BLUEBERRY NIGHTS

I am here now,
And you are over there,
But our time
(It was good) is gone.

Time
Never leaves us the same,
And if I step across that door,
Friends would meet as strangers

I'll never step across
That door
Being scared?
Or obstinate.

Life was good
Life still is
Life shall be
As always.

I await my blueberry nights.
Wish me luck;
I think I know you would
Love.

Deepavali

People laughing close by
Laughing, talking, shouting, screaming
Bursting crackers too
Merry people close by

I disapprove
Why must you disturb my slumber?
The somnambulist that I am
Walking through life in a daze

All you people close by
Go elsewhere;
You must have better things to do
Than heighten my sense of alienation

It is official now: I hate festivities.

When did I last tell you that I miss you?
Or did I ever?

WHERE WOULD YOU FIND ME?

When I run away, away
Through the midnight streets
Of a steel city, guarded by

Halogen eyes of Praxair towers
And dark silhouettes of giant
Mechanical sentinels,

Along boulevards of conspiring
Peltophorums in a wintry dawn,
Sighing lemon yellow flowers,

Along accidental highways
With coke-shops and temples
Haunted by the ghosts of melancholy

Evening bells and passing orgies,
Along derelict downtown markets
When all the cars have gone

Home, and three stray dogs
Bark around the ice-cream parlour
While bulls and bullshit litter the desolation,

And through jogging tracks
Of history and alacrity.
When I run away...

*

An invisible fish subsides,
Inscribing silver ripples
on the wasted waters of the Jayanti

March moon-lotus drifts along the Kharkai
A speckled lizard scampers from 1/4
to C8, leaving a trail of click-ticks

Confirming some unutterable misfortune
An inflamed Sakchi sky
Pitted olives ham and peach

Linger in neglect, on bygone
Tuesday evening shelves.
Life is a long due bike ride.

*

Cheap motel toilets
With white lights and
Green linoleum floors

Tea-stained blanket-sheets
Sighing ceiling fan
A notebook of Poems and

A pack of cigarettes. Each night
Death lights the Zippo
In return for fellatio.

*

Maybe I don't remember
Your touch, distinct from
The lovers and pimps,

But I do.
Maybe I should claim
It does not matter,

But it does.
My skin misses you as much
As this thumping pumping organ

Now diving down to
My navel and loins in an
Oppressing Dakshinayan.

Two years of love and
One year of penance.
Now you shall find me

With white hair,
White breath, and
A white pyre at Manikarnika.

Devipaksha

Old friends inspire old memories
Vintage heartaches seem like day-old wounds
Yesterday I thought of love, despair
And today, of the dead, between hours
Of sleep, prolonged.
The living are corrupted by the
Present.
Only the dead speak to me of days
Of innocence.
A living beyond life, and loving
Beyond love.

A FAMILY MAN

As I witnessed the match-making bear fruit, I distracted myself with a fling with a masochistic poet. It made my room-mate jealous and sad. Arousing such despair, the fling could not last. I survived the wedding-planning days by howling through the interminable nights, and making tea in the mornings after. Finally I escaped, in time for the engagement ceremonies. The days of the wedding I spent in an ancient city by the river: a place we should have been visiting together, as per my naive daydreams.

Back in the metropolis I started seeing other people. Nothing did compare to those two years of happiness; it was an unfair burden. I immersed myself in the old University. A year went by. When the madness and heartaches of new loves subsided, a longing, a despair for my days as a family man kept coming back. What had started with the summer heat and bottled cures for hair-fall, ended in everlasting sorrow.

END NOTE

Picking up the residual shards
Of a failed attempt at life,
I struggle to move on,
Too often convinced
It is best to give up,
Let go.

For how much longer?

Mother-Father;
You who brought me into being,
And loved me till time's end,
Towards you my duties
remain shamefully unfulfilled.

My sisters, my blood;
If I leave you with a heavy heart,
Know a heart was too tired to carry on.

My friends, and little ones;
Grieve me not:
There shall be other things in other places
For charming momentary amusements.

And my unborn son;
Like you, my love shall remain,
Endlessly scattered in the smiles
Of the world's innocent children.

ANNIVERSARY

I think, believe, hope

I cured myself of you

Once more.

Finally.

At last.
There: I turn a smile at life,

And the tendrils of longing and despair

Twirl round my guts, unawares.

Once more

Sorrow sprouts like a cancer.

Let me scatter into a million minuscule fragments.

Without shame, or reproach,

And without permission,

I shall dust your shoulders,

Kiss your brow,

And find everlasting sleep,

As I disappear into your breath

Finally.