People around me
Energy-drowning

I hear them talking
Small talk about nothing
I want to escape it
Control what I take in

I’m right in the crowd
Yet I’m all alone
My thoughts are too loud
I want to go home

Are these all wrong people?
Am I being wrong?
Take me somewhere peaceful
Leave me all alone.

"To get a writer to fall for you, you just have to write about the moon!"

So she chirped—and so I will write about everything but,
like her ****, which I've never seen, but I imagine
could be a whole-*** natural satellite all by itself
(that's why they call it mooning),
the kind of satellite that brings all the boys to the yard,
all the boys who look for the NEOWISEs and Hale-Bopps in the night sky.
If I wanted to date a *****,
I would ask for Freud, and he would ask about my mother,
and I would wish that she was divorced and single.

Hell no, I don't want a writer falling for me.
I don't want anyone to fall for me.
I want to drag them down myself, into pits of mud and tar,
two grimy pigs slobbering and kicking and falling over each other.
I want the kind of love that lasts just a single night,
a night where all the snakes and swans and bears in the sky come alive,
where every corner is a new musical, every step a new circus,
where the flutes and pianos and violins blare just as loudly as the sirens chasing us,
where time is bottomless as mimosas.

Function—
where time slows itself amongst the spring petals,
suspended in disbelief, a viscous clarity, a freezing *******,
where even physali and gerbera meet their maker.
And, for such, too, do I pray, world orb in hand,
rattling from its industrial chain links,
an inhospitable world, the only one I know.

It is a world
that I would tuck under my collar, the subtlest bump
raising eyebrows amongst all at the orphanage
for fear I was one of the loved, the created,
the different, unlike them:
one night, one mistake, and nine months of regret.

Forme—
I do not know my maker.
I do not know why she made me.
But I'm sure that it wasn't easy,
amidst the blizzard,
in a world not unlike my own,
with nuts and bolts and brains
and all that.

Thirty years passed
like a dark flight of
small birds across
a half-blue moon.

I watched through
a keyhole of grief,
viewpoint diminished
like medicated pain.

I watched lemens
climb skyward,
remembering as
they fell away
into the night’s
silent smile.

With you no longer,
there is no wealth
of consolation. I am
as frail as a rag,
my will a withered
fruit.

How pure a thing is joy
that I no longer know,
my heart espaliered
to a wall of silence
and the sorrows of distance
that never scatter away.

On the East of Palatine Hill, on a hot Roman summer;
A congregation gathered at the Colosseum to the sound of Trumpets and Drummers!
A few hundred others jostled for permits at the Arch of Constantine, while a sea of delirious and exuberant souls, packed like sardines in a can; waited to catch a glimpse of their Emperor- Titus Vespasian.

To the Emperor's decree, the gates were raised, the hungry gnashing lions let loose,
who pounced upon these captive men-
Tearing apart their flesh and spilling their blood on the aranaceous ground.
These were men of No Use.

It was my First at the Arena, Aurelia was my name; joining with my brothers and our father in the travesty of 'Games' of mortal combat and venationes,
Chariot races and Executions of Condemned criminals or men defamed.
At one such time, I glanced at you-
Trotting on your dark stallion; a soldier past, you must have led a few batallions.
Now, a gallant Murmillo,  ready to strike with your glistening sword and armour on one arm,
a man so brave, you swept the crowd with your  beguiling charm.
Yet at this hour, as death draws near
as you wave amidst loud cheers,
Could your stout fingers have quivered?
Could your bold senses have gone numb,
Could You Too have feared?!

You gave a valiant fight till the last drop of your sweat, Seeking God's Mercy, or Eternity or Eternal Rest?
What must have gone through your noble mind, The Thoughts Unspoken...
Images of your unborn child or ;
Memories of your young wife?
To hold them one last time, you could give your thousand lives!
As you march to the Anthems, fit for kings,
What voices now with courage ring?
Bleeding for Glory or for Freedom Must?
O' Gallant one, you lay down in the dust!


A Thousand Years have passed since then
I visited the Colosseum with my family again!
The clouds above Rome gathered, and
Drizzled on my eyes...
And thoughts of 'being here Before', momentarily agonize.
Far across the blooming ground, amid the dilapidated walls and ruins- a shadow looms...
Lost Souls from the Past, meet once again and
Spirits reawaken from their tombs.
Could I ever have forgotten him, it was love at first sight? And...
Here we meet again after a 1000 lifetimes,
on this very ground, where my Knight met his plight.
Was it the autumn rain, or a drop of my tear?
Flabbergasted I stood there!
Was he a figment of my imagination or was he real?
The shadow smiled as a breeze came blowing and whispered in my ears...
" Aurelia, do not stand at my grave and cry
I have lived in you forever, I never died".

Tanaya Roy Choudhuri
31st March 2020