Dead Passions...

Dead passions never die.
Buried, indeed they are…
Latent, dormant, sleeping flames-
Damnation follows their murky trail
I clasp the corpse behind sweating breasts
The passion burns more
And myths are curved along
The lines of forgetful love.

Foggy shadows are not all,
Much more remains for the voyage.
The touches and oaths haunt all over
August clouds bursting inside
How it rains! How it pains!
How I gain one lifetime more
Each time they come
And go and come
The bliss overflows in frenzied calm.

I do not mean to live in past
But dead passions are never dead.
The threads are blocked in a smothering knot-
No life no death will slash them away
They wake in graveyards, ancient ghosts
And never let me sleep alone
With whispers filling the air around,
“Dead passions do never die.”

Strange Times

I have seen strange times. Times when everything was too normal to breathe. My family was at peace. Exams, presentations and term papers keeping us fussed and frustrated. The yearly spring was in the breeze, especially in the campus of Jadavpur University where every March the grass is soft (without ants), the sky is a violent shade of ultramarine blue and the breeze too seductive to resist.

By strange I mean normal.
Always!!
Err…
No...
I guess… sometimes…
There is an unimaginable pleasure in believing that I’m mad. Whimsical. Totally. Good-natured. But essentially crazy. May be its because of my irritating habit of escaping responsibilities. Never know. But all the same, loneliness comes as an indispensable corollary to business. And madness. And so it came. Tiptoed. Through Literature and the Other Arts. Through the Book Fair. Through regular visits to the Film Studies Department for the term papers. Through Hiroshima Mon Amour. Through Valentines Day. Through Sanskriti. Through the fossils of a yellow rose. Through Oresteia.

There were only two alternatives to escape. Hugging the pillow. And not awaiting those goddammit missed calls. I chose the first. Way lot easier an option.
I prefer easier things to effective ones.
Always!!

Err…
No… I mean, most of the time.

I’m not good at telling stories. But then, good for me. Everyone is interested only in reality. Or Art. And of course there are people who claim to write about Art and then give us the same old utterly personal hotchpotch. I don’t care. I look for stories. In reality. In Art. In life. But I have seen strange times. Times when love was just a fact. Kissing, formality. Touches, habit. Literature, duty. Family, pretentious smiles. And life had come to a stalemate.

By strange, I tend to mean normal… just tend to. But then, what is normal anyway?

A Deathday Anniversary

Incense churned the nausea wild
White and gray swam all around
Some tears swelled up, burst away;
Others bridled into stifling silence.
They strangled me with pity,
With ropes of sodden love
I sat like a fleshy pillow
Listening to chants and sobs.
It meant that Horlicks was to come
With the smoke of tuberose air;
The white garlands still lay alone,
I held an empty stare.

The portrait is the same today
Incense sprinkling sandalwood
Fussy people, futile ceremony.
My misfit hand forced closed to pray
Peace to a long dead father’s soul!!
The comedy tempts forbidden smiles
In me. I strain to be deeply sorry-
The past that I had for long
Thrown with dirty sanitary pads
Is brought back to me by those
Filled with inane grief and pain.
I don’t know what they gain
Stranding me amidst discomforts.

Fate never mocked me so much as
This winter day does every year.
The feeling is strange but rituals have
Ceased choking me with sympathy.
The garlands dropped from many to one
Sandalwood still nauseates me-
Yet I try to pass the day
Away, rapt with wretched sanity.

Memory

Some whims stick to the ego
The fetish with memory for me.
Childhood bruises form my blue
Mercurochrome red
And greenery is my dirty sock.
Other colours converge in the shutters of the window
Where tongues of sunlight lick it gold.

I cling on to my craving for a piece of shadow
Away from the halo of love
Solitude lulls me to bliss;
A room of my own to hide that smile
That slipped out once
To be torn away and thrown away
And a teen-age girl would just moan away
Away… away… away…
The breeze was kissing
Yes. That’s the breeze I know.

The friendship bands still fill a desk
Friendships melt with candyfloss.
The ink stained scarf was never wet
The cheeks never pink with youthful blush
Yet I touched the moon with a softer glance
Than the ball I see today.

Memory paints my picture bright
For nothing is right or wrong.
Call it fret; I won’t disrupt
It can’t be ever gone.
The breeze will blow my reckless hair
The girl still lies alone
And strike a chord,
There’s still the moan.

The Mobius Strip

The stranger that I glimpse in me
Am not I for sure!
But is that else? It’s hard to tell
With half in heaven half in hell
The ex-centric self hammers my soul
Harder than Iscariot’s final nail.
Its neither betrayal nor belief
Just a potion of yes and no;
The pendulum never stops to pant
The motion flows to and fro.

I love the stranger not for its being
But for it’s being other than my own
For the way it kisses and sucks
For the way it licks the boiling tears
For the way it stabs the pokers with sleeping calm.
The reflection flickers in Freud’s zone
Hide and seek is not just a game.

No I can’t tear apart…
They form my Mobius strip.
Dissections increase the number of rings-
The paint never divides but continues to cling
To the surface called me…
Yet I’m sure! I’m definite!
I swear,
It’s only a stranger that I get to see.

How long since I've spent a whole night
in a twin bed with a stranger
His warm arms all around me?
How long since I've gazed into dark eyes that melted my soul down
To a place where it longs to be?
All of your history has little to do with your face
You're mainly a mystery with violins filling in space...

You stood in the nude by the mirror and picked out a rose
From the bouquet in our hotel
And lay down beside me again and I watched the rose
On the pillow as is faded
I sank and I slept in a twilight with only one care
To know that when day broke and I woke that you'd still be there...

The hours for once they passed slowly, unendingly by
Like a sweet breeze on a field
Your gentleness came down upon me and I guess I thanked you
When you caused me to yield
We spoke not a sentence and took not a footstep beyond
Our two days together which seemingly soon would be gone...

Don't tell me of love everlasting and other sad dreams
I don't want to hear
Just tell me of passionate strangers who rescue each other
From a lifetime of cares
Because if love means forever, expecting nothing returned
Then I hope I'll be given another whole lifetime to learn...

Because you gave to me oh so many things it makes me wonder
How they could belong to me
And I gave you only my dark eyes that melted your soul down
To a place where it longs to be...

[Love Song To A Stranger by Joan Baez]

Inertia…

A breeze sweeping through my thoughts
Of nothingness.
I float and float and float and float
And lose my way and breath and time,
Smelling the void is my smoke;
I choke.
But linger hours of pain in empty bliss.
It’s this
That’s real, the real I miss.

It’s not the distance but the warmth
The killer heat gives stifling glow
And burning is not still for love,
Nor for passion,
Nor for touch ,
Only ether seems worth a drink.
Life oozes out
In falters, jerks, halts and doubts
Creeping, creeping
Lazy, slow.

The salt of blood and salt of tears
Have met the salt of aimless seas.
I lift the waves
With heavy lash
The sky never comes at fingertips.
Vacuum wins, thought subsides
I close my eyes
For unseen dreams.
The play is over, it's time for sleep
But nothingness still hangs in breeze.

2009

Still…

I tell you
There’s still hope
Still new, still sky
Still hue
Fills our eyes
I tell you again
There still is…

I tell you
There’s still smile
Still dew, still kiss
Still few
Dreams to hug
I tell you again
There still is…

I tell you
There’s still light
Still adieu, still tears
Still you
Somewhere deep
I tell you again
There still is…