To Depression with Love

Depression secretly loved Suicide,

every day he would sigh and pine

for her quick slicing, painful touch,

but she never saw the rhyme

floating casually through the haze

of his dark, hungry scented gaze.

Suicide was in her own world,

leaping from building's tall ways

in her mind's soft blue clouds,

falling in Love's splattered days,

but he just looked through her heart,

never noticing her lips gently part.

Agony was killing Depression,

Suicide vowed to take Love's life

while Love sang songs of hope

to the warm night's starry-eyed strife

at missing the light of the dawn

by just a single moment's yawn.

　

Suicide undressed with shyness,

Depression submerged his head

under the fragrant foam, hoping

for the much longed for escape.

She quickly took off her panties

and pulled Depression up

from the depths of the water,

holding him close, feeling

his scarred skin rub her mood.

Suddenly Depression brightened,

he pulled Suicide down,

laughed as her head hit bubbles.

She spat a grin out and kissed him

passionately, her heart beating

promises of love; until death do part.

　

Depression smiled as Suicide blushed

her love across the ripples of gloom;

saturating the room's fragrant smiles.

Suicide caught hold of Depression's grin

as he dropped to one knee with a sigh;

fluttering through the candle's soft flames.

With a voice clear yet full of sorrow's wisps

Depression asked for Suicide's sweet hand,

hearts merged inside of cool nervousness.

The song of delight sprung from their souls

as Suicide's answer echoed off old scars,

Yes - the note was pure brilliant white light.

Musings

Pause. Breathe. Halt. These are perhaps the most belated words in the human vocab. Well, atleast mine. Its clockwork. To run. Am forever chasing, what I like to think, are cobwebs. You see I, like most thrill-seeking folk who believe they are alternative citizens, believe in keeping life complicated. Its a completely different matter that spiders weave straight lines.

Anyway, its monsoon. Its Mumbai monsoon and its supposed to have created a clutter of chaos. And there is that much more urgency to fight for time to weave my web. But today time waited for me.

I walked. I like to walk. It was my absolute favourite thing to do back home. You see, I'm a small town girl. I had no cobwebs to weave back then, my life was plotted in sectors. But I took the occasional long stroll back home, something that was alternative in the hamlet-ghost town.

Here I'm a rootless tree. Challenged to walk mindlessly anywhere, to any corner without question or direction. You see, in Mumbai, every image even resting in the corner of your eye, inspires. This is the city acid flashbacks are made of. These are the colours that spirals in a cokehead. These are the musings of an lost artiste.

Today I walked. I didn't wait for the cab to take me home. The highway, the whizzing cars, the irritable lot stuck in traffic, the conjunctions of chaos stuck in my head quitened. White noise. I wasted time.

The milk stop, the soul street, the dazzling sign boards, the vegetated lush green of wet earth, the cottage-roofed homes - I saw the city transition to smiling faces instead of cluttered conduits of frowned pollutants.

Itd been a while. I'd been watching life passing by like a back seat driver. Collecting used and dampened match sticks in flip flops at a rain thrashed drizzling dusk. Chasing fire flies in the muddy vegetation off a polluted side-walk. Their abode hides the grime of the metropolitan, tales etched into the memory of the concrete beneath the soles of the walking denizens - narratives of the obdurate elves who pretend to live and work in the expansive cloak of what could be their motherland but is their relative land.

Passing a shop window, I caught a reflection. Glee rested in my eyes. I sensed happiness.

So this is to you Mumbai. I've loved you, hated you, gotten to know you better. You've found me, accepted me, changed me, made me a family, broken me, abandoned me, homed me and given this spider a space for her cluttered cobweb. You let me know its ok to be different and its ok to be like everyone else. You've freed my soul, like a helium baloon, keeping my extended string tied to the displaced ground. I keep losing the shifting focal point now and then, but you leave me directions by my bedside.

So thank you lover. Now back to the many more straight lines I must weave.

Expendable

I won't crash

But burn like a cinder

Keep that fire ember-ed

Won't let it die out.

I won't get lost

But walk through the walls of your mind

Dissolve the window and pluck out the hinges

Won't let the door cave in.

I won't feed angst

But will play with fury

Let you rape my mind

Won't let my sanity slip.

I won't vegetate

But let the cancer plague

Grow a mountain of sorrow

Won't climb the Everest.

I won't sink

But will lose the compass

Fall prey to the Kraken.

Won't sail into your void.

I won't peep

But will snake around your curiosity

Lead you to voyeurism

Won't lose virginity.

I won't crumble

But share the pie

Let you shred the paper

Won't sign up for recycle.

I won't die

But let you tease open wounds

Bleed till the last cell clots

Won't let out a last sigh.

I won't colour

Stay within the lines

Pick up all crayons

Won't let the white smear stain.

I will live

But will will you to kill

Yell and watch murder in your eyes

Will still will to love

When Dragons Whine

I am the product of your throwaway words,
My mother's burned-out candles,
A violent, beautiful world,
An unprescribed strip of TCA, nightly.

I am much less than the glue that holds society together -
I am a vine, a weed creeping through the preexisting cracks.
I pretend the streetlamps are the moonlight,
And I feed on last month's newspapers.

I could be the buoy you cling to, keeping you up,
Or the rope pulling you deeper below the surface.
I will shrug the salt and debris from my shoulders,
And board your sinking ship.

I am knotted together with complexes,
Shielded by my opinions,
I hold wit as my sword and pull no punches,
And wear burn-scars as war-paint.

I don't believe I can change the world,
I merely want to shatter the silence.
I will break hearts, I will break bones,
And I will have my dreams broken in turn.

I'm safe where I am, and jaded,
I am weathered and accustomed to being the ground beneath your feet.
I never realised how important I was until then.
And I despise it.

But enough about me.

PS: I hear dragons whine when I sleep.

Chordance

Silence of the Words

I have no damnable words to make my voice
fit the sorrow. My heart had the audacity
to open, and then beat itself to life.

There isn't enough suffering to make anything.
pieces of beautiful scattered and kept both and I
have no room to belong to his smile.

.We
.Or maybe just I
are not breathing and the night
never ends. Nothing changes,

These eyes used to see imagination's miracles
trembling; motion; moons; hands; leaves.
infinite.
Buddha. words.
water. colours.

often I speak dreams now useless and how love
must simply sit waiting so refined and unadorned.
but I become undefined and more unclear.
and I blur in his eyes.
and I cant focus.

I move. Grow old. Die
Unbelieving. eventually unfeeling. body at rest
but soul imploring more...

of anything.......but distance.
hate.remorse.pain.fear.ache......elation.
anything.........but

. .there is a voice i hear
incessantly....caught in my hair.

It takes me to again.
and over. and over.
simplicity.

I know we have already died numerous times
unrequited. and unknown. and these words feel like cotton.
feel tasteless and pointless.
but they are words, and words are all that stick to my skin.
after all the places he touched. my God, i am treading air.
living is a chore. loving is a risk.
and i want to rip everything
away from the world except the truth.
which always resided in him.

remember ..............
depth is endless.
the end is nothing.

and if i can bear the quiet,
maybe the residual fire will keep me warm enough
to teach me that silence is not so terrible;
it is a language that could resurrect us all

Warped & Twisted - IV

Slit it open

like a device of pain.

Fill its crevice

with an imploring disdain.

Cry out asunder

let no one hear

Boil intravascular

let your blood bear

Damage permanent

create scars deep

Keep healing at bay

may gore gashes peep

Happiness is a drug

Romance pain and torture plug.

Suicide

Here: Nothing has changed. It's morning and it's light. She wishes her eyes were glued so the sun wouln't stream through her eyes so. It's morning and she's got nightmares stuck under her fingernails and crimson stained lips from the night before. It's morning and she doesn't remember the night before.

Here: She only likes Spring. She only likes the smell of Jasmine and she only likes white dresses with lace. She says I'm tired, tired of the snow and isn't it ironic February takes so long? She says I want birds. I want birds outside my window. She says I want to wake up, and I want to smell fresh warmth. She says, I don't want to remember the last time I felt warm. She says, I can't pretend anymore.

Here: The white walls of her tenemant are really doorways to other empty worlds. Places where everything is the same colour - cocaine/bone/teeth. She stays away from the walls, afraid sh'll crossover, afraid Alice will find white oleander wonderland, afraid she'll never find her way back. Afraid she won't want to. The floor looks like it should creak but it doesn't. The windows look poetic frames and maybe she wants to jump.

Then: She used to sing at the balcony. She used to dance in the kitchen. She used to write letters everyday. She scribbled her life. She hashtagged her soul. She poured thoughts in 140 characters or more. She couldn't write anymore. Pages went empty. Links died. He used to watch her, she remembered. He used to let her veins tear and stain the paper in words that made it all poetic and pretty, he said. You see, he thought, it was art. He told her it was the preetiest thing in the world. But now he isn't here anymore.

Then : It's morning and her skin doesn't feel as soft. Her eyes aren't limpid and brightly honey-dew. The cieling fan isn't spinning. It's morning and there are empty pages strewn on her white floor. It's morning and she opens her eyes like she's been asleep. It's morning and it seems like it's always morning. It's morning and the windows talk to her.

They call and then she jumps!

Cheers Darliing

To Love

To lingering sense of wonder

To abandon at martinis

To leaps of faith

To seamless peace

To peals of laughter

To urns of sugar swept joy

To rudderless sailing

To mirth

To graying edges and wrinkling skin

To hangovers

To music

To grunge chords F & G

To memory

To Tiny Dancers

To Desire

To the road

Letter to the Tattoomaker

Ink me a scar

O, designer of pain.

Make it deep, dark, intricate.

Add colour if you may.

Let it whisper my tale from afar

Of that love's stain.

It's never too late,

For all the things I couldn't say.

It could be that fallen star.

Brightly shinning in vain.

Befallen to ill fate.

While it shone on many a day.

O, won't you mix in some tar.

Dark as Hades mane.

Put in a drop of blood as bait.

Red - to tease that tear at bay.

I'll look at it - as a melody cut to a bar.

Sing the song of that lover's lane.

Where I walk now in numbness - not love or hate

Carve, pierce, fill - so it forever on skin will stay!

Ghosts of Convenience

O, most convenient Ghost: I find

I entertain you in my mind.

So come and sit, we'll chat a bit,

Your cup will overflow with wit.

Trying though you are, my friend.

I like your haunts, they shall not end.

We waltzed once to 'Hope, Disbanding.'

Now we dance to 'Understanding.'

That's your cappuccino, there.

Need more sugar? Take your share.

Nothing's worse than bitter drinks --

Except, a bitter heart, methinks.

Time : the greatest sinfree sweetener

Rightens things misthought before.

One nervous, gnawing night in bed.

I knew: I'm living in my head

Recovery Mode

Woke up for the first time the animals were gone

It's left this house empty now, not sure if I belong.

Yesterday you asked me to write you a pleasant song

I'll do my best now, but you've been gone for so long.

I can't remember the last time sleep put my senses in a coma. Almost every morning I wake up with a teary-eyed blur. It's nearly as if I spent the night moaning and whinning. But strangely that's the part I never remember in my disturbed slumber. I don't even toss and turn so much as does the turbulent fluid in my brain. The slightest whisper in the alley beneath my third floor windowsil or clang of the iron gate brings instant recognition. I even hear the 5am Aazan wafting in kilometres away or the cackle of the irritable pigeons. I smell the filthy blood from the butcher across the lane and the frying paranthas from the kitchen exhaust downstairs. I feel the warming wind by the morning sunrise, the pillow spooning my back, the thin cloth under me. I yearn to find some music in this periodic reverie of everyday waking up, but all I hear is nothingness. All is feel is arrested numbness.

The window's open now and the winter settles in

We'll call it Christmas when the adverts begin

I love your depression and I love your double chin

I love 'most everything you bring to this offering.

I love winters. I am a complete snow baby. I was born during the coldest recorded winter in the subterranean Himalayas. There was rains, sleet, hail, fog and floods. At the crack of thunder, I cried. It sounds dramatically romantic, like a Hindi serial. But the cold sets in a sense of belonging to time. I feel warm within the more the mercury dips. It's a strange body reaction, but the bile within seems to rest merrily. I glow like a woman pregnant with life. It's almost like first love again. High school perkiness. It's been a while since I've seen winters. It's been a while since I've given birth to joy. I've been mothering loneliness for way too long.

Oh I know that I left you in places of despair

Oh I know that I love you, so please throw down your hair

At night I trip without you, and hope I don't wake up.

'Cause waking up without you, is like drinking from an empty cup.

You know that sense of completeness when you put the final full stop at the end of a never ending story. The sense of freedom. The slight sadness of letting go. I love romance. I truly think all historical romances were written about me. All Greek tragedies and Godly oracles and mystics were characters God made me play. I live in a constant dream sequence that will never end. I don't seem to want to wake up. I don't want to put that final full stop. I'd rather extend the dot in a coma.

Woke up and for the first time the animals were gone

Our clocks are ticking now so before our time is gone

We could get a house and some boxes on the lawn

We could make babies and accidental songs.

I recently discovered a truth about myself. I don't know how to mourn. I am so generally consumed by the lightness of my own being that loss evades my senses. I am the original gypsy heart that'll flock away when love settles in. I'll wear your clothes and be yours to keep, but before you leave the tent, I'll sing you a song, give you a kiss run to the sea. I swim all to well that I'll soon forget you existed while making love to the waters that surround me. At that time I won't be able to seperate from the tears and the ocean around. The longing and the loss all at once.

I know I've been a liar and I know I've been a fool

I hope we didn't break it, but I'm glad we broke the rules.

My cave is deep now, yet your light is shinning through.

I cover my eyes, still all I see is you.

Last night I slept. I really did. It just came. I just dropped and woke up with a slobered mouth. I still smelt of body shop, my nightcream. I didn't feel the morning warmth yet and I could hear music from the I-pod I forgot to turn off when I fell unconscious. I had slipped into coma. I could fell an inkling of the winter chill - more one running down my spine as I struggled to peel myself all too quickly away from the bed. Head Rush, it must have been. I missed the Azaan and I had a blank mind. I didn't remember my dream from last night. I had no reference point to begin my story of the day. For a while, I couldn't even remember my name. And then it hit. A wave of pure emotion. Those tears just came. The flood within rushed on a crack of thunder. I laughed and I cried. The sound mixed. I made music and I grieved. It's been a year and ironically it's been a little over 24 hours again since the last attack. I'm finally growing a lover's heart.

(lyrics intersperesed 'Animals were Gone,' by Damien Rice)

Meeting you

we treat each other with exceeding courtesy;
we make love each time we meet

our tigers drink milk
our hawks tread the ground
our sharks have all drowned
our wolves yawn beyond the open case

our snakes have shed their lightning
our apes their flights of fancy
our cats exchange their licks, paws and lives
the bats flew out of our hair long ago

we fall silent in mid-sentence
all smiles, past help
our humans
don't know how to talk to one another

Entropy

“I probably need new sheets,” I thought to myself

“Yup! That’s it. Fresh off the Laundromat.”

“White light too,” I switched on nervously.

“The orange is making things a bit too yellow.”

“Maybe it’s the settled dust,” I reached out for a rag.

“It’s taken over my senses. My mind is registering dirt.”

“I’ve got it. It’s the floor,” I frowned in inspection.

“The broom will whisk those monsters from under the bed.”

“The curtains, the curtains,” I tore at the filth swaying heavily in the breeze.

“It’s always these drapes that breed and hold the demons.”

“These clothes,” I looked down and gnawed at my skin

“The sweat, the grime is polluting my body.”

“I need Valium,” I thought to myself

“Yup! That’s it. Fresh off the shelf. For a new whole me.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I need love," I cried to myself silently

"I can't kill this entropy."

Abortion

Last night, a giant moth pregnated

And laid its coccoon over the fields.

Covered the mountains and the plains.

Close knit to the ground a nest

For its young to be born in.

The next morning the Sun and the man

Bore gaping holes in it.

Chordance

Amiss

My own solar system blows apart,

Now the debris of my world floats aimlessly.

The rest of the planets going nowhere.

They are leaving their paths

No more sun to keep balance,

Or to sustain life.

If I left myself float on,

Memories are painful.

My fellow friend now gone,

And where I do not know.

/-\ B |_| S !E !)

Monday : You are a canvas, and he decorates you

with grotesque shades of fresh magnolia red and prussian blue.

Tuesday : One look at the always-honest mirror to see there are

vomited bruises all over your reflection. It never lies.

Wednesday : Someone took your rosy coloured glasses and now you have your own rainbow

black blue black blue black red purple.

Thursday : "I didn't mean it. I'll never do it again. I love you,"

his lips are talking.

"I love beating you. I love possessing you,"

his white knuckles are whispering.

Friday : True beauty is real pain: true pain is real beauty.

(by these standards, you are truly gorgeous)

Saturday : A is for abrasion, B is bump, C is for contusion

The A-b-c of how he loves you.

Sunday : Body Shop, paint job, red rouge.

When exceptional plastic features look ordinary.

The artists canvas be fresh for the next week.

Shied Wisdom

Flowing off a tongue, words seeped in soul contemplation

a thought stored in heart, voiced in constemation;

for meaning, greater than a hollowness in a mute enounce

wrought through by doubt, of why they should so resound.

Spoken in that twisted language known for it's unknowing

captures whispering word, of another's thoughts bestowing

it upon a limited and descriptive, burst in quite verse

there lays a beauty, in truth shyly locked away in time.

For all who may doubt, the winds of thought so brought

despair in one's seeeking for more than sould thought words

a clarity is that said, which comes from heart not head

truth, quiet shouted nouns or verbs, so completely read.

To waste away and forget on one moment's truth and shame

is to face, one more daring and fear filled day to come

for a word to become as closed, within an unspoken soul

is to languish in a void, as one's true thoughts unfold.

Flicker

Three candles are lit with a spark

Each one does fade away the dark.

Each one shows us the way

Each one turning dark nights into day.

The first one gave me a smile

She said, "I’m going out in a while."

I say, "when you die where do you go?"

She said, "I’m going to fall with the snow."

The next one looked into me

She said, "where do you wanna be?"

I said, "I wanna fall with the snow.

But where do you wanna go?"

She said, "I’m gonna fly like a dove,

Through this world to search for my love."

Last one dances while dies.

She says, "when the turn comes you will fly."

I say, "what if I fly the wrong way?

I’ll need you to turn night into day."

She said, "I'm gonna shine with the stars,

So Ill always be where you are."

We’re joined with the soul of the world

Found in every boy and every girl

Ever tree, every sea, every hill

And in all of the men we kill.

Every bud, every bug, every stream

In all of the sins we redeem

Its in all of the songs we sing

Its found in everything.