A wide, wide lake
And a paddler.
Moving in no particular direction,
just keeping
Above the glassy depths.
Paddling,
praying it never tips.

Praying so hard,
And still; the wind picks up.

The paddler turns around
oh, so, slowly
and moves for shore.

Chest burning,
water on fingertips, (tip?)
waves getting higher.

Swallowed lake water
up the nose.
The Paddler
sinks to the bottom.

And kicks off!
Wading Home to the Unknown.

So there was this girl. And I met her my freshman year in German class, fourth hour. Her name was Sophia and I thought she was weird and creepy because she stared and didn't talk and tried to play footsie with me and me being the still-self-loathing queer that I am was desperately terrified that anyone would know I was bi. So I gave her mean looks, didn't look at her eyes, turned from her, ignored her. The list goes on. And then she basically disappears for the next two years. And last year, my senior year, I had her in my first semester second hour German class. And she was different. I thought hey. "Maybe she's cooler now, she's kinda a bit cute maybe I'll get to know???? Her ??? Maybe ???? And so we kinda talked a lil lil bit, but not really talking till xc skiing started, in November. I don't know I what it was, but I thought "hey. She's cute AND smart" so I made up a little brouhaha till I was suddenly driving with her to practice. Every day. And I learned she was kind, smart, funny, hilarious, BEAUTIFUL, kept me on my toes... The list goes on. As I spent more and more time with her, more and more time following her like a lost puppy, i feel deeper and deeper into love. She never texted a lot, so I started to text my thoughts to her with no expectation of a text back. I knew she appreciated them even if she didn't reply. And when she did reply, BLAM! A lightning bolt would slam into my stomach each time I saw her name in my notifications screen. I treasured those texts back, and stated writing poems about her, to her, inspired by her, inspired by HER, seeing her blonde hair every time I looked at the sun, her blue eyes in every lake and clear day and for-get-me-not and her big nose in my mind's peripheral vision and her cute small firm **** and the way she walked, straight up, so solid and set-forth and DEtermined, ******* (though she would never swear) to get to where she was going. I couldn't get her out of my head. Her just, state of being. I'd never met a creature so quietly, yet so determinedly set on who they were and how they were. The way she always knew what to say. I swear to god I thought this girl was an angel. When I looked at her, I wanted to trail my fingers over every inch of her, memorizing it, imprinting it on my bones, that intimate knowledge of you to visible eons from now. I would've climbed through hell for her, to just get five minutes of her, a nod a smile a GEN-YOU-INE laugh *******. I thought about how our bodies would fit together, the ghosting of lips over parts only The Holy Ones know. The way we'd sit together, soft and silent, barely touching but very at peace, and I was planning a title for a book of my poetry entitled "A Series of Notes to the Love of my Life (And a Cherishment of Nature)". I mean I thought this girl, this one in the world-universe, was my everything my holy savior my holy love my holy angel. I just thought that feeling, this feeling that was so intense, was because that was RIGHT. AND must BE. So I fell deeper and deeper, snatching knowledge bits of her that I could, leaving sweet notes and compliments, all over and to who ever for her. I asked her to prom. Through a letter I gave her, with a kayak-Paddler necklace in it. I'd never been brave enough to think about doing that before, ADMITTING my feelings for the girl. I was so smooth and charming and kind (cause I thought she might kinda maybe be gay or at least gay ish way and thought if she was and liked me too she might wanna be going "as friends" or something) and she said yes. I was so happy. It made my whole day better. Forever. I thought about slow dancing with her, imagined pictures floating about in my daydreams, taking up all time and space. And we went. Except she invited her best friend along too who she stayed glued to all night and never danced with me and barely looked at me And I felt like a third wheel to THEM, and so we got home and I was sad and tired and didn't want to do anything but we went on a night kayak and and I told her she was the most beautiful girl there by far and I had so much fun with her and on and on and I was just. So sweet to her how could she not know I like her ****. And she just said. "Oh you're so sweet." And she might've said something else, something idk, but I was just so bitterly in love but wanting her all the same and loathing her with how and by and why I wanted her attention. And I continued falling, ignoring the bitter bad parts of our relationship in favor of the new small things I'd learn about her. And for her birthday, July something, I was gonna give a small box id make in woodworking with a beautifully planned out and executed *** from ceramics with a nice letter telling her how amazing I thought she was and how I might tell her how i feel. And I made them, falling worse and worse daily. So in love. And I awkwardly increased the looks, the poems, the sighs and dreams and wishes. And school ended, we graduated, with pictures and a letter to her from me about how cool she was and a promise of a Better letter with her bday gift. I kept sending her my thoughts, asking her to hangout, (we never did) and telling her I missed her. Well I finished her gift and packed it. The letter, and all. By this time I had tried to get over her. I thought I was (except for the bits that stick with you You Know) and we'd just be friends but-I'm-cool-with-More. Forever. I thought this friend was a Real Deal. Once in. A lifetime. So I gave her the gift, then she didn't open if(or maybe she did and wanted to pretend she didn't open) cause she had a 30-day trip. No phones. I sent her some of my thoughts, not all you know. Didn't wanna overload her texts when she gets back. And I waited, and waited. And it had been thirty days! I Waited for some notification that she saw it, that she opened something. I texted her. Her read receipts? On. She saw it. No reply. I waited and texted and waited and texted. Each message more sour than the last. Eventually I all hope. I said to her I was disappointed in her (I had come out to her as bi in my letter, something I wasn't sure she supported.) so I'm devastated now. I thought she'd be in my life forever, how could an angel like that not stay????? But she's gone. I might never know what she really thought and why she didn't reply. It makes me lose so much faith and hope and love in humanity when someone like that leaves your life. It cracked my soul and I honestly think I might never be able to trust anYONE completely. Ever. Because of a girl like her. She broke my heart and never even knew she had it. Or maybe she did. I guess I might never know. It makes me so sad. She absolutely crushed me, quietly and subtly. I do think I'm ruined for life. Even if only slightly. I might slowly be losing my sanity. I just want to talk to you. Please. What did I do? God I loved you. I still might. Please just stitch my soul back together, even just a little bit.

I

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading - books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way - the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

                    II

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire,  a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy -
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

                    III

And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age -
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler's heritage -
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

                    IV

Her present image floats into the mind -
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once - enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

                    V

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her Son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

                    VI

Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

                    VII

Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts - O presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise -
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;

                    VIII

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

A lone paddler
within rumoured holy waters,
blessed by the touch
of a vacant apathetic god,
she gaped mutely like a halibut,
lips parted comically in a silent wail,
the clockwork functions
of her jaw,
forced teeth to reacquaint as sisters,
grinding together
in discomfort,
as lukewarm fluids rippled
around her thighs.

In this silent act of cleansing,
sin's hallmark should have faded
from her skin,
still her father believed
'her to be the devil's young'
due to scientific witchcraft,
her concoctions to lure demons
to their dinner table.

'I'm doing this for you, darling.'
her father reassured
with an earnest glint in his eyes,
madness paced hungrily,
encircling pupils in a territorial manner,
delusions of God himself watching
over his daughter,
with tears streaming down golden cheeks,
repeated within his fragile mind.

Unsure, the girl remained standing,
the embodiment of Mary
with her arms spread like angel wings,
did she dare disobey
her father's wishes,
and feel the leather belt against
her rear,
or reject her own troubled heart,
for her father's sake?

Mark seemed to have it all,
a beautiful wife,
two strapping sons
& he was always out to have
serious
good clean fun.
A hellacious paddler
& consummate fisherman,
always teaching his boys
a higher standard
& fulfilling
his honey-do lists.
So naturally,
it came as a big surprise
when he asphyxiated
himself with carbon monoxide
in his own driveway
during broad daylight.
It tore us apart actually.
At the funeral,
his wife told me he had seven stepfathers.
I never knew that,
but maybe,
just maybe,
he thought he was a failure
when his wife filed for divorce
the morning of his departure,
and he couldn't live with that.
The thought of his own children
growing up like he did,
it must have been hell.
Perhaps
the mystery will never be solved,
but just the same,
all I can think about
is the damage,
the other hell
he left behind.

I am a Paddler
Who has no
Canoe, or oar,
Or even a
River to cross.

if you can try
to cast your mind
to times gone by
left far behind

those days of yore,
aeons ago,
long before
men kneaded dough

before time begins,
before internet,
when man wore skins,
and a woman, corset,

those days when Luddites
meant English weavers,
'n churches were tight
with avid believers

when a Yankee still dreamt
his country was golden,
a queen, monarch meant,
if quaint and olden,

when people still dialled
to each other on phones,
implied lazybones [that idled]
when they carped on about drones,

when block was an obstacle
placed in a road,
canoe, pointed vehicle
by one paddler rowed

when catfish a marine creature
dwelling in sea
and cloud a sky-vapour
that veiled clarity

when tweet was sound chirped
oft by a bird
and old text was a script
inscribed on a sherd,

when RED was a colour,
as indeed was blue,
e'en then, my dear fella,
we still knew a thing or two.

A busy lane
Narrow frame
Two cars could not cross
At the same time
Chaos and confusion reigned Supreme

An obscure building
Wouldn't catch your attention
Housed a club premises
Of two varying interests
Table Tennis and Cards

A small door
Along with it the canals odour
Dimly lit indoors
With not a single window

Toilet and a phone
Also housed a carrom zone
4 tables lined in order
Next room housed the card player

Mylapore Gymkhana club
Diminutive in appearance
With a small parking space in the front
A place of historical importance
Produced Champion after Champion

Tables numbered in order
Determined the quality of the player
Senior Junior and Sub Junior
Played with their respective partners

The air filled with Positivity
Sportsmanship and equality
Will to win in every player
Who played at every layer

Ability to play the game
on any given day
Weighed on a justice scale
Determined which table you play

Background never mattered
Wealth and Influence nobody cared
Integrity to the game noticed
Absolutely no prejudice

Play with your peers only rule
Any attempt to spar with a better player met with ridicule
Improvement in game the only consideration
To play with a better paddler
At his dispensation

No Coach present
Learn by being observant
Want to raise in the ranks
Show performance in the match

Legends of the game
Proud to lend their name
Respected their place of practice
From novice all the way to winning the Championship

All tables with players
Learning and playing with each other
Each a ladder to another
Owed a lot to one another

Discipline present
With no one to Discipline
Coached in the game
With no one to Coach
System of competence
Endeared
With no one to judge
Dedication to the game integral
With no one to Enforce

Booked its place
In the history of the sport
A paradox of a place
Which can never be replaced

Visited the club everyday
To see paddlers play
Great opportunity presented to me
For this was what meant to be

7 years from 77
Club was heaven
Watching and learning
Took to the Sport 2 years coming

Thankful to the men
Who gave me attention
Helped shape my character
Life became a lot easier

Became a coach
Of the same Sport
Nostalgia for the club
Reason I got the job

Teaching avid learners
Imparting sporting values
Every player who I watched in action
I dedicate all my success to them with devotion

Each player a personality
I thank each personally
For the love and affection showered
Considering my age I could have easily been ignored

The opportunity to visit the club
Greatest gift God showered
Getting to know players if that calibre
Solely determined my future

I want my heart to sit
on the boat of love,
Sail my sorrow away across
the sea of joy.

Where love shall be my
compass and the comeliness
of the sea shall be my paddler.

Where I shall whisper love
unto the ears of all the birds
across the sea.

I want to sail my heart on the
oceans of love, and let her
kiss the fishes beneath the sea.

I want to sail my heart and
soul  across to the calm nature
of the sea and inhale the air
of Ramadan.

Forget about your Sigmund Freud;
It’s something you cannot avoid.
To reach a time of lessening desires
And the quenching
Of those lifelong fires.

And you can keep your Alfred Adler
Against the stream a baffled paddler.
No harmonicist like Larry.
His musical skills were quite "verborgen"
He dealt with a very different *****.