It's easier to suffer in silence than trying to explain the extent of the pain.

These words may not do justice,
But it's all I've always had,
Now they bear meanings only you and I know.
And I knew that when we ventured far and wide
Through the Roman fields and back,
Exchanging banter and doses of sarcasm,
That you were a special one.
I knew that wasn't the last time I was going to bask
In your radiant smile and that mischievious twinkle in your eye,
As the Universe conspired this connection
To unravel at the perfect time.

Shalini Nayar
(C) 2014 (13.10.14)

.
to Emilia,
you are the method to my madness

I will cry my heart out now
for every hypothetical tragedy.
I’ll break my heart now
so I don’t have to— in another life,
or a life yet to come,
drown myself in some apocalyptic loss.
Unceremonious

departures. Haunt me for life.
Mourn you for all the ways you’d die.
Prepare myself for inconsolable grief
in a simulation of a graveyard.
Tombstone upon tombstone:
Dug, prodded, buried, sunk.

My dear,
to my dismay, you are but a mortal,
implicated in the immortality of love.
In the book of all conclusions,
written in an indecipherable tongue,
your name engraved in feeble marble,
an expiration date in bright, blinding red.

How can we cheat Oblivion?
How do we defy Death?

You shrug with a confident nonchalance.

What is Death to Love Imperishable?  
What is Eternity of a moment to Oblivion?

We are in the dress rehearsal
for the season’s première and the grand finale.
The Universe has been on our side all along,
it’s poured every blood, toil and tear into
years of conspiration and orchestration,
for our one delicate point convergence.
One chance against all odds.
One intersection against all parallels.
So come what may—
Take my hand and break a leg.

They were toxic bestfriends
both of evil similarity
Annie thought Amy was a parasite
who manipulated her popularity
6 months were spent on careful conspiration
all the while they were still friends
till the fateful day of its execution
is where this story ends.

9am one Friday morning
Amy gossiped during Spanish class
Annie hated when she flicked her hair
& stole all her attention from the mass
while Amy spoke of Bessie-
saying she's dead weight- a waste of space
'so will you be' Annie whispered
under her breath with a demented face.

10pm that very night
the girls slept over at Amy's home
Her parents off on holiday
a spontaneous luxury trip to Rome.
Nearing 12 & the time feels right
the tv plays the ending scenes of 'Saw'
Amy dozing off in her seat
as Annie returns in a stance of an outlaw.

Fixated on the rise & fall of her chest
diabolical thoughts run through her head
Clasping a butcher blade at her own behest
she inches closer towards the dread.
Seconds away from agony,
her eyelids flutter open to a vile scene
as Annie pulls the knife down on her
lacerating through her skin.

Stab after stab
the gashes splattered gore
that stained the velvet couch
& trickled on the floor
she felt her rapid heartbeat
quiver through the knife
and stabbed her one last time
-enough force to end her life.

Blood sputtered everywhere
as she took her final gasps of breath
flailed her arms around
and faced her gory death.
Amy lay in a pool of blood
her favourite Crimson red
Its metallic fumes in her nostrils
started messing with her head
Annie stumbled over the corpse-
the knife slipped from her grip
as regret clutched her heart
across the hallway- made her trip
legs dragged feebly with lament
eyes dazed with disbelief
lightheaded and psychotic faced
stone in her throat gave no relief.

In the bathroom mirror
a sinner took the frame
white tee smothered in scarlet
gruesome was her image,with shame
trembling fingers at her sides
fixed on the bulging red
a sinister curve formed on her lips
'Just like in the movies' is what she said.

god... don't you just love
the ones with subtle ridicule reflexes
in speech?
   only half an hour ago
i was picking beer from
a supermarket open fridge,
testing it against my cheeck
for the proper temp.
when being asked by
   the shelf-stacker
        to pursue his venture
  into stacking: making the bottles,
by labels, aligned...
   well... i was actually dipping
my hand into the back of
the fridge that: upon pressing
against my cheek
    were, the proper temp.;
ah... the bottles...
   corona... mexican beer...
and i do wish i could carry
a knife, to then buy a lime,
   and shove it down the bottle neck,
like...
           the guy who died
from suffocating on an oyster...
drinking in public...
   you mean... england...
in an area where there was
a stabbing incident,
  on the pave that i walk...
and i'm alone...
walking the streets at night...
and i'm glug-glug-glug
halfway down a bottle a beer...
anti-social?!
        ****... lay-deez und grunts!
we've arrived at mars!
   you're welcome.
   if this doesn't sell, i already know
that i'm broke...
            but you can't exactly
call today, with this afternoon,
a normal day...
         my "cerberus" managed to find
a sparrow in the bushes...
   while cooking a prawn carbonara...
so i chased him to the end
of the garden and said: zostaw!
       maybe this writing is what it's
supposed to be...
          i can't manage to comprehend
what happened after...
it's not exactly chicken farming...
out of curiosity...
       ever held a dying sparrow
in your hand?
        ever tried the vain attempt of,
first: ensuring the cat dropped its
play-toy,
      secondly: ease a bathroom tap
and implore (unconsciously)
   for the bird to take a sip?
oh... i forgot... big people deal
     with watching old people die...
or maybe just the odd Cain
mad on introducing euthanasia laws...
because... did that *******
of a grandson ever listen to
his grandfather talk ******* for
an hour and hid a yawn?
       sure as ****, some of them made
it into safer hands than familial
ties would ever allow...
      death by a synthesis of ******...
or its equivalent...
          but did p'ooh bear nanny
ever get a visit fwom her
            p'ooh bear grandchild?
evidently post-mortem doesn't
allow "care" to be discussed in journalism...
see...
          i remember that
hamster i was fooled into dropping
believing it could fly...
   but this sparrow i held in
my hand...
           seeing it transition from
shock...
       closed eyes...
   to a momentary state of surprise...
eager to sip the water flowing down
the bathroom tap...
             come to think of it...
it might have drowned from
taking a sip...
       as you do...
               little into the lungs and...
****!
          but when i shouted the cat
to drop it...
                   a secondary excavation:
can't change that machine of
utility...
       no matter how much you feed
it... the natural impetus is still there...
yet in my hand... a dying creature...
  and it literally started a spasmatic
last-resort mechanisation of
its body...
               a choking effect is
probably the best way to describe it...
   it wasn't a mature sparrow,
god knows where the nest was
situated, but you could tell:
the beak... was still "fresh"...
      i.e. yellow...
          not bark stiff deep
brown mingling
                                         with grey...
the cat would have eaten it,
and i, oh so deperately wanted
to be a brooks hatlen...
    then i remembered the hanging...
ah yes... the pitiful life...
       plenty of them that are dead
who wouldn't think so...
       a sparrow dying in your hand
is no big thing...
       it's not an earthquake...
most certainly...
                  it's not even an attempt
to cry...
               it's unlike having petted
something that invokes
                 a loss of a part of you,
embedded in the animal...
      beside the sparrow...
                  and we seem to be on confessional
terms... sámāél...
     now i hold what you hold
in your right arm...
   the rite of passing: a birth, a life,
a marriage...
                            a death... and a wake...
albeit less within the constraints
for the care for man...
        but more: on the frivolous...
             jittery side of existential affairs...
sure as **** i burried the sparrow...
right next to where i burried
   my former night companion...
   having hacked off a piece of a tombstone,
having taken to use a shovel...
to actually invoke him
to set tone to a blooming plum tree...
   hard though...
holding such a trivial aspect of reality
in your hand...
        and watching it die...
     how does death even amount
to a conspiration, in such a microcosm
of a sparrow's body, beheld by a mere libra
of a hand...
                      with what i could hold
                                                    in my right?
i tended to,
        what expired...
          but upon seeing the agony:
i first wanted to see a quickened extinction
by crushing it with a stomp...
     but then i chanced an intimate
realisation of shared breath...
      no one really writes
poems about sparrows dying in their
hands...
                                   do they?
   apparently when death happens:
everyone is always elsewhere...
                        certainly those behind
typing desks.
   - because chickens i will eat
and i can ****...
              but sparrows?!
                            fowl eggs is one thing...
  but looking for sparrow eggs?!
             that's borderline sadism if
not, just that.
    - no!
        who has had
    a sparrow die in their hand?!

The Unnatural Bends

Soothing commotion
Unethical pious tasks
Scripted life journeys
Unconditional realities
Pure auspiciousness
Restless endeavours
Enlightened conspiration
Periodical happiness
Secular Freedom
Socialism in souls
All do we need ?
Absolutely negating ,
but quite negotiating !
No!
Something beyond admiration ,
Someone beyond aspiration ,
Somewhere beyond the horizon ,
Why?
Unsatisfying hunger kills! Undenying facts win !
We lose ,
lose more ,
then we win! We win!
Simple things, become more simple, Obviously ?
Not always!
Let's see!