Month: August 2023

Sometimes, it’s just a single line.
The rest is bubblewrap and tape.
For no one buys a floating quote
To wear against the cold of being
Alone in mediocre crowds.
Sometimes, it’s only bubblewrap.

My ego is my oxygen.
Without it, I cannot survive.
My every cell of consciousness
Is energised a certain way
That these material cells remain
A unity that’s labelled I.

My ego is my oxygen.
Without it, nothing kindles me.
No emberred insecurity.
No arson of resentment, rage.
No bonfire warmth of empathy.
No cooking flame of artistry.
No forge for casting character.
No engine for ambition, drive.
No torch for visioned enterprise.

My ego is my oxygen.
Without it, I would never die.
It rusts my mettle latticework,
Erodes my grit to verdigris,
And tarnishing my temperance,
It putrefies my wasting wit.

I woke up to my tummy’s snores
And stubbed my toe again against
The leftovers from day before.

I swore I’ll pack the soda cans,
The paper cups, the apple cores,
Before you ring the bell today.

I swore I’ll do. So sure I’ll do
As soon as tummy snores no more.

Remember how I swore I’ll roast
At least some corn for us today?
I’d stored a couple in the fridge.

They needn’t be for breakfast, no?
I swore I’ll get more in the morn.
Perhaps, I’ll get us even four.

As soon as tummy snores no more.

Retirement’s not retiered time
From cultivated calendars.
My liberty of leisure lies
In eschewing expected ends.
À glandouiller, I gladly lay
Against all guillotines of guilt,
Relinquishing rewards, relish
My meaningful meanderings.

When irritation shimmers
Like unfinished coffee,
No deodorant masks
The salmon on the chandelier.

When frustration whirs
Like turning microwaves,
No epoxy seals
The cockroach in the kaleidoscope.

When anger writhes
Like boiling eggs,
No seatbelt holds
The turkey to the trampoline.

While going through a nasty ‘mail
An ex had sent me long ago,
I stumbled on a nice detail:
A something she had vowed to throw.

I used to slip some sticky notes
Inside the bag she brought to school.
They used to have some poem quotes –
Some lines I found too beautiful.

The data hoarder that I am
I’d logged those in a journal too.
And later with a handycam
I filmed those pages, flipping through.

The film became an Excel sheet,
And then a MATLAB database,
And then again a Google Sheet
I lost around my college days.

I laughed and hovered on reply –
No clue if she still used this ‘mail –
And shrugging, sent a worth-a-try,
Archiving off the entire trail.

A fortnight after losing hope,
The mailman gave our bell a ring.
He handed me an envelope
That had her cursive lettering.

No sticky notes, no poem quotes,
It only had a pocketbook
Of limericks (and mold and motes),
She’d picked up at a book fair nook.

Inside, an old “I love you, M.”
Some scattered marginalia –
I traced the paper scars from them –
A bold “megalomania.”

“You have that silly smile again,”
My mother picked the envelope.
I tried to snatch it back in vain.
“The one who made you moan and mope.”

I sighed and told her everything.
She laughed and laughed and walked away,
Returned with journals bound by string.
“Your mother loves you every day.”

To draw your salary from a salt hill
Left by evaporated relationships.

To fork up the starving seconds
You left on your plate.

To pin autocorrected misunderstandings
With asterisks left on your own terms.

To capture en passant feathering whims
Left linted on your dreamcatcher.

A sanguine bovinity
To graze on self-help aphorisms
Sprouting from fertile graveyards 
Of unencrypted philosophy.

Or, an agronomical optimism
To harvest replanted yesterdays
And cook them, by hereditary recipes,
Into tomorrows, tasty only by acquisition,
On the wetwood pyre of a stillborn today.

Or, love.

When does a language really die?
When no one speaks it anymore?
When no one writes it anymore?

But what of texts that still remain?
And audio on the internet?
Will languages now never die?

Elixir of all spoken tongues,
Is internet a condom too?
No human tongues are born these days.

So long, of course, that it is Art.
And if it isn’t, what’s the point?
It doesn’t matter either way.

It matters to the one who makes.
And why it matters tells a lot.

“It isn’t mine” is novice talk.
As if it ever was your own.
As if you never had a muse
Who whispered dreams into your eyes.
As if you never borrowed minds
Of masters who preceded you.
As if you never wielded tools
Before to make the Art you make.
And if you didn’t, then what’s the point?
It doesn’t matter either way.

“It feels like cheating.” Cheating who?
The Audience? They do not care.
So long, of course, that it is Art.
So long as they are moved by it.
And if they aren’t, what’s the point?
It doesn’t matter either way.

And if it bothers you so much
Just tell them AI helped you out.
Unless the means are soaked in blood,
And sometimes even if it is,
They do not care what all you use.
And if they don’t, then what’s the point?
It doesn’t matter either way.

But if you know it lifts your Art
And still you stay away from it,
It matters both to you and them.
You both are robbed of what could be.