too often you **** me with your
monosyllabic question: your lips
form it, so gradually, and hence,
inquisitively, that i,  i would not
miss that diphthong you emphasised,
that question of why - yet too often
i find myself unable to proceed
beyond because...

Hmm

“how would a man live
if he neither
fully
believes in rationality,
nor in God?

how would a man resolve
the paradox of
meaningful existence
and yet, the
purposelessness it brings?

how would a man find
comfort in
fellow men who are
as equally as you,
mortal?

how would a man understand
Creation when he is
the Created,
and part of
the Plan?”

the blind one asked.

“how is it man’s obligation
to answer these doubts?

how could man not see,
that his duty is to
live,
not question,
not answer?”

the wise one reveals.

the first of drinks in days descend,
in short successions, teasing rain.
the trees and earth will crane their necks,
to receive like wine on lips, the shower.

they savour not the cool of wine-water,
for the rain itself has travelled long.
and when it lands to quench their thirst,
you hear the sounds of glass and liquor.

the rain has passed, as transient as nature.
another glass later, when the earth croaks dry.
but now, the wine has cooled their lips,
the air revived by a rain perfume…

and down are the necks of the heavy drinkers.

his words at first tongue felt
fell like snowflakes melting

his teeth shuddered choirs
were refracting colours

his page flew
like inked summer birds migrating to

his breaths
his breaths exhaled northern lights

"your life is one epic poem and
if you fail to turn blood into words,
you'd look back and see yourself  
an anthology of unwritten poems."

to walk across a street and see:
lined golden bulbs with fixing glow,
and flickering flames from waxy tips,
and lying radiance – worthless stones,
and then to find that no one light
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

to look across a forest hued:
a hundred golden sun-lit leaves,
that scatter themselves on fresh brown earth,
across a palate of flaunting flowers,
and then to find that no one shade
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

to read a book from end to end:
and taste that rhythm and rhyme and sound,
then tear its form and see its meaning,
then piece it back with admiration,
and then to find that no one word
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

to meet again with one another:
and see them age with grey and sorrow,
with merely hope to see tomorrow,
the grains of sand in glass they borrow,
and then to find that no one friend
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

to venture life and only find, that:
nothing
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

"People are so hard to understand.
They are like earpieces casually stuffed
in the pockets of their private lives.
And when they step out of their stuffy
homes, they demand to have others
locate their origins, their mid-points and
their ends where you stuff your ears in.
Demand that from cords in infinite loop.
Demand that without an instruction manual."
I wanted to interject, but your sentences ran
into each other and morphed into these
pseudo-words, pseudo-rants without ends
to stuff into your ears and listen.
I would have said that people were fine
without beginnings or destinations or
instruction manuals. That behind the
metal prisons of these speakers lay
sounds, to be played into ears and
listened to. Told to.