembered that old fakir in Rishikesh telling him his newly acquired wisdom, that time they got high under the steps leading to the German Bakery. Love was as much an element of the universe as fire, or water, or earth. Underneath all the badly acted romantic comedies, and the cliched songs, and the bad poetry - was a terrifying truth. It's all real, and we're good and proper fucked.


And that's how he knew that she had entered the room. By scent. Even though he hadn't seen or heard from her in four years. Even though he was sitting in a quiet booth facing away from the door and enjoying the hell out of this little book his friend had lent him. He still knew it was her. His nostrils knew before he did, and as they flared and took her presence in, his heart decided it was a great time to begin a conga beat against the walls of his chest. He had to put the book down and place a hand over his chest and allow himself a moment to be bewildered, before he even noticed the smell. But the second he did...His coffee started to cool in his mouth, he sat so still. He forgot to breathe, forgot to swallow, and only the people sitting facing him could have told him whether he had stopped blinking. He hoped he had, for otherwise the tears in his eyes were being drawn from a different well.

He only shifted when he heard her laugh. The sound smashing through the hiss and chatter of the cafe, sending all other sounds scurrying into their corners like field mice under the shadow of the hunting owl. He heard that laughter and it struck him like a physical thing, like the wave of air and pressure sent out by a detonation, turning the world into a muted, cacophonous, chaotic mess, where one stumbles with skinned knees and bloody eardrums. He reached up and covered his ears, pretending that he was still poring over the book on his table. He hunched his shoulders against what stood behind him somewhere, refusing to be weak and whip around to see her.

That laughter, that voice, that sound crested towards him like an inescapable wave as she walked closer, and then past him towards the far corner of the room. He released his ears from under his ineffectual hands and took a shallow breath through the mouth. His eyes he nailed to the page before him. She hadn't recognized him. He was grateful. He was furious. He was sad. He was one confused idiot, is what he was. Pathetic really, he told himself. The legendary Lothario, the Clown prince of Charm, reduced to a frightened mouse by a scent. Bravo, Sir Gibber-a-lot, bravo indeed!

She took a seat two tables down, facing him. How he knew this he didn't know. But he knew it as surely as he knew that he should keep turning pages after appropriate pauses to at keep up the appearance of reading. But his nervous system couldn't seem to locate his hands, even though there snuggled one, under his thigh where it usually was when he read, and there curled the other around his fourth cup of coffee. He heard her voice talk about her flight to Bombay and the nerdy business man next to her who kept pretending to be asleep so that he could rest his head on her shoulder and stare down her blouse. He heard her say all the things about this city that he had said when he arrived, right down to the sigh and the laugh at the end.

The waiter came to his table smiling and friendly. He lurched to his feet suddenly and almost knocked the fellow aside as he turned away without looking up and dashed into the bathroom. He poured water into his hands and splashed his face once twice and then again. He rubbed it into his feverish skin, around the back of his neck. Then he took a couple of paper towels and wiped himself down. There was somebody pounding on the door. He said "In a minute!" Or did he? He couldn't remember, but the pounding continued.

When he opened the door there was a man standing there with a "fuck-you" expression on his face. He grabbed the front of the man's shirt and slammed him against wall hard enough to wipe it off. Then he leaned in and whispered in a voice entirely not his own, "Patience." Before the man could retort or retaliate, he had walked out of the loo and back into the cafe.

He felt better. Stronger. The incident in the john had pumped him full of adrenaline and testosterone. He smiled at some random girl in the corner and felt flush with power when she blushed. He reminded himself of who he had become. An equal.

He sat down at his table. Crooked grin on his face, careless shrug to his shoulders. He sipped his coffee slow, smiled and leaned back and looked up.

It wasn't her!!!!!!