So I always color my soul the color of you.

you know how after gesso-ing the canvas
you sit back,
take the largest brush you have
add some titanium white with the darkest blue
you can find
and attack that woven weave wanting to
make almost love to it
temper it with color
not knowing what result you are after
I do.
Then you see light spots shadows clouds
trees and fields ponds appear
a few geese white flying
just with a slight addition here and there
trees seem to believe they are real
shadows grow all from one tangent knowing
how that is real
when what you want
need to paint is more surreal.
And the perspective all the sudden changes
into third worlds
reality
I do.
I do know the almost uncontrollable urges of creativity.
I know the best selling colors.
I just faint to use them.
I get all wild.

West Center Street was, not so long ago,
A kaleidoscopic flood come three o’clock:
Children in waves of blues, greens, and golds
Set free from Margiotti Elementary,
The more subdued hues of the men
Finishing first shift, at the Montmorenci Mills
All filling the sidewalk
Like some great jigsaw puzzle in continual motion.
Now, the color seems to have left us for greener pastures,
Only the faded, unevenly washed yellow buses
Which take the children
To the central school over in St. Mary’s remain,
Solemn faces forlornly pressed to the windows
As they pass the ungainly and obsolete building
Now dark and silent, squat and hunched-over,
And further on the mill, gates padlocked,R
rusted pieces of chain-link pointing accusatorily downward,
As if the fault for its closing
Lies with us and us alone.

Ah, but it was different, near enough in time
That the memories remain sharp, clear, biting
And they come back in curious bits and pieces,
Like how the Market Basket stayed open twenty-four hours
So the third-shifters could shop for groceries
Without having to short-change themselves on sleep,
The lights in Carter’s Depatment Store,
Bright as Heaven itself to six-year old eyes
Fixed wonderingly on an electric football game
Or a toy bridge of the Enterprise, complete with a transporter
Which made Spock disappear As Seen on TV,
Or how, when we went to the Friday fish-fry at the Kinzua House,
We would stop at every table,
Fathers exchanging greetings, finishing those jokes
Which the noise along the line had left incomplete.

You left, just like everyone else, but not for good, of course;
It was just a temp job to make some money
Until you’d saved up enough to help out your mom.
Once you got settled, you’d come back home
To visit—by Christmas, at the very latest.
We waited outside of the old Rexall for the Trailways bus
That would take you to Erie,
And after the shortest half-hour I’d ever known
We kissed at the curb and embrace
Until the driver intimated with his horn
That we either needed to say goodbye or get a room.
Still, I knew you’d be back, as, after all
There are bonds that time and distance cannot break.


That is all over now, and those dreams
Our parents clung to like rosaries,
Where our lives were better than what they had known
Have moved south to Charlotte, or Houston, or Birmingham;
The Market Basket closed, boarded and de-windowed;
Hell, you can’t buy a single gallon of milk
Between here and Ridgway,
And the Kinzua House long gone as well,
Save for the tattoo place that occupies the space
Where the bar once was,  
And once in a while, though less so every year,
You’ll catch one of the old-timers, frozen in time,
Staring at the smokestacks of the old mill
Ancient obelisks like those
Looming over the graves of the town’s founders
Tucked away in the old section of the cemetery
Up on Bootjack Hill,
The paths chock-full with weeds and briars,
The grass unmown for some three summers now.

*When I got your card, it was postmarked from Denver;
The temp gig hadn’t lasted as long as it was supposed to,
And it’s not like Erie is a boom town, after all.
Still, you were there long enough to meet someone,
Someone, you noted who was looking ahead,
Not over his shoulder all the **** time;
Besides, you noted in your one
And ultimately failed attempt at humor
You remembered how our Geography teacher had once said
That all the land east of the Missisippi,
Even here in the foothills of the Endless Mountains,
Were simply mounds of dirt, old and dead,
While the Rockies were young, vibrant, still shifting and growing.
The card was one of those that come blank on the inside
So you can compose your own witty epithet,
As there are some sentiments so dreadful in their foolishness
That even Hallmark won’t touch them.

To my dearest darling Joe

I had to let you know of fun that we have had on our latest holiday, I know you would get such a kick out of the tales we have to tell.  

It was a last minute all inclusive deal, we set out with Sue and Steve for some late autumn sun to Zante the Greek island of fun.

Oh Joe I cannot tell you the colour of the seas,  so clear so blue I can't do them justice, if you could see a picture it may be a start but in theses seas you can see to the bottom and the sand is  white and dark.  

No seaweed in sight nor turtles too, it's too late this time of year but olive trees and lemon, lime, oranges and grapefruit are everywhere and handy for a bite, that's right I put my hand up and plucked an orange from the tree, oh Joe your mouth would explode, it tasted so divine.

The people are oh so friendly and they make it very clear that the sun in the sky is unusual at this time of year.

We hired a car and drove into the mountains and dropped down to a port, hired a boat and they took us to shipwreck cove, where some years ago a boat had shipwrecked and it's cargo cleared the sea, we swam and dived in the clear blue sea underneath clear blue sky, oh and some people were tightroping across the ravine, I'm afraid I didn't have the courage to join them in the sky but I lied down and watched them heroically cross from end to end.

We've eaten traditional food and drank traditional ***** and used the traditional loos, do you remember the ones in the south of France that mum and I refused to use, we'll these were exactly the same. We've laughed and cried recanting tales of days goneby.

It really has been delightful a holiday to remember, one I wish I could tell you all about, I know you would sit and laugh with me as I retell the fabulous holiday we have had to catch some sun on the Greek island of fun, Zante.

I love you Joe **

There is, I admit, no small attraction in the possession
Of the wand--but invariably that becomes obsession,
For magic bewitches all it touches, and woe to the man
Who, having discerned its methods and secrets, believes he can
Employ it yet stay unfettered and unscathed, without effect,
(As if the mere claim of enchantment would not make one suspect
Both the man and his motives), all sweet fruit without bitter rind.
Such men may find the verdict of peers and gods to be unkind,
(There exists no single point in time we fail to comprehend
That no simple act of wizardry postpones our mortal end)
For who among us remains impervious to Nature’s whims
Or time’s ravages--our concentration wanes, the eyesight dims,
Our hands shake, every bit as unsteady as our convictions.
So we carry on, with our exceptions and contradictions
Expertly hidden, in the hopes that, at least for a short while,
We can offset, through the employment of parlor tricks and guile,
The diminution of our gifts, fading of our faculties.
So, as we reach our denouement, what have our abilities
Brought us in the end, save the knowledge that our reputations,
No matter how great, serve as no match for our limitations?

The bar squats at the bend in the road where Mill becomes Burden,
Walls somewhat recently painted,
Roof re-shingled ostensibly within memory
A derelict stockade on a front line where cowboy and Indian alike
Have each thought better of standing their ground,
Now defended by a few solitary souls,
Veterans of the days when the place hummed with those
Who’d finished shifts at Troy-Bilt or the Freihofer bakery
(Places either long gone or in the hospice stage,
The bar itself not profitable in any sense of the word,
Opening each afternoon for no palpable reason
Save some madness of inertia)
And who had not moved in with children in Latham or Malta,
Or gone to some frowzy, weedy southern trailer park
Sweating and sweltering through ninety-degree dawns
In Sarasota or St. Pete.
One corner of the building still bears a neon sign
Which sternly announces Ladies Entrance
Though, as the resident wits are fond of noting
Ain’t been no lady on the premises ‘n a month of Sundays,
But, on this particular evening, there is one of that gender
Haphazardly arranging herself on a stool
In search of a compromise between physical comfort
And simply remaining somewhat upright.
She is there in the company of a squat, *****-handed man
Who sits beside her, leering and yakking away
As he signals the bored and ancient bartender
For a couple more Buddy long-necks
(She cannot remember his name—Clyde, Clete,
In any case she’ll assign him an identity later.)
Their acquaintance is of a recent nature,
His end of the deal a burger at the diner on First Street
And a drink or two or three here
(There is a return on his investment, implicit and fully understood,
Though she has not—in her mind, anyway—reached such a point
As it needs to spelled out in plain English.)
She clutches, tightly though surreptitiously as possible,
For she occupies a social stratum
Where placing a death grip on something
Marks it as valuable, putting a bulls-eye
On object and owner as well,
A purse, a three-hundred dollar Coach bag
Bestowed on her by some gum-chomping Russell Sage undergrad
In a random, futile, wholly absurd gesture
(This was some time ago, and the bag, once a fiery crimson
Has faded and the fine leather has creased and mottled
Until it now appears to be a miniature strawberry heifer on a strap)
Though she would note that she was a family of some substance,
Having once attended a fine all-girls school
Where she became engaged
To a professor in the Fine Arts department
(It is unclear whether it was Smith or Bryn Mawr
Or, perhaps, Sarah Lawrence, if anywhere at all,
Her suitors and specters
All but indistinguishable from one another.)
All that, however, is clearly a matter of was;
Her will be is a less fanciful thing,
A measured yet inevitable and precipitous slide
into transactions less palatable
Exchanged for comforts colder than such as she settles for now
(But perhaps not—there is a persistent, palpable pain in her side
Accompanied by a noticeable swelling; Probably benign,
The nurse practitioner had noted at the free clinic,
But she occupied that societal niche
Where further, if unheroic, measures
Were unlikely to be forthcoming.)
In any case, she and her paramour pro tempore
Will call it a night, she pinning her bag to her side
As she instinctively swivels her head to and fro
To ensure no one is seeking to relieve her of her prize possession
(Though its contents are meager—a few dollars in change,
A sweater, a change of underwear,
The whole blessedly insubstantial,
As it is likely she could shoulder any additional load.)

There were
children, sweethearts
shared Moscows, Odessas;
I told myself Ready, aim but
not fire.

======================
I was born in an independent free democratic country
With all the constitutional freedom to write, speak, hear and share
Poetry is my meditation, the every breath of my life
I write in the vicinity of my Goddess of Knowledge
But my words are edited by editor while being published
I recite my latest poems in the hall of poets
Where my friends complain about the illegal use of words
Which they can't digest so ask me to replace them as per their choice
They just hear my poems so that I should listen to them in turn!

Mutual sharing is just based on need and greed among our friends
Not on the quality, mission or vision but jealousy and discrimination
It pained me to do so, but it was needed for my personal uniqueness
So I thought to withdraw from them with a heavy heart but ease of Grace
Since I want my regular breath of life and not a constant suffocation

Poetry is my meditation, not an act of theater
Which may be changed as per public demand
By adding a comedian or a villain
To increase the rating of the show

I want to write my poems as I can enjoy them from my heart
Without the worldly audience
And I can recite them to me, to myself
In the company of my Goddess of Knowledge
Who really listen to me, and guide me to write better

Written by
~~~Jawahar Gupta~~~

In his last hour, he just smiled,
And let his soul go
His hand in mine, still in grip
Father, I bid you farewell as you RIP
Your love so precious and deep
That none can measure even if they leap
I cup my hands on my dull face
As my soul cries and my eyes weep
Breaking all earthly ties
You are gone over the skies
Living us emotionally shattered
But I know your breakthrough mattered
The pains and gains you've left to be
One day we all shall unite,
That day I truly wish to see...

©sim