The Wind Song (draft)

There's a song in the wind
There are words.

The south wind roars
deep, aloud
swirls
in giant waves
over her hut where the river ends.
Tonight she will soak her hair in the wind
and sleep beneath the stars.

And in a damp little room
In a damp little city
Alone
A wordless poet struggles for breath
Where the wind doesn't reach
Lungs and craving arteries
Empty, blank.

Tell me who unleashed the city
over this landscape
Stretched it like an unrolling carpet
rugged with time,
rugged
so,
if you reach beneath the surface
you will
feel the grass and the mud and the soul.
Tell me who it is the city awaits.

And tell me who entrapped the poet
in this body
diseased,
dying,
devoid of blood
And tell me who confined the poet
in this mind
lost for words, lost for
thought, lost
for belief.
Tell me
who cursed the poet
to untimely death.

"Beloved, there is no god
within these walls
No sight, no solace, no
respite. - I cannot dream..."
I cannot sleep
these days,
no more, I wait
for the seagull's scream
above my head, I
wait
for the gales to blow
away the floor,
The dust will sparkle.

But was she the nymph
of the south winds, some aeons ago,
do you know when she forgot her name?
Do you know if the city smog
chokes her, if the chains still
bruise her ankles, or where
does the yellow cab take
her every night?

The computer has fallen silent, the cell-
phone the footsteps and
so will the clock and
the heartbeat
soon - Talk to me!
I yearn for voice talk to me
Talk to me about anything
everything the grass the
soul the cliff the hut your father
who left for the wind
and never returned...
how she lured him to sea.

And why
does the yellow cab take her
every night
to the abandoned graveyard
whose ancient bones
does she try to sooth
with her gentle fingers
of breeze?

This city was not built
for the winds.
I wonder
how they forgot
that the river
leads to the sea, and
the sea to the winds.
And one day
the winds will steal
the men the songs the souls

And when I die, sit
by my grave for a while
and plant me a krishnachura.
Plant it such that every breeze
will shower
petals like sunset
petals like blood
I shall be
red.

I shall be red.

Extract

I would like you to die this
moment, before the glares and sneers
and prejudices can find you and
drag you out to the dawn, seething;
before their greedy fangs dig blood
on the flesh of your back; I would like you
to die and become a sacred memory,
a phantom fragrance, a summer night
dream I can hide in the darkest
spires of my eyes... I would
like you to die in my arms - still
warm, unscathed, pure.

...

Asking you out on a winter night

Tell me, if I asked for
a part of you tonight, would you
let me take a sip of that thunderstorm
raging through the shores of your heart?
Tell me – I ask you
for your city of dust and ashes, those
congested streets that you love, the ideals
of your forefathers; your dream, dark and looming,
transcending bodies and time... your dream,
dark and looming, that lends you blood
and wings.

I ask you for the hunger of your people, rising,
like a ghost in the colour of your eyes;
for your chaotic memories, crowded
with scruffy old men, shrivelled women, children
with begging bowls, lives lived
and died on footpaths, closed-down factories whose
rotting gates reek of blood. I ask
for your path of fire – pre-destined – scrawled
over a piece of paper.

And I ask for your whirlwind evenings, the usual games,
cigarette-end conversations with ladies
with strange surnames; your nights
of careless passion; and the
emptiness singeing your soul, as you walk
out of yet another lover's door on a stagnant dawn.

And at a rhythmless moment - you look
behind, your head tilted like half-sculpted
marble (the rest of you still
undone), your hair thick sheets of rain
over your shoulders, and your reflection
filling you with the bitterness
of a disenchanted traveller, who realizes
that the horizon has eluded him
again. And at
a rhythmless moment, when you think
your soul defeated and lost – I ask for those thoughts.

Tell me, if I asked for a part of
you tonight, would you let me hold
your hands, moulded from centuries of soil
and song? Would you place them – expressive and
warm – on my hips; would they
melt, with a drowning
madness, within my flesh and self?
Tell me, if I asked for a part of you tonight,
would you let me
Become
a part of you?

55 word story - Untitled

Untitled

My terrace was blue and grey in the smoke from your eyes. Not for the first time did we pretend to hear each other's voice, while all that resonated in the balsam twigs was our love lamenting what was left of us. There wasn't much. It didn't hurt me to kiss you any more.

55 word story - Eyes

Eyes

Too many eyes I've lost – some have bled so much I couldn't see any other colour. I rather like the pair I have now. Grey, smoky, plunging into such a wilderness that I shudder even as I gaze into the mirror. They call them eyes of an addict.

There's no way I'm losing them on you.

Doll's Houses

She sat in front of the mirror. The single crack that trickled down the shining glass might have been a tear drop dried, a silvery illusion. Might have been midnight hours kept by passing moons in dark, breathless streets. Might have been the way her gaze held his trail of dust and ashes.

Doll's houses don't last, her mother would tell her, back in her frock-wearing, candy-licking childhood. Those days, she believed in growing up. But round the corner, even the conch shells and primeval drum rhythms that hailed the divine mother would fall silent as the Dashami sunset pours its vermillion over the festivity-worn city. And her! She hadn't even felt Eternity ripple down the manicured brown of her fingertips. Not Durga, not Mahamaya... after all, what was she but just another squalid doll?

A poem by Aakash and The Response of the Pool

Right there...

Inside your closed eyes
Let me watch my n'th dream
Beneath the shadow of your lashes
I shall rest for a while

Let your brow play my tired soul
A lullaby off-white
Seeking within the iris black
The eloped darkness of night

While i seek sleep...

- Aakash

The Response of the Pool

And the eloped darkness of the night
Gives way to a dawn
That re-opens the circle -
My cold grave is dug again.

As I open my eyes
I am doused
In the crimson sundrops
Streaming...
Screaming for reasons
In the seething black of the iris
In the fading shadow of the lashes...

I

It's not the dagger in my chest that hurts me. It's the fact that you put it there. Rainclouds come and go, the marble of the gravestone forgets my name... and beneath a field of carnations, my bones grow whiter. The scent of lavender seeps heavier into my soul.

The scent of lavender. The scent of madness. The scent of emptiness. Ahh... pour me into that void. Pour me slowly, down your dead, white fingers. Let me drip... drip... drip... till the last droplet dries from the vessel. And no fragrance is left.

The music has struck its highest note, and then the guitar strings split. Now, only the drum beats on. Primitive. Monotonic.

This is not love.
This is not love.

It's something beyond.

Pain is my addiction.

Insanities

I could've been the desire in your eyes, and stayed like that forever. Bathed in the seething fragrance of your body. Breathed in the red dust of your soul. Spilled in the liquid rudeness of your purple gaze.

Let me drown
Let me drown
Let me drown

I bloom like the last finger of jasmine on your stormy nights.

Esmeralda

Esmeralda

Oh yet another dance
One more waltz
Clasping your hand in mine
As fireflies plunge to flames
And we play games
Drawing patterns with fingers of ice
On each other's walls,
Walls of the stormy city
We built
Together

Through the nights of winds
And blind moths in your hair
Through the raindrop haze
On the skylight
I hold out for the thirsty hour
You craved
For a drop of Eternity
On the blood-red curve of your lips
The curve beyond which
An obscure street
An ignorant crowd
Breathing, writhing, seething
Asks -
"And how many years
And how many tears
Would you waste
Locked in a forbidden love?"

What if,
Then the violins stop
Then the curtains drop...

Would your footfall recede
From the spot
The sunset was spilled
Like red wine on the dancefloor?

But the rain pours on
Through the night and fog
Incessant
Like the insane mutterings
Of a lover in throes of pain
All the lovers we left behind
At another space
In another time
Embracing Life and Death
In a whirlwind swish
Becoming
You and me

Tonight
The paradise we seek has drifted
In the moss-grown woods
That layer the city
Brimming, spilling
The droplet of poison in the veins
Reaching for the heart,
Iced blood...
And the violins stopped
And the curtains dropped

Blackout.

...And I
Hold out for the thirsty hour
You craved
For a drop of Eternity
For a drop of Eternity

For the last dance that's left.

A Lost Friend's Letter

A poem I wrote for my best friend for Friendship Day. Doesn't mean I care much about such occassions though, but our relationship was just going through a rift and it felt somewhat ironic that an occassion called 'Friendship Day' would be around the corner...
It was published in Young Metro, The Telegraph on Friday, August 5.

---

Perhaps some street-side poet
had written you a song
of fallen stars
and twilight half-dreams
long before the centuries came...
Through the nights of sublime pearls,
deep, dark, insane nights,
have you heard the phantoms weep
at your doorstep?

And as your fingers touch the notes
of the lonely piano,
a shadow still lingers on your wall
...waiting for a lost friend's letter.

The Last Performance

Perhaps the curtains will rise
for the last time tonight,
and the void of your drowsy dawn
will be me.
I will don the myriad shades
of a scripted life,
and on the jovial stage,
in the arclight haze,
I will flash plastic smiles
to tunes that were never my own.

When the empty proscenium
reeks of phantom songs,
I have walked the deserted aisles in white satin,
looking for the poet who died,
in a freak accident,
maybe in another space or time.
I found his diary last night...

But tonight (for the hundredth night)
I'll dance my candyfloss steps,
light ballerina feet will defeat
my purpose to live or die.
To want to fly.
Perhaps they sheared off the wings
I had, in another incarnation.

Don't paint me another facade,
write me another role.
I'll take my poison
in small doses,
licking around my lips.
I'll grow spurious leaves
from the pupils of my eyes,
the million eyes
that sprawl on my skin.
And maybe for the last time,
I'll die.

Perhaps the curtains will rise
for the last time tonight,
and the void of your drowsy dawn
will be me.
Silent dreamer, would you then
play me a song
of yellow and green,
of green and red,
red and violet,
with your magic breath?
And maybe,
as the thundering applause fades,
we will find a new sky.

Nights

There's this person up there with whom I share a very intense love-hate relationship. I refuse to believe in It's existence (don't know if It's a He or She), and It responds by making a joke out of everything I say or do. And when the thing gets over I return to my belief of "What It-wit crap? Coincidences happen."
Anyway, so only tonight I was writing about not being able to complete a poem. And only tonight, a bit later, my muse got so worked up that I conceived and completed an entire poem in less than half an hour. Of course the poem, at its best, looks like a child practising metaphors. But that's generally what my poems are like. Without any concrete meaning. Surrealistic. They probably have some meaning at the Freudian level of the subconscious self, but trust me, reading one's own subconscious is the toughest job - so I won't really be able to tell you accurately. Some deep pain, some deep loss, some deep isolation somewhere down there maybe... otherwise just a simple poem. Just playing with words. Just a few abstract sketches.

---

Last night,
I lost the violin man
at the bend of a purple street
under the cracked lamp.

Haven't I trailed the shadows,
seen them crisscross
in a midnight maze?
I have fixed my gaze
at the bluish monitored screen
and clicked erase.

If the rooftops will
sing your lost tune tonight,
I'll buy
half a star
and let it twinkle twinkle
on my cheek...

And I will step in the stream
and sniff the home-bound wind
for your music
...for yet another night.

Written on June 8, 2005.