A Failing System

Let us call the boy Jatin. If memory serves, that was his name. It is a common enough name, though, since one should protect his identity. And, it has been over 25 years since one worked with him. Of significance here is the fact that Jatin was the one to hammer the last nail into an otherwise promising career as a teacher in the CBSE system.

The grade nine exams are just over and he is one the boys being “retained”. For some odd and completely obscure reason, he has been asked to see me. He arrives with a note one afternoon just as I am about to wheel my bicycle out of the stand to go home. The note, from the school principal, asks me to see if I can work with him to help him pass his English re-exam.

The memory of his face is as clear as looking into the past through a crystal ball. Not that one has ever experienced looking through a crystal ball but one assumes it would be clear at the centre and swirly on the sides. There he stands, hesitating in the doorway, sort of nervously sweaty around the eyebrows – the eyes have to zoom in to the image at the centre of the said crystal – and definitely beading on the upper lip. His light brown hair stands up near the parting and is smoothed down on the sides. And one drop of sweat makes its way slowly down the side of his face, trickles down his cheek and hangs on his jawline as I read the note twice, thrice, trying to make sense of exactly what may be going on.

When he speaks, his voice has a tremulous timbre. Not surprising, perhaps. The child is completely done for in terms of self-confidence as I will discover in a few days. Will you help me, ma’am, he asks. I will, will, I will, work really hard, he stammers out. Let me find out how to do that, I tell him. I am, I freely admit, stalling. For one thing, I don't teach grade nine and don't know the child. Then, I don't know what he needs to be taught. I also have no idea when his re-take is, pushing me into further uncertainty. To be honest, I am looking for a way to say no but the child's pleading eyes make it impossible to find a simple way to put together the “n” and the “o” in a meaningful way.

The morrow reveals that he has not cleared three subjects but English is the high stakes one. You might ask why this is so, and rightly too, when the child’s ancestors have diligently escaped being anglicised for so long. In the virtually pre-dawn meeting (for those who really enjoy their sleep), in the only plush office in the school, I ask the question begging to be asked: Why me?

Why not you, retorts Mr B, or Sir B since the faculty conferred a knighthood on him.

Well, logically, I am not competent enough, I venture.

Sir B smiles benignly through his greying Frenchie. Your competence is not in question, he says. What else?

All right, I’m terrified, I confess. The stakes for the child, and by association for me, are too high.

A pause as he marshals his arguments. One, he says, in this one year, I have never known you to refuse to take up a challenge. Two, your compassion for the children exceeds the combined warmth of the entire faculty. Three, you are better read that the rest of the English department. Four, your skills as a teacher are far better honed than most I’ve met in my 15 years in this profession. Should I stop now or do you need more praise, he quirks another smile.

In some other incarnation, such hyperbole may have made me blush; but in this one I am too tough and way too thick-skinned to fall for flattery. Instead, I ask about the elephant in the room. Why shouldn’t, I say carefully without naming names, the regular grade nine teacher, who knows the requirements, do this?

He gives me a look that says, And I really thought you were intelligent!
Look, he says patiently, don't you think if the regular teacher was capable of this, the boy would have passed?

Ha, here comes the logical fallacy! And this is where our opinions diverge, irreconcilably. Sir, I say sternly, the remaining 54 kids in her class DID pass!

Of course there’s a pregnant pause. He hesitates before walking into my trap but there’s no help for it. What this boy needs, he concedes reluctantly, is some individual attention.

It’s the starter that will curdle the milk and leaven my bread. Now you see why I keep harping on the need for smaller classes? I don’t say it; I don’t need to. He can read it in the triumph of my grin.

He shrugs and raises his hands in a surrender-gesture. I have to report to a governing body, you know, he repeats defeatedly. Any less than 55 and we can't make what needs to be made. I will have to hike up the fee and dozens of kids’ parents will no longer be able to afford it. Or I will have to pay my teachers less.

I shake my head at him and follow the script we have evolved over the past year. Sir, a school cannot be run only for profit. It may not be illegal but is completely unethical.

He says his line with more emotion than usual: find me a solution and I will implement it.

Which, as they say, is neither here nor there. But after working with the man for nearly a year, I know that he’s not making excuses. He is the real McCoy and has supported many seemingly hair-brained but worthy causes. The economics of small classes is really beyond his ken. A metaphor exists, they say, that can describe any situation: the one best suited to this one involves heads and brick walls.

Then an afternoon dream. I am standing in the middle of a bunch of people. Some of them look like my colleagues but have a menacing air. Some words echo around us. Where are the results… The results… What is the value? The value? He’s a failure. You're a failure. You should both go. I wake up, palms sweaty, hair wet, out of breath and there they are again, pinning me down with their furious expressions. Every time I try to break out of the circle they move in closer. I collapse in the middle.

Quite obviously stress. No need for Freud to understand that one.

The next day I begin work with Jatin. We meet before school while the cleaner bhaiyas are still sweeping and mopping, look for a desk and a chair, and start work. Or attempt to start work. Shelley’s “Ozymandias” pops open. Freaky, I think. I had the same textbook nearly a decade ago with Mrs Jesuratnam’s gentle voice reading it out before explaining it line by line. I can do this, I tell myself.

I ask him to read through the poem. Read it aloud. You have to hear the sounds, I suggest.
Hesitating, painfully slowly, each word a labour, Jatin does. He stumbles on “antique”, then on “shattered visage”, “wrinkled”, “sneer”, “sculptor”, “passions”, “pedestal”, “Ozymandias”, “colossal wreck”…

I look on, listen to him stutter and stammer his way through this reading and do despair!
What did you understand, I ask, very cautiously.

Silence.

Hmm. Just as I thought. My gut clenches with the realisation that this is it. The problem does not lie in the shallow waters of understanding. They go deep into the context of the child. Where do I begin the narrative that will lead him to see the emptiness of pride, the ephemerality of the human being, the eternity of the sands of time? How do I break it down so that two weeks from now he can answer questions like “Explain, in your own words, what the poet means by ‘half sunk a shattered visage lies’”?

We plod. First explain the meanings of the words. Then each line. Then put it all together with the themes. Try not to slip into Hindi as that is inadvisable at this stage. Ask him questions to see what understanding now exists. Set him two questions to complete at home.

Day 2, we plod again. He has written the answers to my two questions with meticulous care. Each misspelled word is artistic in its perfect formation. Each ungrammatical sentence exemplary in its neatness. We are swimming together in a swift river trying to make it upstream. His strokes are neat but he has no power to move from where we are, treading water. Shortly hereafter, we will both be swept in some other direction, or for better or for worse, drown. I mention the word sonnet and his eyes glaze over. Fourteen lines, I remind him, now on the edge of desperation. Maybe it is not important for him to know that a sonnet has fourteen lines.

We plod on to the “Chimney Sweep”. Then I notice a teardrop. My mother died last year, he whispers when I stop reading. The cold creeps up my spine. She was very beautiful, he adds. Irrelevantly I wonder if her being beautiful makes the loss greater for him. Put your psychology in the cupboard, Sir B had suggested to all of us a few days ago, otherwise my head will certainly roll. Yes, of course, I should plod on with the poem when the child was crying over the loss of his parent.

Do you want to tell me about her, I ask, gently. He wipes a tear with the back of his hand. I miss her, he says simply. She was nice, he adds after a moment. He doesn't seem to have the vocabulary to say very much more.

I wait, though, long enough so that he can play out whatever memories haunt him, before venturing again: should we do this poem another day? Yes, he says.

Flipping forward I find the ubiquitous “Daffodils” stretching across the page. Oh dear god, now a flower he has never seen. Apollo! Athena! Inspire me!

Should I draw this flower for you, I ask intrepidly. He nods. I manage a squiggly something that may or may not be mistaken for a daffodil. He laughs. What a strange sound it is! Not the laugh itself. It's the usual boyish giggle. But it's the first time I have heard him laugh. Strange in that way. I mock-frown and demand to know what is funny. He reads my expression and relaxes. It looks like a funny face, he volunteers. I add a smile, a nose and two little eyes. He giggles again. So this fellow, I begin, having nothing better to do than wander around the countryside, sees these funny-faced flowers spread out over a field. He is listening intently. And then he really likes how the wind is making them move, like they are dancing, you know…? He nods. And later, when he is sometimes sitting on his couch, doing nothing, just thinking, he remembers them and feels happy, I finish. How’s that, I want to ask, for a gradesaver summary? He frowns, then asks: doesn’t he have a job? I burst out laughing. He realises I am laughing with him, not at him, and joins in. Possibly, we have made good ol’ William turn in his grave but what the hell?

Somehow he gets this one. Maybe he gazes at things in his mind’s eye too. He doesn’t, of course, volunteer this. I am just playing with conjecture. Two more questions are set for homework and we wind up. A little lighter than the previous day. A little less stressed out. A little more connected with an unfathomable mind. A little closer to Doomsday.

He’s getting it, I want to yell with joy a few days later, when “the Road not Taken” makes him wish that he could have choices too. What would you do, I ask, if you had choices? He thinks for a while. I would like to help my father in his shop, he says finally. What stops you, I ask.

He looks disturbed for a bit, then: I have to come school; I have to study and get good marks; my father doesn’t want me to grow up and sit at shop; he wants me to be engineer or doctor; he says anyone can sit at shop – it does not need a mind. But I know it needs a mind and I want to help him. He works so hard, it all for me, to give me good education, job, but it is not needed. I help him at shop and we both be happy. We don’t need more.

This is the child they flunked for his lack of grammar. In the corpus that is his life, he has already written narratives that many grown ups fail to understand till the moment of truth, the few seconds before death takes them. How does he understand, I wonder, that contentment can come from many things and not necessarily from those that the world thinks of as important. Why does he need to study Frost when he is already ready to choose a path different from that taken by the rat racers? But. Not for me to question why. I plod on with Frost, then Ezekiel’s throes of scorpion stings. And there’s further plodding.

Between poets we work on grammar. On vocabulary. We make a little dictionary in an address book and he writes down as many new words as he meets every day. We practice structures till nine out of ten sentences have very minor errors. We mug up spelling lists and drill and drill and drill.

Soon, too soon, the re-take day creeps up, much as a hidden snake in the grass. Nervously, I wait for him to tell me if he did well. I find things to do to keep me back after school, refusing to leave till I know.

At 3 p.m. he comes in. He has been crying. We sit in silence for a long time. I am scared to ask so I let the silence wash over us in wave after wave till finally, he looks up from his chewed up nails and says: I passed English; but not Maths; not Science. I have failed.

When he leaves, the only sound left is the ticking of my wrist watch as I put my head on my desk, willing myself to be still because the only other option is to break everything in sight. Almost an hour later, I make my way to the only plush office in the school and knock on the door. I don’t have to ask, it must be written on my face.

Sir B shrugs: If I promote him to grade 10 he will bring down the result. This is my first batch and I have to prove myself to the governing body. I can’t have a bad result.

The last nail.

I walk up to his desk and gently put a sheet of paper in front of him. As I recall it has some platitudes about personal reasons. Some crap about the past year being edifying. Some shit about great memories and incredible learning. Some utter nonsense about gratitude at being given this fantastic chance. And a request to relieve me of my duties in a month’s time.

With shock he looks up from reading it: I did not think you were a quitter, he says finally.

No, I am not, I tell him quietly. But I have realised that I can no longer be a party to this failing system.

Cherished

Cherished am I and that without a doubt
even when ghosts of lost loves rake demons
in clean linen night after night
in the vast caverns of night, of day,
in the nooks and crannies oft lit up, alight,
with moon-candles intricately wrought
brought lovingly from an ancient city
a nightly ritual, forming shadows on wooden crags.

Cherished am I that without a doubt
even when present pain pierces as sunlit shards
through tender weeping eyes into the brain -
with soft words the dark is parted, stilled,
soothes the shadows threatening to recall
that old penultimate friend that rises with the fall
of enchantment - the forbidding D-word
overwhelms clean smooth sheets that envelop,
imprison, incarcerate, immure, entomb.

And oftentimes the cataclysmic catatonic catalepsis
captures beings, suffuses with light
sweeping shadows before it with gale-force,
burning to the edge,
till the past, present and future, are all laid to rest.

Shrapnel of Truth

Splattered ink from a shattered pen
papers fly in chaotic abandonment
tickers creep past scenes in shadows
a smoke-scented neighbourhood scatters
into distant dreams of peace when
thunder and crackle of hatred sent
bitter, deep caves in the sea's shallows
and acidic fiery rain patters
on one-time roofs that shelter no more
sometime hope disintegrates
in lonesome alleyways of faithless crime
in turbulent seas shipwrecked on a shore
somewhere, hidden, more malice awaits
as violent longing bides its time.
Perchance creations of malefide youth
And intelligences create shrapnel of truth.

Fallen

When inglorious Spring with his heated vanes
Wafted through the sere weblike display
Of wartorn frames, shadowy downs and manes
of broken promises gone astray...
Then on Resurrection the gods did not rise
Entombed, enwombed, in a suffocating paradise
Histories and philosophies failed to apprise
Truth, shortchanged, would lies devise.
In the distance the bell tolls a death knell
And dervishes set up a mad, frenzied dance
Tears, fears, tenuously held at bay -
When the idol from its pedestal fell
Leaving but chance and circumstance
And its broken feet of clay.

Interminably terminal

Jaw grinding, tooth chilling pain
repeated too often for
murderers, saints, psychos and sycophants,
hollow corridors echoing the webs of
disarmed footsteps
faltering perhaps on thresholds
of promises as yet unbroken

while pride plays golf with hope renewed
and sunlight ricochets off
unbroken columns
resounding empty hallways
interminably terminal, and ticking
for eons and eternities

that lie wasted, drying,
in the piercing heat
of a northern spring.

The Debris of Faith

Tickers scroll past in red-alerted "breakings", smashing screens,
trashing, gutting, gushing blood and spilled debris
when faith... what faith, whose faith?
is a faithless sometime thing --

while the world, numbed, desensitized, no longer horrified
by the blood and the gore and the guts --
watches, shakes an apathetic head, too used to,
now, to such sights, such scenes

while a screaming journalist agonizes for help, clicking
in desperation, the horror, the fear, the helplessness
of a blown-to-bits spot while people, innocent, mostly,
stare fixedly, still wondering for moments and hours

how to wade through
the debris of faith.

The next drop

Drip. Drip. Drip.
Silence.
DripDrip.
Silence.
DripDripDrip.
Drip... Drip... Drip...
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.

Drrrip.
Sometimes insanity creeps up
as you wait for
The next drop.

Trust is a choice

Trust is a conscious choice you make
When you open up your heart
Like a flower to dew or a butterfly's foot
As either could tear it apart
with just a callous, careless, thoughtless act
For no cosmic law seems to govern -
If a fool is what that makes you
A fool you should be in turn.
For trust cannot be a sometime thing
Dependent on proofs of truth
It leads you out to the furthest limb
Just like the folly of youth
But trust makes your armour strong,
Makes gluttonous lies, uncouth.

When you rain

When you rain love words on me
Like gentle shafts of moonlight
I smile like the parched earth
as the sky pours down in delight.
Your firm-pettled lips shape the poetry
of your love when deep into the night
or in the richness of a golden dawn
with your passion you set the dark alight.
Throughout the night your arms hold on
even through nights when we are apart.
With tenderness and passion you turn,
turn our love into a fine art.
How I love this niche, this nook you've made
for me, in the vastness of your heart.

I see you now

Somewhere I read about this
In a mystery-wrapped tome
That the one you think of last at night
Holds your heart alone.
And in the morning's glow you see him
Before you open your eyes -
He suffuses your soul with warmth
no matter where in the world he lies.
I see you now in the sunlight,
Walking along a misty path...
Your musky scent on my wanton skin
And your smile that lifts my heart.
But whose scent do your memories breathe
Each night before you lay your head to sleep?

I remember a future

In the warp and weft of time
In a labyrinth of pure-hearted sunshine
In a garden filled with the sublime
anti-thesis of decline

I remember a future
in which age and the aged mature
to uncanny depths of childhood
reinvent with a passionate creative urge

that which eluded before.
For I remember a future
filled with a past untouched
by the voracious appetite of Time.

Would that we could uninvent
At least some of the past misspent.

Insidiously it creeps

Walking barefoot across cool stony paths
Slowly gaining inch by inch
On the warmth of hope and joy amassed
through the toil and treasuring of time

shared with passion and love unbounded...
But insidiously does it creep
Over terrain it hopes to overrun
With suspicion and fear: and crosses

the threshold of the threat factor
when helplessly love looks the other way
and reason has gone on vacation
Leaving vacant that vast and empty space.

Insecurity is a vile and vicious thing
When its tentacles on love it does fling.

Sometimes, one

Sometimes, you said, I don't know 
Where I end and where you begin...

So you feel that too, I thought, 
But gut-wrenchingly
Scared to admit, 
acknowledge,
Give in.
For I have been a runner all my life
And to admit it would mean
No more running...

Then you woke me up in the wee hours 
to prove how your longing would bring you back 
From the dead... for me...
For you turned into a poet
And I the curious journalist
When you wrote your poetry on my skin
And I investigated you thoroughly!

So we lit a fire that spun in
a whirlwind
and I gave to you and took you
Till there was nothing left of me
And there was nothing left of you
Except one conflagration and 
an all-consuming flame
That blanketed us
Just before we were reborn.

Sometimes, I said, I don't know where
I end
And where you begin.

Sound of Longing

A moment of deep longing
echoes through the caverns
of my heart, my gut,
rips and ripples in outward
concentrics
to the edges of the universe;
in hot-warm waves
shaking trees and stars alike
with its intense resonance;
shimmering the mirages
on the road, in the sky,
till all space and time is consumed...
enveloped by one primal sound -
The sound of longing...

Uncropped

When recovering alcoholics ask if
they will ever be able - or allowed -
to have a relationship again,
they are told, "Go buy a plant.
If the plant survives for six weeks,
adopt an animal. If the pet survives
for three years, then you can
think about a relationship."

In deeply ingrained complacency,
without much analysis,
the point of this is evident.
It hits one somewhat
like a sledgehammer.

But a little wisp of doubt
creeps in, begs a question:
What about people
who have never had a problem
with addiction?

So what does it take, then,
to look at a picture,
uncropped?
To see the other with their flaws
their meltdowns
their full-blown hopes and passions
their deep cracks and crevices
their raging insanities and desperate beauty?

What does it take
to accept the insanity with the beauty
to find space for the flaws and cracks and crevices
to make space for their hopes and passions
to bear up under the pressure of their
Meltdowns?

What does it take
to pull off blinkers that circumscribe
the bits of the picture
that would rather be cropped
that if included render
it a picture imperfect?

What does it take
to take the goddess off the pedestal
and to hold her as human as she is
to unfocus from the perfection
and see the uncropped for the
perfection it is?

What does it take
to make a relationship
Real?

Mornings Like This

Sometimes I need only feel your arms around me
In the way that you hold me even in your sleep
As though you would protect me from all 
the hopelessness in the world
Even when you are feeling hopeless. When
on mornings of uncertain fog
closely following on incomplete days and nights,
The rays of a brightening sun shaft through the window
And somewhere inside, I begin to feel whole again...
You, asleep, somewhere far but close here
Where there is the hope that soon the far will be near.
Walking on the edge of a vacuum 
that threatens to spread and envelop and cut
On mornings like this...

Whispers in the Night

Something in the night whispers
of moments not lived enough
of days wasted in callous indifference
for ephemerality denied
deprived of its natural power
to move the mountain of ennui
that grows doubtless
in the fecund plains of apathy.

For we did believe --
we walked, we marched,
we defaced streets with slogans
that cried out, though sometimes in vain,
for equity, for justice, for inclusion...
there were times when we did believe
because we could.

Now, sifting through vested interests,
and the insane baying of some
In the fourth estate,
we look for kernels of truth in an
overcrowded pigsty of politics
hoping, without much hope,
that justified true belief
has a chance to survive
though continuously pulled into
a morass of moral drought
an imbroglio, an impasse,
and a quagmire of guilt
by association,
by presence in the wrong place
at the wrong time.

Between Lessons

Dedicated to the brave warriors of my Literature and Performance group who strive to teach me something new everyday.

Between lesson 3 and lesson 6 they broke up. For the last and final time. She even scraped his name off the locker. Although she had done that before, this WAS the full and final. She was sure of that.

Maybe it began with a discussion about love and sandwiches. What is love, they had been asked. And they had variously replied that it could be anything from attention, getting sandwiches for the other, or a chemical rush much like being high... Or something unreal that you only saw as unreal when it had ended. But, he had said then, that this was the mind's way of coping with loss. To move on, perhaps, the mind needed, wanted, to feel that it was unreal. And the one day that he didn't bring a sandwich, they broke up.

She had had a crush on him since A Streetcar Named Desire, and he used to like this other chick in school. It still got awkward when he talked to the other girl. Well, not any longer, only till the third lesson. Amazingly, the connection between their minds and souls was lost but her laptop was still picking up the signal from his laptop. Clearly, technology begged to differ on the matter of disconnection.

The crazy facilitator could tell that they needed a moment, although both were in denial... And waited it out as she sang the Shin-Shan title track with another zany member of the class. Admittedly, this was really tacky even for a break up situation.

Accusingly he said, you accessed my Facebook.
She coolly denied it, almost languid in her disinterest in his Facebook as with all other things related to him.

You know, the crazy facilitator added, years from now when all of you think back and remember these lessons....you will wonder deeply how it is that they let an insane person like me teach you for two years!

Laughter.
Relief.
A sigh.
A blinked back tear.
A look in the eyes clearly signifying that the mind was elsewhere although the head nodded, unknowingly, unlisteningly...

Why should Coleridge, in spite of the vivid sensory images, inspire, when between lesson 3 and lesson 6, they had broken up?

I will always remember your classes, she said. I found my high school sweetheart in your class. She avoided meeting his eyes as she said this, even though she could feel his boring into her face.

But she did feel much calmer than after all the previous break ups. The tension and agony, the just-welling tears were missing. Unlike before.

When they had first got together, the entire class had been dumbfounded. They didn't seem like an ideal couple or even an unideal one from any angle. The only thing, however, that they had collectively said was, Don't you dare break up till the year is over. We can't sit in this room and feel the thick-strung tension that is sure to follow. Of course the faculty, as in any semi-hypocritical institution, was duly divided in their opinion on whether this was a good thing or a terrible one. After all, prizing teenagers out of shady corners of the building or bushes was a tiring and boring job, even if the Bush Squad had received many accolades in the past for doing just that.

But when the first flush of flowing hormones and chemicals had run its course, the differences seemed apparent even to the two of them. So what was the greatest difference between the two of them? Cuisine! His pure vegetarian family...while her father owned one of the most happening non-veg restaurants in the centre of town. Not that this caused any friction, really. It was something to keep in mind for later, IF indeed there was a later. Yes, the love was very real, but would it last?

In fact, she now wondered what love was all about. Was it about getting or giving, or perhaps about getting while giving? But in the end rather hopelessly about getting, either way. This minor epiphany made her somewhat despondent, seeing as it took away from what one wanted to believe love was capable of doing for the human mind with its handicapped tendency to be selfish.

Then the other crazy Golfer sitting across the room stating quite frankly that if it wasn't for the good times (read sex) that he and the girl he had dated for close to four years, would not have lasted together for longer than a few weeks. And though they had never tired of the good times, it had become suffocating and now he continuously wondered how two people that different could ever have had a relationship. But for the girl it had been a good relationship, he said. She had got the closeness when she wanted it, and the space to focus on her studies when she wanted that. However, in her long absences while she studied, he grew too used to being on his own, spending time by himself exploring everything from bandage sculpture to acrylic art and everything in between. And there came a point when he preferred to be on his own rather than with her.

The death knell of a relationship, said the class Player, is rung by insecurity. I've only been in a relationship once, for about five months, and my insecurities just killed it. I was always trying to make her comfortable, trying to ensure that everything was perfect, that I was perfect for her. There was no space in there for anything real to happen.

There was, clearly, the need for much analysis here.

When you are out of the relationship why doesn't it seem like it was love, asked the Golfer, again. Somehow, this is the reason that I don't want to date.

People who say that they don't want to date are saying this because they don't have anyone to date at that moment, quipped the Player, though fairly seriously. But when they find someone that they want to date, they forget what they said earlier.

He who reflects on things is deep, intoned the Golfer, he who doesn't, isn't.

Reflecting is not about going deep into things, retorted the Player.

Talking of deep, there was a time when he got that he was a part of my life, she said dreamily. An important part, but not my whole life. But then, later, he stopped getting it.

May I draw your attention to this idea of a solid sea with slimy creatures crawling on the surface, asked the facilitator in a mildly desperate tone.

You can't call her love life a solid sea with slimy creatures on it, you know, said the Golfer. She may feel offended and hurt.

She is not talking about anyone's love life, you dolt, said the girl who had made a guest appearance that day. She is talking about the poem.

Really, asked the Golfer. I thought we were talking about the real world.

The poem IS the real world, replied Guest Appearance. WE are imaginary.

The Player suddenly tuned back in with, I know that when I'm drunk and she's drunk, and there's no emotion involved. It's just the physical thing. That is enough for me.

The Golfer said somewhat condescendingly, Bro', relationships are not about throwing darts at a map and marking larger and larger territory. You travel like that. Not have sex.

Sure, said the Player. But at the end of the day, rather than getting your emotions in a knot, and breaking up and patching up like these two... You have to admit that there is something to be said about clean, honest sex.

The Hotshot Actor suddenly seemed to come alive. He piped up with, a relationship is a place in which two people use each other.

And somewhere between home and school, playing hooky on a Goldilocks-weather day, they patched up. Again.

Searching

Why does the day sometimes feel incomplete?
As though searching through conversations you may find
Replaying something still left to say
Something just hovering at the back of your mind?
But there it is, the feeling of having stopped just short
of the end of the book that gripped you to the core
that you were reading with such passion
that you have never felt before.

They say that sometimes souls split and wander, 
lost, waywardly searching for the other part;
you look but the soulmate eludes till in some odd, 
coincidental way, life orchestrates the meeting of two hearts.
For sometimes I love you more than the soul can know.
For you, my love, can make the horizon glow.

In the Silence

In the silence of longing, lonesome nights
the stars echo with cosmic intensity
circling the heavens in a lost conundrum
gathered together over foggy propensity

While the scent of your skin lingers on
mingling with a myriad memories
of nights when passion played with comfort
played out unwritten histories.

When in my half sleep I asked what you would change
if turn back the clock you could;
and you murmured back, in your sleep,
"If I could, I surely would

go back in time and find you."
Do dreams sometimes, perhaps, come true?

Anticipation

08 January 2016

12:56

Through this fog of longing when I see your face

Your cheeks, your lips, with fingertips I trace,

Then you smile at me with infinite, tender grace,

And touch me back at your own gentle, slow pace --

Then each bit of your skin, the soft, the smooth, the rough,

Comes alive to my touch; but it's never quite enough

to taste your sweet mouth with unbridled hunger

as passion deepens as it grows stronger.

So beautifully you push me to the edge again

And pull me back from that gorgeous flight

and I grapple with emotion just to stay sane

watch your eyes glow with wanton love light --

So time stops, stills, anticipation untames:

I drown, I burn, I go up in flames.

Cinnamon

08 January 2016

08:44

(The first two lines were written by someone to me... and I gave in to the overwhelming urge to add 12 lines to it!)

Now, I taste cinnamon, feel your skin touching mine,

Making a poem with words that strain to rhyme.

There's the distant singing of the stars calling out through space and time,

to ask the moon to dance, longing for you to be mine.

Once more a divine chorus will play,

As our lips waltz the night away.

Your scent on my skin to mingle and make the world sway,

as we make love through the night, perhaps the day

will dawn slowly to an insane sanity that calls

out to the gentle love's dew as it falls

on otherwise barren fields and walls

and defeats loneliness as it caterwauls.

Soon, my love, this fire will course through our blood,

when with love and passion each other we flood.

Eternity in an Hour

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour.”

- William Blake

one script meets another on roads dreary

merge as the warp and weft in an insane bed

with some intolerant indecent fantasy 

black inveigles the eternal red

of blood that flows as miniature streams

blazing fires cloud an azure expanse

and the screams... dear god, the screams

that echo, ricochet, break immense

decibel barriers as miseries spread 

like a warm cloistered undermined rug

like the moth-ridden musty-smelling dead

that cling to the idea of humanity like a drug

in the eternity of that fanatical hour pictures emerge

of hatred, intolerance, faithlessness that surge

(November, 1984)

The Shoe

The strong stench of burnt concrete
Mingled with another and another wheeze,
An olfactory overdose stirs the nostrils
into an involuntary, embarrassed sneeze;
Three days after the burning genocide
smoke still wafts with the breeze.
Under a pile of undefinable ashes
under an ashen canvas crease

I saw it peeking out like a scared haunted animal
The only char-free object in a blackened room,
Human remains were long gone from that black hole
Eight members aged three to seventy, gone to their doom.
And there it sat, in mute testimony to inhuman savagery:
A three-year-old's shoe that lived on in the gloom.

(November, 1984)

Daydreaming

Daydreaming, huh? Join the club, as they say:

I have daydreamed many weeks away!

Daydreams are made of the gossamer stuff

Trapping in their complex threads

The warp and weft of reason, rationality, logic,

and envelop the mind in its softest folds

from which the heart won't let it escape.

For oft-times daydreams can conquer the moment…

But when imagination meets sense perception

Fantasy begets Reality.

For the way you love me

I feel like the goddess you say I am

The world's most precious creature --

Without objectification!

Then when we create miracles with our magic

breach clinical possibility in the light of our own golden moon

discover chords (perhaps) never played before

and wonder, with degrees of regret, how long it took --

and of journeys and paths travelled 

sans the other

and why indeed we wandered far

on roads we need not have taken --

But the time gone by, what of it?

It made you who you are today…

And I,

the less said about the younger versions

the better it is --

Though the saving grace lies

In simply knowing

That the rest of life will be

made of choices 
made here and now ...