This night,

My fingers reach for yours

to feel less alone.

My lips

insatiable

warm and facetious in laughter

wade through,

and find your tongue and cheeks.

How lovely you are!

Do you know what you want?

Can you say it?

Are you sure you wouldn’t draw new lines

and paint over them again

with new meanings and

interpretations?

Artist that you are,

is this art too?

Should I let you?

The hunger of skin

exploitative, calculative —

Fingers, tongues, and mouths

get their business done.

It’s my bumbling heart,

still aflutter,

long after,

always the fool.

I am a bug.

I should be squished.

“Should I call someone?” I think

“Who?”

I flick through the familiar list on the screen of my phone:

the usual names,

each given to their ways

of looking,

baked in their ways of being.

It is like switching channels on a TV

the astounding predictability

What to expect?

I shall play the talking game

to kill time

to exorcise the creeping loneliness

to communicate.

Communication is a big thing these days

The loneliness epidemic is being talked about

in newspapers and magazines:

that people are more isolated

than ever

Anxiety, depression, self harm.

But isn’t everybody on Instagram?

Aren’t reels, memes, and DMs doing anything for you?

Well.

Sometimes I think I just need to talk

to remember how I sound

and that words can be stitched to weave sentences

and express thoughts

and that it could be useful

to be functional someday, if needed.

I weigh the choice.

And I can’t do it.

I can’t perform the theatre.

So I call no one.

The quietness of night remains

unbroken.

And there is nothing, absolutely nothing more

that I want here.

And I look outside

smudging

with my daft thick fingers

the remnants of a dream

slouching at the corner of my eyes.

A new soliloquy

is forming, almost

what I would say to who and how

and what a beat down it will be!

Why is there a melee always waiting for me?

I am the most peaceable man you know.

On the other side of the window

are swathes of grass and

tall muscular trees

swept up by

the most gorgeous, most insane sunlight.

Look at them, squirrels

scurrying on the mossy green trunks

and buzzing past blades of grass

like cars in a hurry

they make it look so cheerful

and heavenly

(oh how I’d love to be a squirrel)

to live, to run around

and be bushy and brown and

shoot up and down

like a bullet fired from a gun.

I think I should get out

and feel the light on my skin

and listen to the twigs break underneath my feet,

chase squirrels (they never let me be near them):

the joy sometimes the life offers is irrepressible

(Was I trying to repress it?)

No, I find,

and I stumble and lose,

then forget that I ever found it !

Epiphanies are rare to come, even rarer to keep.

I think you have to reclaim

again and again

the evenings

the songs

the laughter

the magic of words

and standing still in time,

impossibly so,

even if you forget.

I never want to be alone with you

on a bus at night

because our clothes are coming off

in the dark cavernous back of the bus itself

and then I have to let you watch

some movie in peace when we get home.

We talk in shadows of buildings

on this suffocating summer eve

and the thought of losing you

makes me desperate

so I tell you I understand what you need

proving again

all epiphanies are short-lived.

I want you

I want you

I want you

My desires have a serrated glass like edge

and I can’t fight them with my bare hands

You scream and shout

and throw things around

I guess that is a form of communication

but I fear for my new macbook

which I have to shield

from your raging magnificence.

How can it be

that you and I have a lot of past together

without ever having a lot of present?

Just in passing you

torched my soul and

watched it aflame from afar

as though you were aiming to be

my personal trauma.

Can you really achieve quiet?

(Is it something to be ‘achieved’?)

Nothing in your vicinity moving too harshly,

abrading your delicate sensibilities,

enough to make your eyes squint

and your mind wishing that it didn’t.

Then there is the matter of movement inside yourself.

What if a yearning in your heart

is lit with dissatisfaction?

What do you do?

Do you caress its sulking face

with a gentle stroke

telling it you did the best you could?

Do you give it a cold bath of time

and swaddle it in warmth of dreams and sleep?

Is it quiet now?

All the existence is forever stranded at the edge of Present.

Nowhere else to be.

You focus.

Just then you hear the sobs of that yearning

you thought you had lulled to rest.

The Fumble

Once upon a time

a girl called me to say her father died

my mouth dried up

and I blurted out all the formal expressions

but it sounded inadequate

and the more I said

the more it felt I was fumbling it

I still think of that conversation

and remember my regret

— more than her father’s death

my fumbling reaction to it.

The Thing I Hate Most About My Father

The thing I hate most about my father

is that for all this time

as I have tried

swimming away from him

with all the mutinous thrashing of limbs,

now bewildered,

I see myself being sucked back

like a whirlpool

into him

indistinguishable

and then he wins.

Love

Love is logistics

if by chance you could get past

the chaos of the minds

(‘meh, too ordinary’)

the chaos of the hearts

(‘ugh, too desperate’)

there is still the task of carrying that baby

across the raging river

on a stormy night

and you are barefoot with nothing.

Sci fi

As we watch a sci fi movie

and dissect it to its fibers through its runtime

over peanuts and diet coke

in J’s living room

I am glad we make jokes

and laugh

unconstrained and honest

through the slipping hours of the day.

Laughter does make the ‘simulation’

more endurable

just as sadness makes it more believable.

Running

On a dark road

snaking through trees

I run on this dewy evening.

The moon hangs round and fat in the sky

and the wind makes the sweat on my shirt

feel cold and thick

I want to sit somewhere and take it in

but there is nothing around

So I keep running

even though

there is nothing I would love more than to stop.

The freeze has been clinging to your heart

all year

it is not sniffling sadness

like the one that visits you upon a loved one’s demise

which you can weep and get over with;

What it is is something heavy and brutish

and pale

and unmistakable.

It makes you sleep longer

with sheets snaking up your body

as you embrace the soft touch of cotton

lovingly like arms of an old lover

their face and lips, and there is nothing outside of that.

In a careless moment

when you laugh at something so small

as a cat crossing the street

it makes your laughter conscious

and you are careful

not to suddenly awaken the grief

ensconced in your heart

dozing like a baby

else you would start crying

along with it,

and you don’t, don’t want that.

The passage of time

should help

you hope

but time passes gradually

and a day is still a day

all the hours and all the minutes and all the seconds

say ‘tick-tock’ to you.

did you make hay while the sun shined?

You didn’t!

And now look you can spot white strands of hair in the mirror.

Enough then.

The freeze must thaw

Stop the illusions and dreaming

— people, play, parts

in the humming whistling chugging train of life

What dreadful sense and nonsense

has filled your head?

The freeze must thaw

you have your little heart

and a lot of mind too

and shake it off what has ailed them both.

The freeze must thaw now

and you must laugh madly

The freeze must thaw

and you must dance dangerously

as though you could be swept off your feet at any moment

and fall

The freeze must thaw

and among strangers

you must dance alone as happy fool.

You

timidly moving through the world

shy and wistful

uncertain,

of all the lights,

all the sounds,

and all the places.

All the inscrutable faces

appearing busy

and intent,

feeding egos

which open their mouths like hungry hatchlings,

and nip and bite

constantly.

You know the people

some of them

knew them?

You stare

but never meet their eyes

It is perhaps embarrassing to you

falling behind

you realize.

Cars, pools, houses, spouses

trips, tags, handshakes, prizes.

May be you should try being clever

being clever

like a rat in a maze

figuring out where the cheese is;

it's evolution,

but cleverness makes you vomit

and you wish to not be around

all this cleverness

so you don't get friendly

and retreat into nihilism.

Sometimes you have seen your own face break

all the ugliness and shame pours out

through the cracks

audibly

and you hope nobody hears

this unprincipled moaning

it’s embarrassing.

in fact, call the whole situation

entirely unwholesome.

Agitate or levitate?

troubled by the chase

wait

come back

come back to yourself:

and all that the world takes from you

- faith, hope, foolishness, dreams -

shall be restored.

What I want to say really

cannot be expressed

with a flicker of a pen

sputtering ink on a coarse white paper,

nor can it be said

with coordinated movements of

jaws and teeth and tongue

stirring air with syllables

nested into words,

strung together

with rules

of grammar and syntax,

and streaming like

a band of soldiers on a 26th parade

with maneuver and flourish.

For what? Empathy? Understanding?

No.

What I have to say

can only be manifested

with a blood curdling scream

angry, screeching,

revolting,

a surge of mad power, cracking

the glass panes of civility,

I become hostility

staring at cowardice and surrender, masquerade

as good choices.

You've destroyed and betrayed

yourself for nothing —

Dostoevsky said.

Desire is a death trap

chasing phantoms and mirages

exhausting whatever little time I had

here comes existential dread.

Higher highs and lower lows

going where the wind blows

the indignity of looking for love

to fill time or nourish ego?

one may never know

as you came so you go —

I have wondered

what the difference is between this body and that

especially lying together naked in bed

the flag of individuality should fly at half mast

everybody serves a purpose, don’t they?

Please.

Again I became mired in words.

Conclusions are not satisfying

I am exhausted

shooting darts at a moving target

And I want to scream.

A gush of rage

coursing through the windpipes,

squeezing the last atom of air from my lungs

and then I probably would have

expressed

something real

for the only time.

Writer’s Note: As I was writing this poem, a couplet from a ghazal of Pirzada Qasim lit up my brain. It is beautiful.

अब इस फ़ज़ा की कसाफ़त में क्यूँ इज़ाफ़ा हो

ग़ुबार-ए-दिल है सो दिल में निहाँ लिए फिरिए

Full ghazal could be accessed here

A young James Spader starred in my dream last night

he looked gorgeous

in a white shirt and black trousers

his chestnut brown hair swept back

and that hundred watt smile

radiant on his beautiful face.

It was his first day at a very modern looking office.

What happened after - I don't remember anything now,

but I had the whole story going in the dream

Alas.

Well, anyways

Character actors don't ever make an appearance

in my dreams.

My dreams are mostly situational panic

with me at the center, panicking

So I am intrigued and pleased about this dream

and how it came to be.

May be it was because I have been thinking of this movie

'Sex, Lies, and Videotape'

and that I should write about the film,

how great it is

and how great James is in it.

The film made me want to watch all his movies

So all his movies I watched. Every single one.

I can be very fanatical about such things.

What I have decided is that he shall be the protagonist of every story

I shall write

if I ever really get going.

I mean look at that face. It could conceivably do anything you could think of.

This night

as I sit upright on my bed

and look over a clear room

and there are no folds in the bed linen

and all the corners are tucked in neatly

I feel satisfied

like a housewife

relieved after hours of sweat inducing,

back breaking work

except my back isn't even arched

and I hardly dripped any sweat.

In fact, I ordered a large burger

at 3 A.M.

and since I need four hands to eat anything

and have just two

I spilled the filling and sauce

on myself and the bedsheet.

Let's be candid

eating is inherently messy

an exercise in assembly;

this has to be held

then greased and soaked and mixed with that,

then lifted with a fork or fingers to the mouth

Then add all this cultural pressure to be graceful

while eating!

why?

there is nothing graceful about eating or sex

Have you seen the pathway of food

from esophagus to the rectum?

Well,

I would happily be a wayward cow

sniffing and shoving my head for food

lapping up blades of grass with my long tongue

ripping them from the ground

or scraping leaves from a low hanging branch

no need for mixing and layering

just chewing and swallowing

as God intended.

I don't know if it was alcohol

that tipped him off the edge

or wounded pride

or if it was buried humiliation

that disturbed the surface

not buried deep enough

but his face flushed red

when I laughed at his made-up stories

that he told me:

how he always wanted a way out of his job

and was not booted out at all,

in fact it was all his idea to provoke his superiors

because he himself wanted out.

I knew the story wasn't true at all

(did he think I was so naive)

The truth was he chewed more than he could swallow

a case of heroics gone really wrong

I heard from people that

he tried apologizing,

and when he was booted out

he had tears in his eyes.

So, when he piped his bullshit story

just one more time

something broke in me

I told him he tried to lick his own spit

and in my contention

that is the lowest a man could go

and that I knew his story was phony all along.

I don't know

if ripping someone's mask is cruel —

maybe we are all wearing masks

and somebody will rip it someday

from our faces

like I did his

and it would be deemed

kindness.

When I'm strong,

I walk around in my soft blue tshirt, black jeans, and

grey sunglasses and

feel the winter's air on my skin,

and I feel a manic surge of power

rising like waves

I could squeeze a building

and turn it into rubble.

But when I'm weak,

lying on my back, alone

with a swollen testicle the size of a golf ball

and in pain,

I feel helpless and scared

of my strength failing me

(and so much depends on that),

and of dying of a creeping disease,

and that is not my idea of dying at all

(I want to die in a car crash).

I find it hilarious though:

being fucked by my own testicles

(that joke made my testicles hurt as i was shaking with laughter).

It is a cold night,

and walking beside

the painted white line

on the edge of the grey concrete road,

it sometimes feels like

a draft of wind could

send you backwards flying;

you lurch

and dig your feet in the ground

and find the will to keep walking

your arms wrapped around you to keep warm,

your back arched like a crossbow,

hair rumpled, unwashed,

and eyes bleary,

seeing frames of a disconnected dream,

and dust riddled shoes

plodding on the surface

— all at once

and not at all.

The road meets an intersection

so you stand on the sidewalk

under a lamppost

waiting for something.

There was a shape under the lamppost

and it swayed for a while

and then just disappeared, somebody says

It was a shape, I saw it, they insist

their hands in animated motion pointing at you

What of it? somebody counters.

Nothing. It’s freezing. Let’s go.

They are gone

leaving ‘you’ there

a false memory,

or an existential error.

The sun sets in the hills,

and with its last light

the small town shutters

its gaudy delights,

light shows, motorboats, theme parks,

alcohol shops.

I resent the rush,

it’s chop chop just about everywhere

and it gets on my nerves sometimes.

Repeat, yet be restless throughout?

God!

I sit still,

looking at the lake

turn orange, and red,

and grey.

A bird steadies itself

against a strong gust of wind

and flies off.

A woman with blonde hair, sunglasses,

and shockingly hideous skin,

takes pictures.

Stillness.

I run vacuum in my head.

Be here. You don't want to miss this.

The scene is stretched like an artist's canvas,

mesmerizing, hypnotic.

Are you here?

Soon, the colors begin to fade

and darkness envelopes this small world.

I sit still, watching.

On the other side of the lake

settlement of houses lights up

like an anxiety.

Is this temporary?

she asks,

her tongue has swiped my dick right

pretty recently,

and now her head rests at my chest

exposing her nicely shaped earlobe.

She is a business graduate

working as an assistant to the CEO

of a pharma company.

I tell her I know a lot about pharma --

I know every type of medication

given to treat depression,

anxiety, anger management,

sleep apnea,

suicidal ideation.

I caress her soft hair and talk about

neurotransmitters –

the chemical messengers between neurons,

like serotonin and norepinephrine.

Neurons won’t get fired

across the synapse

if there aren’t enough of these chemicals,

and that is how the anti-depressants work —

by increasing their levels

and boosting the brain func —

that is when she bites my nipple.

‘Oww’

It is obviously very important

to not quit the medication suddenly,

you must taper off,

gradually,

then I stop talking.

She doesn’t care about all this.

She cares more about the top line

and the bottom line of the company,

preparing daily, weekly, and monthly

financial reports for the CEO.

The first day she joined

she had a crush on him.

He has a muscular built, she said, and

he was wearing a shirt

that allowed the contours of his physique to be felt

if not seen,

She flushed when they were in the same room alone

and she felt there was a definite ‘sexual tension’

across the table.

This went on for a while,

but she gave up,

realizing he wouldn’t do anything about this situation,

him being married and all.

Well.

So now she represses her urge

to fuck him on the conference table

by downloading reports

from an MIS dashboard,

printing two sets,

arranging them in sequence,

and placing them in transparent folders

at his desk

underneath a paperweight sized wooden elephant,

which is

incidentally the mascot of the company.

Elephants have really large penises, I mused,

but that has probably no relevance.

Anyways this is what I said to her

when she told me about him —

I am a little disappointed in your story.

It lacks heroic resolution.

What does she want to know?

Her bare back gently rises and falls.

Is this temporary?

probably what she means to ask is:

where is your integrity?

do you have some?

are you a man of your words?

how long can this be satisfying?

am I boring you?

An elephant sits at the edge of this room

his big penis dangling.

Have I told you yet?

my favorite porn star died unexpectedly.

She raises her head to face me.

Motorcycle crash,

at just twenty-nine too,

what a waste of potential!

I could be lost

in a village somewhere,

in the dark moist streets

lined with brick houses and sundry shops,

the crickets chirping

by the side of pools of mud and dark water,

the washed-up moon

glistening like someone’s bloated face.

I set my bike on stand

and decide to buy a cigarette

from the cluster of shops near a railway line.

They inquire my name

and ask if I am new around here,

but I smile

and let the question linger a while

like the plumes rising in the air.

‘I could be lost,’ I say —

‘but, don’t worry.’

Once I got lost when I was five.

I was visiting a relative’s place,

and they gave me a big coin,

and I wanted to spend it on icecream,

and maybe I got far,

or took too many turns,

but just seconds into

slurping the melting candy,

the ecstasy turned to panic

as I realized I didn’t know

how to get back where I came from.

For a few minutes

the world with its

blue boundaries and black shadows of people

caved on me,

buried me under,

and tears welled up in my eyes,

till a girl at the house I was visiting

who followed me on my way

reached and rescued me.

I wish I remembered that angel’s face. But alas.

That is one terrifying memory. 

There are other ways

to lose oneself as well—

I could be lost

in a dream

which came to pass

and broke with the sun’s first rays,

leaving in its wake a fuzzy feeling

that it was a good dream

and I wanted it to last,

and I sometimes think about it

though I don’t remember much of it.

I could be lost in time

(more like stuck in time)

with no way to get back or go forward (?)

‘cause I am trapped like a bug in amber1

to this exact Present

and often I don’t like anything.

And I don’t have a quarrel with time,

I honestly just wish to

put my hand on something

and feel it passing.

Like something slips through

your fingers

and even if you can’t stop it from slipping

you can at least feel it

as it is leaving your hold.

So when weeks and days

pass in haze,

I want

a receipt of sorts.

As we sit gazing,

we hear the roar of an engine,

a train rustles past us

like a caterpillar made of lights

and we watch it like children,

stupefied.

We go around

like two celestial bodies caught in

gravitational pull of one another

spinning and spinning

in the vast blackness of space

Oh how long has it been?

Sometimes we catch a glimpse

of one another

from afar

we wink and smile

knowing, always knowing

that love could be found

in those devastatingly beautiful arms,

years flying behind us like

white clouds

in a summer sky.

Sometimes we come closer,

drawn in mysterious ways

this life has,

always curious, always delighted,

listening to stories of the intervening time

and saying, “I wish I could have seen you sooner.”

wistful and yearning,

wondering if we can trust

the whims of our minds

this time

oh baby !

how capricious we are

for our souls have always been free

and alight

with passion

and laughter,

it’s our bodies

blundering

and heavy

jaded with failures and indecisions.

Inevitably we drift apart

(did we ask too much of each other?)

Don’t be sad love!

Sadness is the worst sort of disease

it makes us hollow.

We are still spinning

and in the mysterious ways

of the infinite

believe that

may be

there is hope

even for us —

we shall be whole again

and we shall laugh.

Night is wounded

and the blood oozes through hours

till dawn

painting the skies red.

A jagged memory

comes alive

and twists and turns

like a dragonfly with a broken wing

and dances some more.

I am dreaming,

from a dark recess I hear your voice

now,

it sounds the same as before,

I laugh and cry,

I plead you to save me,

but you show me your fingers and count of years

‘You are late,’ you say.

sometimes you don’t even know what you have missed

till you see it again.

‘But I am here,’ I say.

But you wave at me

passing through fog

disappearing

never to be seen again.

Time, time

nothing too sublime

thoughts are just tokens

to get by from day to day

unsatisfying

old age and dying

vanity, defying

the idea of birth canal

to funeral,

the carousal

of waking up,

work and workouts

and money and poetry

and sleazy laughs

and idle talks,

clubs and bars

bookstores and cars;

soon everything

loses meaning,

yet holding on to something

like Jack at the end of Titanic

dying.

Rage, rage

carves me open like rib cage

a dark hollow

will I find a heart there?

my insect brain

calculates the pleasure

and avoids the pain

what can I get from other people

sick!

a fucking post on Instagram

that is all I am

the earth is spinning

or my head is (?)

I want to fly

but the gravity is inescapable

everybody tugs at me

in their direction

like a swarm of zombies.

And now

you are grinning in my head.

I tell you to stop

it feels awful like

salt on a fresh cut

stings like hell but

I am still happy to see you.