Breathe;
I know there was a time when you thought,
you would burn bright like the shooting- stars with me;
Does it make you breathless,
How we became,
Candles throbbing with a steady flame.
Apr 23, 2017
Apr 23, 2017 at 2:46 AM UTC
If you were nineteen acts of my Broadway classic,
I would pause time to watch you make me proud,
And scribble poems on backstage passes,
On a different day, In a different crowd.
But When the notes are changing now,
On grand pianos of mice and men,
You’d still find me writing another verse,
On a different day, With a different pen.
Yet Beware the ides of march they say,
Even as they feast on your incredible smile,
But beyond the journeys of lost tenses
There will always remain another mile.
Apr 5, 2017
Apr 5, 2017 at 12:03 PM UTC
****** on the rice fields of Vietnam,
Where was God when his children wanted to sleep,
The burnt villages should make you question;
Is your love really too young to weep ?
(Grandfather’s murmurs – here to stay,
The woman I love wouldn’t have it another way.)
Life from the shores of incredible pain,
Your mother gave birth to shifting sands ,
A woman’s love should make you question;
Did god kiss her bridal hands ?
(Father’s advice – never fades,
Our love will outlast his coming decades.)
Early mornings at red-sacred dawn,
I still remember your un-spectacled eyes,
A mother’s prayers should make you question;
Why does God believe your innocent lies ?
(Mother’s beauty- touches all,
She wants you to sing this coming fall.)
****** on the rice fields of Vietnam,
Where was man when his brothers wanted to sleep
A squandered earth should make you question;
Is her love really too young to keep ?
(Grandmother’s pearls – here to shine,
I am glad I made you forever mine.)
Mar 13, 2017
Mar 13, 2017 at 4:59 PM UTC
I thought I had run into you when I saw Zoya on the brickroads of Karachi. She was carrying the weight of her uncovered head with Rumi on her lips and rumours in her smile; I couldn’t help but wonder if she too hummed Tagore on lonely nights.
As I approached my past, the unmanned dinghys of the Arabian Sea seemed to have followed me from a different harbour, where the skyscrapers stood like unopened letters stacked to impress your firstborn child. The salty sea breeze might have been your childhood friend, but then these waves were always mine.
Maybe It was time to let go.
We kissed for 12 months while the bullets made love to the crumbling walls of Karachi, a city with the infinite passion of penniless poets and warrior saints. Draped in the lightest of cashmere, Zoya couldnt help but be worried – the curtains of my thoughtful musicals never cared much for bulletproof jackets.
Zoya’s grandfather was a veteran of two wars, the smoke from his imported cigars still fills our balcony like the laughter of your firstborn fills the halls of your new sea-facing mansion – I wonder if Naina even knows my name. My books have begun to sell now – you should make her read ‘Summer Wounds’ one day.
The newspapers tell me I am widely read by the underground leadership because of Asif – my brother in law who has taken up arms against men who want to burn Zoya for walking with her head uncovered – Karachi is no longer the same.
They have banned my books now – apparently God hates the words I use to describe our summer love; do you also feel the same way ?
I dont know, maybe they are right – after all Zoya still flinches every time I mention your name.
Zoya’s grandfather is sick – the years of tobacco have now given way to the gunpowder smoke – I am lucky you stopped me when you could. Do you still make people change their ways ? Maybe. But something tells me even you can’t help Karachi.
Its your birthday today, I know you haven’t gotten a piece from me in the last 10 years but this time it will be different. There is a fading sound of Zoya’s screams as I leave for the post office; i cant let her love wipe my past.
A bullet hits me from nowhere ; I hear a distant cry of an animal celebrating the first **** of the day. The pain is blinding but they shoot 10 more bullets into me, there is no modesty in ****** it seems.
As I lie dying with eleven bullets buried in a heart that has known more wounds than love, I have begun to wonder if I should have chosen a different harbour for my love – the words of Tagore suddenly seem far more familiar than those of Rumi.
Maybe its time to let go.
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 9:34 PM UTC
I hope Dave doesn't mind, but I am used to her holding my hands now, the certainty of death has a curious way of removing barriers of uncertain modesty.
Today she has come in with a basket of my favourite books because unlike the sombre woman in white overalls, she knows I need my Hemmingway more than I need the dripping blood of another man. After all, it was she who started that stupid ritual of calling me Old Man, after she saw me reading Hemmingway at 16 - the stain of the spilled medical cocktail on her white shirt still makes me wonder whether it was all a mistake.
She has stopped crying these days, the tears make me uncomfortable like they always do - Her 2nd year analysis on patriarchal oppression of men might have helped her understand my plight, but it can't stop her from wiping off the occasional tear when she thinks i am asleep.
Today she can't stop kissing my clean shaven head - i wonder if it feels different from the days when she used to play with my outgrown tufts. The kisses make me a bit more naked than the dressing gown they make me wear, but it's the kind of nakedness that makes you feel feel more thoughtful on winter nights.
As she strokes my face, the edges of her engagement ring are gently rubbing across my cheeks, and reminding me that he will arrive any moment.
She has to leave a bit early today- Dave is meeting her parents, so she apologies as if I will die the next day - what ******* I am gonna stick around for no less than 2 weeks the doctors have said.
As i see her leave, I take out the half torn tissue on which i had been secretly scribbling - old habits die hard. The poem was almost done - almost, apart from the last lines. You see, when you are dying, you tend to become obsessed with endings.
"And so although Its been twenty years since you said I would be your last,
You still look beautiful when you wear your past"
I hope Dave doesn't mind.
Feb 4, 2017
Feb 4, 2017 at 12:56 PM UTC
The last time I saw you sipping time on his rooftop, your wounds were smaller and my heart bigger than it ever would be. I had learnt to love you despite the smell of wild daffodils on your breath, and the look of expensive pride in your eyes - things you were willing to give up when you first hugged me with the surprising confidence of an old world pilgrim hugging the shores of new America and bringing with it the hopes and bitterness of the transatlantic blues.
The last time I saw you sipping time on his rooftop, the neighbours said that if I had arrived a bit earlier, I would have heard the sound of his sandy boots crashing against your rotten hardwood flooring, drowning your cries for constant help. His clenched fists might have broken your apartment window, But you begged me to give him the benefit of the doubt - maybe unlike me, he had never fallen for a wild daffodil before.
The last time I saw you sipping time on his rooftop, I remember confessing how you weren't truly my first love - that honour instead belonged to a monsoon paperboat that hado shown up at my flooded doorstep when I hadnt yet crossed the ripe old age of five.
Looking back - you told me, those were probably my golden years of romantic maturity.
The last time I saw you sipping time on his rooftop, you failed to realize why men kept falling over their swords to win the curled up furball crying in my arms, wearing an unasked crown of broken hearts. I wish you had remembered what i had said.
People loved you not because your face shone the brightest or you looked more beautiful than every damsel dancing in the ghostly courts of a dying town. Instead people kept coming back to you because you were Kolkata, you were literally this city.
The last time I saw you, we were sitting on the edges of a different city i had chosen to call my own. But I wish you had realized what I meant.
Feb 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017 at 12:14 PM UTC
It's fall, and I'm falling.
Again.
I can hear you fall into step next to me, our feet crunch the bright blanket of our dreams, susurating the empty outlines of our unsketched pieces.
Everyone seems to be carving jack-o-lanterns, but I can't meet the eyes of the pumpkin patch owner after what we did there last fall. I can't go back to 'our spot' without their carved faces subtly mocking the shadows of the idealist, drunk on the idea of "the one ".
It funny how we manged a smile when the leaves actually fell. The tree's misery masked ours and you carved the rocks on the empty ghats with the same knife you would later use to cut our ties. The leaves grew back you know, and we still never stopped smiling.
How curious.
I'm a little relieved you didn't ask for the coat that still cloaks our past even though it clashes with my wardrobe almost as much as it clashes with my life. Because I like believing the illusion that they still smell of you in a way that your perfume couldn't make up for in our brief dalliance.
I remember speaking to speak at our - no, your wedding. I must have told every ghost floating in black tie or a white gown what a beautiful person you are. What I didn't tell them was how much I loved you, because regardless of what I said they would refuse to hear the past tense in my voice. Gosh, never have i missed the tragedies of my language classes quite as much.
If memory serves me right, I remember congratulating the groom and telling him how lucky he is. But I don't bother telling him how it would've been me last fall. Some truths are best kept secret.
You even asked me for a dance didnt you ? Was that really needed ?
When it all ended I remember waiting outside, next to the roses littered down the hallway and thinking - what a pity. After all your favourite were always lilies.
Now that I look back I think we swept through, akin to children in a hurry. The haze is still lifting, but the season keeps coming back like a monday morning hangover. So as the clouds part with majesty, you happen to have lost the blur of perfection.
Come next july, you'll open your painted eyes to midsummer rain and think of -
The rain.
And I'll be thinking of how burning marshmallows always makes them taste a little bit better.
Why ? Because not ever tale needs a dramatic ending.
It's fall, and I'm falling.
Again
Oct 27, 2016
Oct 27, 2016 at 3:15 AM UTC
An empty pub is the worst place to be,
In a city, Where even gods stay a bit longer every year,
Perhaps persuaded by the halcyon laughter of that half dressed street urchin,
Who has learnt to celebrate her comical existence,
In the pregnant underbelly of a false saint,
Who refuses to give birth to anything but naked poverty.
Small wonder the gods have never chosen to intervene in the city of joy,
After all its the fault of these urchins who refuse to abandon their filthy smiles,
And have the audacity to peak through the walls that we annually paint,
With the victorious colours of human values.
But why do they peek,
Isn't their world filled with the unmatched profoundness of black and white photography?
Isn't their world the home to poetic muses and romantic poverty ?
Indeed, why do they peek ?
Before the label on the bottle in front of me,
Makes you judge the potency of what I utter,
Let me tell you why.
For them our world is a constant theatrical which has run different shows annually,
Yet the only complaint they have perhaps is that the genre of the shows,
Have somehow never changed.
Its always been the darkest of satires,
Like the running satire in which half our society,
Sitting safe within the beautiful walls ,
We built around our indomitable prosperity and culture ,
Indulges,
In the hysterical condemnation of a man,
Who wants to build a beautiful wall on a different continent .
To protect the same
You know, I don't speak urchin-tongue,
But I have always had the gift to read feelings I shouldn’t,
And something tells me the urchins have titled this theatrical,
“Moral ************
But that’s not all,
An empty pub is the worst place to be in a city which refuses to let you give up hope,
And gently reminds you with every drink
That even when the rest of the world is out there dancing,
To the drum beats of happy endings and ephemeral farewells,
There’s one place that will never close its doors on you.
The only thing is.
The place isn’t the home you never ended up building with her,
It’s just an empty pub.
And that is why an empty pub is the worst place to be.
Oct 27, 2016
Oct 27, 2016 at 3:13 AM UTC
The intimacy of a naked skyline had always been a bit too much for the girl who had grown up tracing her thoughts on the moist windows of skyscrapers that tore through the emptiness of open skies and lonely hearts. The city would always be her first lover, the sea winds her first kiss, and the inhuman slums her first heartbreak - this wasn't your ordinary girl.
The arch of the Sydney harbour bridge reminds me of how her back arched the first time I kissed her neck and the horizon melted right in front of my eyes. The bridge's arch might be a testament to human civilization, but hers is the reason why you can someday justify the pain of your first heartbreak to your daughter as she breaks down before her high school prom. The bridge's arch might stand tall against the trials of time, but hers is the reason why you will see your past flicker in the flames fanned on every bonfire night.
But before you fall in love with the arch and wish bridges could heal all distances, you need to know there are some that even the best and the most beautiful can't.
You know, sitting on the docks of Port Jackson reminds me how I was born in the small port town of an insignificant island and I had grown up with more sand in my slippers than tongue in my cheek. Everytime you swing your legs from the edges of the dock to feel the spray of the recurring waves on your naked calves, the waves seem to sing about how they taught me never to give up on a shoreline, no matter how close or distant its breath on your face.
Its funny how I never ended up finding that Italian place by the harbour where I taught you how to soak in the flavour of a single malt scotch while you taught me how to soak in the flavour of life. Its funny because you always wanted me to find us that spot, in case we wanted to relive the mistakes we made that night.
But then I guess,
There are some mistakes, you are not allowed to make twice.
The sun setting on the city still looks beautiful from the edges of the harbour each day,
But it makes me wish we had stayed behind long enough to see the sun rise from underneath the sea.
Oct 27, 2016
Oct 27, 2016 at 3:08 AM UTC
In empty airports, farewell to thee.
Farewell the clouds awaiting forever,
As a blushing skyline is wasted, on
Concrete cracked with dreams of poets.
On empty parchments, farewell to thee
Farewell the quills dipped in open wounds,
As hopeful mornings are wasted, on
Neck-scarves scarred with cigarette stubs.
From empty mansions, farewell to thee
Farewell the bricks of sweat crusted crumbs,
As the shining glasses are wasted, on
Men blinded with acid burns.
But,
From bursting heartbeats, welcome to thee,
Welcome the branches of the jasmine's smile,
As the three paragraphs above will be wasted, on
Love smiling at the cusp of dusk.
Aug 8, 2016
Aug 8, 2016 at 1:41 PM UTC