This Man.

He has power. Such that is within him. Within his nervous clenched fists and curled feet that he presses against the ground. It leaps up. It flames! But he doesn't see. He feels. He presses his fingers to his forehead to feel the temperature rise and sweat trickle down his throbbing temples. The air-tight warmth of this home seems to wrap this man tight now. He is more than any person inside this realm could deign or dare to be and yet he does not realise; he is a King. He makes his own realm; he spins and unspins webs of unspoken sentences and he weaves his dreams into this delicate of mesh of imagination that no one else may perceive.
He stands alone. He feels the pressure on his lungs, on his toes but he does not see he stands strong. He stands and he endures. He has overcome this air-tightness, which consumed enough of his life to make it his occupation. He feels loss but he does not see it was never anything to occupy enough. And he must realise there need not be any struggle anymore. He sees every thread of this world entangled, sparred and sifted but does he not realise the craft, the skill with which imagination has embroidered courage on this blanket? Rock-steady. Not soft. If you hold his hand and feel the calloused skin on his palms, you will know the ripple of dream, those currents of strength swimming in these hard-earned, long-spent years of thirty.
Brother, I will undo your fist, grasp your hand and not let it be held and unheld once more. Don't you see defeat is not an idea in your creation? Never in these years have I seen anyone rise and rise again. Now that you have risen again, I can see gravity bow down and surrender beneath your feet. Epics will crumble within bookshelves in revision of faith when a man in your name is written. The carpet of man's dreams is not fit to carry the stamp of your tread. Blessed seas will welcome you and skies will clear beyond the Seventh Heaven, parting in your grace. Do you not see, you have only to summon?  Let the truth be known. Turn around and look in the mirror, dear brother. You will see humanity reborn.

An Alternate Beat.

The Sun is relentless. Merciless. And we're never short of energy shortage. It's a typically Monday, hot afternoon. The heat seeps in from these tall windows. I don't think the Sun cares.
It maybe a while before I decide to step into shade. The cool, the light, the ease. The fan blows, bursts across my face and for a moment I consider if it only throws off the heat from these baked ceilings overhead.
I think of water, of seas, of splashes and foams and I think journeys. I hear engines whistle and spot a ship sailing ahead, beginning it's smooth journey. Nonetheless, something tells me this ship does not sail. It steers. And there need be determination, energy to steer or this vessel may totter. Lifeless vessels totter and capsize if no navigator is aboard. Because vessels do not belong to the waves. They were made to traverse. Because sometimes the sea is only a matter of distance, a charted course, and not an energy in itself. It may bear life itself but may hearken death for another. Because sometimes, one life is not enough to move adrift with another just as sometimes, love is not enough to have us travel distances together.
 The heat this afternoon is too overpowering. The windows let in too much of the sun and there's something about this house that blocks the passage of its return.
I think of blue beaches and I can only picture crashing surfaces.
But I try to contemplate the depth, the median, where there is ocean and there's ocean.

Here.

I'm sitting here in my room with this mug of tea in my hand. It's my second. It's odd because I usually don't have more than one in a day. My day doesn't start without it either. I am literally incapable of all sorts of movement until I have had my doze of chai for the day. But it's odd because I've been sitting here in his same position for nearly two hours now. There is no movement. There actually hasn't been much in a while. I think I gulped down that second mug-full in hopes that there might be some today.
No stirs, no turns of a page. The twist of a pen, an ankle, sole of the foot seems lost. I see my reading lamp there, lying on my table in all its order and serenity. Only I cannot reach out and switch the light on.
But what have I done? Only nineteen and nothing yet.
We love, lose, give up, stand up, strive, win and sometimes lose again. There is So Much to be done. So Much to be Read, Heard, Spoken and Unspoken. So many leaps to be risked and a few friends left behind. Why then are these days like those nauseating merry-go-rounds I have always run away from? The inescapable kind. Cotton-candied-pink grins and sharp, sugar-coated, mechanical screeches of joy. Clownish smiles, mocking with electronic, dizzying tunes of the merry-go-round. Whereto from here? How? And I realize I am living my dread; I am living a sense of completion. The point of rest is the death of all thought. There is no rest, thankfully and unfortunately. Rounds. I come back to the same point I start off from every morning, without turning corners. I laugh too. You can die of fake happiness.
I read poetry in times like these, find briefly worded comforts but there seems to be no rhythm in the verses that I find. All of a sudden, I don't see, a rhyme in all that I have composed in these two years.
There are thoughts and there are questions. There were replies too. But there was no poetic justice in them. There was no poetry in the hearts. Only hearts broken and illusions restricted to delusional verses. Only in written. Never in Life.


There is only one window in this room. I think I'll attempt to open a book again.

Letters of Verse - Part II

You were mine, only till twenty-five

but the world swept you away.

In rolled the charcoal skies, to have you abandon that sparkling ray

I recognized, but cupped these ears

only to muffle the roar

The wind now whispers their plan:

the overcast has decided to draw away

to let the yearning sun have its way

I spot the shy streaks of golden too

curving a grin in the once graying realm.

I know and I always did.

I'm glad that Spring is imminent

though the knowledge wrings this obstinacy,

(Forever is nothing more than a word)

Forever this spring will never be.

Though this Universe never promised balance,

It's still an unbalanced trade.

This scheme was not hard to unravel;

I know and I always did

but acceptance, now, dodges this terrain.

Impulse to Scribbler

Spin spin, entwine entangle

(sway selfishly away)

wheel, reel.

Then twist, turn and roll out the carpet

while all that was invested, divests.

Bore the tips into the knits and grits,

twirl and flex these bones 

through the coarse, prickly fibers

(cuts, cuts, cuts!)

till reams unravel and expose under

the streams, beams and gleams

A trap! Scratch...snap! Catch, catch, catch!

Then plunge, pitch, sink

into heaving oceans of sighs.

Letters of Verse - Part I

It's a void, this inactivity.

Spent.

The sap of satisfaction drains from your limbs.

Each finger falls numb and yet the cup is held

for illusion to be drunken, 

for a sip of merry when all mirth has sunken.

Velvets of the dark wrap away at this solace,

enfold their arms and embrace this form so limp.

Mourning is delight. Drown you, further in despair, in shades of grey 

unless, flicker in time, the pale shadows of day. 

Glimmer into your pupils, a beam of cream and white.

A quick warmth rushes to these naked arms, bare toes

to have you recover from your woven woes.

The cup to tumble will be gripped. 

It's a slow repair till loss is not all,

till the self will suffice to pour into this void. 

Posthumous.

Something twinkles. The blades of this grass are dancing green. They waltz with the wind. I think it is the eye of a hare. The fur looks immaculately white.  Did it just wink at me? It's soft, pink paws reach out to me and a slight grin is discernible on it's round, puckered mouth. The mouth does not threaten me with the razor-edged teeth that dug into a seven-year old me. It left me pricking and aching with disease. Funny it should've pricked considering I had lost every inch of hair that had ever grown out on my soft, young skin.
The smell of perfume, a sharp rusty, singed scent of Ittar. A scent of white, holy, sacred sheets and clean bathed women. The smell of pilgrimage and prayers that jumped into your head and wrapped around like the sacred, white dupatta my mother shrouded my sanctity in when I bled for the first time. It's purity claws me in. I feel thirteen again.
The shadow of the setting sun is upon me now and I feel this grass will be green no longer. I can hear life being trimmed and sheared at its edges. The sun wants to snake its last last rays around me but there is nothing to trap any longer. There is no flesh and nothing that can bleed tears. I want to touch myself. I am the air now. I can see myself, the dust buzzing in the last light of the sunset. I can see my life in particles and I know I have left it all behind like I've always wanted; Like I always envied the feather that simply parted from a fully functioning body and flailed to its destiny.
I spread my arms out. There is silence and loss. Something twinkles and I can see it grow, expand and welcome me but this luminescence does not hurt. Maybe because I don't have any eyes that will face the hurt. Perhaps hurt was never more than a word, a rolling of the tongue, a melody that broke and crashed into shards of numbness when I took flight. I don't remember any hurt anymore.
I can see the man who left me alone when I tried to learn to live like that flailing feather I have always wanted to be. A thirty year old me flashes onto the theater screen from the grinding projector that gurgles out my entire life on this black, smoky screen.
Marry me. Kneeling, smiling, feeling. The girl beams at him. She knew he would propose today. I always knew. Even when I screamed at him for twisting my heart and breaking it into two. Even when I banged the doors wide open and walked out of his territory, I knew I loved him.
This warmth, this smiling, feeling light blankets the inside and does not let this strange, dark, Sad Man near me. I would shed tears at a time like this but I don't want to. This light is too warm.
It's drawing me in.  Music caresses my ears and wraps its symphony around my head. I can hear giggles and  white laughter, snowy white laughter that sings youth to me. I don't remember exhaustion. I don't think I may have ever felt tired. It's like the cosy, green and white afternoon where all my friends chat and live over a cup of warm, brimming tea. I can smell the rich, foamy tea pouring into a cup and I can smell friendship.
This moth flaps, dances.. The sweet, honey-coated moonlight is her majesty. The river sparkles blue and splashes itself into the sea, head-first. There is nothing but breath, and exhaling, royal, blue skies.
One moment I am the jiving butterfly. In another I'm the liberated sea.