We laugh
at least you do
I watch you laughing
thinking the joke wasn't really that funny
at least to me

But maybe that's the punchline
I know to you this all makes sense

But that's a different punchline isn't it
for another joke I've never heard
or just don't find funny

maybe this just lacks context, don't you think
even the slightest sense of reality

But the gap between where I stand and where you do is only getting wider
we're drifting, but not together

You keep punching holes in your boat
like bad jokes
asking where the waters come from as you sink

lower
              lower
                         lower

I think its time I untied you from my life (preserver)
less you climb aboard when your boat sinks

Bad jokes and all
no punchline here

Just you and I, not making any sense at all

there was never any magic to finding my way to this place just another sleepless night
restless longing to feel, pretend that I could belong

somewhere, at least for a time

to cast my words like fishing lines in hopes of catching some fragment of acceptance
in a craft where I still fumbled
stumbled, blind as any bat

fingers grouping harsh and frantic after words that plagued my mind jerking sleep back like a rug that used to lay so still and lifeless

leaving me flat on my back head spinning with so many verses
titles for these names and faces
places, places I have yet to see but still go seeking endlessly

scratching words through coffee shops, plane flights.. bus stops
somber tones of concert halls rising higher

pitch matched only by these shaking hands still gripping pen and paper
feverish with intent and desire to find their place where two worlds could meet

if only as a passing glance between two threads of a second where I could simply fall in place and know as artists do
that I am not alone

i'm standing by the marker stone
feeling wind upon my face
listening to the echoes from the grave
i feel the tears freeze on my cheeks
from the wind upon my face
as i listen to the echoes from the grave

I'm in a darkened corner of the graveyard
It's overgrown and not well kept
It's been a long time since a visitor
Has on these markers wept

I feel the spirits all around me here
I hear their voices on the wind
There is not a single angel here
These are souls who all have sinned

The grass has grown halfway up the stone
You see the name but not the years
It's been decades since any marker here
Has been whetted down with tears

I tend the grass and **** growth
Cut it back right to the ground
And except for ghostly echoes
I do not hear a sound

The man here was my father once
Though I don't recall his face
But, here he lies, worm food and dust
In this long forgotten place

The voices of other souls do float
Waiting for someone to show
But, their families died out years back
And those left, they do not know

I hear them as they call out names
Frozen snippets lost in time
And though I am on my father's grave
Nobody calls out mine

i'm standing by the marker stone
feeling wind upon my face
listening to the echoes from the grave
i feel the tears freeze on my cheeks
from the wind upon my face
as i listen to the echoes from the grave

it saws old rain in my skull
and your thoughts take a tour; wet and heavy
and quietly, the dirt shifts in the metal tracts

you break me every single time
my internal spilling is entangled
hopelessly

my summer-psyche enmeshed in your season
and forever swallows a few more ribs
don't wake the children of the light
for their feathers will burn beneath my nails

a storm hangs patiently on the wall
like a delighted painting made from frantic crystals
and I skitter from your towering moods
yet the moon dances in and out of every calm abyss

the lid is no more vacant than my veins cursed with
your silence
like algae, I slip on

my terror squeaks like a vehicle possessed
cheeks go ashen in my gay smiles
you will blush, in secret at what I will do
to you

sails lift on garlicky air in a port where ships don't wait
and my tongue loosens another melody only doubt hears
I'm completely in your hands
and willing for that crush

my acts for coins fall meaningless in embedded frustration
       don't come to the table, then
       keep the shades drawn
only the sense of phantoms
will be hanging in my smoke
intoxicating me to radiance
racing through to the ripples in your day

I'll keep lancing pebbles across the ocean's surface
they will never really reach the riverbed
frosty comes in agonising diamonds
a feast of distress sitting urgently
a shudder flutters through me, imperceptible

reduction of sweetness
a date with the cherubs from a netherworld
my nose feels the snows you carry
and I know you constrict still
my language falters and thinking shatters
and although slumped and vulnerable, it flourishes.

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the ****** disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

                       - *Arundhati Roy