Chi·mae·ra


Look, I am writing. Writing because of a love for a certain font. Writing because, I adore this midnight air. And the guitar in my ears. Because, I love how black blotches on white. White as in, emotions that vanish leaving many faces in my past, white, as I chase them until far away. Not just the ones I loved. Also, the ones I didn't. Also, the ones I couldn't. The many who I ignored, consciously, unconsciously. The dozens I split my fags with. The dozens on the near by tables in cafeterias I asked for a light. And vice versa. The purposes I chased, the purposelessness that chased me. For years together, the futility of various manifestations of a promise of prosperity, leading to layers and layers of bias over my mind. Forgetting the truthful core I am made of, honest, blatant. Naked, open, free, lover. The stories I am made of, and those that I make up. You know, a lot, a serious lot, seems to be losing any importance. Almost everything of value seems to be depreciating. The lost, seems to take leaps like a naughty dolphin would leap over waves in the sea and then sink back, just so as to tease me, how the aftermath of that loss has disabled me to value the things I should value, and that are actually precious enough, dream like, icing on the cake like, dancing on a string like. And I seem to be losing any understanding of whatever it  is that I want. Do I want freedom? To float like a fallen leaf. Or do I want to settle like dust? That question, I am not able to frame it fucking right in my head. The older I grow, the more I lose my fixation with that question. The more time passes, the more I tend to confuse and repel you with what I write. Let me just sink in the high that is me right now. My toes, tiny balls of lust, are floating out my thirteen floor window. In the midnight air that I adore. And there is guitar in my ears. And I see so much I don't want to see, and hence, I am blinded. Chi·mae·ra. Chi·me·ra.

Our Monsoon

Does rarely so happen that it's raining and you're in love.
That it's coming down in lashes,
You can see drops conjoin to form streams in the air
And there's love coagulating like sugar in bits of your flesh

That there's car screeching brakes on sliding shiny wet roads
In 9 o'clock nights
And you are feeling, deeply stringed.
Rooted, loved.

The world ends at your windshield
And home is inside your head

Never, barely ever
Does it happen that the Monsoon,
Brings anything other than tears,
Quiet melancholy, year after year

This time, however
Our past ache seems to have vanished
This June has erased, made pointless
All of our singular drenched walks in the rain

Now when it's thundering outside,
We're nearly orgasmic inside our head.

This time,
There's that lovely umbrella of rainbow colors
One that I always wanted.
And there's you.


Bed of Lies

We lie to save ourselves. We sugarcoat, slip our tongues on bare truths. We lie out of not knowing for certain. We lie to hide the truth. We lie to hide another lie. Lie in love. Lie to the one we love. We lie at home, to the only ones we own. We lie at work to save our ass. We come up with excuses and explanations. For not turning up, for not making time. To keep our character un-tarnished. We lie in pity for ourselves to begin with. And then we become svelte liars. We mouth lies like they were truths. One after the other. Like smooth like cream. Without one hiccup. We keep going on, sometimes we lie much more than required.

I lie a lot these days. My conscious is built of water tight chambers set apart from each other, making up the whole, which is my mind. I be with people, who do not know absolutely anything about each other. I strive they don't meet or match notes. I have hardly one confidant. Or two. The rest, are a bunch of people, who I expect not to cross check the lies I sell to them, day in and day out. 

The trick to becoming a seasoned liar is to be assume that that lie is the only truth. Not merely assuming would do sometimes, you have to believe the lie you utter, if you want it to be bought. 

I try to consciously believe in mine, and end up doing it so good, that the truth escapes my memory. It's only ridiculous, but every night I lay on my bed of lies, I see the beautiful truth that I am, become oblivious. 

Livin-in



Sometimes, she would leave about strands of her hair red green over the floor, rolling in circles, to some mild invisible breeze. Playing tiny games till long after she's gone. Would have her earrings removed and slid underneath the pillow case, because they were too dangling to be worn around at home. And this, I would discover weeks later. One by one, many of her hair-clutches would disappear and stock up at my house. And by each day, her hair would hence grow, wild and untamed. Her head too. Corners of my room would not smell of her perfume or of her sweat. But of something else, those drops of secret vapor that leaked out the pores of her skin, and hung lose in the air, stood caged, for she kept my windows always shut. Her brassiere slung quietly beside my shirts, like she owned this place. The misplaced knife in the kitchen, the saucers out of place. And she never tightened the faucet enough and that dripped all night, not letting me sleep. Obsessing about her being in my house, livin-in, despite her having moved out days ago, weeks ago, months ago.

..

Before this: here

Perfume


My world of unhindered glee begins from under his nostrils. There is the half day old stubble, invisible but still there, brushes rough against my fingertips. A remnant aftershave under the chin, around the neck. 

Faint wriggling odor of deodorant off his arms. Last night's dish-wash mildly, mildly oozing out the pores of his palms. That faint lemon fragrance and our vague month old romance. 

His third shirt in one day. Sometimes that one shirt for three days. There is an odor of love that lives locked among those threads of fabric. In those checks and in those colors. There is that faded intimacy growing stronger by the moment. The blinded rush of passion. The dissolving taste of mouths. Leaving behind, thoughtful aftertastes. 

That last for days, sometimes for even weeks before they are written down about. Explicitly. Sans inhibition, like in the act of love itself. 

Life, lazy, languid. Time, we believe must be moving. Watches tied around tens of thousands of tiny wrists in the world must be ticking, because we believe they must. But we can't see that happen. 

Where we are, temporarily, in this exact fucking spot in time and space, our interlocked co-ordinates, I do not want to care. Whether it does or does not.

I am only lost. Only lost. I have even forgotten myself. Usurping the un-bottled perfume that exudes when our souls cuddle. Momentarily. Or so.

Idyll

When there is just the two of us in the room, and I am intently staring at how conspicuously his eyebrows meet, or the depression on his upper lip and talking about it, there is actually three of us in the room, I say. There is obviously the two of us in flesh and soul. And besides, there is another me. Right beside us, the couple. Sitting perpendicular to the axis that connects the two of us. Quietly, existing with large eyes she, the third person, isn't taking notes or anything. She is noticing the passage of moments. And submerging in our heavenly inaction. I tell him about her. Ask him to keep looking only at me though, and not get distracted by searching for where she is. Instead, he tells me, there is actually four of us in the room. I jump to an alarm, looking for that other woman of his imagination. But then he adds. There is obviously the two of us in flesh and soul. Then there is the other me, who I just mentioned. And then there is the other him. The fourth person. Our two other persons spare us a glance, and then continue at each other. We the real ones, end up sometimes as reflections and then sometimes those distant observers are the apparitions and we stay real. Amid such fluctuations, we inch closer to an idyll.


Between Lovers

They kicked it off on a good note. On a note of mutual ecstasy. Literally speaking, if the note were a note, you could see that chit of white paper with utter profanities scribbled on it lying between the distant silhouette of their legs as they walked away, holding hands and letting go, holding hands and letting go. They believed they owed too much to the coincidence that made them together. And that was the only one trait of gratefulness they had toward anything on the whole. For the rest, sometimes their misanthropy would tie them together, sometimes the endless talk of truths and illusions. Sometimes, the art they were about to unravel would make their hair stand up, sometimes it would be the intoxication or the libido. In that phase, when long time passed in slow undulating curves when they were away and in one sudden shot of alacrity when they sat talking, and undoing each others' minds, things were mostly this way. They relished their secret life under covers. They sewed together promises, of travelling to unknown countries and abandoned islands. Of cutting themselves out. Of knowing peace. The one within themselves. He and she, they would do their own curious experiments with life and then possibly for suitable stretches of time, merge into one person. Can you even imagine, what that would be like? Can you?

Later, much later, however, a certain immunity to whatever was unreal guarded their minds. The thick curtain of reality that hid their magnificent persons hung lose right before their eyes. Shrouding everything. Everything. They couldn't even see each other. Their sewn promises were left knotted, somewhere in the corners of the room in which they began. The love didn't wear out as much as how much the pinches and pinches of salt you are expected to take life with, coated it. Lathed it with true sounding lies. Reducing them to some two people, who instead of merging, began suspiciously looking deep into their systems. So as to fathom, how, just how, they were humanly capable of kicking it off as neatly as that.

Between Lovers. Between Lovers. 

Ca·dence

Our pumpkin colored cheeks, mild orange cum pink. Where the flesh shallows into tiny dimples. The glory on our white faces. Enchanted with stolen smooches. We, instantaneously are closer to the skies. If we jump and raise our ankles an inch above the gravel roof, we would gather a bit of the grey clouds under our fingernails. A bit of those unbounded water bearing uncut giants that hung low, undifferentiated from one another. One bit of them in our fingernails. And then we would stand facing the other and shine. With the aura of the future and the rust of the past both lost. Locked in one precise moment. Our gargantuan shadows crisscrossing each other on the wall. Like our true demons within. Unshackled, unsoiled and beautiful. Unafraid of being seen. Or indulging in the forbidden.