Lonely Hearts Club

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Dont give up until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky

For sometime now, I have been waking at the crack of dawn. The first ray of light is about to hit the skies and its still not day yet. Just the anticipation of it. The moon is still glowing but I know the moment I shift and dig out my head from underneath my pillow, there shall be light. The tenement window that peaks into the open skies ,with the thick palm tree grove that is my boundary wall ,will twinkle the sun in my eyes and I will have to stir out of bed. Every morning, I wait for that moment. I have been beating sunrise. I have been awaiting sunrise.

This is for all the single people
Thinking that love has left them dry
Dont give up until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try

There's a theory to this. I am convinced. A law of proportional dimension. Can't decide if its a direct or an inverse. But I completely believe that if u will it, it will. I have bad knees. I trip all too often. They bear those permanent scars of childhood adventures indulged in. The left one is melancholic and leaves me on many occasions, till I weep and will it back home. Age, they say, will fade them away -the scars? Only, I need to grow up and stop falling.

The relentless heart tries too often. It wills too often.

Well, Im on my way

Yes, Im back to stay

Well, Im on my way back home

Geese flock together. Twigs branch out from the same tree. Glue naturally sticks to something. Gravity invented touch and attachment. Flowers bloom out of a seed. Bricks need cement. Doors need hinges. Music needs an ear. It takes two to tango. You get pairs of everything – shoes, socks, legs, curtains, pillows, screws, glasses, eyes, buttons, quick fixes… But my arithmetic always starts with one. The calculator seems to be broken and home seems too far away. What was it again? How many steps backwards? Home is lost in translation.

This is for all the lonely people

Thinking that life has passed them by

Dont give up until you drink from the silver cup

And never take you down or never give you up

You never know until you try

I have a mirror that shows two images. A magnified and the regular oval shape. More often than not I choose to see the regular one, after being conditioned to the distracting magnifying glass. It’s on the left and my line of vision betrays it each time. I choose to look right. Its deliberate training and it works. Ignorance, they say is the easiest way to kill love and perhaps even will your flaws away. But what if the flaw itself is to kill love? It’s like that tooth that aches but you tongue it to feel the pain anyway. The poking hurts irritates but you poke anyway. The knees are week but you try anyway. The heart is still bruised, but you finger it anyway. One still needs another, so you add anyway. Home is still far, but you walk anyway. Will end up alone at the altar of judgment, but will hope to keep company anyway. It will be daylight soon, but my head will dig out from under the pillow and steal a glance anyway. You know you will fall but you love anyway.

(lyrics interspersed 'Lonely People' by America)

Vodka Straw

I think,
when the light goes out
reality twists.

A million ants in this ant hill.
Whatever career fits.

Stumbling past neon lights,
thinking of chances I missed.

And I wonder.
Maybe there's love somewhere
haunting my dreams,
a figure with sturdy hands
longing to find me.

I know.

My stomach twists and turns,
I haven't slept in days.
The sky turns a purple haze,
waiting for a brighter day
when this crystal city crumbles.

I'm coming to find you.

I stir my vodka with my straw
and I'm sure we both know

That doesn't seem like me,
does it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
when disjointed lines come together on a scale for poetic disturbance on inebriated nights. My version of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind...

Soundtrack

Lost in creativity, I hear no other sound
The music flows freely and holds no bounds
I can hear you in the melody guiding me
Showing me the chords patiently.

Gently moving my fingers into shape
You keep me playing though I blister and ache
Teasing out the emotion inside of me
Until it expresses itself in harmonies.

You show me the notes to sing away my blues
B minor the chord I choose
Then when the music stops and I have my song
I reach for your hand and realise it’s gone.

Rhythmic Rant

Shuffle! on the sunday afternoon and the seemingly spirited shred of the violin streamed through the weekend workstation. Remnants from last night and I suddenly smiled. It was the same song, with the same guitar riff that lead into the same mellifluous voice reciting the same verse. 'Mysore se Ayee.' It was Raghu Dixit's playful barritone and I was ready to dance again, without ghungroos even.

If music be therapy and new age yoga have found its perfect guinea pig - then I offer my testimonial. I have healed. Twenty four hours, in the grasp of music and I am finally beginning to hear my heart skip a beat again. My skin is awash with tenacity and my mind has goosebumps. Muddled up senses - just perfect. Too many verses from too many moments and too many lines are coming together. My mind is writing disjointed poetry and my heart is watching them jump on a scale. I am writing again.

And it all happened with a morning meeting with a former popstar who is singing again. "If life be art," she said, "then I am living it." The settled gleam in her eyes and the certain smile made me believe. I smiled back and for a moment, hours later in the local back home post a plate of Reshmi kebabs and sweet lime gorged on on the side of the historical cricket pitch, the line held me in a pandemonic trance. A volte-face. Like I was somehow carrying the legacy of the heroes and heroes that will be. My mind had begun to hum a raw melody and my fingers instinctively formed chords. The afternoon humid flush on my cheeks made for an excellent cover-up.

In a city of cubbyholes, carcasses of plastic, colourful horadings and cultural cosmos crowding roads - to hold onto a muse is the toughest thing to do. Every corner inspires and every sound grabs attention. In this matrix of images, a lucid interval doesn't exist long enough to take it all in. But my melody in the tropical heat did find its harmony. And it happened at the Channel V Concert for Change. Three new bands will committ their original sins and four artists will hone their stage. And it began. First with a baul-grunge band from good ole' Kolkatta. Cassini's Division and their interpretation of fun. With Reverse Polarity who gave masquerade madness a whole new carnivale of meaning with their deep throated guttural angst and their incindiary-notice-my-anguish heavy metal squeals from the lead, the bass and the drums. And later with a humble fade out by simplistic genuity by Faridkot when they sang to you.

But the best dwindled between the many. The Raghu Dixit Project. The songs gave me my harmony. The sarangi, the guitar, the bass, the drums, the ghungroos and the voice - and I believed. The men smiled, wore their lungis and drove in a wave of emotion. They felt each note and sang into the sunset. The Helium globe dipped and Raghu sang folk, sufi, qawwali. There wasn't a face in the crowd that wasn't looking up, not an arm that didn't rise, not a voice that didn't sing along. He conducted. We perfromed.

For someone who visits concert halls, campus grounds, open-air-arenas and festivals with a raised eyebrow, through the worst and the best of all - I wouldn't call it the moment for it wasn't. It wasn't mind-numbing and it wasn't the brilliant sound that would hold you in a trance. Rather it was the familiar sound of an instinctual learning, a deja vu from within. Even though the thousands were only a few hundred, music had been made. Art had become life. My heart was ready to skip a beat.

... And it did.

Waiting for Normalcy

Amiss...
the bud
the ache
the love

Unmoved...
the leaf
the muscle
the heart

Tattered...
the branch
the will
the soul

Forgotten...
the trunk
the touch
the life

Numb...
the earth
the eyes
the organism

Cup of Tea

The tea you pour is black and strong.
It doesn't taste like tea to me;
I must have been away too long.

It isn't Assam, Suleiman, oolong;
It tastes like an apology—
This tea you pour, so black and strong.

Where's that old fork with the bent prong?
What happened to the hemlock tree?
Have I really been gone that long?

I think I hear the saddest song;
It has no words, no tune, no key.
The tea you pour is black and strong.

You're careful to say nothing wrong,
You seem too eager to agree...
Yes, I've been travelling far and long,

And now it's clear, I don't belong.
I watch you sash your robe, as we
sit, sipping tea that's black and strong.
I went away too far, too long.

U !\! ! !\! S P ! R |E !)

See the tree, the brown leaves fall.

Be the flea, the clown seems tall.

Ride the clown, the circus fool.

Hide the frown, the mirthless mule.

Donkey ride, the shoreway treat.

Wonky slide, the broken feet.

Aching legs, sit on the grass.

Breaking eggs, and breaking glass.

Shattered window, open door.

Scattered hedgerow, oaken floor.

Wooden planking, dance away,

Hooded monks in chapels pray.

Ask for peace, thank for gift.

Masked police, tank for rift.

Tear the curtain, look for me.

Bear the burden, see the tree.

Alcoholics Anonymous

The vodka bottle sits on the dresser

half empty,

half dead.

The setting sun reflects off the smooth glass,

creating a prism of rainbow light.

It could almost be beautiful,

almost be perfect, if you don't stare too hard.

don't get to close.

No one would ever know

that the stale smell of liqour sat so thick

it seemed to seep through the paint in the walls.

No one would ever know that empty bottles

happened often around here,

as if they grew from the weeds in the yard.

And no one would ever know

how often those lips kissed those bottles

in a romance all their own...

She sits on her bed,

half empty,

half dead.

The setting sun reflects off her smooth cheeks,

making her skin glow abnormally warm.

She could almost be beautiful, almost be perfect,

If you don't stare too hard, don't get too close...

Rusty & I

He was as soft as rainwater - the day he came to our house. He came in our car, snuggled between my mom's arms. Just a little over 2 months. The most incredible deep dark brown flesh, peering through greenish brown eyes. We called him Rusty, the same day.

It was monsoon of 2001, I remember. His jittery paws were hesitant on the gravel and his little body jerked a little every time a new pair of legs approached him. "Surprise Sherry. We got someone for you," my mom's mischevious grin got me on the driveway. That's how I met him. He found the middle of my arm as his anchor and looked at me expactantly that he was home. Was I his new mumma, sister, brother, master??? He was pulled out of a pile of puppies, nestled next to his mom. In alien, non-furry, distinctly two legged environment; this was his first moment.

He didn't like the car at all. Especially when it moved. Movement to him was four kegs or maybe two. He had not yet invented the wheel. He would lay behind my neck in stoneage despiar, not rigid, but heavy, as his bladder would empty each time even later, and the black leather seatd were puddled under puppy rain. He would always stagger out the same way, as though it were the hold of a slave ship and hm left aboard for six months or more. And it still is a task to pull him in. His size may not be manageable, but in mind he's still two months old.

The tug of war and the reverse fetch is still his favourite sport. Mariah Carrey is his favourite singer. She sings him to sleep even today. He sleeps outside my room even though I am not there. He hates being left alone and tears up his world apart in protest, finding the naked floor his sleeping companion often. Storms and Diwali nights are distinctly hated. He loves to whistle and he is amazingly good at it. If I'd known better, I could swear he's a Janis Joplin incarnate. He rebels, growls and has the most guttural barks. But he loves endearingly. He still meets, greets, awaits everybody the same way. Gravity, head down, feet up and Rusty on top - always. He still snuggles under our legs, one at a time, after taking three customary rounds under them. He slumps, slouches when he doesn't want to eat or walk and maybe sit in the green a little longer. He still shies away at eye contact or if you kiss his nose. He still calls you traitor if another dog smells or takes a fancy to my hand. He's smell, investigate and sulk till you hug his frame and say, "Sorry Rusty!"

But at the heart, he knows he's grown older. His limbs crack a little, everytime he tries to move a little more enthusiastically. He's still a crazy diamond. His face is greying and the corners of his mouth are drooping. But call cat, good ole' friend Brutus just once and he comes running straight for the leash yearning to be lead out. Rusty will be eight this April and its been six months he's grown apart from me, instead of together. This time, I'll let him lead me out the door for our walk to water the greens. I hope it's monsoon again. Rusty loves the rain. We ponder and prolong the rain in our heart and have let the floodgates open together.

... In every life, some puppy rain must fall.

A day at the Movies

Some days you wake up with a resolve. To put things right and to bridge the gap from acquaintance to family. To marvel in sincity and hold wonder in abridging visions into a montage of feelings. Amidst cups of chai, coffee, smokes and some overdue Goa sand, S&I, found two moments of celluloid that would go down in the annals of Z’s history.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for afternoon, with the hope of finding a faith in an uncertain tomorrow. What an incredible story – and how well extraordinarily told. A life of a commoner, a riveting tale, of life in the reverse. A blueprint reeling backwards, all portrayed in the graphic texture, rewound. Like Mr Gateau’s reverse clock at Louisiana Train Station. Or the boy, born with arthritis on the day the World War -1 ended, who dies of dementia as a one year old wrapped in a crocheted shroud. An ordinary life lived with an extraordinary gift and the ability to watch many dawns on the pier.

Milk, the story of a queer revolution that made you believe that fate can be altered if devotion and belief be by your side. Nothing could be more endearing than to hear the silent rumble of a many thousand rising in a single echo of recruited fervour. When boys were boys and handsome butt cleavage all too pretty!

Now back in my insulated ivory tower away from the great revolution, thinking of the 7th lightening and hoping for thunderstorms within the self. Thanks S, for the love, movies and the sand. Jim Carrey can wait a day. :-)

Rubber-Band

Crack it open like an oyster. Let it ooze out

the way it should, scoop it up, then shuffle it

in a deck of cards too stiff to handle.

Make it call you by your name, learn the

features of your face as well as any friend.

Offer promises you might never keep. Become its

blood brother, a cut along its edge touched to your

small cut, sealed together, pressed with need.

Bend it backward then forward, then shoot it like a

rubber band--a green one from the grocery.

Let it sing off key, tell a white lie, say that it has

real talent. Don't wait around for it to skip a beat,

take it down fast and hard, bury it in days of wonder,

nights of fever. Feed it fruit and chocolate and slow

sips of tea until it knows not the order of its day,

its rhythm shot straight to hell, its left from right

gone terribly wrong. Do all of this to your own heart

and you will know what it has been to love you

PS: -

Roll Call

Trapeze artists show perfect composure. At the height of their long, graceful, winding fall – they dive with passion, compassion and with purpose. Each stride in the air and leap into the unknown is piqued with the pride of trust in the anticipated abysmal nothingness. Yet there is the faith. The knowing smile, the calm eyes, upturned chin showing and the proudly arched back and the nodding head that revels in the knowing - there is a safety net at the bottom.

Days come and go. the shadow of the sun dial chases out the daylight. At the end of even an imperfect day - perfection seeks its head out. Abstinence from regularity is just a wild call away from reality. Wish for some randomness and it truly does seek you. That is something I learnt this year when 26 became more than a step ahead of the quarter mile. I run the main league now and sooner than later, my days might be getting outnumbered already. A-process-too-complicated-to-explain is no longer a guise I can hide behind anymore. Answers are supposed to be coming clearer now. The heart be more in sync with the mind. The knee is supposed to be in place and not wander away and well courage needs to be Dutch now.

It's the year of big realisations. I need to get a grab on the trapeze and fall knowing there is a safety net. If only I could see it...

Jugni

Jugni ja varhi hun pardes
jithe pa leya usne nakli bhes
Hun meri aa ve jugni
Tera ghar tu kyun vichora!

Jugni dasdi mainu kuch gallan
Apne pinde te usde ehne kaniyan
Hun meri aa ve Jugni
Tainu duniya ne samjheya khidona!

Jugni rondi saanh phar phar ke
Sun na sake koi usdi lambiyan cheesan
Hun meri aa ve Jugni
Teri nas nas wich ghul gaye tere aason ni!

Jugni raat raat buha kharkhaundi
Kis nu sunda nahin ausdiya haakan
Hun meri aa ve Jugni
Tenu bhul gaye loki vasan toh pehla hi!

Jugni baithi lassi rirhkan
hatan di lakeeran mittan
Hun meri aa ve Jugni
Teri kismat da kaagaz vi kora si!

Jugni bhul gayi apni reetan
Tambe te glassi vich kuch ohne peeta
Hun meri aa ve Jugni
Nashe wich lidh teri khilkhilahat!

Jugni di rooh kache dhage wangu phathi
Jadon phulkari di chadhar vich simti
Hun meri aa ve Jugni Tere
ishq ne pheri apni kassi ni!

Jugni pajhi, navin raaha takke
Paara di pajeba ek dujje nal laddan
Hun meri aa ve Jugni
Sansar di raahan ne tenu maari thokkar ni!

Jugni phaj aaye vaapis us hi tobe '
jithe mileya ohsnu oh moti suche
Hun meri aa ve Jugni
Ohne baha te apne saare ratan ni!

Jugni hun sutti saari raat ni
Apni kothe te littaa ohne saa ni
Hun meri aa ve Jugni
Akhan toh girl gaya aakhri moti vi!

Sanitise

a long laundromat hour, an old fade, a familiar slide of time;

soap in boxes, machines of it; a

sign begs, "Keep this place clean."

outside, the bars are so wetly lit

in their silent huddled storefronts;

buses pass by in the rain with

their peculiar leviathan sound noising the night.

electricity hums along wires

strung above the street, fine web of wire.

i wait to be inhabited. smoothing laundry,

feeding the tumbling with coins,

buses swim along the street, sighing those metal sighs.

there isn't a thing i do today

that does not have your name written, sounded into it;

sounds like something maybe looking for air,

breaching above the wetness,

maybe calling a name out into that dark, folding sky.

I let out a sigh, or wait a name;

how many washes more to wash you away

Orange!?!

It's the need to be truly rhetoric.

To fall and rise

and let fate despise.

To be inebriated

and constantly sedated

self-obsessed traumas completely unrelated

yet simple verse finds a meter unprepared

words Id rather keep in than share

for with each sigh, a wound lies to the wind bare.

Keeping the glow, the hue all in

they say it will ride me through the sin.

Christmas Lunch at Taj

A month after the terror attack, I brave an x-mas lunch at the Taj

“No Photos Please!” the hostess of the Shamiana smiled the warning in while a German couple tried to steal a click. For a brimming Chirstmas afternoon, South Mumbai’s most famous coffee shop for banoffe pie and Christmas struttle is eerily mute and empty. There are no carols and no magnanimous buffet spread either. A few visitors have taken place in meek corners, which have erupted post the restoration, of the Taj Mahal Palace and Hotel’s most prestigious eatery. The cream, silken tent is missing and the hollowed roof structure that was completely destroyed in the spate of the terror-attacks has been restored. But the golden gleam of the Shamiana Chandelier has dulled. This is my first lunch at the just-restored and barely-recovered Taj. The Hotel by the bay, that had its own TV show on a popular channel, came under siege when armed terrorists stormed the Hotel – destroying, killing, stomping, torturing and uprooting the faith of a fearless city. Hundreds lost their lives and the Taj burned in a Magnesium filled air. Pellets of bullets burned holes into the walls of the aging building marking our lives, visions and hearts with fear.

But just shy of a month from when the terrorists first set foot in the Taj, a part of the hotel is now taking orders and reservations. Constant music is filling the gaps of the constant hotel murmur that previously filled the space. Few talk, silent whispers resound and the lobby leading to the Shamiana, is eerily dark even under bright halogen glow. For a newly restored Taj, the place is far from being crowded. 268 rooms have been booked in the Tower, while the Heritage section is still under construction. The opening ceremony was grand, but post that the doors to the Taj have been again closed. The Apollo Bunder, sea-face side and the Bombay Electric entrances have been barricaded again and to get a mere glimpse of the activity around the Hotel, one has to walk through and peer through the fence again. The Taj, it seems, hasn’t recovered from the siege and as the restoration process is still underway, the doors are open for select few. The guests at Taj include fewer foreigners than ever before. “There have been cancellations understandably. And all the new bookings have been fresh as earlier we were booked till January end when we have a lot of people coming in from Germany and UK who spend winters in Mumbai and Goa. Because of the terror attacks, all bookings were nullified. We only opened for the same a week ago. But we do have a couple from Germany staying in the hotel,” Vinifer, the spokesperson for the Hotel described.

But the Taj has recovered. Much of the drapes, carpets and linen in the 268 rooms have been replaced, and new sets of crockery and glassware adorn the tables. Any signs of the havoc that was unleashed on the walls, ceilings and flooring have been painstakingly eased out.

The only reminder of attack is at the base of The Tree of Life, where an inscription carries the names of 31 people who were killed here. The artwork itself bears no trace of having survived the grenades and gunfire on the sixth floor of the heritage wing. In the rest of the hotel, too, it is business as usual a few days after it was opened for guests.

“Nothing seems to have changed except, maybe, for the fact that the food tastes a bit different,” said Ogilvy and Mather Vice President, Production Vikram Bangera, sitting with his mother in the Shamiana eating fish and chips and a slice of strawberry struddle. “I stay at Matunga but come to eat at the Taj at least twice a week. After what happened I will come more often now if possible,” Bangera’s spirit is undeterred, echoing the thoughts of the 178 staff members of Taj, at work in the hotel right now and the 300 some guests being catered to in the various restaurants.

While the staff is warm and welcoming, they are wary of talking and disclosing too much. “Lets not relive the past and wonder too much about the future. For now lets just celebrate the season,” said a Taj employee, insisting on not being named, while shrugging questions of when the full hotel will be functional and whether he witnessed the terror unfold. An intrigue filled curious reporter seeks questions. And a gore loving sadist would love graphic details as another regular on a table nearby prodded a smiling waiter what all he saw and how he got over it. The man, standing with a jug of water, is shaking his head and smiling – eyes focusing on the jug.

Maybe that’s what one should do. Appluad in the recovery of the Taj a month after and pray for normalcy, with a hotel that is still scared to open all its doors. The food for the day is on the house. Eat all you can. A tribute or welcome? One is still unsure. “This is Shamiana’s first holiday celebration. We had limited reservations, so we decided not to charge out guests for the food. This is our Christmas cheer,” the waiter on duty smiled when the cheque was called for. Surely not the last meal.

Inheritance of Loss

Wild eyes, left astray,
absent within their own dismisal.'
Grips of sanity, lucid pain,
unheard to the negligent victim.

Locked on vanished, past events,
that stumble into relapse.
When all is done and all is good,
we are hit by fatal traps.

Savage and brute, untamed upon touch,
sold on feud and vendetta.
Vein and bent, stares in the mirror,
but who looks back is fiercer.

Wondering won't help, the deeds been long done
Innocence instantly vanished like never there.
Their screams I hear often, stuck in a melee of aimless stupor
if only I could reach and shoot one.

I feel their loss, though I know them not
Some profound humour in terror-struck tragedies
My heart, it weeps and feels the anguish
Of the child who lost his religious parents
Of the friend who lost his companions
Of the young son who lost his father.

Lying in their final resting place
Lives, that were perhaps lost in an instant
I see, I hear, I feel -the sound of each heart break.
Though I knew them not...

RIP
Apoorva Parrot (was found in the staiwell of the Oberoi Towers, in a pool of blood, being dragged down between the 8th and the 10th floor. His son, Siddhartha Parrot, stood amongst us in the media enclosure behind the Hotel anxiously waiting for his father to come back safe )

Gavriel and Rivka Holzberg (the Rabbi and his wife were tortured and gunned down, while standing in front of the fourth flour window of the Chabad House, Colaba after being held hostage for two nights)

Amanaette and Jeaquess Mannayatte (the husband-wife were eating their dinner in Tiffins, Oberoi. The husband was sho through his head and the wife took the bullet through her stomach. Both the bodies had to be identified with their clothes by a friend who waited and cried anxiously standing outside Oberoi)

Hostage situation

A flat dead face

where emotion cannot stick

but slides off

and is lost in nothing.

(It's not easy to comprehend a life amongst the dead. I don't know how to take those images away. I don't know how to silence those screams. I don't know how to exist in a world where they don't exist.)

So it is

I wish there was some rule book for intimacy. A guideline that told you what and what not. A map to guide you while you walk your way in and around your own and your significant other's heart. It's easy to blame it on love. The same way it's easy to be a 2-year-old and be unable to colour between the lines.

And so it is
Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time

I wonder if I've ever been there - on the top of a pyramid and be reaching to that perfect Northern star in a symmetrical line. Isn't that how the Egyptians made their peaked triangular towers? Their need for perfection and allignement to pay allegiance to their Kings reflected in their architecture of their tombs. Have I been in love so deep to endure the pain of perfection? My galaxy is splashed all across my cieling and I still can't touch the stars.

And so it is
The shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky

I have been in love, I think. I've wanted to breathe and been left breathless many times. I have felt the touch, the race in the heart, the blood boil and the flush in the cheeks. Red's been a favourite colour and 2 the perfect number. To gaze endlessly at filgree cups and wonder. I have been a victim of beauty. When nothing else - not a word, or a sigh; a sight or a flicker looked as timeless as him.

I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes...

A lucid interval - when time stands still. Does it exist? Can it linger? Will it stay? Forever? Never ending? Do I still believe in fairytales? Does the butterfly really die in seven days? Do hearts really break? Does sleeping beauty fall asleep again? The sky, Earth, wind, water and time doesn't really stand still does it? We live not forever do we? Love doesn't endure life does it?

And so it is
Just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
Most of the time

I swim. When my heart breaks and when he leaves and walks out the door. If it's jarred, he tears it apart. If it's locked, he breaks it down. But if it's open, he doesn't even make a sound. And then there is the flood of water through that door and I must swim if I don't want to drown. I hold down till I can and then I push and fight myself to the surface. At the end of it, the tears that never came fills my world and all I can see for miles are the tears that drowned me all this while. I think my heart stops beating for a while. But I just don't forget to swim each time. I survive and reach the shore somehow - each time.

And so it is
The colder water
The blower's daughter
The pupil in denial

It's the hate, it's the cynicism. It's what they call being practical and it's what Freud called a super-ego. I call it freedom. I have this fondness for birds. I have this belief that if I really want to, really really put my mind to it - then I can fly. Meet the skies, let it escape beneath my wings and talk to the sky - face on. But it's only when I'm asleep and dreaming. Most of the times, I suffer from insomnia.

Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to?
Leave it all behind?

Confessedly, I am a relentless romantic. I have faith and my heart never leaves my sleeve. I wonder when it'll come back to me, but it rarely ever does. I believe in fairies, I do know how to fly. Truth is I don't swim too well and don't mind drowing every now and then. The door is always open and I think I must've lost the key or broken the lock in some era. I do have a knack for perfection and I must've been an Egyptian slave who built that pyramid stone by stone. If only I knew how to quit 'You', I wouldn't be a word or a sigh.

I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind...My mind...my mind...
'Til I find somebody new

(lyrics interspersed 'Blower's Daughter' by Damien Rice)

Finish Line

You are a champion
When you ran
The ground shook
The skies parted
And mere mortals looked up
Wrapped with a wreath of flowers on your back
When you came to meet me in the winner’s circle