Month: August 2023

I take galactic Scrabble bags
And pour them in an hourglass –
Each tile a grain of halite salt
That crashes through the bottleneck
Composing, with its fellow damned,
A babble of eclectic hopes.
I wake into an empty page.

“I’m meant to be on top of this”
Is keeping me from sleeping, when
It isn’t in my hands at all.

The overthinking is a way
To somehow overcompensate
For feeling so inadequate.

Sometimes excited, sometimes not,
I stare up planning through the night
To find the morning changed again.

Except the heartbeat in my ears.

I see myself arise in rage.
I realise it isn’t me.

My voice is raised.
My BP, raised.
I realise it isn’t me.

How am I calmly seeing me
So agitated, rampaging?
I realise it isn’t me.

Is that why I’m not feeling guilt?
Is that why I am feeling proud?
I realise it isn’t me.

Nor rampaging, nor noticing,
Nor calmly guiltless, proud am I.
A someone else, another else.
I realise it isn’t me.

Beyond the money, lunch, and drink,
The people in the protest march –

The ones who wobbled days in trucks
To brake the speeding Capital –

Had other pulling engines too:

To meet my sister living there.
The train would cost me half a month.

To raid the National Handloom Fair
And melt into the shouting crowd.

To watch the Indian cricket team
In practice for their World Cup match.

To run away from family
With that one on the women’s truck.

To see the Taj Mahal! Say what?
It isn’t in the Capital?

Is language such a savage tool
You will not stoop to pick it up?

You speak to me in overlays
Of tastes and coloured archetypes
In motion with emotion’s scent
In contours of constructed time.

You scoff at my translated verse,
And scold me for this scaffolding
Of words and space in measured lengths –
Impressing now, expressing now –
Secured with strings of syntax stripped.

You mind if I remind you it’s
Amusing how a musing must
In music move to memory,
Afraid of fading in a frayed
Crochet of crude rememberings?

Whatever your aversion be,
Remember that my gratitude –
So grand and great an attitude –
Is merely motes to mighty moods
That blow beyond the Beaufort scale.

Remember I am amber that
Preserves the servings of your verve.
Remember I am humble ’cause
My kneeling kneads your naked nerves.

Remember it’s my craftsmanship
With language that enables you.
Remember I’m an amateur
And yet, I am a master too.

You learn that it is possible
To cry all day and cry all night
And wake up crying from the sleep
You don’t remember losing to.

You learn you can be split in halves
Or thirds, or quarters, but no more,
Attending to the tasks and those
Who do not have the words you need.

You learn the shape of family
With bleeding fingers lining up
The edges on the other shards
The broken part has left behind.

You learn that gravity of loss
Is infinite, explaining why
(He would have rolled his eyes at this)
There’s weight in massless emptiness.

Who has no poetry within,
Perceives no poetry without.
No story within, no story without.

Systematised non-fiction builds
Systematised rigidities –
A recipe for dissonance.

With fiction, fill your life with lives.
Be loose. Be slow. Be eagerly.
Festina lente, mi amor.

It pops up almost every day.
“Is there a point to doing this?”

To writing poems, reading books,
Highlighting excerpts, keeping notes,
Recording thoughts in diaries,
And digitising all of it –
These snapsnots of an inward life.

“Is there a point to doing this?”

Another Zettlekasten tool,
Another thick biography,
Another common commonplace,
Reminds me of the benefits,
And yet it pops up yet again,
“Is there a point to doing this?”

To which a gravel voice replies,
“Just label this and set aside.”

If that’s the only point it serves,
A practice prompt for mindfulness,
A drawing-water-chopping-wood,
It isn’t quite as pointless, no?

“But what’s the point of mindfulness?”
An antidote to pointfulness?

Some times take selfies in our minds,
While others let us pass them by.
Not always do we get to choose.

Sometimes, we brew rememberance,
But sip too soon and smart our lips.
And every sip thereafter burns.

The best remember future thems
And plan for every past that stops,
In time, forgetting who they are.

She raises me, erases me.
Across my ages, gauges me.
In phases, now, she fazes me.
With pages, stages, cages me.
My curséd cursors cursoring,
I’m worse in verse and worsening.
For phrases, still, she praises me.
Into her mazes, chases me.
Therein the rings of writings ting.
Therein, the rites of righting sting.
Therein, she right debases me.
With blazing gazes, razes me.