Draft Three

One of these days

Sooner or maybe later

You will watch yourself taking

The lanes that wind up at your door

And you will watch yourself walking upto you

Taking a seat next to yourself

Smiling, hands clasped in silent reception

Like old friends who accidently meet

With time on their side

Indulge with love, with mutual recollections

Listen to your stories and fondly finish the lines

When memory slips

And while the dust settles from her long tired feet

Refill her cup to the brim just on the verge of spill-over

And dismiss protests with laughter and kindness

You have come a long way

Through ignorance, mistrust, breakdown, false hope

Broken love, unmailed letters, mornings and dusks

Nights, strangers,hunger and laughter

Appreciation, coldness, longing

Separation

Death, arrival, relief and paranoia

Emptiness and comfort

Shame and love

Disbelief and indifference

When she comes to you

Keep time in hand

Your one true friend

That never quite left

When others did

Draft Two

Warmed on your bed by a hundred nightly chills

She grew to recognize the lengths and ends of her body

Through pain, through pang

Through tenderness that came from you

To tenderness that mutely screamed in the quite nights

And every sting was a reminder of your love

Spoils of the war, she lost every time to win

A new scar of your boundless affection

And while she leaves her marks on you

You leave none for onlookers to spy

To inquire, or silently understand

Instead the blows of your love

Seep deeper

Infiltrate

To find shelter under her fevered skin

But every day she seeks and seeks

More and more of this frenzied game

Not allowing you to keep your calm

Not accepting measured moves

Not allowing the dialogue to end

With pleasantries and polite exchange

But if you are reading this

Do not feel moved to take the blame

For she doesn’t wish to smolder

But scrounge your love

For her charred remains.

Draft One

She will always keep your secrets safe

Slip it under conversations

Deftly with a sleight of hand

Brush it from sight

Talk of moss that grows on her thatched roof

Or the dogs that reach for love in deserted blind alleys

Or the china that broke on her Persian blue rug

If you give her your poems

They will always be gathered with the smile

That she receives the first rains of the year with

Falling slowly, falling fast on her small kitchen garden

And when she stopped at the foot of the tree

Eyes glazed by moonlight and insecurity

For a moment before she decided to sit

And look up at you, at its highest branch

Keeping starboard watch like a sailor at sea

Did you resent her then or did you simply forget?

The silent eyes that placed you in her night of stars

And one day they say, she dissuaded herself

From waking up

Tucked between a hundred weightless dreams

Warmed by your secrets that have finally found

A home behind the closed space of her sleeping eyes

And secrets of her own, you will be surprised to know

That played with yours, quietly along the seams.

Some July Nights.

The bitter smoke inhaled and held. The shrieks of the train cutting through the song on loop, and the rhythmic motion of wheels on track, an external beat, drowning the words till the language became alien, and only in memory made sense. She stubbed the smoke, bits of fire flew, tossed by the mad wind like fireflies that have caught fire. The sky was overcast, probably a storm promising to rupture the sky, the soil was warm, restless in her wait for satiation. The process of forgetting, of erasure, of making invisible all the signs and sights that connect to it till everything dries into facts. Signification is muted till the pantomime ceases to appeal.
But to begin the end, to understand how its time is done, and no prayers, entreaties to a questionable God, or efforts and strategies can bring back what came free...
She closed her eyes to a rising storm...

How long can I stay, in the grey autumn lights, shifting through fallen leaves

While birds take their long flight home, casting no shadow on the ground

In harmonious joy, in bleak twilight, they soar, little black dots.

How long can I wait, while the last train winds its way around the bent tracks

Faces pass me by, sad, painted, beautiful, unfocused, all indifferent, all erased

By the slow cold draft encircling the fast deserting stage

How long can I linger, when you hold the pain gently within the steady gaze

That looks beyond me, to open fields where crops trace sinuous patterns in the air

and desert me in my dreams, till you are no longer there.

Sweetest downfall.

It was a folk lore that the bride went away with the strange dark man from the mountains to see the sun step down and stretched infinitely till it died a pitch dark death. The bride stood, braving the wind, secretly guarding the simple happiness of being with the man with piercing eyes and rustic ways. They stood, her back rested against his arm, carefully casual, watching the landscapes in their hurried retreat. The sun set, the path was lost, the roads now newly learnt led them back to where they had begun. Now that it was time to say good night, he looked as indifferent as he could and she overtly happy to find other company.

I wake up, deepest night, curled senseless, listless

Fragmented in parts, lying here, tossed there

In halves, between fingers, I gaze, i see, I sense

the rupture of time, across the ramifications of fate

on my palms.

Just another dream congealed into wasteful prudence

Blink, I pray blink, turn me inside out

Paint me pretty, leave me to dry

Just another dream, crying me to sleep...

The leaves twirl as they fall, falling down in a slow sad dance

Turning its face away from the sky, dying midair, lost, out of reach

And the boughs shiver suturing heaven and earth in a cup of moonlight

And I think of how I am falling, flayed by the winds, and each

Thought bent out of shape and dragged back to the state of unity

Falling, with no prayer for release , till I become one with the night.

I have reinvented you, bit by bit, taken care to erase the notes

scribbled most carelessly on folded corners, taken time to

remove the binding, to invert our shared memory into a lifeless still.

All our summer evenings spent in reading strange new literature
smoked fashionably

taking time, between long deliberate drags to notice

the rise and fall of the nocturnes, as we progressively forget

our conversations, the noise of our words killing all thought.

Poetry dries like blood

Between pages, across miles

Pressed between your lips

Like a waif, like a tear lost between

Fingers curled infinitely into a fist.

"All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up;

that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke.

I curl myself in a box, pinstriped

Odd bits of old confetti 

toes crushed against folded photographs, the first ballerina shoe

Shiny pebbles, a movie script and chocolate wrappers

Christmas bells and torn pages of a diary.

I close my eyes to make a 

time capsule, to be buried for years till

Present thoughts become a confused smile, a memory. 

I bury me under the Rowan tree, covered by berries and speckled red flowers 

The earth growing warmer, I hear

muffled laughs of lovers or maybe little children dappled by sun and shade

I sleep.

Seasons change, the rain mixed with songs of the wind seeps through

I wish to turn, restless in my sleep

I dream of thunderstorms, barbed wires of electricity in the sky

My bones ache for green fields, damp green fields

I wish to turn

Within the closed space of the eye

I see the rain dripping through my twisted fingers

Dissolving me to absolution.

Doused by a thousand tears of a dead god. 

I feel not the weight of the berries, the red petals, troubled dreams.

Seasons change, the summer awakens me

Blind, blind fury of a midday sun

I rise, I merge, lost to the elements

Fevered by the heat, I turn

into a rain cloud

I fall

I turn

parched lands into fields of green

My blood in the earth

Fertile. 

You sit, the end of summer by your side
Filling your hands as they fall and rise
Holding my hands in harmony
To rise again for a last reprise...
Go disappear softly up the stairs
Hide behind those shadows long
Bring a souvenir from the hiding place
Or rise with mine for one last song.

Mon Amour..

Pause a while, beloved city. Wait for me to catch up, catch my breath as the time dissolves like smoke in thin air. You disappear behind alleys, across streets of concrete, between yellow taxis and peeling paints of black on walls. You flicker behind old moldy buildings, patched together with postings, windows painted garish and people trudging towards made-believe destinations. Linger closer on nondescript nights when cold hands seek earthen bhars of cha and drink in the squalor of the metropolis and the repeating hum of life. I have walked with you in muted dreams when the street lights have glowed orange and as I stepped on my shadow, my thoughts formed without effort, without meaning, without shape and the dreamscape grew dimmer as I try to hold you back.

You gave me love, moments unreflected, run-of-the-mill poetry written behind stray pages jealously hidden, bruises hidden behind practised smiles, mindless joys, fear and fever, aimless days when the limitless sky was just a tease. I have seen you ignore me as I walked down, a filler of sorts, jostling against hundreds like me. Seen your love when smiles doodle across my face just because. And mixed in the wasting afternoons, sordid with hooting monotony of everyday life, your derision at my mediocrity...

So pause awhile beloved city, pause till I catch up, catch my breath and you take me in your fold, in your arms with your clamor, and your peace, your moody blues or calico days of reeling splendor...

I

In another day, another time, another summer, or some other night when the stars hide the nocturnes of the sky. Another me, but this same you. But now turn your back to me and talk about music, poetry or of the thousands of sunsets you stayed up to see. Talk cliched, talk in jangling verses of the happy, talk without another look at me.

II

Bad girl, dirty dirty girl, what did you do. Look at me, lower your eyes, confess the truth, don't open your mouth. Walk the line, curl in your toe, hold out your hand, do what you are told. Speak your mind, think as I say, don't break free, but go away.

My lonely girl, caught in a storm
Do you hear the winds moan
The sky flashes angry tears tonight
Where do you wander all alone...
I have known your kind, lady lover
Creep out at night like a rambling witch
With ankles deep in moors discover
Cruel ways to beguile, bewitch
I saw you wander in a tawny wood
And sing incantations to the air
A woman, often misunderstood
A little evil, beyond repair
You tear assunder and recombine
Bits of me, beloved witch
Feel my vision by degrees maligned
Lying with you, doing your hitch.

I miss you
In disconnected strains of conversation
Mixed in road maps, coffee stains and
Hints of smiles behind cupped hands


You could be anywhere now
Pebbled streets, street plays or catching thoughts
Or trading lives or undoing plans
Searching with eyes shut, building with paper cuts
Screeching cars halting inches from death

Where do you wander now
Where do you die
When the tempests break
Upon the face of your sky
when poetry agitates
Or cigarette ends don't light
When you become your words
Written on a nameless night.

Summer days meant lazed afternoons on smooth cotton sheets, drawn shades, melting ice cubes clinking around a glass of sweet lime and a book from the library. A summer afternoon these days, invariably means working for some really sadistic exams and occasionally fighting the urge to woolgather. But a summer afternoon today means, taking Macadamia's tag up and posting this very special something which I have been wanting to do for a while.

The rules [for the tag] say that you’ve to post five bits of information about you which you have never shared with your blog readers before. No "I plan..." or "I hope..." here - lets look at what has already happened.

1. My all time favorite childhood book is this Raduga publisher's Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. A few years back the book got misplaced and ever since then I have frantically searched for it everywhere...from the regular book haunts around the city to book stores, college street, Golpark, you name it and chances are that I have been there.

2. Once upon a very long time, my kindergarten teacher had called ma over to break the news to the lady that probably her daughter had some learning disability...specially with English for while the other babies had graduated to T or M or some other letter, little miss Acharya would still not say her A,B,Cs. I don't blame the teacher. I was too busy climbing trees or chasing butterflies and really didn't feel the need to know A,B,C,D.

3. I can be very whimsical. And I absolutely adore dogs [yeah, I am aware that the two statements had no earthly connection. And thats two points under the same point. *smirk*]

4. I once tore my ligament, displaced my knee-cap, suffered some hair-line cracks [all in my left knee] while playing volleyball and shrugged it all off as a slightly more painful sprain. So with a crepe-bandage firmly around the much abused knee, I did nearly everything that I was not supposed to do - like trying to run around and did I mention dancing?
Needless to say my Orthopedic was mortified when I finally went to the medicine man.
[Note aside for the two doctors, the rest can go over to point 5 - I promise, the next time I will turn myself in sooner.]

5. Taking me for granted is one of the fastest ways to lose me.

Thats that. Five things. And I tag anyone ready to play.


For someone with so called learning disabilities [:D], it was really feel-good to get all those comments for Sway, Sway, Sashay. But a certain someone saved the best for last. A musical rendition of my prose, something out of my wildest imagination and totally incredible. He composed, arranged, played the instruments, sang my lines and left me feeling absolutely happy. Here is the audio-

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Sway, sway, sashay across the floor, silver microphone in your hands, your raiment of gold. Sway as your silence keeps time with the rising tenor, sway against the veil of blueish smoke. What will you sing tonight...

My darling turns away her face, watch now as my darling turns away her face, flicks ashes and licks her lips of sullen brown. And she says, her hardened hands don't move as she says, what will she sing tonight?

Have you heard there has been blood on the streets tonight? Life here as stable as tomorrow's headline. Life here in the streets of homicide. On the streets of Harlem, I passed bruised bodies slouching against a reddened wall, on the streets of Harlem I passed the girl as she kissed every curve of her lover's darkening smile, on the streets of Harlem I passed all those who adore and abuse...listen the clarinet, when will you rhapsodize the blues...

Collapse...

Living life on tuna cans, cartoon strips and roadside colors absorbed by monochrome eyes. Twirling hair, vision obstructed by the kinesis of stationary landscapes, vertical lines stretching against the wind. Streamlined thoughts lost in translation and the jangle and pop of your ramshackle grace. Hooting of trains, the shape of your mouth left on half eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich and compact discs paperweights on disconnected songs written after last night's telephone conversation. Caught in the middle of stiff pretexts , in the process of coming undone, camera shutters and bare legs throwing shadows while they dance pointlessly on mosaic floors.

Stub your cigs on the wall, make an ugly graffiti with the scorched out shards of nicotine days. Or lie in soft diffused light, lassitude never looked more sensuous and memory's focal distortions shall never find a more beautiful you. And even when the night is lost, I shall love the infant like I loved the man. And I the same maverick who hitchhiked back home in a getaway car.