it.

you will certainly not believe it first

you will overlook it

how silly to speak about it, you think

unless perhaps in stifled conversations

when night forces its breath

through keyholes and chimneys

and then you discover it one fine Friday evening

in a quaint little coffee shop

or your favourite book store

and along with it

arrives the time of the useless customs

of sleeplessness and dreams

and acts of tenderness

a sudden season of smiles

slowly

you recede past this world

into the succour of imaginations

it leads you there

it opens your chest and thrashes inside you

it makes you a hostage

and you set upon that road again

the end of which

you already know

it will not let you live

it.

Hours

It is that hour of the day

when the calm, next door wind

moves so fast it scrapes the flesh

off the bones and leaves the heart

open like an exposed wound

so a universe of memories settles on it

like dust clouds on grease

So even as you shut the windows

and draw the blinds an air current

roughly the size of your own sorrow

clings to the curtains and stares at you

with a stubborn gladness

Here I am again

And the mind with all its fondness

for reason and purpose

now seeks a place to hide itself

from all things that constitute

the randomness, the sameness,

the everydayness of life

Like an orange sun

setting behind the tattered edges

of buildings

casting shadows

on the criss cross of lanes

that lead footsteps marching into

the whore houses of this city.

Soon they will be full of emotions

perhaps like my teeming heart.

Severed

i am tired of sending
pieces of myself to you,
one at a time
through my songs, my rhymes
through those countless hours
we spent in quietude.

like shattered pieces of glass
they lie,
disfigured,uncautioned, untouched,
covering the floor
of your 8*7 bedroom.

do me a favour,
after you sweep them out
of your room and life,
return them to me

i want to live.

Home

Give me a home

that isn't mine,

where I can slip in and out of rooms

without a trace,

never worrying

about the plumbing,

the colour of the curtains,

the cacophony of books by the bedside.

A home that I can wear lightly,

where the rooms aren't clogged

with yesterday's conversations,

where the self doesn't bloat

to fill in the crevices.

A home, like this body,

so alien when I try to belong,

so hospitable

when I decide I'm just visiting.

Arundhathi Subramaniam

A Quest (ion Mark)

Life. What is it. What is it for. Are our lives consequential. Why are we here. What is hope. Why do we hope. Does it make us accept our fate with gratification. Or discontent. Or anger. Why do events occur the way they do. Why do we regret things that didn't happen. What is luck. What is good luck. What about bad luck. What's the difference. Does it matter. Do you actually believe life would've been any different if it mattered.


Are we really the supreme authority over our destinies. What choices do we have in shaping our destinies. Can we really create our destiny. Do we CREATE our destiny. Do we accept it. Have we truly any choice on when we rise and when we fall. Or a force larger than ourselves bid us our direction. Is anything certain. Life. Death. Do we live in a dreamworld, a coma, inside an amorphous maze, as a part of an illusory ordeal, trapped within a labyrinth of infinite boundaries. Why bother if life's going to make its own choices.


What is the role of divine providence in our lives. Why are suffering and evil so manifest in human experience. Is this place another world's hell. Do we live after we die. Don't we die before we die. What is consciousness. Are we indeed conscious. Unconscious. Do our struggles have meaning. What makes mankind tragic. Is it the fact that we are victims of nature, or that we are conscious of it (Conrad, eh). Is it evolution that has brought us our way. Or is it GOD who intervenes, keeping us safe.


Are we in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute and knowable. Or is it an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which our mind is impotent to grasp.

Where are the answers.

Sonnet XVII (100 Love Sonnets, 1960) by Pablo Neruda

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Pablo Neruda (is great).

Longevity

Humans are perhaps the only species cognizant of their impending demise. The same evolution that inevitably developed consciousness in us has turned us into quakers. It is so difficult for us to accept the fact that the universe was not made for us, and that there is no special meaning in our being here. We are constantly seeking out ways to prolong life or find an afterlife - in the kingdom of god, or here on earth, reduxed. We have to learn to let go and accept death. It is all transient. Enjoy it while it lasts. Let it go mate !

This fear of things ending makes us cling to beliefs and ideas even after they have outlived their usefulness. We want to stop evolution in its tracks, believing falsely that we have attained some perfect sentience. We want to believe in millenia old ideas on how to live, like religion, or the more recent ideas of communism and capitalism on how to make a living. Move on and create something new. An idea for the times, and when it doesn’t work, let it go.

The hardest thing we have trouble accepting is the end of the affair. It was good while it lasted, but it’s no more. Knowing that it will all come to an end does not make it any easier to deal with, but it’s a start.

Live it, and when it’s over, dust yourself, and get back on that dark saddle. It is the fragile and ephemeral nature of life, the unknown expiration date we each have, that makes it so precious. If we were immortal would life be as beautiful?