Sun slits in through slats
of kitchen window blinds
and she is alone.

The art major is cooking
spaghetti,
pretending her thrifted T-shirt
bearing a cotton copy
of Campbell's Soup Cans
is not stained with tears and blood.
Oh, but that's hysterics and
hyperbole;
art has a tendency of making its worshippers
melodramatic...no?
The blood is only tomato sauce
and the tears...
well, what are tears but
water and salt?
After all, dramatizing the
mundane is just one awkward shade
of artistic temperament.
Visualizing life through
a heavy silk screen.

The art major sighs and
stirs.
The spaghetti is redder and
redder as she cooks.
Just as
her paintings bleed more blood
as she dangles a brush over them -
the teary-eyed watercolours.

The art major has decided
that drawing out extremities
of colour
might transform
her own life into
a pop of a Warhol painting.

The art major sighs and
stirs.

She thinks, tries to
think
in technicolour.
Today's thought-pencilled thesis
concludes (like a brush stroke of uncertain finality) that
love is the red of tomato soup cans.
Anger is the boil, passion is
the gulp,
danger, caution, warning,
the hot breaths, fleeting warmths,
the burn and sweet and tang.
She looks down at the
scarlet of
Warhol's soup cans,
blooming in worn out cotton
on her chest.

It might as well be blood, she
thinks.
It is,
it is,
it is.
Blood red love -
tomato soup cans.

Sun sets in slits
through kitchen window blinds
and she is still alone.

The art major sighs and
stirs.
The spaghetti is ready.

Heartbeat limps
into my ears as I perfunctorily
greet your memory.
The slate of recollection wiped
clean
by a year-long flood.
Good.
Passersby on the street - your
memory and me.

Heartbeat finally caught
up to steady-drum-wit.

I'm glad, I am glad now -
you exist
only as a breath-steam image
on my glasses.

I got a new pair this year
so I could see more clearly.

.
...
.......
Then I never saw you
even didn't hear that song again
how everything got lost in uncertain
begins the rules of funeral  

Those morning dews,
how beautiful  the silver shines!
surely lost after a few hours
ah! the dreams grew and lost in daylight  

Moonlight falls on this large meadow
Certainly clears my distinct shadow
what a brightness in the face of horizon
get lost after the clouds covered

Hope grows love
where river moves towards the upstream
when loses
the time, untimely  

Love is a foolish pride
Find after lost,
as the day within the days,
daily

Lonely time as the pain of the poetry
In words, paper of poetry submerged
Find thy, say into the darkness
what a restless mind, drunk!
...
..
.
@Musfiq us shaleheen

Prometheus gave fire
to humanity and had
his innards guzzled
by vultures for it.

You gave me the sun
and I
unduly set myself
wholly
to the task of tearing
apart your insides.

Top to bottom, I stripped you
strip you,
will strip you
of all that makes you you and
I don't know how to stop
turning your yellow
to orange
to purple
to black
like my innards too. See,
I too once gave fire
to people and lovers and friends and
then
I set myself to the task of
tearing up apart
those various necessities that made me
me. Things like basic human kindness.
Simple rules like don't
involve yourself with so many girls
that you lose count while never losing
count. That sort of
thing, y'know.

Do you know how long I've been
trying to write you a poem called
Darjeeling? I've been trying  for
so long that I drink coffee now.

I've been trying for so long that
when the restaurant menu finally
reads 'Darjeeling tea' for so and so
price, I don't pay it and order
some mediocre hot-chocolate instead
(and even a Strawberry milkshake. What
does that say about me, I wonder?).

It was lukewarm. It didn't scald
my tongue like you did.

I suppose it never will.

feelings that stick to the roof of my rib cage
like stubborn peanut butter
I attempt to loosen with distractions from you
I go running or maybe more walking
I try to run to dislodge these thoughts
maybe I run to become something new
something unknown to you
distant and foreign, unfamiliar

what I really need is to learn a new language
so that it can take up all the space in my brain
cramp you out
I need some time reading a confusing book
so I have less time to remember

these days you're everywhere obtrusively
I am trying to shut you out and forget
I fail and I remember, hopelessly.

all but one recurring hope, I keep.
I hope you think of me -
because I am always thinking of you.

Clementine deleted Joel
from her mind. Joel tried to
forget her; he couldn't, so
he got rid of her too. You
try, I know, to get rid of me. I
try, you know, to pretend that
the world isn't spinning so fast
in the hope
that we will fall of its spinning-top edge
and stumble, clumsily, gracelessly, into
each other. We're spinning so fast with it-
the world- so this is unlikely, so we both
pretend that it's an accident when we fall
into each other,
again and again, as
We play spin the bottle while
The world spins instead.
Suddenly.
Now that that same world has stilled itself for
us: we don't know what to do without its
rotationary madness angling us
towards old age and crumpets (together?). That
same world has stilled itself until
tomorrow when that same world will spill
itself out from day to night to day again
as we take our respective first drafts
of our poems written about each other
and

Edit.

out that same mad spin
that made us
us
just like
Joel and Clementine forgot-
on purpose. We forget, on purpose
with purpose
but,
we'll still meet each other in Montauk where
that same world will still itself
as we wrap our fingers around each other's
fingers
in the cold
where you might finally reciprocate
my lacklustre
confessions.

You too,
right?

Little girl in a blue
snow globe.
Pressed white shirt and tartan skirt.
Hair slipping
out of a ponytail or braid or something
like that.
Laughter like a current
to be lost in by a boatman.
Her first time at the beach.
Writing
childish saltwater sonnets
in the sand with her toes.

Paper-plane sky
kisses
sea brimming
out of its seams.
Singing, on-off key,
school choir tone,
'Never Let Me Go'.
Who needs, she needs
nothing
but
the horizon
cupped
in outstretched palms.
Innocence stored
in jagged-shiny shells
waiting to be
buried
in hot, bare sand.

Time comes to shore, oceans
grow warmer,
shallow.
No more of kid braids
but a woman in
azure.
Her whole life having been
a half-moon run
out of deep, dry wells
in search of,
in search of...
in search of
what, but
hope.
Cracking oyster shells
looking for
pearls.

Time again comes to shore.
Cigarette pants for tartan skirt,
in a blue-almost-black.
Staring out
at water lapping before her,
before her, after the sky.
Before,
after.
The horizon is a pretty picture
she wants to hang
on the wall of her heart.
But she, schoolgirl trapped in snow globe,
remembers
textbook phrases like
'Humans are made up of 75%
water.'
So we are drowning every moment,
she thinks dryly.

Water within,
inevitable.
Maybe her skin or nerves or vocal cords
sensed it all those years ago
in the schoolgirl's snow globe.
Like crying, like love,
like fearing, like dying.
Shifting, receding, flowing in
and out.

Could emotions be tides she dares,
dares not
row, row,
row through?

Where did it all leak away?
Was it in the salt
running down her face?
If she is 75% water,
where has it drained
to leave the heart parched,
and her tartan days a distant drought
of memory?

Snow globe melts away.
Wade in, wade in,
have your fill,
until skin is slick
with better pain.
You told the ocean years ago,
you sang in schoolgirl choir tones,
never,
never,
never let me go.

Now it never will.

I wish I had told you
when even the stars had been
too cold to breathe, that
yes,
you are my disaster.

See, your hurricane blew out
the paper-candle-sun I'd so
precariously perched
back in January
for warmth and solitary
subsistence.
Instead, you dragged me out
into harsh, hot, white
spotlight,
my hand grabbed in yours,
with your series of purple and then more
purple verses,
while I resisted the fact that
that
I wanted, want
wanted, want
to be more
than fodder for your poetry.

You may not comprehend
the catastrophe conjured
by your hands, your words
but I know myself.
I've always lived on the
edge of disarray and I
think I relished,
relish
my mania
because now I'm
stilled.
Stilled.
Wagon wheels stuck
in African mud,
halted
by stop signs of
violet violent violet
velvety verses.

Now I'm cowering under blankets
for artificial warmth,
with my thoughts
and a book, all clad
in the ghosts of your hands, I've been
stilled.
You've thrown silence
into the life of a musician.
You have scratched the vinyl
to break the song into pieces,
stop
stop
Caution.
This is a broken record.

Stilled.
If you are a hurricane,
then I am a bigger blossoming wreck,
still
you have managed to do it -
stilled.

All I want is to shatter
teacup
after
teacup
against the walls
and scream
into your too-brown eyes
but I can't say or sing a thing,
cowering -
stilled.

I wish I had told you
when the stars had been too cold to breathe and
you and me
you and me
did not even bother
to inhale or other such trivialities;
our breaths had been stolen
in the time and space of a white
aeroplane,
I wish I had said
yes,
you are my disaster,
so what am I to you?

Dear Oliver,
         It’s been a while since I’ve written to you, but not so long since we’ve spoken. I know you’re always patiently watching; eyes lowered but mind forever intertwined with mine. You sit and wait for the right time to chime into the rhythms that skim the slippery slide to the restless places of my mind’s eye.
         The world still doesn’t know how you manage to exist in one place and then the next; never resting, always humming to my thoughts “today will be okay”. Some people know about you. And I’m not sure if they think it’s a joke because they haven’t really laughed. I see the worry in the twitch of their eyes, the open lines that come to their mind; like is she crazy or maybe this is a lie? But how can intangible innocence of my conscience be a flaw in my logic. Your light blue eyes are too real to be made up by a tragic cataclysm of chemistry’s flawed magic. They’re engrained in my brain, and I don’t know why. They’re the features that stand out to me the most. I think, that maybe, in my head, I’m trying too hard to give you a soul. But it’s okay, and I know you’ll say it’s fine, because you’re the kind to help grown-ups like me climb the things we’ve clung onto too tightly. Childhood’s grip never did loosen its hold around me. I still feel like I’m stuck in purgatory. But your smile; I can see it, and I can feel it, and worst of all I recognise it.
          Sometimes in the darkness of the reaper’s shadows, when I wonder why I feel so suffocated even when I’m breathing, you sit there in our hideaway, calling out to sway the deafening silence that begs to stay, beckoning me to crawl your way. Because, you know I have this tiny light I keep hidden away in my mind, and even when I think I’m about to die out in existential cinders of the world’s abandoned fire… I’ll follow it. You have my hope under lock and key, guarded only by your trust in my will to live and forgive, not only others but myself. You float around my sickness with it, see right through the thick fog of misty tears that forever stream across my face. You grin at me and say, “It’s alright, you’re alive.”
         To tell you the truth, that line hurts as much as it helps, because you’re not; I reach out into our void and touch your nothingness with my aching fingers, try to hold your hand, to feel the touch of something uncorrupted and sinless… only to end up curling myself around the air where your comfort still softly lingers. Maybe it’s a small curse wrapped in the purest blessing but you’re something I can’t extinguish. People think you grow out of these things, but imagination only grows with you.
         I’ll finish this pointless letter with the words that truly shape you. You are the countless moments people wish they would never forget. You are the thump of a child’s wild heart. You are the light that first hits our blind eyes. You are not alive, but you are living in us all. And the purest thing I can say today is, there’s nothing more I could wish for.                      
                                                                                                     Yours sincerely,
                                                                                                                          Me.

So, how have you been?
I know it's been awhile.
I couldn't bare to watch this creature feature -
The selling out for style.
What good is luminescence
If there is nothing to be seen?
I choose to light my words
With colors-
Blues, and reds, and greens
And shower it with glistening golden streams.
So, pardon me as I purge my disappointment.
Where does integrity go
When the walls are burning down?
The lanes are blocked with gratuitous frivolity as meaningless as the strands of fiber drifting in a beam of sunlight-
Particles of bodies that settle on the coffee table only to be wiped away by a tattered cloth.
I cry out for the setting of the sun,
That glowing orb which destroys the mysteries,
And robs the seeker of discovery.
I ask,
Are the shadows being driven into the crevices never to be seen again?
There would be no depth perception without them.
A phantom weight is here,
Then just as suddenly as it came,
has gone.
The color is washed away in all the brightness.
What is left is white,
and not much else to write,
But of the sadness of the ways
it takes the texture from the days.