Life is
Just as I'd
Declared it
In my scribblings.
[It is] precise to the extent
Of the [now] most appealing and repulsive
Contours and intricacies,
Some overwrought with older etchings,
Made darker by attempts
At rubbing them out-
Of where, pray?
[The eternal itch of perfecting the complete, you see.]
I'd dropped them
Into a box called time
Shuffled into compartments
Of past, present and future.


We mistake dreams for reality.
And then
Do you mistake imagination for imagination nowadays?
In your sleepwa(l)king consciousnes(t)?


The weaved hollow of Empiricism,
The added undulations of space and duration.
Somewhere, one's interpretations
Sewed into another's visualizations
Vis-a-vis
The maze you charted for yourself
To be/get lost
Where all that has existed yet,
Is the reality of the imaginary.
Knowing there would arrive a juncture
When you would be breathing
Into a kaleidoscope of chaos
Waiting to wade into patterned perfection,
Eventually, when; Alas!
You fell for time, again, time and again!
And shifted to the infested realm
Of hackneyed manifestations.

As the universe thrusts that sheet of paper
On to the pen in my hand,
In my quest to trace and quench
The voices sketched somewhere
In the white void of the sheet,
As I pen verses of salt & pepper.