As Buddha smiles, so do I...

It was definitely the blueness that called me out. Placid. Tranquil. That self-content smile of Buddha played all over the surface. And in all its serenity, the water seemed thicker than it possibly could be.

As I stepped out of the window - the wood smelt of grandma's tales - the air was so crisp, the grass cracked under the weight of my shoes. They gave in willingly, dreamily; caught inebriated in the surrealism of that winter morning. The warmth was a surprize. The sun was out and the sunshine held you warmly yet loosely. Like a lover who had known you all you life; its fingers gently exploring every edge and curve in your body. And the snow fell so lightly, it melted off your skin, leaving behind moist lips where it kissed.

The water still beckoned. In its blueness. Its softness was there for all to see. The grass, despite the morning dew and the uncertain snow, was still too sharp. So were the craggy hills behind it. In the watercoloured sky, the clouds were too sharp-edged - their edges too white in the morning shine. And the wind had a bite of coldness that pushed needles till my bones. The water, by obvious contrast, looked too soft.

Marshmallows. Cherry blossoms. A leaf dropt somewhere. Floating handkerchief. Down feather. Dandelion head. Steam rising from a warm cup of tea. Too sweet.

I was neck-deep in water now. Again, the warmth surprizes me. And the ripples i leave on my wake don't move too far, nor too fast. They seem too lazy to fight the thickness. Too pacified by Buddha's unknowing smile. I walk forward. Even deeper.

The Buddha is everywhere. His presence, everything.

I do not choke as i reach underwater. The water for all its swaddling thickness, has by now wafted to ether. I can still feel its thickness around me, and its touch. It feels like I am walking in a thick breeze that hugs me, wraps its soft arms around me. I see clearly. Too clearly to be underwater. And then I pause.

I can definitely feel it happening. That irrational heart-scoffing fear when you lose something you prize the most. Feel myself losing out. Not that it was material. Not that I ever valued them when they existed. Not that I never wished them to be torn away. But the loss... The contradiction dawns. They were all I had gathered all through my life. They were my unsigned bank cheques, my unnamed appartment, my framed sepia photographs. They were my promise for the future.

As I stood at the bottom of the lake of tears, I felt it all getting thicker, all around me. The wrapped arms hugging tighter. And I felt my memories, my hopes, my dreams turning into ether. Warm. Mellow. Soft. My vision's now clearer than ever. I could see each wrinkle, scar, bemused smile, buried sorrow, as my memories float around me. Away from me. I can see each molecule. The electron cloud. I feel I am being one with them.

As the lake opened its eyes to the watercoloured sky, on it played the Buddha's self-contented smile.

Betraying the cause.

Causality

The relationship of cause and effect

The principle that nothing can happen without being caused

There was blood seeping

Tracing lines along the grains in the wood

And marking out the cracks in the floorboards.

Blood spewing out of his half-open mouth

And his bleeding nose.

His eyes were half-closed.

Half-open.

Staring aimlessly,

Trying to make meaning out of the rust patterns drawn into the bottom of the refrigerator door.

Trying in vain to substantiate life

And place pins, and hold it down,

And dissect its viscera

As he lay, dissected himself,

In a pool of blood.

His blood.

The blood of the cause.

The high-octane fuel that once charged

That turbocharged mind of his

Which identified, improvised, illustrated, illuminated.

No doubt he started it.

His mind was the manifesto,

And here lay, bread and wine,

And a thousand delusions which escaped the confining quotations

And puzzling citations within that psychical text.

Now with the knife staved deep in his chest,

It still was not easy.

Cutting a shredded line through his heart and his left lung.

Blood oozed out.

Filling the chest cavity.

Pulmonary oedema.

His lungs compressed, filling up with blood themselves.

As he choked on the high-octane fuel

That kept spilling though his breath now.

The blood wrote histories on the ground.

Stories he meant to achieve.

Walk in front of them, at the head of the procession.

His chest bared open to bullets

And cannon-fire.

Wrote tales of forgotten beds

And forsaken love.

The story of a cause

And how it made sense of the world to him.

How he tried to make them see it.

All they heard was a mad man's ravings.

All they saw was a path paved to their grave.

The knife plunged into his heart.

Soft and warm; and red with blood.

Allegropolis. Episode Four. Upturning the Fishbowl.

The fishbowl of existence. That unabated sense of euphoria substantiated - matter and the immaterial - within the inebriated minds of a million memory-impaired goldfish. The nauseating sense of aloneness. Sobriety in the middle of energy-pumping rave party. Ohh!! the flashing lights... The blacklights and the numbing baseline... Elliptic Epilepsy. My head spins. Counterclockwise. Understanding what lies beyond - the real substantial. They wont listen. Bluddy senseless goldfish. They are caught in the dream. Between the non-existent past and the stillborn future, their world is a stretched out elastic band of a present. the tension tears through my being. [T = mg cos A + mv2/l]. I run for the restroom. Nausea.

The band snaps. The fishbowl topples to a side, water pouring down its side.

Water drips down my face as I step away from the washbasin.

The Lassitude and Longi(ng)tude of Loneliness

On retrospection, he felt certain he must have left his mind behind. The take-away counter, most probably, he thought to himself.

But, he didn't realize it then.

When he stood there, in the busy bazaar -

Shoulders bustling for space

A stream of rickshaws blaring air horns

The bickering of women and vendors

And catcalls of a few who leaned by the stalls scanning the crowd

The occasional whistle of the policeman

The ringing bells of cycles snaking their way through the crowd

The unmistakable market scent

Of incense, jaggery, sweat, salt,

Rotten cabbages, fresh fish and soiled paper -

This heady concoction of sensory perceptions we so distanced and muted, he felt he might have been overhearing someone else's thoughts. Again he didn't realize it then, 'cause his mind was elsewhere.

Resting on the clean grazed stainless steel and glass take-away counter, shuddering to the unusual chill, his mind was dreaming. And creating those exquisitely intricate dreamscapes it so often indulged in.

Her warm kiss of sunlight on his neck.

Her gentle breeze running frail fingers through his hair.

Her lazy sleepy waves whispering music to his ears.

Her scent was a valley of flowers and rain and sunshine.

Her hair, waves of an ocean in night.

As he stood in the marketplace, the summer sun turning the world a monotony of white, he was searching for secrets and truth, for reason and meaning, as he looked into the endless depths of her eyes. In those few moments of lazy transcendency, of silent mournful longing, he was the loneliest person on the planet.

Yet, he remembered vividly that he was with her the whole while.

Leftovers and Left-Behinds. Surviving a Revolution.

The table was rickety as it was, being put together from discarded bottle crates with boards nailed on top. A very certain tremor quivered over its surface when he banged his fists and pushed his chair back. The knife clanged on the ceramic plate, in tune with the distant church bells that centuries ago used to warn the villagers when the malevolent Putana prepared to spew smoke and flame and brimstone; that ominous note of dark skies, grey ash and blood red earth. A few crumbs of bread floated off and rested peacably on the table.

Peace.

The tip of the cigarette burnt bright red as he pulled in a drag.

The ash broke off and floated off with the dry desiccating breeze.

His eyes were fixed on the horizon.

She looked elsewhere, searching for an answer. Searching for a reason despite all the illogicalness that shrouded the age. Her nose twitched at the familiar tinge of cigarette smoke carried over by the wind.

Peace.

She sat at the table, brushing that lock of hair off her face. Her fingers ran through her scalp, entangled themselves in that forest of melancholy.

He was inside. Could hear the cupboards being slammed shut. Rustle of papers shoved down into a bag. The sharp click of the lighter as another cigarette was lit. The faint memory of smoke trails out of the shack again.

She did not feel sad. Just a sense of time catching up. An intense feeling of tiredness; like when you sit down halfway through a marathon you did not have the lung to finish. A knowing recognition that they could not outrun time, especially when one of them was perennially straining back and looking over his shoulder.

Peace.

And the the tale of silent evasion.

Of hiding away from time.

Trying to find

An island of recluse

From fire, and hell,

And brimstone

And the vicious anger,

Hatred, greed,

And that indefatigably alluring

Hold of ideology

And idealism.

The dream of peace.

She remembered. The tantalizingly melodious sound of the stream. Carving secrets on the pebbles and whispering them to the trees. She remembered his fingers tracing lines on the water; the same way they would draw lines down her back. And her neck.

That distant summer afternoon, long before the paradox of peace confronted them with its brutal banality, she remembered him writing their dreams in the water. She remembered how their dreams seemed to take tangible shape in the dexterousness of his fingers. And how they were washed away. Caught in that flux of time.

When he stepped out of the house, he was the very college boy she had fallen in love with in University.

His eyes were evasive;

Shy.

His face half-turned.

The unkempt hair.

That forest of melancholy.

And the overgrown stubble.

He slung his bag high

Over his shoulders.

Closed his eyes

Not to meet hers.

His footsteps downhill

An ill-tuned verse.

A fly with blue wings

And the leftovers.

When she left out her cry of anguish, he was too far to hear. Too far to turn back. Too far to meet her eyes, hold her waist and kiss her neck. Her voice was a strained violin note trying to drown the silence that engulfed her in that forested melancholy.

Silent Mind and the Midday Shade

The words were always there.

Laid out

And arranged

Like the gleaming silver cutlery

On the pressed linen tablespread.

Surgically sterile

Tools to cut,

Slice,

Chop,

Tear,

Stir,

Scoop,

And dish out

Reality in more palatable

Versions of the truth.

They were blunt in their sharpness.

But they were always there.

I never thought of them.

Never repeated them

A hundred-and-twenty-two times

Each day

As I scrubbed myself down with soap.

They were always there,

Dancing,

Even before the thoughts

Remained unthought of.

Like the shadows

Dancing on the tablecloth

As the trees romanced with the midday sun.

As if that shadow play

Had started much before

I was called over for lunch.

Or maybe even before the sun even rose today.

The mist of memories

Fall down as worded raindrops

And spill ink

Into a dictionary of incoherence.

I sat in the shade

Of that redundant romance

And saw a rainbow

Staining the midday sky.

Allegropolis. Episode Three. The Bridge over Lethe.

The bridge stretched forever, a thread of light held taut between civilization and the blind horizon. The rain was beating down on my hat; streams of water cascading off its rim. Through the curtain of water, I saw the blackness of Lethe pummeled white by the torrential downpour.

Allegropolis, where everyone smiled. Flanked on either side by the endless blackness of Lethe. And Lethe, that seemed to stretch till forever. Lethe, so wide that its banks disappeared beyond the horizon. The raindrops added to its width, and depth.

The water cycle. Evaporation. Precipitation. Evaporation. As I stood by the siderails, water running down my chin, the black oblivion seemed to be soft velvet. Somewhere i could sink in. Where the blackness would wrap me up. Hold me swaddled (or shrouded) in its womb.

Lethe was so full of thoughts, reflections, remembrances, recollections. So saturated, the words and letters got so muddled up, they no longer made sense. The raindrops were words too. Words cast out of mind. Words on exile. For in Allegropolis, all should smile.

The lights of Lethe were upon me. A psychedelic concoction of joyousness. As I looked back through the mirror, I saw that gilden thread of light fading into the white sheet of rain, somewhere in the middle of Lethe.

Lacing my shoes

I wished
The light night breeze would carry,
Softly swaddled,
The scent of your hair
Through the thickness of the air.
I wished
The words you dropt,
Casually strewn,
Would turn the black asphalt
Into a clear starry sky.
I wished
The air was as liquid,
And feather-light,
That it may blow off
My thoughts, hopes and memories.
But my shoelaces
Are entangled,
And I trip and fall
And wake up bruised.
The air was thicker
Than the blood on my arm,
As it spoke to me,
A voice deafeningly calm -
Ain't it better that you walk alone?
It better 'cause
The air ain't thicker
When you wont take away my breath.
The wind blows softer
Not ODing on crystal meth.
At least
Though i trip on my laces,
I dont fall over the words
You left on the ground...

Contemplations on Trance Music

The tones play on.
Muted melancholy.
The residual silence
Of some 140 beats per minute
Trying to
Shape the air into comprehension.
The beats were meaningless.
Some abstraction.
Craving to make sense
To seem significant
In the ensuing and preceding silence.
I was listening
To those
140 momentary spasms
Of silence.
Silence chopped violently into pieces.
Those 140 tiny moments
That paused with pulsating energy.
Like a heart.
Holding back to pump life
Down the veins.
The track peaks.
The violence is shudderingly real.
And once it breaks...
Oh bliss.
My heart falls back to its lazy rhythm.
The turntable is melting into haziness.

Their eyes were watching god

So says Hmmmbug.

As god was working his divine rearside off, trying to replicate his abode on earth, as he twisted clay within his hands and made out his divine image in two ungaily stickmen, those eyes didnt comment on his craftsmanship. If god was a better sculptor, we would have been living in paradise. He was the prodigious kid. He was also the prodigal son. Those eyes waited for him to falter. For him to fall on his knees, in frustration, for failing to be the promise he was born as.

God could have made a better sculpture. His fingers very nimble, dexterous. He simply chose not to. Thus was his revenge. We are collateral damage of god's self-exacted revenge on those formless eyes forcing him to form.

On a Green Meadow on a Misty Afternoon

The clear blue lake spread out in front of him. And beyond them, the distant blue hills paled until they merged and became one with the clouds and the pallid blue afternoon sky. The lake rippled in the breeze and the sunlight sparkled off the lapping waves.

He didnt know why he had to be here. Why now. He simply had that urge to escape. Run away from those thousand and five invisible hounds that all but clipped his heels. He was tired from running away. But it was even more tiresome staying where he was. And now as he left his body loose, stretched out on the bright green grass of that endless meadow, he felt like had left the lot behind, and maybe his body too. A feeling of transcendental bliss.

He sat up. Picked up that pebble lying next to him. This pebble too must have chosen to run away someday, and laid himself down by this lake until he became a fossil of his existence, he thought to himself. He felt its smooth cold texture on his palm, felt the weight of a thousand years that had polished him to compliance. He took a breath and launched the pebble towards the lake.

He wanted to see the pebble skim over the surface. Instead, the pebble plinked down to the bottom of the lake at the first bounce. Its ripples cut a swathe through the tepid waves that lapped the bank.

The anticipation of expectancy. That longing for perfection, of a perfectly smooth pebble skimming over the fragile surface of that dreamy blue lake, endlessly, until it disappeared over the horizon into the mist that shrouded the hills. It was not to be, for the pebble wished otherwise. It was an outcast like himself.

The frustration of a thousand shackling dreams, the bewildering anticipation of a thousand hopeful fingers that tore their way through the ground, pointing him the path they wanted him to take. And groping for his feet while he tried to trample over them. The thousand blades of grass all around all pointed skywards, that pinnacle of perfection.

His eyes were rooted far away in the distance. Across the lake where he had willed the pebble to go. Do the blades of grass point skywards there too?! Or may perhaps someone might send the stone skimming back from the far bank, through that veil of mist?

At the bottom of the lake, the fossil finally found solace among many more of its sort who didnt make it to the other bank.

Allegropolis. Episode Two. The Wholly Trinity.

I wait. Stretching myself out on one of the long wood and cast iron park benches. The bench is cold. No one usually sits and waits. Waiting is in the temporal. The past. No pauses for the future any longer. The wooden backrest bites into my back. Cold venomous reality. The electric trains are cold embodiments of ruthless efficiency. Silent as a cocked gun waiting to explode. But all i hear is an implosion of silence. The muted conundrum of bustling voices do not count. I throw my head back, and watch the sunshine pierce in like coloured spears of joy through the stained glass ceiling. City of Joy indeed.

I wonder. Had we all forgotten what joy means? Maybe it meant the same all along. Is joy satisfaction, being content with who or what you are, what you have? Life without the complaint box and the "Articles once bought need not be returned/exchanged" tag. Or does it mean anything further... is it that long forgotten sense of euphoria, that half-drugged break from reality when the stained glass ceiling seems all so brighter and soaked deeper and thicker in colour than it actually is? But then, can the ceiling get any more brighter. Its already washed in the mid-morning sunshine. Can joy actually exist in the City of Joy, where things cant get any better?!

Forgive. Forsake. Forget.

The Wholly Trinity.

The three incinerating truths etched on the scratch-proof grazed steel walls of every alley, penthouse and ghetto in Allegropolis.

Forgive for you wish to be forgotten.

Forsake 'cause thyself is all that is real.

Forget... well... forget 'cause the past never exists, nor existed.

We are all unfettered creatures soaking in the warm sunshine and strained colours of unalleviating joy, caught in a limbo of satisfied imperfection. Here lies the precursor to perfection, taking pride in being what you are. Perfect becomes what you are. And it cant cant get better than this.

The park bench is warm now. I lift myself up. My face is stained in myriad of streaming colours as i smile. Allegropolis, there is something about the city that makes me smile. And i am the last cynic left in the world.

Allegropolis. Episode One.

The city of joy.

Allegropolis is not Calcutta, please.

It just translates to "the city of joy".

I step out on the platform.

The train is delightfully late.

But from when did time ever matter.

There are no clocks here.

Those relics of wooden cuckoo clocks do survive.

So does the clock tower.

The dials do remain.

The needles which ran around, skipping from number to number,

Pointlessly,

Merely to reach back where they started.

They are no longer there.

Pointlessness can be joy,

But not when you are pointlessly in a hurry.

Contradiction One.

The Clock tower chimes.

It chimes for joy.

It chimes whenever it feels like it.

There are no birds any longer

To chime for joy any more.

The metallic song of the clock tower will have to do.

Have to do?!

So can there be happiness in compromise?

Has to do.

Contradiction Two.

Chat Discourses on PseudoMetaphysics and the Human Ontology.

silence: i can't go on like this

have lost all motivation

me: chchey!!

silence: so want a break

me: whats wrong now?!!

silence: sigh

me: yeah thats the problem with our generation

the general apathy towards life and ambitions

silence: but i am not like this

me: hehehe

so we all say

silence: usually i'm fired to do things

me: you just became postmodern

silence: now i don't feel like reading what i have to anymnore

me: yes yes

welcome to the world

silence: want to read some literature, study for NET and live somewhere else without much worries for sometime

me: hmmm

wokay wokay

do it then

silence: and it is also in my birthcard that from 21-5 of this year to 07-12, i 'll have a time of restlessness and moving away

me: hahhaha!!

then drift along a while

anyway i am off

silence: i should, but towards the better :)

me: hehehe

theres nothing is better and all anyway

its all just pretensions

make-belief

see i ll give and analogy

its just like smelling a flower while walking along a road

it smelt good

but fact is you were just breathing

and it happened to smell nice

silence: see, i was not online

so come again with the analogy

me: and you would have breathed anyway and have to breathe anyway

shit

see the good things in life

are like smelling a flower while walking along a road

it smells nice

but eventually it was just that you were taking a breath

and it happened to smell nice

and whether it smelt nice or not

you woulda taken a breath and moreover couldnta helped but take a breath

thats all

life is all about breathing

in and out

silence: ya, i believe in the cosmic connection which exists between your nose, the flower and the moment u decided/involuntarily took the breath

me: thats all there is to it

nothing of that sort

if the cosmic connection willed that you were not to smell the rose

it wouldnt make any difference at all

you prolly wouldnta even noticed there was a rose worth smelling by the road

silence: exactly

so, that is imp

me: in no way at all

if you were oblivious to the smell of the rose

the rose never existed for you

silence: then there is no rose

me: and you go on in life

silence: and how do we become oblivious?

me: breathing as you go

silence: karma, my son, karma!!

me: hehhee!!

it just depends on why we chose that path

and that might have a little to do with our past

but hardly ever

it has more to do with our future

if you think about it

coz we always choose paths to reach somewhere faster

or take our time and delay the trrp

silence: but our idea of what is fast, and how fast it will be in a life that is at the same time snail paced and blowing away in centuries, that is karmic, my son

me: we always do have the faculty of choice

but that doesnt mean we may get run over by a bus coz we did some incomprehendable mistake in our past

based on a choice

the universe is far more random and chaotic than that

if there exists an order, it is that of chaos

we wont see that in everyday events

but put everything that happens around together

and thats the picture you get

and hence no better or worse

silence: but who controls our choice? where in the oceans shall w unravel the real mystery of agency? who decides for us? the well perceiving faculty, oh, aren't they just five in an unknown zillins? or is it the time that decides for us? the time that comes to us like a srtorm or as a child's cry, as a hushed up moan oin bed, or as the silent naughty half look of a girl by the way?

me: hehehe

silence: can i copy this chat?

me: hehehe

yeah yeah

hahhaa!!

now you ve thrown me off track

yeah lemme get back to it

aah

so time...

and how we perceive and react

well when we are placed in certain social and ethical circumstances

some choices are made for us already

the choice of the system

the system that tries to find order in the whole entity of existence

hehehe

yeah

its a futile human attempt

and if time seems to decide what we want in life

that is because the systme wants us to believe that is what we want at that particular moment in time

and so the next question naturally would be

why should we look for order

silence: no no

me: then??

silence: what i said is not that we decide to suit the ytime, but the time decides for us

me: as in time brings forth events that determine our life??

silence: also

me: hmmm

that again is a futile human attempt to find order

cause time in itself is arbitrary

silence: exactly

me: and we create time in order to dispell our fear

silence: so, being a karmic, as our conversation proves, is a way of being pomo :)

me: how come?!

hehhee

silence: bcoz, both tend to be taking away metanarratives from human effort

in fact, even slightly hinting at the randomness of time

me: karma hints at anything but the randomness of time

silence: that's true

me: the only randomness of time advocated by kramonc theory is that

silence: but we wil tweak it a bit for concensus :)

me: i ll strike you but you dunno when

hehehe

wokay wokay let that be then

anyway lemme wind up

saying

we exist coz we do

we live just coz we have already breathed the next breath

silence: against ourt own fears, i'l add

me: philosophical pseudometaphorical discourses make me very hungry

metaphysical that is

i really have to go off now

lunch awaits

bye now

see you later

silence: don't call it pseudo!!!

me: hehehe!!

okay okay

will be redundant then i see!!

hhahaa!!

silence: :)

me: bye now!!

silence: bbye

Arial Black

{Tragedy is like rocket science. Quite (cry)ogenic it is.}

{Silence. I am listening to hear the fan swear.}

{Safety pin, they call it. Only pricks prick!!}

{Arial Black. Poseidon White.}

{sin sin sin sin sin x. Trigonometric damnation.}

{Elephants have big ears 'cause they can't close their eyes with their hands.}

{Peekaboo... Fuck you too!!}

{Silence. Telepathic message sent. Yeah, so what were you telling me?}

{Cant you see the full-stop?! Or do you expect anything more??}

{There it is. The Full Stop.}

Going back to rhyme

As i hold back my voice,

And lose what is mine;

Wish for a choice,

And end up resigned,

Wish i could turn back the time,

And go back to rhyme.

When clock shows its thirteen,

And my twelve hours bespent,

The world with its spleen

And its seething resent,

Makes me bitter as a lime.

'O, if i could go back to rhyme.

My feet feel the weight

As my boots drag me down.

I bite back the hate,

And iron out my frown.

I wait for the chime,

When i can go back to rhyme.

Hope and persuasion

Eats up your dreams.

I wish for fascination

But end up in screams.

To flip off the dime

I have to go back to rhyme.

When the air gets too thick

To fill up my lung.

The dust has to lick

The taste off your tongue.

To wipe off the slime,

I go back to rhyme.

As the thoughts that were snow,

Fall down as chalk.

I search high and low

For a key and a lock.

Can't lose what i'm

Must now go back to rhyme.

Once, in those days of innocence of yore, i used to write exclusively in rhyme. And now, i have probably, to put it conveniently, grown out of it. The truer fact is, rhyme is too beautiful a thing to capture the cruel ruggedness of life or whatever jazz. Rhyme is too innocent. Rhyme is perfection. Rhyme is that spotless framed sepia picture of childhood, that smiles at you, capturing the thoughtless joy of the moment and pretending it will last for all time to come. Rhyme is capricious. A piece of nostalgia. And now, you can just look back and smile at it.

This poem is a vain attempt to go back to rhyme. I need not be sorry, or feel pathetic about it. I can just laugh at my vanity to turn back time... Hehehe...

For the Leprechaun's Remembrance

All events and incidents in this blog post are non-fictional. The characters in this post are based on a non-fictional insect termed Pyropyga Nigricans and a not-so-fictional Irish folklorish fairy.

Every night my lights go off post-three in the morning. All is quiet and silent. Except the steady wheezing of my fan, as it kept dizzily spinning, spinning daisies on my ceiling. And the calender leaves rustling in the wheeze. I can hear the rainy wetness outside. But thats just part of the silence.

As a rule i hate LEDs in the dark. Part of my obsessive compulsiveness. They seem too bright. And they catch my eyes and refuse to let go. Too bright i tell you. But i have gotten used to the LED indicator of my UPS, blinking steadily to show its charging up for tomorrow. In a way its kinda reassuring, and i never am sure in what way.

And then the last few days, i noticed something else. After i turned off the lights, i could see a yellow-green light blinking timidly on the floor. Searching and yearning. Yet. too tired to fly and float up towards the yellow-green LED on the table. Too scared to be disheartened and disillusioned. The firefly would always be there, under my chair right next to the computer table. And every night i ll switch on the light, get outta my covers to check on it, to hold its warmthless light within my hands. To share its longing and find its belonging. But once, the light came on, the magic disappeared. Evanescence of light, and that wickedly humourous sense of euphoria that only pure magic can create. The firefly turned into the soft-bodied leathery beetle that Wikipedia says it is.

The Leprechaun had left that speck of gold when he crept into my room at night. The rain was lashing outside and he wanted to be remembered.

Remebrances of a conversation that floated away with the wind

I remember the stone steps that led up the cliff.

I remember the drone of the sea.

I remember the sun drowning itself and spilling its vermilion blood all over the sea.

I remember the sky trying to be too many colours and moods at once.

I remember the grey-pink waves turning into white froth as they crashed head-first onto the rocks below.

I remember the wind carrying whispered secrets from the waves to the hills.

I remember the wisps of smoke trailing from my lit cigarette.

I remember the wind eating up the smoke, and blowing her hair onto her face.

Her hair... I remember the sun turning her black strands of hair gold by magic alchemy.

I remember how her delicate fingers tucked her locks behind her ears.

I remember that her ears looked transparently pink, and reminded me of a conch in cross-section.

I remember how the sun glistened on her lips as each word floated gently with the wind.

I remember that the wind took the words away from me.

Words strewn in the wind.

I was too engrossed watching as the words dissected themselves.

I saw the syllables float off alone, the lone letter suspended in animation, twirling and soaring up and beyond.

I remember smiling.

The voice of disinterest.

Mundane talk.

Talking because the silence is too unnerving.

Because we think the silence is unknowing.

Scattering words, hoping it will fill the couple of metres of space between us.

Nevertheless, it was silent; except for the drone of the sea, as the waves whispered secrets to the hills.

Dust

I am asthmatic. At least on paper. I never really get a bout of wheezing unless i get caught in a dusty environment. They say i am allergic to dust. I am fascinated by dust. Dusty hard-bound red books in tall library shelves. Dusty windowpanes where you can behind streaks of light when you run your fingers over them. Dusty fans which look like pinwheels as they spin above you as you stare aimlessly. Those shiny particles of dust that look like floating honeydew in blocks of sunlight that stream through the leaves.

Dust. I hate dust too. It is so static. I denotes stagnancy. Oblivion is difficult, but dust pisses me off. 'Cause you remain as a relic begging to be remembered, not yet lost, refusing to get lost in time. I hate blowing the dust off every time. Though i like seeing the dust play in light again.

And at times, the dust gets to me. I suffocate. The air grows thicker and my lungs go so small it can hardly go smaller to push the air out. The air stagnates within my body. Sediments dust. I cough, but it is an exertion. I try to breathe, but why is the air so fucking heavy?!!

I am stifled. Straitjacketed. The room is big. The windows open. Words float around like those shimmering particles of dust. Golden specks of happiness. I am disgusted. The air suffocates me. Why are they stealing the air i breathe? Or is it that the air is too thick with words when i dont want to speak any? The windows are open. I suffocate.

I hold a kerchief to my nose. To keep away the dust. And the stench. I walk out graciously.

Ctrl. Alt. Shift. Escape. Delete.

I am what i was

I was Nature.
Air, Water and Earth, wafted and baked under the fiery sun.
I was the primeval sea.
Pangaea.
I was the mucky gene pool where life took form.
I was life.
I was the Primordial Sin.
I was the 160 ton sandstone boulder that crowned the Pyramid.
I was also the slave who dragged it and the mason who chiseled it into shape.
I was gunpowder.
I was fireworks, and so was i cannon-fuel.
I was the besieged.
I was the battering ram that broke through the ramparted gateway.
I was the river.
And the sea, and the ships that sailed across them,
Unfurling their sails to catch the wisps of air
That I breathed out.
I was the gentle summer rain.
And the scorched plain that begged for salvation.
I was salvation.
I never knew who I was.

Anyway, leaving behind the cliched rhetoric, here's what I know what i really was.
I was born in 1947 (No... this has nothing to do with "Midnight's Children"... i consider it a grossly overrated book).
I was 16 when they napalmed Vietnam.
I was 20, when it was the Summer of Love.
"If you are going to San Fransisceo... Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair..."
I was a hippie.
I was living-in, being-in during the Second Summer of Love.
I was arrested during the Emergency.
I was silenced.
I died in 1988 in a freak accident involving a stationary car, a sinking freight train and a ship that derailed at the docks.
And i was reborn.
I am what I was.

I am the wind. I am the rain. I am the silence of the sun that leaves your shadow on the plain.

Gall bladder

Listen to my voice.

Yeah the vicious screech you hear at the back of your head.

Noise.

Static in the radio station.

Hear it.

Try to listen to it, rather than tuning into another channel.

Can you hear the words?

I cant hear them myself.

I spat them out in such spite.

Such anger and frustration.

No one tunes into noise anyway.

And no one can tell channels apart if there was

No noise in between.

I am not philanthropic.

I do not claim to be a bluddy Messiah.

I am so selfish i keep my words to myself,

While i tune into FM stations.

And when i do speak,

It comes out

Unpractised

Garbled words.

They forsake me.

Cheats.

And i scream out

'Cause i cannot cry.

The screech.

Its drilling through my ears.

Its too sharp

Sharp as cut glass

And clear

In spite of all the disturbance.

Pain.

Tune it.
Tune out.

Switch off.

My channel doesnt have any audience rating.

Ridiculing the riddle

Poor enigmatic Riddle.

She puzzled them.

Her lips moved to the tune of some self-sung hymn.

Her smile knowing.

Her eyes held a truth which they refused to see.

Poor Riddle.

They laughed at her

'Cause they didn't understand her.

They never got the truth 'cause it was simpler than they thought.

Riddle just wanted them to look within themselves.

They blamed her for it.

Called her strange.

Smirks. Sniggers. And an occasional wink.

And the truth poured down her cheek as two twinkling teardrops.

White vintage down the side of a long-stemmed wine glass.

Gundrop silence.

The wooden stock was gleaned smooth. Smoothened out by the many sweaty arms against which it had leaned while its sight zoned in on its target. It was worn out. But AK's never get too worn out. The wooden stock. The cold steel muzzle. Its weight so delicately balanced by the bulk of the magazine. It felt right.

He could feel blood surging up his temples. Hear it foot-tap to the rhythm of his heart. And he remembered her face. Her delicately arched eyebrows. And her eyes which held that ocean of truth.

He could hear them come. The footsteps crunching in the gravel. The courtyard. The sun blared in through the window with a vicious violence. Sharp shadows. Sharper footfalls. He held the rifle. The magazine clicked into place. It felt right.

He could hear his deep breaths. Feel his chest heaving. And yet so silent. The gravel crunching in the courtyard. And he remembered her face. Her peach skin so soft beneath his fingers. Her cheeks turning cherry pink with his touch.

He clicked off the safety. Leaned out of the window. Arms resting on the rough grainy windowsill. The weight of the gun. The sunlight streaking, turning his eyebrows gold as he trained his eyes down the sight. Pulled trigger. TISSHHK. A puff of smoke. And a body fell limb in the courtyard. Pulled back the safety. Eyes trained again. It felt right.

Sweat trickling down his brow. Legs cramped. He sees the flare as a gunshot is fired. A volley of bullets. The windowsill splinters. The windowpane bursts into sharp bits of sunshine.

Her face... Her lips curled into that half-amused smile.

No more heartbeats. No deep breaths. No sweat down his brow.

Gundrop silence.

Soft

I walked through the rubble
And pick up a feather.
Light, soft, fragile -
An instrument of flight dropped.
It seems misplaced.
Lying gingerly, half-willingly,
Waiting to float away
With the slightest of persuasion,
While all around it
My world lies in static destruction.
The feather is too white
In the middle of the grey
As the sun shines down on it
Painfully.
I ma standing on
Crumbled walls,
Reinforced concrete blown to powder
By explosions whiter than the sun,
Charred bricks,
Splintered window frames,
Bent girders, Twisted ambitions,
Broken dreams.
I stand atop vanity
And vainly, I hold
The vane and ponder:
How the feather stayed so light
Unburdened by longings
And desires.
How it stayed so soft
When it had been dropped behind
So ignobly, so ungratefully.
How it stayed so fragile
When around it
Metal and stone blew as dust.
Dust.
But the feather is
Lying on its back.
No dust blows into its eyes.
Its eyes are turned up,
And all it sees
Is a clear blue sky
Caressed by smooth white clouds.

Typographic error

click-click-click click-click click-click-click

dup-dup dup-dup-dup dup-dup-dup-dup

the letters appeared on screen magically as my fingers ran across the keypad. its nice to see them there. i can see the words surging from my mind down to my fingertips. i can see them, i can touch their curved-straight edges onscreen. i wish i could take them out and hold them in my hand, feel their weight, how the earth pulls them to itself.

selfish earth. takes back everything. i think the earth 'cause i feed on it. the earth is part of me much more than i am part of it. it owns me.

tied to it by unseen cords, unknown kinships. gravity pulls you down to itself. and earth finally swallows you up, to spit you out somewhere else.

i am immortal.

the words are appearing one by one.

click-click dub-dub

keys crunching. heart beating. earth waiting.

typographic error.

Sweet Rust

It is excessively warm. Sweaty warm. I lean on the wall and leave behind a glaring pink-orange-red streak of rust.

:

:

:

Lick the rust off your fingertips. I have been leaving behind too many fingerprints. Traceable back to unique me. And they stare back at me from the oddest of place. There are rust-stains on my jeans where I had wiped the sweat off my hand.

The smell of rust wafted from my fingertips. Nauseating, but allurring all the same. I tasted it gingerly. It was a mixture of that tingling taste of sweat, the musty blood taste of iron and a rare sweet taste - like putrid jaggery. A heady winey mix.

:

:

:

I licked my fingers again. Finger lickin good. I closed my eyes and can see sweet pink rust. Two-dimensional candyfloss

Wanted to write a new blog entry. But all I feel like doing now is SuperPoking...

Tickle me, pickle me, sickle me, popsicle me

Clause One: Tickle me

'Cause i wanna know you care

Clause Two: Pickle me

'Cause i dont wanna turn to rot

Clause Three: Sickle me

'Cause i wanna feel i am worth

Clause Four: Popsicle me

'Cause i wanna to feel the cold

Clause Five: The one that didn't make it to the title

I dunno what i want, and what i dont

Clause Six: Santa Clause

Be good, and you get a present.

Clause Seven: The Corollary

Be in the present, and you ll be good.

Feeling my way through clouds

I am apprehensive. Scared of taking the next step. Scared of even moving. Not because i can't see. Not 'cause of what lies ahead of me. Rather 'cause of all i had left behind. They stare behind my back. Stare right to that dark uneasy corner of my mind that we all call the conscience. I wish it was like an appendix... disposable.

The sunshine is dampended. Soaked and suffocated. Apprehensive.

The thoughts pop up once in a while. They silently whisper. So low that only i can hear. More memories. Contemplations of memories. Wonder why i let things go. Wonder why they seem so far. Another life apart. Did i live through them? Or am i just watching a dull video taken in grainy grayscale?

Fragmented moments in time. Faded photographs. Pictures stained an antique sepia from all the coffee spilt on them. Coffee that kept me awake through all the nights when all i wanted to do was close my eyes and sleep. Tell the rest of the world to go to hell and be damned. I staeyed awake then. Groping my way down the stairway railings.

That ephemeral illusion of love. Muted converations between friends. The uneasy silence which creeps in and shouts so hard, your ears go numb.

There are clouds at my feet. Clouds all around me. I am afraid to turn back and look. I might make phantoms appear from the clouds, when there are none.

I am not guilty. I do not regret. Apprehension.

I might dissolve and disappear someday like a wisp of smoke from a dying candle.

I ask for forgiveness. The supernova has to happen.

Hyper in a diaper

Hyper:(Gk.) Over, beyond, overmuch, above measure

Hyper-activity
Hyper-sensitivity
Hyper-perceptivity
Hyper-reality

Realizing a level of existence that doesn't exist. Or maybe does, but is beyond.
Comprehension. Perception. Understanding. Imagining. Describing. Deriding. Feeling. Believing. ing.
We comprehended. percieved, understood, imagined, described, derided, felt, and believed.
Its existence.
When we were born.
Into reality. Into under, wintin, underless, in measure.
We grew out of it.
We forgot. We no longer know.
Hyper.

Hush, said the clouds...

Secrets are not meant to be spoken out loud. We whisper them to ourselves, in that dreadful conspiratorial tone that reeks of self-sedition. Truth which breaks the constitution of our existence. Dark secrets. Those chapters half written, and given up, because they had too much of truth to stay in that diary of lies that makes up our lives. We keep those pages to ourselves 'cause only a few can even decipher the scraggy scrawny handwriting that came out in a few frenzied moments of furious clairvoyance.

I tried shouting my secrets out to the sky. The world didn't stop to listen. They were half-writing pages on their diaries while my pages, with all their scraggy words, fanned and fluttered in the wind and were shat and spat and scattered across random pavements across the globe. Footprints and dusty shoemarks over yellowed paper and curvy blue letters.

Only the clouds heard me. It rained. The blue letters melted away and trickled down the drains...