Alcoholic Reveries

The throes of alcohol
Looking  into your blue eyes
Only see ageless
For eternities gone by.

The hums of greetings, food, walks, chirps and laughter
Buzz in my ears, clapping, applauding
The welcoming sun of our fairytale.
The one that was lost in the pages of the sea.

My father told me never to believe
In fairytales born of vodka shots.
Especially the ones on nights of solitude
Such as these, when lights blinked star-like.

You've been gliding away, knight like
On quests you named "change/challenge/finding yourself"
While I've been searching for the map
That leads me to you.

We don't know anything about earthquakes
Says news that likes to believe otherwise.
We don't know anything about love
Says my father, a forgotten romantic of the 80s.

Words come out of me, leaving
Along the same pathway as all the men before.
I'm whispering to you and only you now,
"Stay. Just stay. Words can flow away"

Painting by Artist Sacha Pola

www.sachapola.com

Nameless Verse

Passion and its dying embers
Keeping me awake this summer night.

"There are three things that make us sleepless--
  Passion, the lack of passion, and disease.", said he.

Our crossing smiles and shy eyes betrayed
Stories of our pasts that led us here.
He misses her and she misses him--
A reality washed over by their tumbling bodies
On nights when human nature turned awash
Their hearts that once leaped as wild dolphins
On seas they could call their own.

In captivity of those seas that turned stormy,
Those dolphins smiled, yet. 
The throes of their passions undaunted.
And when those seas the dolphins held ever so dear, washed them ashore.
The burning, brittle specks of sand caged their hearts.

The dolphins existed no more than the cities you see from the skies--
Scattered gold dust, a mere illusion,

Their hearts learnt to live in self-made cages.
Their eyes learnt to give curtained glimpses
Of the bay windows they used to be.
He sang to her and she wrote poems.
Trapped in illusions  of their selves
That once roamed free, drawing gasps
Like the red beaked blue magpies fleeting past.

Little did their hearts know of proximity
Born of cages and lost loves.
Theirs was a blossoming question mark,
Etched deeply, swept under the rug determinedly,
Their longing for his face and her face
Marking all their destinations across life.

Little did he know, she felt it.
If only their seas of yesteryears were wiped off,
Their hearts-- the happy dolphins would discover
Oceans they would find in each other.

(This image is from here: https://jessicajanecharleston.wordpress.com/)

Coming Home

Coming home always has multiple meanings
From awkward hugs that remind me
Of too much time passing by.
To the smell of old age wrapping home--
A constant reminder of goodbyes.
Goodbyes that can and will be permanent.
But the heart won't learn to accept.

Coming home to boxes full of sweets
And eyes withering with decades gone by.
Eyes that look at me, with so much love.
It would fill an ocean.
Sadness permeates the books lined so haphazardly
In every nook and cranny of the house.

Too much knowledge and too much love destroy equally.

Coming home to my two fathers
Whose love is more than that of a large, joint family.
Whose care and scoldings mean so much more today
Than all the years when teenage ruled and rebelled.
Conversations that blend mathematics with governance,
Geography with historical tales and books--
The books in this house are family trees of voluminous emotion.

Coming home to hands that shake as they feed me.
So much pride in home-grown mustard greens-- 
Growing accidentally, like the distances between us now.
Expansion-- of silences, of origami boxes and withering pages
Resonate consistently, saying, "come home for good".
I am a little stranger to it all each passing year
Growing fonder of and more distant from their balding, greying heads.

Coming home each year-- a little older.
Growing within myself, growing smaller from them.
My two fathers occasionally chuckle from memories
Of my infanthood and their youth.
Those chuckles turn to sudden sighs of the present
Like dying batteries of a constantly ticking watch.
And we all return to the normalcy of today.  

Alone Up There

Rows and rows of chairs lined up

And I whisper, “testing, testing”

Suddenly, something prods me to be peppy and I chuckle, “Hey, there peeps!”.

It’s an empty room that will fill up eventually, with tired blue collars.

Some white collars too, perhaps.

All looking to smile, to laugh, to “have a good time”.

Sometimes, in the middle of a set, I wonder what stories you bring to the table.

Will you go home laughing and giggling into the next day’s lunch break too?

Or will you go down those stairs, dejected by another evening of city life, downed with a chilled beer?

Standing alone up here, I feel small.

Just as Sisyphus did when he hauled the rock up the mountain.

Standing alone up here, I wonder,

How do I make strangers laugh?

When I merely smile at the rudiments of hilarity life offers today?

It is easy to make people cry.

It is easy to comfort them.

It is easy to prod them into throes of forgetfulness.

But, in times when school shootings, wars, economic dips and highs, fashion and too much technology

Govern our very being.

In such times, it is not easy to make the world laugh.

Standing alone up here, I am yours to seek.

Standing alone up here, I hope to see those smiles, those nods

Turn into uproarious laughs, even if for just a moment.

Because in the maniacal way of the world today,

If I can make you laugh and forget all but the ringing sounds of hahaha in your lungs

Then I have achieved what I sought, standing alone up here.

She Buried Him

He’s thundering on wheels in misty mountain roads

She’s blowing magic rings in duvet delight.

Distances measured on speedometers

Turn into averted eyes, on boulevards.

Boulevards, that once saw the same eyes

Hold hands so tenderly.

The poets speak of love, the hero of faith.

She buries that love in tears.

Tears, that refuse to traverse pathways they once had.

Pain and laughter are interchanging,

Much like their crossroads

Once race tracks, now dirt roads.

She knew they were a goodbye, when she buried him.

All along the pages of a journal—

Dust lathered piles of broken promises.

His drunken laughter from across the garden,

Now stirs a stammering spark in her withering flowers.

Too many words, like too many stolen glances,

Break the rhythym she sees in the humming trees.

Treading ever so softly on crushed leaves,

That are dried, forgotten reminders of their past.

In the numbing silence that now engulfs her,

She buried him. Far and deep.

Mountain Girl Problems

The silence of the mountains

Crackles within the burning wood

It screams into your city-honed mind

Myriad sounds that terrify and uplift

Chirping birds and sounds of “home”

Warm the fluttering heartache within you

Into throes of a welcoming sun.

The flapping wings of a bird flitting past

Remind you of your relished solitude

While the solitary mountain woman’s chores

Resonate methodically against the oncoming storm.

Mountain girl problems? Against all this?

They’re a fistful of snow.

22 leopards growl and grunt and I walk on, knowing they see me.

Srunching on dried oak leaves and mossy rocks, I move on.

Now, a bear threatens life as well. Oh well, thank god for pokey walking sticks.

Mountain girl problems. Chopping firewood too hardy for soft palms, too brittle for a hardy mind.

Squeezing toothpaste from a frozen tube while whitened hands refuse to move

Much like you, when you walked away.

Leaving a frozen shadow of you behind.

Walking along forest trails that are my new friends.

The moss that looks like mistletoe, and I kiss a dying red flower under it.

The trees that quietly watch me pass, whispering amongst themselves.

The men, oh the men here. Puffing beedis, chewing paan and wondering

If this girl needs city doctor help. It is crazy to live alone in a tiny cottage

That gets snowed in for over 8 days after the first snow fall.

Mountain girl problems. Controlling the urge to eat when provisions deplete.

Controlling the joy of seeing new faces, wanting to hug them for visiting.

Trying hard not to thrash people who say, “you’re so lucky to live here”.

They know not, what solitude brings. They know not, of the hunger of wild animals.

Mostly, the problems involve strength and temperament.

Mostly, I spend days lifting bucketfuls of water for weight training.

And racing sessions with my dog.

Mostly, I spend evenings wondering what Delhi is up to, when I am in bed by 730pm.

Mountain girl problems, they are many and they are few.

In the end, my fate is decided by the Camus kaleidoscope that asks me,

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”

A Song For You

For Jennie Elliot, who left us 17 January 2014, but will live on in my heart forever. RIP brother.

It ain’t a life without your smile

It ain’t a moment to cherish and rise.

Your voice showing me the long miles

Ahead, it ain’t a place in time.

Dreams and visions of laughter, of song, of smoke.

Vanish slowly into that time.

That time which is the future, which won’t stop.

That time which is the past, where you stopped.

Guilt feeds into my cheer

Asking, why do you lie?

Nights go by with your eyes shining

Starlike, timeless, into my unstill mind.

A song for you won’t make things right.

A song for you won’t stop the time.

A song for you won’t make me smile.

It’ll only freeze this moment, in time.