Remembering Macedonia. Chapter Two. The Glacier and the Jungle.

And Alex was standing at the door, half torn off its hinges. His summer blue eyes were locked on me, transfixed by this wild beast of dark and dreams and nightmares.

Blue cold eyes.
Distant planets in their orbs,
Or satellites in space
Watching everything unseen,
Clutched in place by those
Talon-like eyebrows.
Admiring,
Yet questioning.
Eyes too sharp,
Trained on reading
The blank eternities of space and meaning
That lay between the lines
Of the printed page.

I hated the gall of him. His questioning stare that seemed to lay me bare and dig claws and talons deep into my flesh and pull out my innards in some sort of grotesque pagan ritual sacrifice. The cold neutrality of the hard altar stone. Would just have walked over to him and pummelled his head so hard, all that would be left would be a cracked bone bowl of thick lukewarm porridge.
But those eyes knew too much. And beneath the self-controlled serenity those eyes knew what I was doing. They burnt with the same blue heat of the Bunsen burner and the alpine glacier.

I dropped that ragdoll of a head. Stamped the light out of it with one languid step of my heavy foot and felt the crunching sureness of dislocated teeth and pulverised bones. Reached out for the beer bottle on the table and walked over to Alex, meeting the icy glacier stare of his with the warm fetid swampy jungle of mine.

What followed, as they say, was the history of man.

Remembering Macedonia. Chapter One. The Colosseum of Dirt.

Still remember the day I first met Alex. My eyes were blurred by the sweat dripping off my brow... The warmth of fresh blood as it spilt down the side of my face... The very exuberant vivacity of life and living - sweat and blood. I was chewing my moustache - a thick black caterpillar - my mind locked in contemplation. Locked in my vice of a palm, Fernand-o-whatever-fucker, his head look small, inconspicuous, unimportant. He was knocked out already. But that greasy-with-sweat unimportant head of his posed a very important question - as important as life itself, to take the next breath or not. Bar table or beer bottle?

Chewing moustache, contemplating this vehement question, my eyes - blurred with sweat and blood and life - were scanning the wreckage I had left behind. A dozen broken tables and upturned chairs. Half a dozen or so slumped bodies, with faces blotched an shirts in shreds. Beer bottles lay shattered on the floor, blood mixing freely with alcohol and flowing down in dirty veins of grime. The lighting was dusky and the creaky fans croaked in a cacophony of applause.

I was the Roman gladiator striding over this Colosseum of dirt. I was Jimi-fucking-Hendrix smashing his guitar on the amps. . I was the stench of sweat wafting up in the tropical sun. I was the taste of mud spiked with cashew liquor.
Bucephalus (Bu, as they called me). Ox-headed. Obstinate. Black-maned. I was whatever the fuck you called life.

Grey is bluer than you think

Good morning.

A weeping afternoon.

Not a wisping breath of wind.

The musty smell of tamarind

Trailing airy fingers through

Earth-soiled dew,

Rubber balloons and cigarette ends,

A dime and sixpence,

A few dropped tears,

Listless tingling fears,

Smiles and smirks

Embroidered into a book,

And a pistol in my hand that shook.

It is as simple as buttoning your sleeve.

Even simpler.

Idiot-proof. Sharp. Efficient. And no quivering quavering metallic heart.

One trembling finger

And a six-ounce slug

Explodes the silence in vehement self-conscious defiance

Cuts a straight line through the two inches of air

(A line too straight to be natural

Yet too straight to be man made either-

The lethal has a beauty that is incomprehensibly divine.)

And pounds into soft tissue

Crunching bone

And lodges itself into

Soft electric pulsating

Grey matter.

The body snaps out of synapse.

Acetylcholin.

Resounding echoes in an empty chamber

Of a sound that never registered.

Too quick.

Quicker that hopes and synapse hops.

Hops and barley and beer.

No thought, no regret, no fear.

Red blood. White bone. Grey matter.

The sky is grey.

And old and stale

As moulded out butter toast

With furry rhizophus spreading out black fingers into its very heart.

Black fingers.

Nerves of thought.

The wind is a faint reminder

Of a long forgotten secret.

Of words that made me smile.

Laugh. Cry. Fear. Long. Wish. Love. Yawn.

Feel.

The mould smells of the past.

Thick, sweet and balmy.

Like sweaty palms.

Warms me up.

The moment has passed.

The grey is blue.

Bluer than it seems.

The gun clangs on the floor as frail fingers let go.

Sweaty and warm.

Good evening.

Bad night.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Spun

One twist of the finger, and the top starts spinning.

Whirring about.

Its sharp tip drawing a wicked spiral on the ground.

Fingernails tearing through serenity.

As the top spins, it makes the air around it whizz.

The sound of electricity.

Tension.

The air is caught in a vortex.

And pulled apart by a thousand forces working in counter-directions. It whizzes.

It gives the top its sound, its voice, it electric energy.

The air spins around the top

And makes it spin in turn.

It gets dizzy after a while.

Persistence of vision.

Vision gets extended along a tangential line, and finally

All you see is a blurred fat line that connects all around you without revealing

The minute details.

Details by the minute.

Lose track of time as you cannot make sense of the space and direction and distance.

It is a blur.

Cant think, maybe for the better.

The fingernails keep inscribing that spiral.

It is a monument to the cosmic chaos. It stares at the sky, where the the stars are a spiralling blur too.

Then the death throes. Painful, and arduous.

Even the top, the creator of chaos, cannot part with its life so easily.

Tries hard to hold on, and come back to life.

Pushes itself farther and harder, leaning to one side,

To push up the other.

To stay alive.

Gravity wins over the centripetal, centrifugal and all forces centred on its own axis.

The grave belongs to all. We all meet there eventually.

Old friends too.

The fingernails stop crawling.

The top rests.

The Doorstop

The room had to breathe.

Open door.

Enter the wind,

And the sun, and

the sweet scent of flowers in bloom

and alluring sounds of melancholy.

The bedspreads are awry,

Crumbled ,

Slept on

and forgotten.

Ashtray on the corner-table.

Cigarettes

burnt to the butt,

Matter, fire, smoke, ash, strewn

peppering the table.

Careless taps of the finger.

Whispering wind

Says secrets

Seduces the ash,

Makes it dance around in whirls.

Ballroom of fraility.

The wind stops.

Ash collapses.

End of life.

The curtains flutter

in the wind now.

Billowing,

as the wind belches.

And the door trembles.

The room breathes.

The ash floats,

Stay suspended,

Double somersault,

And paraglides down

onto the unkempt linen.

The doorstop keeps the door open.

Limiting friction.

Full-stop.

The silent sound of a raindrop trickling down the window

The rain had stopped. For a while, now. And a single raindrop stood poised to take a dive down the windowpane. Patience. A moment of timeless silence... As it waits wordlessly, straining thought and gaining force. It is accumulating mass, gathering together at that spot of captured illumination. Reflection, refraction and internal reflection. Held together by something someone named surface tension.

Surface tension. Waiting to break free from the surface. Or wanting to it to the surface. Tense and quavering, the raindrop stayed. And it let go off the ledge.

There was no explosion. No brute force. No captured momentum bursting into a cannonshot of energy. Silence. And a slow wormlike movement. The raindrop crept down the window.

It urged to go forward. Reach out for the ground in surges. Pushing its forces forward. Hoping to touch gravity. Pulled down by the gravity of its own predicament. It trickled, crawled, halted. Then it thought out.

Strategy. That is always part of reaching the lowermost rung.. the windowsill. And then, it pushed forward. It screeched, and sighed in relief as it carved a space for itself to run through right down the windowpane.

Violence in silence. All violence happens in the deepest of silence. We probably never understood the language.

Bookmark

So here goes...
The page was screaming to be marked. Its bold letters each climbing up a decibel until it reached that unbearable crescendo. The final symphony of pain. And relief. The note slips. The orchestra goes awry. And the stick falls from the conductors hand as he collapses to the ground in the ordeal of cacophonic creation (or was it recreation?!). Freeze... Bookmark...
The letters stare at me. They each pose a question. And they sink their gruesome stare right into my heart, like a thousand silent daggers. Smooth and soft. It doesn't hurt. Just a warmth. Or is it the blood seeping out through my wounds?! Freeze... Bookmark...
I stare at the page. It is innocent. It is silent. But its innocence and silence which poses the most disturbing of questions. You cannot answer to innocence. And you make your own questions up in silence. The words run around my head in dizzying circles. In a whirlpool of thought. Interstellar verbal orbiting. Freeze... Bookmark...
I was scared to mark the page. Condemn it to memory. Afraid i ll remember the page number and the odd tear halfway down the right edge everytime i flip past it. Condemn it to familiarity. Tag it as special. And yet never be sure, whether it was so exceptional after all. Or whether it was a moment's fancy, or a passing glimmer of hopeful fear.
A faint breeze catches the page, and it rustles in mid-air. My fingers still rest on its torn edge. Freeze...
I never use bookmarks. I just remember the page numbers.