If you were here with me
You'd compare the workmen next door
Who drill on my eardrum every hour
With the woodpecker
In your grandparents' backyard in the village
On a silent sultry afternoon.
I would ask you once again
"Tell me how you said-
How you used to play-pretend
To make ice-cream out of mud?"
You'd burst out a little laugh
We'll re-enact your childhood glee
That cherished memory
Of rubbing earth on face
The best 'chocolate', eh?
It is too late now
I forgot to go inside
Now I have tears in my eyes
I'm sure my neighbour saw me crying.
I had come to the balcony
To water my plants
But the past turned to water.
I am not surprised
How ever hard I try
I cannot think of you these days
Without the streaming tears
That always appear-
Yesterday I saw you sister at the market
I couldn't face her
I thought I had gotten better
But her happy little family-
It was too much for me.
Everything's a mystery
How the sun still rises
How cars move past my body
How I see you everywhere
I could see your face even on a TV ad.
I am not sad
I am not even mad at you
Or anyone
That you're gone.
How many years has it been?
Or was it yesterday?
I cannot remember.
But I remember you
I remember everything you ever said to me
Every sweet little word you said dotingly
Every office anecdote
Every harsh word you spoke, too.
But we always made up in the end
After dealing with the pain-
We still do.
You aren't with me anymore
Anyone would say so
They won't understand
I think no one can.
I could try to tell them
You're a part of me now
Like the stars are a part of the night
Even though the city spreads her smog
The stars don't die
They just hide.
Let them not be a part
Of our hide-and-seek
I believe you're still here with me
As long as I keep you inside
You will never die.
Forgetting is silly
When you keep echoing
What’s-it-called what’s-his-name what-was-I-saying
In every conversation once twice thrice
But it’s all nice
Nobody minds it, really
You might forget who you met
(Maybe it was someone not that great)
Or the name of the person you’re talking to
And cover it up with a smile or two;
Forgetting is nonchalance
A disrespectful indifference, a lack of sense
When you fail to do what they asked of you
Simply because you didn’t remember to
An irresponsible fool
Who agrees to
Run errands, and evades doing them
It’s natural that you’re to blame;
Forgetting is confusion
A blurring of your youthful vision
When you can’t remember
The goals that centre
Your lousy little life-
What to live for, what to live by?
Jumbled up to-do lists and half-done work
Failing to pick up where you left off.
Forgetting is absolutely wretched
It may fill you with a blunt dread
When you can’t remember
What the hell is supposed to make you feel
Something. Nothing? Anything!-
To make you dance, to make you sing
There’ll be something that you can almost feel
But you might just forget what it is.
Forgetting, I say, is worse than loss.
Forget me not, forget me not.
“Who will be my home?” Everyone looks outside the window and asks. But I can’t remember what a home is, Is it my mind, my body, my family, my city, my country? I’ve been a stranger everywhere, Often enough to ask like a little child What is a home? Home is the person you love, they say, The person you return to after a day of rain and hailstorms, The arms you hide inside when the world comes out to swallow you whole. It’s not that I don’t know what a home is I can’t feel it. All I can understand with my massive joke of a brain Are stories. You and I, we’re stories, we’ve always been Some are more than that, they are dreams. Therefore I’ve stopped searching for a home (After years of walking along aimless alleys and lanes which lead nowhere) I’ll start stringing words and actions into tales Only hoping they’ll connect me to a story that I can call mine So the next time I put on sad, soothing music And look out of the window I’ll ask “Who will be my story?”
There’s nothing new under the sun There’s nothing new about my pain, longing, love Nor in my desire to be unique. There’s nothing new in my poem, When I say I’ve been blue to have missed you Red to have kissed you Black to have forgotten you and myself I’m only rewording what I’ve said Maybe a hundred years ago, Even a thousand, who knows? The gnawing hunger in my mind To compose the poem to end all poems To create it all and consume it all- Is a spectacular piece of comic nonsense I laugh, louder and louder till my lungs bitterly burst And I’m finally empty again- A quill with no ink A blank word file A waste of time.
“How was your day?” . . In the mornings When my mother starts her day in the kitchen And my father looks for the newspaper All I want is an excuse.
An excuse to pause the day, even before it has begun.
“Halt!” I say to Mr.Time. Mr.Time wears a suit and a tie With glasses as thick as icecubes Perched on his rigid nose. He slaps me hard and shouts like a war general “Yes,Sir!” I come back to my senses.
The day goes on and on and on Like a thriller movie in slow motion, Devoid of background music. Deja vu Every moment a facsimile of some other one.
There’s a cadence to monotony If you have the ear for it. Sometimes I do, don’t you too?
Before long, I get lost In other worlds freshly manufactured Where facts don’t matter, Mr.Time is banned, And I am free.
But I’m no God, no Creator Almighty My thinly framed bubbles of thoughts Fade away like half-remembered memories Oh so quickly Poof! And I’m back again. Nothing makes sense yet, but at least I’m back to my senses.
Ringing voices vibrate in my ears Boys grinning with their mouths wide open Girls leaning onto each other Tearing up into giggles. The dusky sky and the dazzling streetlights Coexist with different ideals of beauty I keep my eyes open For every sight.
We call it a day. I make my peace with Mr.Time He smiles at me like a benevolent captor I smile back. . . “My day was great, how was yours?”
A sleepless night.
Shiny, shy sparkles (let’s call them stars) hide behind the raging smog,
A sky as grey as the railway platform with nowhere to go but stare at the ever-running trains
My city’s clarity matches my mind’s.
“Would he/she/they really care if I were gone?”
Blink once, twice, thrice
Over and over again
I make my eyelids droopy with repititive restlessness
But can’t get rid of the pain.
My body refuses to shut the windows to my soul, it seems
My heavy eyes are wide open
To let in all my doubts-
They’re guests after all (or maybe they are the residents)
And my mind is many things
But not an impolite host.
I try to conjure up some tears,
Scanning my memories-
Strange places,
Familiar hands in strange places,
Strange coldness in familiar souls.
Alas
Sorrow is too pure an emotion.
Disappointment suits a cynic better
And I am (often) sure I am one.
Dry eyes, a dry soul, a dry sense of humour
I’m not out of place in my own self, at least.
That’s a relief.
Speaking of relief, I finally realise what I really want to ask
“Would I care if I were gone?”
“Would I be… relieved?”
Maybe some other time,
Some other day,
I will ask a complete stranger
“How did you know I’m broken?”
And nod along with empty eyes to whatever he thinks the reason is;
Or maybe I’ll read a bestselling self-help book
Absorb it for a day
And decide not to be broken;
Or maybe I will go back to bleak attempts at sub-par poetry
Maybe you will read it too
And the desire to die (or the indifference to death, life and everything in between)
Will be reduced to a mere poetic theme
Just like love, war and other things.
I wanted to write another poem and was hesitating if I should write anything but poetry in my blog ( being a newbie blogger I’m nervous anyway) but I decided that a little insight into my prosaic life does not deserve poetry.
So here I am, a second year undergrad student of English Literature from a city named Kolkata in India, trying out blogging despite being cynical about it. Who even reads these days? I honestly wonder. I used to be such an avid reader (although I gorged on thrillers and not true literary pieces) but now I just can’t seem to concentrate on any book, write-up, and so on-nothing captivates me, and I feel that this happens with all of us now.
Our attention spans are shrinking too fast, we are a generation of bored people. Or is it just me? I love it when someone is often excited about a book, or a TV show or a poem or a song- just about anything at all- because I miss feeling that way. It’s very rarely that I get excited about anything like that- and it is the best feeling ever.
I even dread conversations because I’m always afraid of boring the others. I can’t figure out what to talk about? I have been told to speak more but I keep running round and round in the vicious cycle of-should I call it-shyness? Social anxiety? Whatever it is, it kills all words that dare to come out of my lips. As if, I try to push the words outside of my body but the words come running back inside like scared little children. I know this is stupid, people will not probably hate me if I talk to them, but I get a feeling that I have nothing worthwhile to contribute to any conversation-so why waste words? In the span of a year, thanks to my shyness, I have had a proper conversation with hardly half a dozen people in my university.
There’s another side of the same coin-I get bored by other people easily. It’s a paradoxical feeling- I believe they are cooler, smarter and more eloquent than me, yet I mostly don’t want to listen to them. In the end I end up not talking to anyone at all. I am happy in my own company, but sometimes it does get lonely.
Things are looking up since I am actively making an effort to talk to others. Technically my second year has not yet begun, and I hope that this year is going to bring me a lot more smiles 🙂
I am again afraid of boring you, reader, so I’ll end my piece, but on a less-whiny, happier note. Here’s a picture of a temporary tattoo I drew at a tattoo art competition at uni (the topic was stardust). I stood second (because not many participated XD ) and so it’s a good memory of my first year.
Think of dreams and smile at memes, reader, and we’ll meet again.
But darling
Why do I see you
Hiding sheets of paper,
Verses scribbled on them?
She broke your heart, didn’t she?
I can see the forlorn look in your eyes
Typical of the poets you despised.
Poets never created misery, my love,
The world was already full of it.
All they ever wanted
Was to
Set themselves free.
What will you do
When the youth of your body
Leaves,
Like a cruel gorgeous maiden
Who never cared for her lover
What will you do
If your experiences tire you
But never bloom into wisdom;
Your dandelion hair
Shedding
Every time you sigh
What will you do
If nobody cares
As you descend-
Rather, drown
Into your second childhood
Cheating on your diabetes diet
Sucking on mango seeds
Over and over
Like a greedy baby
What will you do
When one sudden morning
You catch your mind running slow,
Buffering every other minute
Yet not slow enough-
You can still observe
The annoyance it causes
To others
Their attention span getting shorter every second
What will you do
To hide your pain
When the shopkeeper screams-
Justifiably, you tell yourself,
It’s another day
Of forgetting the hearing aid
What will you do
When phone calls make you jump
Dreading
Who it is this time
Anxiety chewing aloud on your miserable mind
In the silent funeral
What will you do
When you can’t escape
The necessary noise of daily soaps
Reality TV
And hours of meaningless news
To fill the void
In your days
Evenings
Nights
What will I do
When I wither away in winter
Even though I never knew
How to blossom in spring?
I’d like to fall intensely in love.
Fall in so deep
That I hit rock bottom,
Only hoping you’d lift me up.
While pulling me up
You’ll fall in love too
Over my beautiful locks of hair
My tiny waist
My flawless skin
And before you finish lifting me
You’ll fall down yourself.
We’ll fall together
Deeper and deeper
Intensely in love.
One look at your chiselled jaw
Your muscular arms
That cocky smirk
And whoosh
I fall twenty feet deeper.
We’ll fall and fall
Until we can’t see
Our perfections anymore.
We’ll fight and fall out.
Fall out of love
Get out of the pit of intense love
And float apart
In giant bubbles of ego.
But
Neither you nor I possess
Such supermodel-like perfection, do we?
Maybe we aren’t fit for
The age-old tale
Of the dashing damsel and the handsome hero
Who didn’t step past their face values
Always sticking to
Love at first sight.
Maybe we aren’t fit for a love affair.
I am glad
For our greasy faces and gaping smiles.
Maybe we have hope
For love.
What will you do
