End of the Jest

Sunday night is an imposter,

The kind that writers wearing bandanas foster.

Taking notes on how the sugary sweet sodas he sips,

Is a metaphor for nourishment escaping our collective lips.

Sunday night's when writers don't work,

So they try poetry for a quirk.

On Monday you wake up early ,

To chase your horses in the mist, ever so unclearly.

Tuesday was blue, Thursday was push and shove,

Then came Friday and you still weren't in love.

.

.

Sunday night and emotions, just don't go hand in glove.

Sunday nights are not to be trusted for emotions,

There are so many places you would rather be,

So many people you would rather be and be with.

Yet you find yourself blinded by the blue light,

Of your computer screen, bandana on nightstand,

Writing this poem.

Reaching/Leaving

The day before you came/left,

Of appropriate words,I was bereft.

I saw you pack, words that were had,

Into suitcases of clothes and apples gone bad.

You left the keys on the nightstand,

Along with matches of your brand.

Where could you be going without a key?

Were you leaving home to go home across the sea?

Will memory fade like sea foam?

As you reach/leave this honeycomb.

Have you learnt or will it be the same?

Will you finally know your name?

You said as you left/came,“Write about me”,

You know I’m doing just that.

Just have me know,

Am I reaching you or am I leaving you?

The Sunday Poet

When the weight of the world is fleetingly off my shoulder,

I let ink drip from my head onto paper.

The Pernicious Poet mocks me about words lost.

I do not chose to write on Mondays,

About love lost and hearts tossed,

I write on borrowed time on Sundays.

He asks me, “ Will you fly on artistic ventures?”

“ Or will we be another autistic dementor?”

He tells me I will be another brick in the wall,

Because no belle dame sans merci has me in thrall!

He dreams of Ozymandias in daffodils,

And I cannot sleep thinking of the bills.

He tells me the sky is but a landfill,

And I’m just busy working my power drill.

He tells me I will always have a writer’s block,

You can only write on blackboards with white chalk.

He tells me to to live everyday as my last,

I say, If today were the last, I’m at peace with the past.

He tells me to pull the trigger, drop the blade, seize the day!

And I pick the pen-today I write, it is a Sunday.

The Pernicious Poet tells me Poetry only comes from Poverty,

I tell him that is exactly why I write on Sundays strictly.

Pensively the Pernicious Poet provokes

“Do you want to write? Or do you want to be happy?”

I do not mean it to be snarky,

I chose to write on Sundays so on other days,

I can be happy.

When the weight of the world is fleetingly off my shoulder,

I let ink drip from my head onto paper.

Sessions

Hello again it's you and me,
coffee for you and words for me.
Fresh paint on my walls and a thousand stories,
Of ups and downs and flailing glory.
A nervous laugh and you tell me,
Of childhood ghosts and new found fears.
On reckless nights down we go,
Opening ourselves and mixing tears.
But now our time is done ,
we go into life and oblivion .

In this moment , if we chose to stay,
We'll build our bridges and barricades.
Time and place won't mean a thing,
A thousand years or decades.
That was there time, this is our place.
We won't be lost cuz we've been saved.

Hello again, it's you and me,
kinda how it used to be.
Been so long since you've seen me,
I've got new stories and new memories.
So pick one gem hanging in the air ,
as we go into conversation.
Sailing uncharted waters ,
of our begginings and our ends.

Where are you, Vincent?

If Van Gogh were alive today,
He wold sell socks on the pavement.
We would steal his paints and replace them with a begging bowl.
We would take his brushes,
And replace them with books.
Books of science and mathematics and instructions ,
On how to be a contributing member of society.
And then we'd say' Paint us something, you're the painter man!
Do your job anyway?'
'Not in wavy colours! Paint in black and grey !'
He'd run away with his oranges too a far off field,
And we'd laugh into his hazy eyes, as he'd scream colour from his veins.
We'd pelt his eyes with stones on starry nights.
We'd burn gardens of his almond blossoms.
We'd make sure he never touched canvas with colour.
He would beg on the streets for kind words and for food.
And we would spit in his bowl (which we gave him) and his art books.
We would never buy the socks he sold,
Or the dreams that died with him in blood cold.
If Van Gogh lived today,
He would still cut his ear,
And we wouldn't shed a damn tear.

#Colourblind

I want to write poems in fountain pen ink,
-Hazy purple, on yellowed pages,
On the back of a novel, unopened for ages.
But I can't make a mark,
On this blue screen of computer bark.

I want to buy a guitar from that old pawn shop,
In the old part of town, with a tea stained table top.
They tell me at the store,"Gone are the blues and bebop!"
So I buy myself today's harp-the latest laptop.

I used to buy Rubik's cubes from an old Parsi shop in Bombay,
But the mall there now sells cubes with fifty four pieces of gray.
So I try to meet the changing times halfway,
And buy my food in predigested sachets!

To eat out is in, cooking with calories is a sin!
To kill language to save a few seconds is #hip,
But you better spend hours to find the filter to hide that melanin.
Like the cubes, all is gray in this township.

Sitting in this colour blind sink,
I want to write poems in fountain pen ink,
-Hazy purple , on yellowed pages,
On the back of a novel, unread for ages.

Rope/ For CC

I carry pocket size chaos on my shoulder,

As I push my Sisyphean boulder.

I sit by the sea with ennui,

As the waves wash away every buoy.

Do not throw me rope!

You don’t know my chaos’ scope!

Hold your sympathetic display,

For I am the autumn moon,I am the highway!

The breadth of my inner wings,

Cannot be measured by man made things.

Do not throw me rope!

I am nefarious! Throw me hope!

I gather my chaos now spread over me so chaotically,

By my mind full of thoughts of excesses sought.

Collecting it in a manner oh so orderly,

Into a chaos pocket sized and 10000 watts.

As I push my Sisyphean boulder,

I carry pocket sized chaos on my shoulder.

/* This is for the sad loss of Chris Cornell. RIP Shadow King and say hello to heaven */

Someday I'll Fly

Someday I’ll fly,

Beyond the questions ‘what?’, ‘where?’and ‘why?’,

To where answers are only given with a sigh.

To where time does not fly by the bye,

A day,

A year,

Forever,

Are meaningless words to say.

Someday I’ll see,

Beyond the need to be,

Loved as to love.

Beyond the smell of burning clove,

As smoke

    Takes away

All woes.

Someday I’ll  write,

To not stub out ends of burning hearts by the night,

But to be one with beauty in all it’s might.

Someday I’ll pick up crumpled papers of poetry,

Rising

Beyond

Their blight.

Someday when the chords turn minor,

I shall not glance at the world’s pyre.

Even when I’m down to the wire,

I shall dance,dance,dance,

Through

The

Fire.

/* Check out this fine ditty whilst you read these words. There's also a rather rough take of a piece of music I think goes well with these words */

You remember the days?

You remember the days?

When you walked in sepia streets of nostalgia,

When you rose in roses of stupor,arms and melancholia.

You remember the days?

When you woke with a head spinning in purple haze,

And evenings of fighting demons in Lucy’s daze.

You remember the days?

When the sleepless nights made us feel,

On top of the world, not under its heel.

You remember the days?

You thought you would never sleep again,

And the night when fitfully by slumber you were slain.

You remember the days ?

When eons were  as far as evening tea,

And all your sorrows drowned by the sea.

You remember the days ?

When time caught up in its cheating chariot,

And in your mind anxiety and defence did riot.

You remember the days ?

When you held all the good that came your way in arms clenched tight,

And at time’s clarion call, let go with all your might.

You remember the days ?

When the walking  in sepia streets of nostalgia,

Only gave you neuralgia.

You remember the day ?

After which you didn’t remember the days ?

Even if you remembered, you couldn’t live them, anyway.

/* RIP Leonard Cohen. I'll spend the rest of my days searching for the secret chord. */

/* There's a cover of a Rob Scallon that I think without words captures the feeling of letting go of nostalgia very well */

Oceans have no memory

When books of poetry fill, swagger dies

The muse sighs- thoughts in a standstill.

A laugh, a smile and then I show you,

Glimpses of dreams cast in china blue.

Walk with me by the sea,

As smoke blows away from mystery.

The oceans have no memory.

In the waves let’s our walled thoughts immerse,

And let the ocean churn up a china blue verse.

Every beautiful thing must slip into oblivion.

But to forget something-one must relive and remember.

Another lover falls to the universe

And the oceans have no memory

Except that of immersed verse,

Cast in china blue and reverie.

/*Ginsberg has a surprise reference  watch for it.*/

Let Mr.Wilson tell you about the water and memories

Self Portrait in Colour

/*maroon is a combination of red and blue*/

He wakes from maroon dreams,
Into a world of summer autumn colour schemes.
The maroon man with his myriad moods,
At schemes ,chuckles, smirks,laughs and broods.

Red from blood once flowing,
From skin covering secret scars,
That now radiant and lambent are glowing,
Like battle scars on old guitars.

Blue from a music of oppressed art,
Blue borrowed scent,  blue love and blue heart.
And somewhere Bukowski  is sounding a rebel yell,
'Love......love is a dog from hell.'

As his eyes crave the sepia tint of nostalgia,
Blue and red blend , overpowering melancholia.
Hail muse! As nocturne sea brings foam to shore,
As maroon distills into purity from its ore.

City moves in chemically somnambulistic steps,
As poets of buildings large and small perplex.
Between these lines of cathartic ink,
Maroon turns into crimson,magenta or even pink.

A Bucket Full of Rain

I collapse into the arms of rain,

As it descends from mysterious heaven,

A flowing respite from the summer’s pain,  

Making music -rhythmic and even.

I think of the could-be-muse,

Writing poems of autumn rainbows,

But they are of no use,

Even if they are about rain that flows.

No one cares for my poem, my diadem,

Unless they are written for them.

If you love the rain as you say you do,

Why do you have an umbrella open?

Drop it! Let it flow! Like a music true,

Till it fills up all that was stolen,

And then let down a bucket,

And bring up a poem.




" The poetry books are out of print, but that is as it should be if you're an Indian poet writing in English ."-Jeet Thayil in the preface of 'Collected poems'. 
Poetry is prayer for the godless people - Jeet Thayil 

It's exactly as Dylan says.
The rain is a metaphor for many things , and vulnerability is one of them.

Melancolie du Changement

There is a reason we like the music we do,

There is a reason we read the books we do,

They are the handles, by which we hold onto,

Strings better left to fray.

Melancolie du Changement ripping through,

Every illusion of permanence,

Kick, run, fight-you will never outweigh,

Specks of dust in cosmic sand.

Old vinyl records scratched with nostalgia,

Envelopes that now feed vermin,

Yellow pages, watery eyes,

Are but futile in eternal time.

Should a Tennyson implore,

'That which we are, we are!'

Or a Robin Williams say,

'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!'

Embrace every moment for time flies,

Trough the slipping summer,

Through the harsh winter,

But it stays in the summer within.

/* I can't even start on the inevitability of change. It is going to happen , yet we cling to the familiar. Like a comforting summer in the middle of winter. This is not an uncommon euphemism on this blog, and it refers to porcupine tree and Albert Camus at the same time ( yeah, that's some combination) . But that is perhaps the only answer to change. Time flies, and the best that you can do is take whatever comes to you , cherish it and then let it go. If we weren't specks of dust in cosmic sand, perhaps the summers would last for ever, but that is not the case. All we can do is make good memories and let them guide us through the unfamiliar, unpredictable future.If you've had to say goodbye to good friends you know what I mean (and that's why I wrote this ). Dans les profondeurs de l'hiver je l'ai trouvé un été invincible as Camus should say .... that summer within , that's where time stands still. */

/*Also finally, a recording of trains . Hit the souncloud link below to get the summers metaphor better . */

Here's an acoustic guitar slinging , dreamily crooning John Mayer telling you basically the same thing.

The Silence Between the Notes

If for every path not taken

There is a parallel universe,

For very chorus heard

There is a silent verse.

City moves in maddening chaos,

As we get lost in crowds and its throes,

Searching for a blindfold to pathos ,

Not once looking to the undertows.

The moments between phone rings,

The poetry despite the text message blur,

The mindful breaths between desperate pangs,

Is when air becomes breath.

Pauses before punch lines,

The loud note and then the softer,

Elegant strokes of blank canvas,

Amidst splashes of colour.

/* So this one is about the virtues of silence and minimalism. I think in the fast and chaotic world we find ourselves in , the few moments of silence and poignant observation are rather amiss and rare. Great work of art always have paid attention to this idea. How many notes does BB King have to play to say what he wants to say and how many words does Hemingway have to write to convey all the horrors of war? I think we could all benefit from a few moments of silence and reserve in a world full of noise and chaos. Of course , too much of silence can never be a good thing, but given how fast and loud modern life has become , it is always great when art remind us to take a moment and just observe.*/

Flags

Lining hills , fluttering in the wind -prayers , blessings , hope. The Buddha came and went. And new flags were raised. Flags of red, flags of sorrow.  Yet some vestiges of the glory lingers~

As old prayer flags fade,

Old hope makes way for new

the mountain watches

/*So my fist attempt at haibun. Well as you would've guessed this is about the situation Tibet finds itself in. Check out some pictures of the prayer flags that  I speak of. */