Choked

As I stand
in the still-coldness of my room
I see my hopes and loves
once upon
drift away
like the gentle sea breeze.

And as I stand
in the still-warmth of my room
I realize I can't speak
about any of it
however much I try
to clear my throat.

Happen
Tire
Tried
True
Smile
Smoke
Smell
Alive
Silence
Help
Trout
Swore
Swagger
Stitch
Shame
Figure
Guilt
Draft

Community, family, consortium, religion, country, state, institution..
All for a sense of belonging.
Farcical and empowering, nevertheless.

"Aasai mugam marandu poche
Adai, yaar idam solvennadi thozhi?
Nesam marakavillai nenjam
Enil ninaivu mugam marakalaamo?"

I can't seem to be able to
Write poetry
Anymore.

Coming to think of it, when it comes to grave situations, people do eventually become fighters one way or the other (even if they try to give up). You are labelled so as well to make yourself sound strong.

Well, you play along and act strong when you are already so, I guess.

United

Yea, it's that time of your life when behavior is a way of life but wish you could go back to the days when you wore behaviour and felt proud about it.

Irony of life: Holding your post-teen hormones as you enter twenty and believing that you want to die without hurting anyone.

Irony of life 2: Forced to think the above was a stupid ideal when you cross twenty five.

"So this is, this is how it feels to be crushed."

Premise

I have reason to believe that no one bears a stone for a heart. The thought that makes you not want to give up on humanity.

"What have they done to you, to your soul?"

"Is this how the ache of the heart feels, grandpa? It stings." "Where is my angst? Where is my Existential-Nihilist?"

Love

The more I try to find you in them, the more I know they can never be close to who you are and who you are to me.

And the best part is, I don't care about whoever in this world reads this but I truly wish you do. Someday. If leaving a footprint is easy then.

Do you?
Identify with them.
Do they know?
Who you truly are.

Which one do I go by?

Mugilinangal alaigiradhey mugavarigal tholaindanavo?
Mugavarigal tavariyadal azhudhidumo adu mazhaayo

**
Nilavinai nambi iravugal illai
Vilakkugal kaattum velichchaththin ellai
Oru vaasal moodi maru vaasal vaippaan iraivan.

And there are people -
who take a breath away -
like butterflies.

Meh ;)

"Helloo! Do I know-know you? :|"
"No, no!"

"You've changed... Well, thumbs up to the new avatar. I'd like to see the old you back someday, though."

"Your *e*** is not going to appreciate those who are true, is it?"

Big question

getting answered: Where did/do I belong?

I am an Indian who found myself (well, philosophically) in Sri Lanka. Not that georgraphy matters, but I guess it means I am going to be making some strong moves with my life. Gear up for the changes, Ramses!

Stutter

I don't know, I don't know if I should trust poetry or poems anymore. Including my mutterings and me.

Priceless

The price one has to pay for being nice to a loser/a spiteful person.

Running Away

From streets of minds
to isles of light;
swings of the hand,
to the smoke of cigarettes;
eyes of anger,
to a sunken face;
nobody seems to be
a mirror of themselves.
Wrought by Buoyant forces,
we'll make Archimedes proud.

***
For Eliot prophesied that there never will be a time, after all.

***
For Isabella prays the cold, harsh days are but nightmares she can wake up from.

***
For this is just one life and nothing really matters at the end of the day. Who the heck selflessly cares for what happens to the dead, anyway?

Bastard.

Living

It's been many Fridays - and it continues to be hard to say the night from the day for Marly.

When you apply paste on your toothbrush and realize the day is actually the night, you know that you've been vegetating. She can snap out, yea, but her faith wouldn't let her.

24 hours is not enough;
so much more for the four-chambered piece to feel empty;
as much as the distance between an hour and a minute.

So, what's it going to be like sipping green tea while overlooking the city from a window on the 50th floor of a building? Will there be time to consider the weather or the skies then?

Well, got to get there.

What's a man to a woman?
He who stands by strong enough to make her hold back her tears or he who stands away and lets her fall apart?

What's a woman to a man?
She who stands by strong enough as he learns life's hard lessons or she who runs away from him for his shortcomings?

***
Someone said/wants to and will say: "Before the world, I say, "I am sorry." And, I mean it from the brimming caverns of my eyes and soul."

***
The loneliness of a long distance runner. 

People are interested in your life.
Sure they are.
People care about you.
 Sure they do.
***

How do people with so much spite sleep in peace? Or do they?
***


They are funny, the times we live in. I can use an app or a one line formula on excel to find out how many days i have lived in exact but somehow, these few minutes i don't feel like doing so.
May be we/I won't be flake someday.
May be We/I agree that We/I still do have control over our lives and our future.
Chippi irrukudu. Muthum irrukudu.
***

Pada pada nu irrukku, Rama. 

Broken

Bridge
over troubled water.
Watching water recede
(from the sand).
Waiting to see
sand being advanced,
by the water of a turbulent sea,
from the
Bridge
not Broken.

...When tout est calme, may'aps.

Tout Est Calme

Falsifying, breaking, burning.

What else is left in the reprimanding, Almighty?

For the record:

There's a sharp, sharp pain,

right where it all resided.

Chagrin. That's what has resulted.

If that's what these were meant to do.

If that's what makes someone happy.

If that's what gives someone peace.

Very well, is there a choice?
There's got to be a weather to take it all.

Punctured in reality...

...Unlike the other times.

Would it matter if, in humble astuteness and hope, I know it can be filled up (or made sturdy with tubeless tyres, mayaps) because of that very awareness? Would you stand by a little while?

Eshara said: We are acting and being different now - but that doesn't mean we have changed. Nothing can change us, or our soul.

The little joys, Eliot

Let us go then, you and I
...
...through certain half-deserted streets
The muttering retreats..
...
And indeed, there will be time
...
After the sunsets and the dooryards...
After the novels, after the teacups...
...
...white flannel trousers - you shall wear and walk upon the beach
...

:)

iKnow

I don't figure in the everydays. May be I should move away from stuff I figure in as well.
But I don't know, I don't know why I don't feel strong about moving away, you know.

Somedays

Set aside somedays -

For rides in a hot air balloon.
Across clear and cloudy skies,
Above the oceans and deserts,
Close to the peaks of ice-capped mountains.
Grasslands, plain-lands, plateaus, volcanoes:
Everywhere, but through smoke-filled city heights.

Possible, you say?

Somedays -

There are wishes made for songs
to be sung
not by the original singers
or the music player, but by the one
who holds all the charm,
for you.

Bad days.

Today just got worse.

brother and bugger

xyz: know how shitty being being pricked every time can be?
abc: sure, brother
xyz: painful shite, say what, bugger?
abc: you got it, brother

Today

Bad day turned worst day ends with gentle breeze that soothes the eyes.

Lives of others

Chandran's guests would have complemented Sita for being a wonderful host and told Chandran how lucky he was to have such a partner, when they would have been invited over the first time, to celebrate Chandran and Sita's first wedding anniversary.

If only there were more time to have paused and thought, he wouldn't have run away from her; from his own shadow, like a cliché. And she wouldn't have had to sit alone in their once cosy balcony and gaze into the empty streets to while away time.

If only I had charms that would make them grow strong in their bond and happiness - Gosh, they sorely need some! 

Of dichotomy

Just as when you plan a surprise celebration (birthday, perhaps) three months in advance, have three different back up plans for it (adapted to different scenarios that may come up on the day), buy souvenirs, make bookings, think of calling Xs, Ys and Zs and then revise to include As, Bs and Cs, and then decide not to have them at all lest they ruin the exclusivity, and make more of those enthusiastic devise changes,

You think you should visit a temple before beginning the celebrations, and then understand you have to stall all plans as you are outright excluded from the life of the celebration's reason,

So was Tamara's astonishment and disappointment as she learned the kick-ass project she put her heart and soul into was decommissioned without notice.

She could hope for resurrection and for sense to becalm those behind the decision, but will it work? Does it have to be that way even?

Who will will to see her through?

Who cares about dichotomy or you, anyway?

Alive

Fire in hand,
burned.
Tussle in the ear,
Torn.
Something for the future,
Endured.

Fumble.

People. People, people, people.

Fag-Burn

Oh hey, there are those men,
pot-bellied, self-righteous ones,
perhaps even women,
the imposter kinds,
whom you smoke with,
who are more interested in your life,
(yes, they are, or so they say)
as they plan their next smoke,
and break with others like you.

Oh, you know well.. you know Selfish.

I pray, for the million unsaid prayers
I make before the next breath.

Could do with some blessings, boons or goodwill.
So those sulks, or swears needn't be borne.

A May before an April

Flutter

For I know,
None else can (dare) love
As much
As me in those moments.

***

Little joy and a prayer under the breath for the ones I guessed and learned more about. Luck is the charm, ahan? Save more of you each day :-)

I miss the piano,
love.

For the mind can
travel farther than the feet
while swimming across
these seas of shores.


For the mind finds peace
in a sit-down by the sunken bench
during a summer that makes
an underwater park in Austria.

---

Like fish
wading through the bridges and seats
in their tanks.

Repose

You're the few moments in a chaotic day when I get to the architecture of our life's plans, and make those revisions. 

Fast life

Mixed feelings.

Frostbite

An evaporate, that is what the four-chambered safehouse will become. Lost in its way through the thin air; turning back, only to become ash.

Ha

Clipped; rightfully or not, I wouldn't know.
I'm not supposed to. Ha.

---

Make life the outcome of bad decisions? allthedarntime? Opinions pasted on every post you want lean on. The everyones HAVE to have a say. It's going to be tough running away from any of this and the everyones.

Scary, like a plague. Eats the brain.

There, I said it.

I am tired of all the addendums attached to every interaction or equation on this mighty planet. I could trade my fortunes to make it less clumsy!

It's not a good idea to get comfortable with anything or anyone here.

Guncha Koi :)

In the midst of all the chaos, the unplugged version of Guncha Koi plays on the radio. I turn a deaf ear to all else almost immediately and am moved to times of yore. And then, I wish to preciously surrender that part of me to where it belongs and bring back those old, warm times.

(Whatamaidoing)

The heart is not where the soul is.
And,
The city has gotten cold.

Celestial

Meeting the shards of everyday finally turned passe//
this evening, there was time that I caught for myself amidst all the scurried travelling I had to do.

Nothing remarkable, the good ole beautiful full-moon, wafting right up there, seeming closer than the days of yore, not so white when I saw (looked like there was a pale brown translucent wrap around it) breathing those soothing rays, watching over many things. And in those few moments, I might have held on to promises I made, hopes I had and forgotten pains and these overwhelming times - I'm not too sure what happened as I closed my eyes for those precious few and opened them back to be able to see the moon and only it. It doesn't matter, does it? Simple, plain, shining through the night sky, as it has at the end of the lunar months for eons. Overwritten through songs and literature, made dense by philosophers, an easy muse of lovers, master of high tides and yet it lays a becalming charm upon those who spare a few moments to witness it in its full glory. The quirky celestial being.

Mayhaps I write this so one day when the skies go dark, on a moonless night, I could talk to my grandchildren  of what moonbeams could do with the same ambiguity I have right now. No, I'm certainly not complaining :).

A lot of us in this world have similar ideals. It's about how we live and approach them that makes each of us different, I guess.

YAAY!

I just had to say it here (where I wouldn't have to look at likes and/or questions/speculations).

So, YAAY, again! It's been a hard day's/months' night!! :) I'm positive I've stuck the rightfully earned right chord.

Hopscotch

Shake your hair, girl, with your ponytail
as the fingers of the boy deftly play the keys from the piano of Burmese wood in the rich living room.

As the walls resonate you both, don't ever let it falter.

I'm paying through my nose for having been unilateral about my ways. Learned tough lessons, have I. Boy, going to be extremely wary hereupon, am I.

Mein lakh jatan kar haari
Lakh jatan kar haar rahi!

Sitaare waalon raatein har gayi kya?
Meri Chand mar gayi kya?

J.A.P.

There's going to be time.

A picnic will be packed.
Montauk will be visited.
Dinner will be had
by the lighthouse.

None will be around.
But starfishes, turtles, pebbles, sand, and shells.

A seashell would be placed
Next to the right ear --
"Are the waves of the sea faster than their sound in the conch?"
Questions not answered,
Stars all over,
J.A.P. with hair parted from the side,
performing poems of poets on the beach.
Surreal and weathered,
A night of wonder.

Rhetoric II: Factiousness

If one were to assess the proactive Vs. reactive pie of one's life or immediate environment, the former is sure to hold just a minuscule portion of the pie.

Don't you see it?

• You have a valuable (fact) suggestion to make, there are 10,000 people who disagree and bring their own barefooted experience and then you end up responding to each of that (or you don't)
• You are in a tense situation, and there is at least one person who is there to intimidate and make you seem like a hopeless defensive (or you don't) 
• You're being assessed for a subject/at work, and then you have one, two or three other heads who decide how to weigh you over the others, if they don't 'feel' you deserve a good score or you're not the ideal fit, you end up having to do all things possible to prove a point (or you don't)
• If the clients are not happy, you take reactionary measures to straighten things up and can't show them what else you can do (or you don't)

E'en while being proactive, there are so many blocks that you end up being reactive along that way, too!

Can't you break away from the crap that's doled out to you each day? Why, why, is it so hard for someone to try and show others what they can be? What's the idea behind dominating someone or a situation, anyway? Taking the lead is different, but dominating?

I'm no saint, yes, I've unconsciously made these mistakes as the 'thems' I refer to, too - with the same unconscious or unintended insensitivity they are allowed (note - yes, I am being defensive; makes you happy?). But at least my heart bleeds that I slipped from listening to my humane self unlike some others.

Isn't this why there is so much oppression/suppression around - some party thinks they own the stick? Is it something about the way the third planet in the Universe functions or the curse that the human existence is? Urgh.

And then, at the end of it all, you are expected to be mentally strong as what Hercules or some such heroic figure might have been physically or staid.

Okay, if you were thinking that I'm "misrepresenting facts" or being "biased" - well, I am, I admit. It's because I've been wounded and I am reacting to it. Pent up anger. You see what happens - makes people clumsy or rebel, yeah?

I don't know what else to say now. I'm just tired of saying, "There will be time." I'm cynical, finally. 

Feng Shui

It is one of those evenings. Pavithra clad in her dainty saree waits, as usual, for her husband by the window of her bungalow. And as she hears a bike approaching with a "thud, thud, thud," she quickly gets off the chair, checks to see if the pleats on her saree fall well, adjusts the pallu, and swiftly walks to open the front door.

As she helps him with the groceries he bought on his way back home, her eyes speak the language of her thawing heart and his of a spent soul at work. If there were other people around, they would have said "Touchwood" and a silent prayer for the strength of their unspoken bond.

She has her patchy days at work, he strives too much, they saw an innocent person lie dead, close by, very close by to their home just a few days ago, he had the electricity and phone bills to pay off, she had to transfer money into their joint savings account the first of every month (for their future), the house maid has gone on maternity leave, his parents have gone on a vacation to European grasslands while hers are busy visiting temples across the South of India and Pavithra and her husband had their own individual collection of books waiting to be read along with the several movies she had stacked up.

It doesn't matter.

Like a whiff of air from nowhere meets another, these instances move away from the four walls of the cosy home as the two sit down with a bowl of rich and creamy tomato soup each by the dining table made of solid Burmese wood, sharing their thoughts, laughs, silences, hopes, fears, and pauses over the last few minutes, as usual, of each day.

They don't matter, do they?

Violin.

It's like the poem written on a balmy and silent monsoon night under a lamp post while the old man wearing his twenty year old spectacles looks into you; deep into your eyes.

Resignation

Yeah, from the many things that have happened in the recent past and today, I have some reason to relate to the #meloser tag. May be I am being hyperbolic but, yea, things have wracked me enough.

Not for long. Not too long.

Just you wait.

Absence

Do guardian angels live to see eyes long beheld caught in tempests.

On Nausea

Ay! An editor can't afford to be careless with punctuation!

Of Redolence

Sippiyirukkudhu muththumirukkudhu
Thirandu paarkka naeram illadi, raajaaththi.

Telltale

After all that was, if This is what is wanted now.

If This is what the eyes flutter for, should I blame the falter?

Perching on the stone sit-out in my terrace, with closed eyes, letting the drizzle-filled evening breeze hit my face, while my phone plays some healing music makes for such luxury.

It's not going to be difficult to find a bridge over troubled water that will ease the mind, is it?  

Exhausted.

I have no idea where the next pit stop is; but, as Floyd auspices, I am not giving up. Not without a fight.

While I let my music player ruminate over a Brian Eno, 

Here we are
Stuck by this river,
You and I
Underneath a sky that's ever falling down, down, down
Ever falling down

... 

Always failing to remember why we came, came, came:
I wonder why we came.

I'm trying hard to not let myself wonder about any of this having been worth it, after all.

Throttle me with anything, you world. I don't want to become or seem like a lie when I am not one, you know? I'm tired of being misconstrued, stomped on and made to seem like a misfit. I know what I can hold on to. I'm positive. Restless, but positive. Homeless, but positive. Incensed, but positive.
Positive is ! an emotional belief. It's a Goddarn conviction. Here's my conviction. And strength. Strength.

Rhetoric

Lackadaisical and waltzing by the Volkhov, Sara tries to get rid of the dense clouds that have been following her for way too long. Playing with those butterflies that flutter about oh so graciously a minute, waving her imaginary wand and trying to shoo the clogs cast in the sky another. Moving to playing a game of hopskotch with herself, finding a shed feather of her pet peacock, Ronita, and running it on her balmy face, visiting the local grocer every morning just so she can dig her hands into a pile of cool and colorful vegetables. All of four, it's not really fresh air that she wishes to suspire as much as hope that the grass turns greener with each breath taken.

What is she doing, really, in a world that forgets what it is to listen to the murmur of hearts?

Rightfully--

Pushed
Away.

Falling, failing.
Figuring, fighting.

Will,
Way!

Being--

Conclusive.
Corroborative.

Therefore now--

Wafting.
Waiting.

Meanwhile--
Plotting.

Believing--

If,
Then.

Wreck

If there could be a day I could relive, it would be Saturday, the fourth of June, 2011.

And then, this day when I stand defeated on a battlefield where I could have easily won, knowing I will wail if I bury my face in the comfort of the ones I can trust, I can't wish more for reliving that day.

Peace

It's actually easy to be a woman and it's easier to be a man.

Somewhere now -
I hear Banality of Evil ringing in academic ears.

You know, we are still learning, learning it hard, in this world.
I write this because there is no one else to speak on our behalf.

Right now, I could really do with some rich and creamy tomato basil soup. One of the reasons being that it won't be fodder for thoughts other than about itself.

How soon

This morning, I removed the anklets I had been wearing. since they were gifted to me a little more than a day ago, because they wouldn't go with my attire to work. It was just about ten hours since I had removed them and I could actually feel something missing in my ankles on my ride back from work :). 

Sketching this day that splits the year into an exact half in non-leap years --
Pada pada nu irrukku, Rama :).

Nigh, Nigh Enough

Three weeks and the artist continues to toil. Burning the midnight oil each day in those concrete and glass walls. Wielding analyses, forgetting days and nights. How the heart breaks to see those eyes that have to drudge over inane fodder for his future learning, and role changes, leading its silent revolt against those headonistic managerial and directorial skulls.

He's not meant to be doing any of this (nothing short of the best for him), and will be out soon enough, the dear artist; He ought to. Painting the colours of the world in his head, his every stroke is going to be masterful.

Meanwhile, I will be by the biggest clock in my city, waiting to see the day his world comes alive and then see, through his quaint mirror, the pride and joy in my eyes whilst giving him the bottle of Minute Maid I'd bought for him from a shop by the banyan tree with the strongest roots on Earth.

Sometimes I wish it was the tug of the heart and yearn in the eye when someone dear does, gives, or gives up something for you, that I feel, and not my altruistic breath all the time.

Vision

Wo, wo, give me the credit that's due, corporate! Excuse me, but I conceptualised the film festival+you! idea much before you gave it a shot, much much before. I did! Oh well, I'll go with altruism and some activities to ward off the wrath  for now.

But let me tell you this: There will be days when you're going to wake up each morning with our ideas. We both will be selling them, at a steep price; and you guys are not going to be able to do without us or our consults, because well, we're way too fast and forward for your thoughts. Ha, we are not going to be lazy with our patent files and defensive publications then.

Oh and, dearies, we're not megalomaniacs before you (monomaniacally) dismiss this for that. It's going to be our time, ours.

Just you wait! We're just kindling the fire.

Eliot and Valerie

And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleeping time,

the breathing in unison.

In waking moments, being lost in the softness of quiescent eyes breathing gently.

Messiah

Every passing day, I hope someone plays La Valse d'Amelie, the piano version, and my Lord stands right behind me and all I would need to do is lodge myself on His chest and be lost for a long, lost while.

Can you play the waltz?  

Exasperation

I need a smoke! (No, I don't smoke)

Nee Daya Raada?

nee daya rAda, rAma?
kAdane vAreva ru kalyANa rAma?

nanu brOchE vADani nADE teliya
ina vamSa tilaka inta tAmasamA?

:)

Feathers fall,
feathers grow.
And yet They are
the same twosome birds,
flight in toe.

Harmal

And each time you are at Arambol, you keep asking yourself, "What is going on?" in the faintest voice
that swims away from you, swiftly through the mercurial air;
while whiffing and tracing the answers,
Muse.

A wilted sunflower

Without you.

Beswaadi beswaadi ratiyaan, oh sajna|
Rookhi re, oh rookhi re,
Kaatore kate, katena!
Tere bina chand ka sona khota re
Peeli peeli dhool udaawe jhoota |
Tere bina sona peetal|

Tere sang keethar peepal.

Drama / Masks / Obscurity

"How different am I," asks the good ole' paint of the painter; unable to comprehend its master's eccentric choices and strokes.
----

Would you savour the minutes
and hours, for you are The
Cafe Terrace at Night?

Even if the nights were close,
and wide apart as the dual
orientations of your shadow,
will you wait for me
at Cafe Terrace this Night?