Sitting in a cubicle all day, squinting at letters a feet away, my eyes ache to focus on things that are a horizon away. To leave, be not hemmed in by the familiar, not shackled to repetition.

Handy haiku

Many women go past, I gape.

Many words go past, I gape.

Many worlds go past, I gape.

Gaping, I do well.

postscript: thanks to a friend, in conversation with whom, this thing was born. it is obviously not to be compared with the masters, but it is pithy, it has context and I like it. 

A tragedy

The infinite, 

multiplying possibilities of childhood, 

being chased forever,

by the whittling years,

are dead men 

now.

Their ghosts however

return, without fail

to haunt the undeniable

now.

Tea cup.

If a cup of tea
is no one's
cup of tea,
Is it then
A cup of tea ?

Lost

Its one in the morning. I roll down the window of my car. The cold wind helps keep the drowsiness at bay. Apart from a lack of sleep, it really is wonderful to drive down a road at night, without all the chaos of daytime. No assholes to navigate, only potholes.

I drive past a bunch of boys, in tattered clothes, carrying a bucket of white paint. They have been retouching the zebra stripes on the road. All are barefoot. They are laughing and howling.

I feel a sting of ... pain ? Guilt? Sympathy ? I don't know. Its one in the morning and these boys are awake working. I don't think they got to catch up on their sleep during the day. More like they were slogging equally hard.

When will they sleep then? Where will they go? How far do they stay? How will they get there at this hour ? Do they even have a home? I think of all these things as I drive by. Towards home. I feel lost. Here is a world that is alien to me. Made of things and people that I hardly think about. I am unable to combine all these things into one big cohesive view of this world that I live in

Its a good thing, I think that people surround themselves with delusions of order and purpose and with a sense of being able to make sense of it all. I drive on and know that I will forget about this soon, but just at that moment I can't seem to find one reason for any of this. All this 'living' that I carry on day in and day out.

Sniffle

My nose runs,
Wish it really would.
I am warm all over,
Fighting off a warm sopor.
A Cold is anything but.

My muse, she's a fickle thing,
manifest as a little bug -
Goads me into writing.

Somnolence

I sit in silence. Its afternoon and I have just had lunch. On a full stomach, I am experiencing that part of the day when the real around me fades into a swirling mass of half real imagined thoughts. Images come and go, mixing, flowing into one another and then you.

You are here. And I smile.

10pm - News. The kid that fell into a borewell two days ago is dead. They finally got to him.
11.45pm - Calvin draws his death ray blaster on an approaching Zorg.

Both of the above belong to the same reality. If only I can convince myself of it.

A score and six years

"How does it feel to be twenty six?", asked a friend. "No different", I said. Though I suppose it finally is sinking in, the age that is. Aging has never concerned me before, but the other day when a much older (read thirties) colleague remarked that going past thirty meant having one foot in the grave, it gave me pause. Yet another thing to crowd an already crowded mind. Life it seems, never gets any simpler. One stays afloat and sane, or one just sinks. Gibbering like a mad monkey. Do mad monkeys gibber ? I haven't a clue, but this is rhetoric. I love rhetoric.

Anyway, I realize that my worries are trivial and inane compared to the regular killings that happen on a daily basis in Iraq, or the current situation in Darfur, or the little girl I saw at the signal stop. She moved from vehicle to vehicle convincing people to buy some flowers. She had a badly done bandage on one side of her face, coming down over her right ear. You knew it was badly done because when she turned the right side of her face towards you, you saw that the bandage barely covered the red mess of a hole that was there in place of her ear. I do not ask for perspective to be slammed into me, not that perspective ever listens. The gibbering monkey threatened to grow louder that day, but we managed to keep him afloat.

A score and six years. It is to be seen how many more.

Sit

Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six, and still have some of life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.

The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.

-- Vikram Seth

Faith

Reasonable faith and blind faith. Applying qualifiers to a word that already implies belief regardless of anything else.

But this raises an interesting point. Science, all of it, is based on the sense of belief. This belief is based on evidence gathered thus far. On the basis of the fact I have seen the sun rise every morning and that the planet we live on hasnt just floated away I believe that the sun will rise again tomorrow. This belief is based on theories that have come about that attempt to explain empirical evidence. These have stood the test of time and so it is reasonable, and convenient to accept these explanations as fact (until of course someone has observed something that doesn't seem to quite fit in with current theories. Theory then goes right out the window. This is the very stuff of science, that it allows things held in good light for years together to be demolished on the basis of a single contradictory observation. Of course the fact that we humans practice science, thereby infusing it with all sorts of petty mindedness is another story altogether).

The next time I want to know something about the Sun, I do not go about collecting evidence, instead I look to science to offer me explanations and reasonable beliefs.

Theists or believers who are otherwise smart enough to understand that all of science is also based on belief somehow draw the line at accepting that the belief in science is based on hard empirical evidence.

fulcrum

stay - poise !
a knife edge
insanity yawns below
enligtenment behind.

a light breeze blows.

babylon

i drown and i choke!
noises, smells, colours and smoke
life, chaos and crime,
coughing and sputtering, i look
out on some weird god's pantomime.

Search Results

shades

what good ?
what evil ?
what absolutes ?

black and white
are for the books
and the movies
I read and I watch
and shake such
fancies away
life has for me
but shades of gray.

maple syrup

There are things that for no apparent reason, get indelibly etched in your mind. The factoid ( if it is indeed a one ) seems to achieve no apparent purpose sitting there. Like maple syrup.

It was like this. Way back in eighth class, Nondi was yammering away. Nondi was the name affectionately given our geography teacher. He walked almost as if he had a limp, his whole body leaning to one side and almost a swagger. Well, at least he must have thought it was a swagger. And I don't, to this day, know if he really suffered a limp, but being kids, and with the amazing cruelty that kids are so easily capable of, we named him Nondi. And i digress.

It was geography time and Nondi is yammering. I then recall that he asks us, to name that which is used as an alternative to sugar in Canada. And some one from a bench behind me, shouts out maple syrup. And that's it. Maple syrup makes itself a constant companion to my life thereafter. I can even recall the way Nondi was standing as he posed the question to us.

Now at four or so in the morning, as I sit unable to sleep and with a ringing headache (quite the bastard) I think of maple syrup.

hushaar !

i am warned
to stay away
from the deep
and the dark
corners of my mind.

somebody was there
and did not like
what they did find.

lol.

Boredom

Loneliness. I wake up to a silent day. Coffee and the newspaper. Somebody dead, a thousand dead, somebody won and somebody murdered. Not a flicker on my face. I fold the paper and down my coffee.

Breakfast time. TV. Silicone, murders and pop. I am so bored. I look at my watch and it tells me that there are another twelve hours to kill. I pick a book flip a page, and toss it away.

Should I kill myself ? Maybe death holds some meaning. Maybe I'd feel something then.

Lunch - Chicken. I used to enjoy eating. Now its a task. Death, pain I think again. Maybe.

Night. Dinner is on the table, but I am not interested. I sit at the table and watch my blood pool on the floor below. Interesting color. The sharp ache on my wrist has dulled to a throbbing. I am so bored. Its getting dark. Did I not turn the lights on earlier ?

Oh.

So this is it. But I feel nothing. I was supposed to feel something. Damn.

Damn, its eight already.

I came across this post on a friends blog, with a link to this comic. I hope I have something better to put up for my tenth.

lukoi

head thrown back
running
i drank in the light
running
like i should never
have been able

the ground opened up
the trees moved
one with the green
i moved
things that tripped
and things that snagged
did not bother

graceful and lithe
i drank it all in
sharp contrasts
soft yellow light
a darker green
and the smell -
an epiphany played
played inside of me

easing into a stop
incredulity winning
for a moment
over the newfoundness
the world twanged to a stop
an instant after i did
like rubber stretched
and not wanting to stop
urging me on

i look down
scratches on my arms
almost healing
and flash back to
a glimpse of gleaming
fangs in the dark

only a moment
a single frame
that dissolves into
the world alive
in front and around
my body thrums
with an energy
that will not
be contained

i pull back
one last time
inside
and then
mouth wide
smelling, tasting
tendons stretching
and muscles taut
i bound away.

buckle up dorothy

who or what
and where was i
why and how
and when did i
get to be
into this strange
looking glass
alice - dear lass
thought she
had it bad
i'd give lewis
a run for
the money
he had.

pity

fend !
the barbs
the insults
the backstabbing
the nonchalance
the unending stupidity

what am i fending for ?
fending exhausts
leaves me no time
none whatsoever
to live with
whats mine
might as well
stop
and be rubbed under
trampled to the dust
from whence we
sprung fighting

such a waste.

almost perfect

Its a saturday morning and I look out the window. It frames an explosion of fresh green leaves and a wet earth. The air is cool and the smell of rain lingers - that absoluelty divine whiff of a parched land suddenly made wet. And my lines are prevented from becoming a cliche, by a sky which is a bright white, and not a brilliant blue. A cup of tea in hand, I stare oustide as my mind picks up on a thought. I forget the beauty, as it tries to think of ways to preserve a moment like this forever. Stupid me.

early death

musings, born
out of a monkey mind
that refuses to be still
jumping and grabbing
on to every passing thought
following it around
chattering
gibbering
and discarding it
for the next ,
die an early
death.

free falling

Exhaling, I lean back. Nothing fills my head, a white noise really, a blend of many babbling thoughts. The noise soon fades and my mind floats away. Staring ahead, I try to blink away fleeting ghost patterns that haunt my tired eyes. Shaking my head, I jerk back upright, trying to clear my head off a fog that is fast threatening to overwhelm me. But the sudden movement only serves to pitch my head forward and I am too far gone to resist. "Just two minutes", I promise myself and lay my head down on the table. Lingering I try to remember something. Something I had promised myself just a moment before. Something, something ...

And a sudden "But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus and always thus will be" flutters in from somewhere, a dying sputter of a thought. But that is the last and I am pulled in. Pulled into a free fall.

Life's like this

Life trundles along the gray plateaus of the daily, avoiding the dark and sunken valleys of despair and missing the tall shimmering hillocks of happiness. There is a path that it follows amidst these, on this endless gray sea of slate. The path which for the most part is by itself, is intersected every once in a while by other paths and more often than not, takes sharp turns into the aforementioned valleys. Life has to be careful, for there are never any signposts put up in advance, to warn it of such things. "Conniving sod!" it says, its irritation directed towards the one who designed all of this. Surprises almost seem to be built in - a feature, instead of a bug.

And every once in a rare while, along the dusty path, are glimpses of what-may-be's. Having stopped now, at one of these, it pauses to look upon the what-may-be. And a moment later it ambles on, wondering about mirages.

A good day

The day wears on and I am witness to a brilliant sunset. Red fills the universe of my sight interspersed with a flaming orange. An orange at war with the red fighting for space and winning in bright streaks. This sunset, I think, should be a fitting start to the end of a good day. But I pause and wonder at what the remains of the day yet hold for me. While the magnificent spectacle plays on, granting me front row audience to a cosmic dance, manifestations of which fill the sky up ahead. Amidst such beauty, I am filled with a longing, not quite sorrow, that a good day is past and is never to be mine again.

another year

"Are you making any resolutions for the new year ?"

"Yeah, I'm resolving to wing it and see what happens."

"So you're staying the course ?"

"I stick to my strengths."

this soldier

A common foot soldier I am and I wield the pen. I was not always a soldier. I was once a common man, looking in from outside. Looking in onto the plain white, afraid to step in. But this battle is a free for all and so I was given my pen and asked to go forth and conquer words. Lay siege to adjectives, capture verbs and bring down paragraphs, sonnets, verses and prose.

Glory and literary acclaim, supposedly await me. Lines such as the pen is mightier than the sword are concocted to help me along. For inspiration I have a whole range of masters. From mere Knights to veritable Gods. People whose prowess with words, words are insufficient to express. Masters and mistresses of form, wit and dialogue, of satire, of drama and powerful intellect. Weavers of new worlds, builders of kingdoms, spawners of demons and dragons. As a foot soldier I look up and upon them and to their victories, legends that I strive to emulate, as I try to shape these words to my ideas.

Are the words there first or are the ideas ? I do not know. They are both at the same time. Without words, I do not know if I would have ideas and of ideas I do not know of any other kind. And yet, once the idea and the words that make it appear, I am able to discern a difference and make the idea be of other words, better words perhaps. More lucid words. Ah lucidity. Every moment on the battlefield, I strive to make my verbs and nouns and prepositions be where they are meant to be. I try to fashion vehicles for my thoughts and emotions, vehicles which will transport and deliver, without much ado to themselves. I do not often succeed.

Millions fight this war. The war remains the same, though the battle has spread to newer arenas, away from the traditional paper and away from the pen being the only weapon. A universe now exists composed of letters, words and lines uncountable, immeasurable. And in this immensity, a common foot soldier, I plod on. Oblivious to the tumult of humour, satire, poetry and prose around me, I am busy in an attempt to leave behind the only things about me that will remain. My body will perish, memories of me will fade, but my words, they will be about. That I was once. That, borrowing from Whitman, I existed, life went on, and these here were my verses.

Particularly weary, I realize that the sun has set on this days battle. So I clear a space on my desk and lay my pen down.

breaking the law

completely wasted,
i was riding the edge
while it lasted

top down and head up,
the night roared by
as my foot wouldnt let up.

my car screamed down the road
and my mind joined in
a while later

past the trees and the posts
as angels above and demons below
gambled on being my new hosts.