There were places I should not have gone
Like the path of squeaking tires
On rainy nights
Skidding

Slipping
Falling on top of each other
A highway pile-up

With flames raging in the air

"You remind me of that,"
I tell this moment as it passes me by

The leaves above my head
Fire engine red
Softly waving in the breeze




The water doesn't wash the color away

cold benches

black benches

silver coal in moonlight

red golf umbrella

gold yellow in moonlight


a yellow spider climbs on




a cobweb dangles below
torn by wind

Things they do not tell you about goodbyes:

No one tells you
When you walk out of your house

Your home,
For all purposes

That sometimes
You don't miss it

You do not turn around on your ankle

Look at those heights

And want to return


No one tells you
That even when you travel to the absolute extent
Of this earth

You will find that people will still be the same
You will still be the same


No one tells you
That sometimes
You do not miss
What you left behind


They will not tell you
That you will find comfort in
Dark, frightening places with unfamiliar faces
In shadows

They do not tell you
That
You
Will still be
alone





This feels exactly like home
I am not sure what I am meant to miss
Except the solitude and the stars every other night




The rain kisses the earth in different ways here

It does not send petrichor soaring
Throughout the atmosphere

And it does not torrentially lash at the earth

It is soft and slow
Like the softest cotton wool of the blankets
You cuddled in when you were a child


The rain kisses the earth differently
My ears perked up, I realize





The rain kissed the earth of my hometown differently
With thunder raging in the skies

My nightmare woke me up in the morning
to a dark night ceiling

I turned over to see
the blinds holding out the light
A faint grey line escaping
From the corners

I closed my eyes
"It must be seven am,"
I thought

The clock told me differently
It was eleven am

The sun is high up in the sky
by this time
Usually

I had dreamt
of walking in strange
dark places
where I shouldn't have been

I thought that gender equality
meant not being scared of
walking alone

You came along and helped me out
showing me otherwise

My heart which had been waiting
for something bad to happen
calmed,
like the premonition had passed

"I am all pieces that don't fit
But with you
I don't realize it."*

That's all I have ever wanted to be able to say



And meant

Inner Weather Report:


The silence weighs heavily around my ears and it is difficult to focus

Stare at the ceiling but it moves as I end up head-first on the floors





My heart doesn't stop racing as I wonder and double back to crossroads left behind. Self blame is a slippery ***** which I already slithered away on. There wasn't much left and I feel like the hollow impression of smoke of an extinguished candle. My enthusiasm lurks behind corners as I run behind it but I tire out and stop for a drink at the stream of cynicism and depression. A sound resounding throughout my head as I imagine the worst and maybe that's not even the worst. College might not even pay-off.

How can I confide that I am worried because I don't see myself alive and going there means to sign a contract saying that I will not die?


It is a difficult reality and I worry so much.



A girl told me that I don't deserve to be forgotten the second I leave the room; that I deserve people caring and thinking about me.

She forgot everything the next morning.



As someone else sinks into depression, a whole group launches into discussions to help and I launch myself into it, a smaller part of me wondering where they were when I had asked.



It creeps onto me every day- an old friend. I've been comfortable living inside its haze for this long. How can I live without you my dearest friend? You have given me insight and clarity, given my feet direction even if just to throw myself off cliffs and I don't think I'll be me without you anymore.


How can I bid you goodbye? I was never good at those, preferring to walk out leaving bitterness and unsaid hellos and farewells behind me.


No promises and connections.

I've survived in you this long. How do I move on from you?


You are the only thing that has ever been mine, dancing in my tears and depression, asking me to cut a bit deeper, a bit more to the left. My four walls, ceiling and floor- you are my Home. Organically, growing, nestling in the veins of my sins, my existence. You are not a cancer but my closest well-wisher, you are me. To know you is to face myself. How can I breathe without you?

Don't call yourself a river
- it evaporates leaving a stony riverbed fish skeletons behind
Don't call yourself a rock
- it is worn away with time into fragments, smoothed planes
Don't call yourself the sun
- get too close and burn
Don't deem yourself the night sky full of stars
- they are ancient echoes vibrating with radiation
Comparing yourself with pens, knives
- mere inanimate tools; their meaning only lies in their use

Call yourself human
Feel the imperfection settle into your bones
and own your identity
Looking for faint romantic descriptions in
non-living objects
is irony
don't you see?
This body of yours will decay
Bit by bit every part will fail you
Feel the blood in your veins, wearing away your vessels
Growing stronger, then weaker
You were meant to be embraced from the day you were born,
child of nature
You are the present, the now
Just as ephemeral
You are human- breathing in and out
Your purpose is always clouded

When you hand out
bankrolls of cynicism and cheques of failure
I will show you my bullions of perseverance
Diamonds of reality

When you show me twenty stories of disappointment
I will display five stories of utter joy and hope


Take your handouts of regret and chances-never-taken
Face me and tell me my dreams will never grace this earth

But I laugh
Even as I cry
And bleed


Hope I don't regret this
Hope is all I have
Hard work will get me far
I hope hard work will see me alive at forty
Dying regrets but hope hope hope
I hope I hope at forty

I let my hair go
Stride into your space
And out
Weaving through

Always a dance
Always running
To-away from you

Intentional
Even as your teeth

Break open my lips

And the skies
Could bleed red

But as my teeth
Give back as good
As they get


We don't need to look up,
love

There's red on you

I stare at your lips
Never into your eyes

Let me finish what I meant to say before

I'm sorry
For being so damaged
Wanting my death to happen to you

(because I am not the one
who'll be left to pick up the pieces
and it is you
who will need to cope)

I am sorry
That I am so so damaged and
broken beyond repair
That I sit and
Rip my skin into bits
So that I can feel
The burning under my skin

I haven't been hugged like that in ages
And I hope you don't know what happened to my shoulders

This is not just a phase

I am so sorry
That this is not a simple phase

I am sorry
That you got someone like me
Who thinks the way I do
And acts the way I do
Especially with myself


I am sorry
You didn't get someone more normal
Who can pretend they're alright
Convince themselves every night
And don't believe that there's
Something much better out there
That the universe is much crazier
And madder than can be believed







.

I am talking
At walls and mirrors

I have deleted
Your number

I am trying
To forget his name

I have been shutting
Everyone's existence out



This is how I need to be
This is what I need to do
I need to focus on what I have now

But
Work still does not get done
And I still cannot focus.






.

First,
You teach me to think
With my own brains
Feel out my way
With my own feet
Treat me the same
As the boys


Second,
You put me in a school
Where they teach me to read
- oh, what a world!
They teach me to look
At international
Literature
- Marge Piercy,
Maya Angelou
And the like

Next,
You show me the crimson
Powder meant for foreheads
A deeper red for blood
Spilt on beds.
A life of compromise
And adjustment


Ripping out my ideas
And opinions
Telling me they're worthless
A baby, a house,
A life of adjustment
Is all this was meant for.


Tearing my beliefs
In an equal world
An equal society
Where society rises
To meet human morality


Is this what you taught me to read for?
Sorry sirs, ladies.
I tip my hat and bow.
Sorry to disappoint.
I was meant for an equal position
And I'll take it
- by force or mutual
compromise.

There was black coming out slowly over my face

Actual words and sentences
A small picture of a smiley face


I involuntarily grinned back
Adding a black mole
- or was it a dimple?
- to the face



I write the things I am happy for
Because I lack people to be happy for



I think a bit more
And add in names of people I should probably talk to


'I will get around to talking to them eventually,'
I think now.
I hope I still do later.


I write some equations and mathematics reminders
- they make me feel peaceful


The universe calls out it is 4 AM

I hear the birds sing.



It's nearly dawn
- and my eyes smile back.

I don't know whether to
love it
or hate it

- that brief lull
at 2:33 AM

no birds twittering around

engines still approaching
too far to be heard

the buzz of electronics
nonexistent


except for the ticking of the clock


the slow drumming driving me crazy



I think I can hear the roar of a thousand regrets in my ears

my head resounds with ghosts




.

Believe you me


The smell of antiseptic sticks to my skin

My sleeve and skin are pushed back
Letting the sinew of my bloodline breathe













I would not have lasted this night

I do not think I could have lasted last night









But I remember a blip and pixel
As another continent came alive on my screen

And my friend waved out to me behind her hipster scarf
Telling me it's okay to cry







Believe you me

That last night left a lasting impression
And I would not have made it through alive





If that friend had not been wakened by the ringing of her phone

Had she not proclaimed like it was fact


That I will be living at sixty and fifty and forty







Believe you me
I found something precious last night

- I regained my strength.

"I am all pieces that don't fit
But with you
I don't realize it."*

That's all I have ever wanted to be able to say

I don't know about the world
I have never believed in anything
anyone

But I believe in her

To the end of the universe
Because when the stars burn

And heaven decides it has had it
Hell wants me
My soul is shattered
And pulled everywhere at once

When I can't stop the shaking
The earth floor is pulled out
From beneath my feet

When my world fades
I look around furiously

But I cannot see what everyone else
Focuses on

And I cannot understand the colourless
World around me
Just blurs and shapes
With white noise surrounding me

Standing in the middle of a crossroads
With lorries bearing down
Without brakes
From all directions




My god,
I believe in her





*she'll be there

I will love you
in the worst ways possible

I will take you slowly at first
then all at once like a sudden storm

The small light touches
Innocuous

A gale of laughter

Secret smiles
Like the sun playing hide and seek
on a particularly cloudy day


I will rip you apart and settle into your bones

Love you like you've never felt it before
As if there was no one but Me


I will tear you into bits
And open out the auricles
and ventricles of my heart


Tell you it's necessary
And leave
In a sudden storm

I will say it was for you
So you could move on  
Find someone better

Love someone the Right way
I'm too much of a mess,
I'll tell you

And when I leave
You'll beg me on your knees
To stay

I will say it is necessary
and go away
Say that one day,
looking back,
You'll see why

But my lightning
Will reside in your lungs and breath
Even as I make you burn

You'll never see why

But you know I wouldn't stay
I can't stay, I always say

I will apologise
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry

But

But
Maybe I really needed to go
before you sunk into my bones
became my lightning
and took me by surprise

I will make you taste blood in your mouth
I'll be your biggest fan
When you write raving about my misdeeds
and coldness

I will see your writing grow exponentially
In oceans and mountains

I will love you love you love you
The only way I've known how

- from a distance.


this is how I've survived.

I laughed all the way home

Had asked for support
Got denied

Rather than being disappointed,
or sad,
I laughed and tripped my way everywhere

Raised my hands and clapped
As I danced around


Downed a drink
With the sun setting
Almost felt like a toast

I had my heart in my mouth
My eyes had laughter lines

And
I laughed

I have heard that words strain
But I have never felt it as acutely
Hypothesizing as lustreless
Than when I spoke
Trying to paint you images
Speculation in rhyme
Present a piece of my soul
Save some secrets
Sealed behind some lines
But speech failed me
And words
Strained and shattered
But even so
A strand of a connection shines
**Can you see it?

I was all edges and jaded eyes
Long before
you met me, with sweet smiles
- all teeth
My laugh gets louder
I get taller
But I was only edges
Before you met me

I'm sorry but I think
You would've liked me
Before when I was innocent,
always straightforward

Than this twisted
Hardened joke I've become.

You need to go.
Before I become too dependent
You have to go.

Copulation
- meaning of entire human
civilization

the lines on our hands
mingle with the
roughness of the fibre

of our skins

talking of touches
long spent

-

there are grooves decorating
our feet

our soles are flattened

only reminders of the places we've been

-

crinkles beside our mouth and eyes

they speak
of smiles
to faces
whisper of tears
in air

-

sometimes
we forget
we drift


*and just like the last time,

we're drawn into the story that never finished
- a story never told

Cold hands
Cold food
Cold blankets
Cold room
Cold house
Cold metal
Cold

you said you wanted to see
but I felt it could never be


you circle scars
i circle


we've gone ways, love

i said




when they marched in

they saw
they condemned


could barely move a muscle


but the walls didn't hold
and the passersby

have just had it with us


and our airy tones
  weighed down


we couldn't help ourselves
love, let alone each other


we saw the skies bleeding red





*or was it just us?

the shoes are imprinted with the paved streets
there is never enough time


our eyes sparkle
but the eyebags belied the many nights
whiled away

smiling at the stars
new maps every night

gazes change as the skies change
we traverse different longitudes

trees spill into trees
there never was a need to distinguish

our passports fading crumbling
paths always leading to each other

will we still be left with an identity?

sometimes
i apologize so much
i feel like i'm saying sorry for my existence

the ocean of my bloodline calls out to me
from the sinew of my scars

we walk, strangers on parallel shores


the cigarette butts have been rubbed out all over my inner thigh

a flash there

another here

the platinum shackles on my ears and hand
betray my animosity

- this is no social call

Hoist your skirts

Tears sparkling like champagne
were always overrated

getting in the way


Ours are the streets

The night

the skies


Let's go out safe
in our dreams,
our memories


Yet everyone marches on

The deluge of music washes around us


As it bears us farther away

Your hands slip through mine
Yet our incisors show

Sharp
Wanting

The bruises don't fade

But a neighbour group
Makes us brush past each other

They said we'd be ashamed

They said they'd rather die

They said there was no time





Our dance lasts our breaths
As the moon hides

Another game tonight

I saw you

I saw your brain spilling out its cerebellum, medulla oblongata, etc

All over- unrecognizable

indistinguishable

I saw

I thought those were some kind of pink pulses

Lord knows, weirder things have been found

and seen

I saw


I saw

I hope there is justice for you

I will pray for your soul

My soul will meet yours
when the knell rings for me


I hope you find peace

I hope you know that I called

And called and tried and tried

To help you even though you were already gone

I saw your friend- his eyes, his expression


I really did try
Please find yourself another life

I hope your friend finds peace
Knows it wasn't all his fault
I hope his eyes lose the haunted shocked expression
I really wish he can drive again

I hope he can continue working
- he looked like one of those people
you know those ones?
working hard to make it out of drudgery?

I hope he makes it through this
And I really really wish you guys hadn't had a fight before this

Find peace
Go safe
Go softly

Your death was sudden
Ripped out of this earth
Like you were never meant to exist
That was meant to be me

I hope it didn't hurt too much

And those ******* that did this to you?
I hope they didn't mean it
I wish they hadn't been high before this

Your death shouldn't be meaningless
And although
You might be simply another obituary in tomorrow's newspaper

This poem will say

"I saw you.
I prayed for you.
I greeted you.
I witnessed your existence.
You meant something
Just as your death did.
I wish you peace and that you go
Safely, soundly
Wishing you that your loved ones
Remember you with love
And maybe some heartbreak
But they find strength.
Tonight,
I
s   a   w
You"

I saw them calling for us
As they broke down the walls

But I didn't have much to give
So I laughed
Opening my wrists and giving them my all

They danced...
How they twirled and sang

My demons
as they finally thought the din
was too clamorous

The ***** has dried on my feet and I

I just need it off of me
As my nails seek to give my blood
An out

But my friends, those **** fools,
They danced

And I kept laughing
And crying
It was like a dam had burst

And I cried

As they laughed
But the blood came out with them

I just want some rest now

Need some sleep
Need to close my eyes

*Love,
I had fun

Ink crawling paper
Teacher rambles, different
The student writes

Baby,
Can't you hear the bells?

They've come for us

Love,
Close the shutters
We only have a few more hours

As the regrets and phantoms
Rain down over our heads

The thunder fades from our veins

Sweetheart*,
Only a couple more hours

Let the lights dim

The ***** will flow around our ankles
And we'll be there

Hush, my dear,
One day,
We will be there

Maybe they always did, love,
But it always escaped our eyes
As we stared at the skeletal
growth of this pain


Maybe the ground always did run into the skies
But we were too busy thirsting the night

To remember
recall

and forget

How were we to notice
When we were so caught up
Choking in the thunderstorm
of our failure?

I will rear my hand back
And let it fly

Across the space-time divisions
The empty spaces of our
Memories and hatred

Rear it back
And tear it all away
Rip into shreds the nights
We had nothing in our hearts
The nights when we
had it all


I will let it crash against the mirror
of your absence

and let out a choked breath

As I bring myself under control

Leash the emotions
Always bubbling the constant laughter

and happiness

And love

The multiple echoes ringing out
Splitting my hands with the
Shattering windows and mirrors

Staring into my eyes
Spell-bound
Seeing years pass by
Speaking to the faces that no longer
Stayed
Wished for a breath
Washed-out on this beach of regrets
Wandering around, clutching to
Words and smells of who we used to be
Whispers of the air

The sinew of my hand breaks
As it recites to me the long-lost saga
Of my race
It tells me its sins and hopes and regrets

and regrets

and  r  e  g  r  e  t  s

I dream on

Hollow-eyed
Sleep-deprived
Backed into the corner
of my nightmares
The scar above my eye
Needle-marks on my chin

Throbbing
Remembering

I hold up my hands
A raw meat hammer


And they reach nothing
Past the empty fjords and valleys
where you used to reside

I am left










here

Nowadays I find it so difficult to think
- it's like there is cotton
inside my head
asking
for something
more
than
I'm willing to give.

I lose sight of what's
important and
I don't feel very
real.

There is no
anchor
in my life as I continue
to question the
value that it might have.

The darkness
of the nights are
what
I remember
from the nights I can
never
fall
asleep
- it is in this darkness that I have grown.

And
the
white
light
with
its
white  
noise
seems like a haze,

an illusion dropped over my eyes
which I cannot help but live out.


As I lose                                                             ­                          (my sanity)
touch
with
everything
around,

this keeps resounding within me
and
my words
continuously
fail
to reach
the recipient.

I've been writing such exacting words

Addressing questions

Too many of them

Where's the love
the fun

if it's all laid out in print

It's supposed to be shady
The elusive meaning


Darting

                                                                   W  i  n  d  i  n  g

E                  r r            a ti                                        

c
  
                                                          T
                            u
                                                                                                 m
                                                                  b
                                           l
                                                                                              i
                                                               n
                                                       g

around



The lines.

Where's the fun if it's easy?

Burn at the back of the throat
Disguises the brunt borne by the second child
Prickling the back of eyelids

A ripple in the pond
- reflection of *time

You need to reach out
- that's what I was told

I confided in a number of people

Sat across a lot of wise spectacles
Sympathetic coffees
Blank invites
Dispassionate loves

You need medication
- that's what I was told

I popped a number of pills

Over months,
White, long
Yellow, small
A number of nights
Crazy eyes,
Erratic behaviour
Strange moodswings

You need a change of scenery
- That's what I was told

Miles and miles of sand
A sea extending into the sky
My heart became the feather
That landed on waves
And sank
Far below
The understanding of humanity

Went to the hills
Stream flowing by
Which iced over at night
Bare apple orchards
Green and stone
Woke up at 4 AM
From where I stood,
I couldn't see the sunrise

My spirits
Shattered and fell
Along with some rocks
Off the cliff's sheer face
As I ended up
On my hands and knees


You need to meditate
- that's what I was told

Pure silence at 4 AM

That's what I woke up to
And I sat for an hour everyday
Trying to focus on
The "om" I was told about
With the last echo
I was left bereft of purpose
Vision and energy
I couldn't move on
With the day

It's 3 AM

And i keep trying to figure myself out


Ordinary questions...
things we all ask of ourselves everyday


But I guess I expected something a little more definite from myself


I keep remembering eyes

Different eyes, different looks of disdain, different continents, different faces, different genders

Broad spectrum of statistics

I wonder what exactly anyone is here for


I find it difficult to discern why are these people in my space?

It's so difficult to tell

Courtesy? Loneliness? Fascination? Routine? Misguided sense of doing good? Misguided sense of displacement? Some mid-life crisis? Need to be diverted? Curiousity?

Ah, it's just too difficult.


Why do you linger around?
Someone answer please.
Hey, its 3 AM here and I haven't been able to sleep in days.

So I was thinking that I hadn't written in a couple of days
Then again

I haven't really laughed

Eaten

In a few days




I haven't met a real face in days

Where are the mirrors
Oh god,
Looking into them doesn't help

These were my thoughts yesterday
Before I sat and cried for four hours


Gained a fever


Ate breakfast

After
T
W
O
Weeks

I've been trying to write

draw a picture

in colours

for so long





It's not happening




Words blur
sentences get clubbed together
television waves
pixelate
manga and anime
dissipate

I need to write something

there's something missing inside

Help, I can't breathe

Help.
I can't stop thinking

Somebody make my brain stop.

Make it screech to a halt

I don't want to sit and imagine

A hundred ways to die
Tonight

I don't want to lose sleep over this

I can't afford to miss another day of school for this

(people will start wondering)

My ***** little secret


Only mine


Help. Make the voices stop. Make them sing. Make them be quiet.

Let me write.


I need to escape.

I only know to cope in a couple of ways
- slam up some walls
Pretend it doesn't hurt
Move on
Innocence is a mockery on my face
My lips twist into grotesque resemblance
of long-gone smiles

It is difficult to remember
to relax
to be normal
'normal'

you come back in flurried recollections
blurs
and
heartaches

a pain starting from the middle
of my forehead
to the crick in my neck
right to my wrists
softly rotating trying to relax
i smile

this is normal

I only know to cope in a couple of ways
- slam up some walls
pretend it doesn't hurt
move on
innocence is a mockery on my face
my lips twist into grotesque resemblance
of long-gone smiles
It is difficult to remember
to relax
to be normal
'normal'

you come back in flurried recollections
blurs
and
heartaches

a pain starting from the middle
of my forehead
to the crick in my neck
right to my wrists
softly rotating trying to relax
i smile

this is normal

people play tricks
and the best-laid plans
fall to pieces
when in contact with each other



everything falters

there are no clear, defined lines

please stop looking for them.

it's just now, now, now.

can't you hear the roar of your
own heartbeat
thump-thump-thumping
to get out of your chest
and away?
so far away.

look in strange places
fall to new depths
you never know where you may find It

let the players play their games
your heart is not theirs