Dear Pain,
Now that you’ve become my best friend. Please, be gentle also. I have to accept your existence because denying you isn’t going to make you disappear. So let me adorn you with my quest and hopefully you’ll teach me to be me with a dis-fracted view and push me forth onto this journey.
Let’s slow down. Just a little, dear. Life rushes by but that doesn’t mean that you have to pull me along with its insane drift. Just little bit. I want to be able to remember all the rampant shades of your pupils and every little crinkle your eyes form. All the half-smiles that you throw at me when you think I’m not looking. Slow down so that I can remember and keep all those memories distinct. Each in their own compartments so that I can pull them out one by one and recount that yesterday, you kissed my forehead. Looked at me and smiled with a smirk and your eyes were a dark jade. And the day before, your eyes were wide and your lips were relaxed.
So slow down, just a tad bit. So that the days don’t blur and the weeks don’t turn to ages but remain crystalline moments collecting in my jewel box.
Lately, I’ve been chancing upon money forgotten in pockets of various jackets and sweaters.
It’s perchance and it’s interesting because they become pockets of inspiration and I’m left wondering why of all reasons pockets are so fascinating. It’s a place of secrecy, of discovery, of memory and reminders. Where did I go that i put a dollar bill in there? or what the fresh ten dollar bill was chilling there for? What’s this note doing in here? Oh look a shell. That’s where my watch was!
Where was I going that I needed to have money in my pocket but not my wallet? And why this jacket of all? It’s interesting. It must have been windy that day and not too cold. It must have been a good day. Because this jacket used to be my fathers’.
It’s a comforting thought, that my pockets can be so full of stories.
He doesn’t know what love is
talk about a poet’s dilemma
and yet he’s that interesting
‘coz poems and wanderings
end up being about him
that this unhealthy fixation
‘bout something that’s become
so fleeting and nonexistent
these days
hopefully exists under each
poets’ pen and they keep
whispering coaxing it to peek
and bless the dark days with
its light and airy and sometimes
serious demeanor to the world.
Say, dear love, what pains thee
the most?
Hiding isn’t that helpful. i love
thee, this thing called love.
call it
obsession, addiction,
at least it makes smiles ample
regardless of long days and
dark nights, short pays, mixed
airs and hapless encounters.
But he doesn’t know, that even
with his basket empty, a poet
is a poet, who is a sucker for
love
and especially for him, who is
a muse.
Find old writings that you can’t remember yourself writing is such an interesting realm.
——-
April 28, 2011
Silence
so deep that sometimes, we discover new lands
and stuff that just wasn’t there.
This absence that becomes
something in its nothingness.
So this nothing
that is something-ness now,
becomes that thread
that I follow
this thread as Icarus flew too close to the sun
but I know not to, coz I learn from him, and this
thread leads me to you
but of course, utter care never harmed
anyone.
Reading threads as Island women read lace as they
weave hidden secrets and stories that only those with a tongue
can read. Who can say what this tongue is? Labour and sweat?
Or, utter care and devotion?
Quickfire, like liquid gold,
spitting silver bullets to calm the beast
these bars I call my ribs.
At any inclination,
he tries to claw out
and cast his darkly
charm on the brightly array
of personalities gathered around me.
He loved her poetry more than her,
it was an inexplicable drama
and more trauma
for her then she could imagine
to think she could be used
to pick at her brains
and toyed with desires
he glinted with zeal
all he wanted was her words
she was a vessel
that’s it.
A vessel to conjure
this amazing invisible stuff
how rich
he laughed at the sheer substance of it
She was just a container
as long as he pulled
the rightful threads
her words would spill and
he’d drink
and drink
it was all for his fill
keep her dangling, yes
her poetry was his lifeline.
she was nothing to him
time weighs me down
as its child holds on
tight to my wrist
and i constantly check
but of course it goes
no where except runs
forward.
and it always runs
forward, bubbly, child-like
no direction except
forward.
dragging me along,
and when i try to look
back,
it becomes sluggish
and fades my hindsight
into hazy whispers
or
taunting reelings
being shackled to time
slaved around
bound by my wrist
as i realize how
tight its hold grows
i let it go,
instead of looking
forward
my eyes wander upward
rooted in now
and glancing ever so
rarely to my wrist
the hold loosens,
never releases but
loosens
and for once i feel
my shoulders lift
and the sky is bluer
and the air tangy
and the laughs sparks-ful
as long as i stop
paying keen attention
to dear ole time
his grip is slight
and my step light.
some days i’m a filament
whispering nothing and everything
to those who care to listen
and then i’m nobody
just something that once existed
and just as she came into your life
she disappeared
glowing till the very end
just as whisper fades.
i’m nobody, she’d say
nobody, remember that. nobody
so one day you’ll forget all
that was
but you’ll remember me
the nobody
because
well
i’m nobody’s
but i like you, she drawled slyly
as she fingered my face gently
i do like you.
i’ll be the most interesting
that you’ll forget
but you won’t forget me.
she’d wander away humming,
whistling—
some days i’m a filament
and then i’m nobody
i still look for her
hoping she’ll find her
way back, not as nobody
some days i wish
i’d accepted her then
held on
to every drop she whispered
cradled every breath
and caressed every laugh
but life can’t be locked up
