Unexpected…..
So unexpected was the meeting
It was in the dim candle light
of a city restaurant that I saw her
How time had etched its marks on her
The long dark curly hair
has turned all white
The even set of pearly teeth
now discolored with missing gaps.
A weeping willow with gnarled branches!

Did she recognize me?
Her searching eyes registered
a limp awareness
Soon I saw her cataract eyes shining
in unclouded recognition!

My memory like the arm of a crane
lowered to plough up the hard crust of the past
and rose with heaps of broken rubble
I nosedived into the past
to the little village
where, as children we ran round
the long necked shady trees
until our little heads went dizzy

Stealing behind the tall grass
how I would suddenly yell out;
‘The thief is in hide
Come and track me if you can’
forcing on her an arduous search,
all the while giggling at her vain efforts!

How we ran after the ripe mangoes
that fell in ones and twos
when the winds shook the fruit laden boughs
and how we quarreled over the yellow ones
like mongrels over a piece of bone

I remember once when the drizzle
suddenly strengthened into a heavy down pour
with thunder and lightning accompanying,
how we ran dripping and frightened
seeking shelter in the empty cow shed
at the backyard of a house,
clasping tight to each other!
She was then a little girl
with springing feet and dancing steps
naïve and naughty with all mouth and ears

But as time skipped by
she kept a safe distance
No more I saw the former ebullience in her
In its place, a quiet reserve settled in
The chatterbox no more opened her mouth
To my questions, her answers were mono syllables
My efforts to walk by her side
always ended in futility
either she would quicken her gait
or lag behind at snail’s pace
Seeing me somewhere
she would walk away with eyes down cast
But I always noticed a faint smile
lingering on her curved narrow lips

Around it, I built my dream castle
where she reigned as my dazzling queen!
I am not sure how it was with her
One day even without an abrupt goodbye
I had to leave my hometown to an alien soil.

For long, she came, sailing in my dreams!

After a couple of years when I returned
to the land of my childhood
the mute witness to my unuttered passion
I knew from a close friend
that she was forced into a marriage
much to her consternation!
She is reported to have confided to someone
that she hoped the ‘thief who stole her heart
would one day, come out of hiding’

We met again
We heard each other’s cracked voice
and stood unable to recollect all

Much water had flown down
under the bridge
And we floated in the rush of currents!

I

Testing that nuclear feeling pulsating through my ventricles, a pain sour at top of my genitals in the area above the ***** dr's call the pelvis
it hurts for no such reasons; mysterious numbness to the pain as it aches and yet it is only a suppressed fear of cancer, the dr checked my prostate jamming finger in ******* n twisting like a diamond fairy-- perhaps nicer not jammed in my ******, but this is 'the nature of the examination'

nature, nurture, I am suffocating myself in her addicted presence, regardless of how much I may love her she was cuddled next to me last night before slipping into a gasp-snore sleep and the ****** intrusive evil thought came to me-- wat if i took this lighter and singed her hair or her skin and fer sakes I scared myself, the same way I scare myself after watching documentaries on serial killers and wondering, so wondering, 'that could be me- the killer- torchering stray cats with infected syringe, binding its legs with an unwound coat-hanger and tossing it off a bridge-- and then years later I pick-up a hitch-hiker and ******* him against his will, slit his throat to keep him bound in the loss-progress of forgotten history'

this 10 mg escitalopram oxalate / i cannot tell if it is working / but my head is a pill and the dr agreed to prescribe me .5 mg xanax n maybe this is why i feel close to losing the mind in burn-ache-scare-myself-away /

II

I got a blood-test the other day, my way of praying to science to ask its all benevolence if I, perhaps, have ***, AIDS, chlamydia, godknowswat

immediately afterwards, I went home and read 3 articles on the Russian intervention in the Crimea as if it were my insanity civic doody

cracked-open my budget and calculated my debt to be somewhere in the $2,400 range n felt trapt and angry and unreal as if high-school is when time stopped and ever since I waste my life / spending it on money / money it on spending ******* /

i go to work, feel dead or mad already, as if 20 yrs is too late for me and it'll be one hell of a trip when I realize I've made it to 21, let alone 30

let alone 30

let alone *30

III

last night i begged her for ***, a remorseless evil pulsing thru my veins and no compassion save for some manipulative control of a dark-force--

she was sleeping, sleepy, woke up, i deliberately watched **** with the volume high to keep her up and guilty

she called me *pathetic and it only hurt becuz I believed her and knew it

it spunnn outta control and into other vortextual matters of an unexpressed zeitgeist diatribe and she went as insane as me, threw my coconut oil at the wall in my bedroom when i insisted i sleep on the couch muttering to herself i feel like dying like killing myself like ending, if u *******, how can u ******* when u know i feel like this it makes no sense and it hurts and i call her one great-big-guilt-trip-lookin-pretty she insists on a slam-slouch next to the door and says i wanna listen to you ******* and i will i don't care we are both now in the grip of an evil cabin fever trapped in each others soulz and i become eviler as she becomes eviler, we look like madmen women to one another going tangent after tangent and in some sick sense realizing how petty and empty we must be to feel so petty and empty and expressive of a dark chill within us each a hot ember of hopeless cold firing the spot-team responsible for motivation and direction due to budget cuts of the soul

and by god i hate myself, and by god at times i hate her the same and the world but only as reflection to that dark chill within us

an empty chatterbox

IV

i wake up, write this poem, refuse to pop a xanax pill today and feel a gritty dirt rubbing thru my hert hertz heart

better, it's better, i love her

and yet there is that dark chill within us

an empty chatterbox