A Dark Rendezvous (A Poem)

There are times when I see the world
Through a pair of lens
Resting on my nose
With an anti-glare coat meshed somewhere inside them.

There are times when I see the world and feel
How? How to say this is so not me?
I blink, blink and blink.
I squeeze my eyes,
Clean the lenses and realize
That the frame is same
That this is all nothing but a game,
Where I don't know who I am because each day I get to know something new about myself.

For whole poem, click here

That Guy In Blue

The first time she saw him, it was that blue and those slender eyes, that caught her glimpse and she could just wave a 'hi'. There was some vigor in that distance that kept them apart and some ardour holding that distance.
How can one person hold something so intense, she'd thought.
Lost in her own experiences, this is it, she thought again, smiling; he will become a treasured memory, treasured like those constellations in the sky, which continuously reminds the sky about their presence. A treasure that only a heart can hold. He was someone, she'd not want to lose.

"I am glad that you exist." She murmured. Never had she known how much relief it can be for someone to just exist. Relief of having known someone like him. 

Wrapped around each other, smiling in the dim light coming through the window, piercing the curtain that is how his eyes had pierced hers, with shine in them. He was all the particles that the light contains, illuminating her, adorning her darkness with smiles, giggles and light.

But that was not the end, that was just a beginning. People leave, leaving you in the purgatory - flooded the realization. Still, the frame enraged her demons while also soothed her soul.
Even if he leaves the memory would stay, the relief will linger, relief of knowing that guy in blue would not haunt her, but make her beam. The fierce vibration, that strong heat will always calm her down. The beating heart and the sound of it, would resonate in her veins.
Because all she had seen for the first time was that blue and those slender eyes. 

ATTACHMENTS (what it is to me)

She often asked me questions out of nowhere and then she would expect me an answer. I know the starting is abrupt. But that is how it has always been. Once she asked me about beauty? Like come on? How can you ask a fugly person to write about "beauty"? Still I managed to write something on it.
AND NOW! Today she asked me to write on "ATTACHMENTS". I don't know what attachment is again. I got to think a lot. I am thinking while I am writing this. What fascinated you about today? I saw a silver lining yesterday.

YES! I am there. Near to what I conceive of 'attachments'.
So here is what 'attachment' is to me:

The door hanging on the hinges, sometimes close to each other, sometimes centimeters apart.
That end point on a beach where the water and the sky appears to meet.
The laces in my silver shoes (yes, I like silver shoes!) tied when "I" do that and separated when "I" choose that.

Let me sort this out.
Attachments, never made sense to me. It's like people speaking forged meaningless sugary words, metaphorically asking the other person to get attached and then waking up SOME FINE DAY and saying "hey, don't get attached. It is the worst thing that can happen, you know! And let us part our ways". And what the person is then left with is - "what was I doing for so long? Riding a duck?"
YES! that is what has happened with me like always. I got attached and the person told me that you were riding a duck and the duck is now dead. Dig a grave for all your emotions and all the good you have in you.
BUT
Attachment is like that door and hinge relationship. Sometimes you are close due to the presence of it and sometimes you are not, due to the presence of it, because that is when you want a person to be there, JUST BE THERE. And the attachment is in a way, that you don't want to get close, because that is where you find the real game being played.
It is that end point. Always there yet absent. Every time you get hurt, every time you get a little detached from the anticipated attachments.
It is my shoe laces with me being a binary. Tied with something firm, knotted with love, having firmness. Separate because my foot needs air, laces suffocate it. PLUS! misunderstanding, how can they be at bay? Misunderstanding is that neighbor who EVERY YEAR asks you about "what you EXACTLY do?"
"Aunty, Literature."
"Nice. Stick to it."
365 days gone, and AMNESIA.
"What are you EXACTLY doing?"
"Aunty, riding a unicorn."

But I am a liar, I am lying. Attachment is so much more than this.
It is so beautiful when it is reciprocated. Yes, attachment demands reciprocation too. Imagine being attached with someone who is equally attached with you?
It gives you hope, it breeds faith, love, trust and happiness, There is so much care when two souls are attached. It is really that hinge, holding you tight, telling you not to let go, tying you, giving you firmness. It IS that end point, where everything is magical and beautiful. It is the shoe laces playing with each other even when left apart, trying to reach out to the other.
ATTACHMENTS, here it is. 

A Memory of You (Poem)

I still carry the book you spilled your coffee on, And then apologized with all the uncertainties in your eyes. I wanted to tell you that I didn't need that combination of syllables, All I needed was, 'I will give you my favorite book. And you can spoil that.' I remember the time, The time, When you held my hand and said you won't let go, but still you did, As if you never meant it. I wanted to tell you that I didn't want your 'I won't let go'. All I wanted was you to mean it. Hardly did you know how I would have treasured that love, That memory, That scar of the kiss on my lips, And that passion in your eyes when they rested on mine, And the smile on your lips when they found my ears and you bit them slowly, whispering, I won't let go. And yet you left me, leaving me in agony, Lost in your soul, Kissing the stale coffee on the pages, 
The pages you once spilled your coffee on.

I Killed My Cupid (Poem)

They flew among the clouds, Foamy and soft, Naked as they were, Hurrying and lost. With a bow and arrow in their hands, They hunted souls around, But I am a sinner, I hunted my Cupid down, "No love was lost And no love found". I spanked their little buttocks, Pulled their cheeks, Brought them to tears, Transparent and clean. Took away their bow And their arrow, Watched them cry harder, Shaved their head bald, Cut their wings, And left them there, bearing my sin. Love is not happening. Love is nothing, I yelled at them. It is a slapstick fallacy, It is a space inside the space, Unfound and buried. I yelled. It disintegrates the heart, It kills the soul, Live with nothing that does not let you grow. I KILLED MY CUPID And buried the love he was shooting. Since love is an illusion, Useless and stupid.

All Is Never Lost

"Don't think too much." He whispered.
"Don't refrain yourself." He repeated. 

Months passed and the memories came hurrying towards her, ready to haunt her.

"Memories don't haunt. And you won't regret this one memory." He uttered. 
She knew it won't haunt, that she won't regret it, but she indeed was a skeptical; struggling all the doubts in her mind. 

Months had passed and his silhouette with a bag on his shoulder and a tired smile on his lips, came running towards her. That black shirt, that brown trousers and that silhouette, reflecting the textures of his clothes.
She missed him. She started missing him like the winter sky missing the warmth of the sun.
But all was lost.
Him and those racing heartbeats, that intense passion, that 'immortal' connection.
BUT ALL GOT LOST.
Those fragile emotions, unbreakable feelings and instilled passion.

"Don't think. Relax." He whispered. 

How could she not think? She was bound to do that. Forcing the memories into her occluded brain. How well she remembered each touch, each move and that undesired resistance.
BUT ALL WAS LOST.
The capacity to feel it all again. It was lost. She felt like a loser, surrendering herself to her blunt passions, trying to sharpen them up.
All that differed was that the memory was not as fixed as the previous one. Not as clear as before. It could never be.
Hours passed and partial amnesia surfaced her. All she could remember was the dull room, orange light, a white cupboard and the whispers.

"I want to feel the love. I want to fall in it. I want to fly in between. I want to take off again. I want to feel the love. How it is to be loved. How it is to love. I know not what love is. Crucify me with the arrows." Her heart whispered. 

But something was left. Something only she knew. Something she won't show.
All is never lost. 

A Metaphor

"I will tell you why." He started. "I will tell you why I still love her." 

His friend could do nothing but intently listen to what he had to say.

"I once asked her to describe people. What she felt about them. And for the first time she smiled and didn't answer. 

Nothing made me feel bad at that moment than my question being the reason of her silence. Thus I had let it go.

The next day we met, again! And while I greeted her with a ‘hi’, she answered me with the answer.

She categorized people by calling them - the words, the moon and the stars.

I couldn't help but ask what she meant out of the sheer confusion and ambiguity she had created.

And then she continued in a soft voice.

Words, for some people know everything and choose to flaunt themselves.
Moon, as a part of them is always hidden. They will know but they won't show.
Stars, because all they know is how to twinkle. Innocent to everything.

And that is exactly what I love about her. The metaphor. Because that is what she is. 

A metaphor, a simile. And there is not even a single metaphor like her. Unique in her own way. Weird. Clumsy and messed. She never talked straight and it was fun deciphering her."

Lonely Bodies (A Poem)

He was the white words carved into the black heart,
Displaying himself in bits and pieces,
Shy and calm.

He smiled each night
Thinking that smiling would drive away the loneliness with his fading smile,
When there will be the lack of light.

Alone and aloof, far from the flimsy stars,
He loathed himself for having the scars.

Little did he know how beautiful those scars made him,
That each night she prayed for a glimpse of his.

He hid behind those cottony clouds, trying hard not to disturb the world.
He must have cried silently there,
Burying his face in that opaque billow.
She wished he knew that it wasn't a sin to weep on the face of this twirling earth.

His brokenness was visible and bright,
Broken is beautiful,
He made her realize.

They were just two lonely bodies residing under the unseen galaxy,
Under the untraveled space.
Little did they know that each night they brighten up each other’s face.
And each considered the other’s absence, a winsome disgrace. 

HIM (A Poem)

The first time when I saw him,

His eyes pierced my wriggling soul, 

As if I was his very goal. 

And the touch of his hand,

It was the melting snow on a winter morning,

Cold but warm. 

Whenever he breathed out, his fragrance
Clung to my radiance.
A fragrance, I now smell, feeling him near me.
Beside me. Like it had happened on that cold wintry day.   

When we walked together till the skies turned grey. 

But little did I know that his touch would become a smoke,

Escaping from my soul, making my skin choke. 

And the holes that he fabricated in my wriggling soul

Would soon start aching. 

Creating the cracks; forcing it into breaking. 

I believed his eyes, and the melting snow,
But little did I know that even the eyes can lie,
Eventually making the heart cry. 

And now I sit, in between the four walls,
Unable to walk and only crawl. 

The heart stings with pain, 

Invisible and vain. 

Nobody knows the agony,
Questioning the extent of my sanity, 

But now I know, that this is just a state,
And soon it will pass away. 

The Watchman

Each day the night fell upon him, engulfing him, calling him out with a loud shriek. And each night he would surrender himself to the sumptuous hours of darkness with a post in his hand, strong as the darkest hours and a thin muffler swaddled around his thin lips covering his long curled moustaches. 

"Darkness." He would whisper every time, trying to let go of the fear in his heart. 

The word was like a muse for his power and strength, with which he walked the streets lit by the streetlights trying to keep up to his duty.

Daily he would walk silently, pounding the post till 3:35 AM. Although he made no sound it was his mind that raged with a fire of thoughts, burning regularly. And it was those thoughts that kept him going throughout the hours of darkness. 

Thoughts of getting his wage at the end of the month and watch his family smile out of destitution. A conviction of running away from the night someday in order to work in the daylight, letting the bright rays of the Sun pierce through the pores of his skin. 

While his mind was a battlefield, each night, he tried acquainting himself with the Darkness with a belief of surviving it someday. He tried talking to her, blew into her ears, told her stories that he borrowed from his childhood, touched her face - peering into her eyes, touching her lips. But nothing worked. It continued to scare him, constantly. His efforts - all in vain. 

But that night, things were different. 

He came out letting out huge steps. He walked with a bounce while he had the same post in his same sulky hands. 

That night the moment he stepped out and started walking, he didn't strike the wooden post, instead he first glanced at the muffin like clouds stitched to the clear sky and smiled.

Maybe it was his new strategy of acquainting himself with the night. And thus, after he did as if it were a ceremonial activity, he started pounding his post. 

While his hands and post did its work, his eyes twinkled the stars he delightfully gazed at. 

He then searched for the Moon waiting for the clouds to move. 

"Voila." He cried softly and a tear fell from his eyes the moment he located the Moon. He wanted no more to work in the daylight. He was already in love with the night and the night couldn't love him less. 

It was then he realized that it was not only the night that demanded his love but the treasures that she owned and daily carried with her, that needed him. 

That morning he went his home and told his kids the story, borrowed from the night. 

WORDS (A Poem)

I wonder how words can pierce
the core of our hearts.
Maybe it is these hollow words which
resonate with the hollow heart.

Each day, each night the ocean grows deeper
The emptiness is scratched and dug,
With bogus oaths leaving us in an appalling dusk.

Is it easier said than done?
Then why do I find saying, the most difficult?
Maybe it is this murk that turns people into a cynical.

It is only action that can heal
As for the words- they break,
Raping us, of all our zeal.

It is all pretense and lies in a misty guise,
As the words know no wisdom,
It is the meaning that does.
They are empty; they are worthless.
Exactly like the sound of 'word' itself,
Lacking in firmness. 

Catharsis (A Poem)

What I write is the pain I endure,

With each trickling tear it is my soul that gets torn.

People read the syllables I write,
Each day and each night which is not so bright.

Nobody knows that all I want is for them to feel the pain,

That I have endured time and again.

But maybe, it is not the pain. 

It is just a cathartic experience that I gain,

After each word is spilled onto some paper that is plain. 

Therefore, I hope to exist in what I write,
So that I can feel the catharsis and then look at the sky.
Wishing to write this prodigious world,
With each word that I have ever loved.

Happily Depart (A Poem)

Each morning I want to wake up by your side
And feel your warm body against mine. 

Then look into your hazel eyes
And brush those soft hair aside. 

I want to savour the taste of your morning mouth
And sink into the demons inside your soul. 

I want to align my chaos with yours 
And try to bring order into the world of ours. 

I wish to feel the rhythm of your heart 
And want my heart to follow its path. 

And then, if ever we fall part

I will have the order speak its command,
Set you free and let myself happily depart. 

To the Unnamed

And you are back again like the coolest breeze that you contain in your soul, to haunt me for days. I thought, it will be a little late this time. The October didn't contain much of you. But I guess, I was too naive to understand your fallacy. And the fact that nothing can stop you, scares me. I wonder if you will still act dark and mean like you did the last year? Did you change? Or are you still the same? Will you cage me again in your scary sights, sleepless and wintry nights? Please be a little lenient this time! Please be a little calm. Let the river of happiness flow through the walls of my soul and let rest of the things suspend in a little corner. 

Don't allow melancholy to flow in with you. Please ask the cottony snow to be merciful. Ask it not to conquer the city of my heart.
Let the moon and the stars breathe along with the vast clouds that you bring with yourself. Don't suffocate the surroundings with the cold and depressing puff of air.
The leaves, they fall as they hear you come. The birds, they start strengthening their nest out of the fear you induce. Me, I sit here, pleading you to be soft and humble.
I wonder why can't you just freeze where you are! why cannot you just stop melting and flowing aimlessly?
But not everything you wonder turns out to be true. It is all an illusion and that is why they are called the wonders. 
But again, at least I can request you! I don't hate you. Hatred kills us from within. It just puts me at unrest. It appears stormy, cold and dark.
So please, let me savour you this year and I will savour you forever.
Let me cuddle the wind and nuzzle the snowflakes. Let me hold you, gently and live with you, so that the next time when you come, neither of us feel alone.

Paradoxes

"This life, this month, this day, I am never going to forget. Not because so many things happened but because so many things became a memory. You know, it is good for a moment to pass and turn into a memory. It makes sure that you don't face the same thing again until you consciously travel in your conscious." she wrote her mind and pressed the enter button after considering what she had written. For a while, pondering over the fact that he don't care. That he would never care. In this life, at-least no.

He received the text, immediately. Swiping down the notification panel, he further swiped the notification, not pressing it but elongating it in order to read it then and there so that he can ignore the words that might pierce him. He read, focusing, manipulating and interpreting each word.
It was difficult for him to resist a reply, after all it was 'her' message that he had received. He thought, pressurizing his neurons to think and stir a reply.

"I am glad that it turned into a memory for you. But don't forget that I am still alive, if not with you then at-least in your memory that you would avoid reaching out to. But how paradoxical it all seems. 'Never going to forget' and then 'travel in your conscious' to unravel it. How forgetting is linked with remembering a memory, which is already forgotten the moment it has passed. All I want is you to be happy and do whatever makes you happy." he typed and sent without thinking even once about what he had written. "People leaving often makes you happy, and today I am the happiest. And I always did the 'whatever' that will make me happy. Like letting you go and more than that, finding a reason that makes you leave." she replied in a tone too careless for him to handle. That was not what he has expected; for her to not care.

They were just two paradoxes who tried to live together but eventually repelled each other.

A Reader In Solace

Sometimes I wish if someone could just walk and ask me about the books I wish to read, the wisdom I long to gulp. I hope that there will be a day when I would wake up to my favorite books and smell the words and hug the colors they would offer. Nothing tempts me more than the paperbacks and hardcovers with yellow pages printed in black. I reside where the books are! And simultaneously reside inside the books I read. And therefore, it is not just one life that I live, it is the life of the books that I read and live. Sometimes I wonder about how crazily one can fall in love with so many lives and cherish them altogether.

Books are so much better than humans, making you cry but making you better with each silently moving tear. Hurting you but eventually loving you too, unlike humans.
I am the words I read, the books I love and the silence I breathe.
People call books, a fantastical world, aloof from the reality it is the best bitter picture of the reality.
I didn't experience much and yet I experienced so much at the same time, joining them from star to star and making a constellation.
I lost myself when people had left, feel dejected umpteen times but words etched in the books always paved the way towards harmony after each page I read. I was not born reading but I definitely intend to die while reading. A reader in solace.
And if ever you fail to find me, search at the places where the books are, search in the places where meaningful words lie, in between the curves of the words and the spaces that connect them and you would find me in a position, better for everyone.

Stoic Calm

"Life itself is unhappy", this is what I heard in the middle of a lecture while my mind wandered in the outside world, searching for stillness. 

For a moment, I felt someone consoling me, telling me that it is okay to be lost, to be sad about something that happened days ago, but life is really an unhappy one and we are constantly consoling ourselves with the lie of how beautiful it is. 

I then woke up from the arms of the Morpheus, this time concentrating on what my lecturer had to say [she knew that I was depressed, she knew that something was bothering me, and I know this because she questioned me about what was disturbing me so much]. 

Sometimes all we need is someone to randomly ask us about our state of mind and she did that. Her question soothed me; she cared. 

And it was then that I got to know about what she was teaching. 

                                                                                   Riya Jain ©

'Acceptance of the fact that life is unhappy resulting in ones indifference towards joy and dejection.'

It was called the Stoic philosophy. Where "the Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgement, and that a sage, or a person of "moral and intellectual perfection", would not suffer such emotions... that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved." 

And then I realized that how important it was for me to be a Stoic. Life would be so much better when you stare at the moon and it makes you feel nothing. When you walk on the road and don't feel the need of having someone to walk with. When you could just be detached, disinterested and neutral. 

And when it seems hard to forget something, it is these little philosophies that reincarnate you into a better self, a stronger self. 

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.” 

-  Markus Zusak 

Shrunken Human

"Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are

I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart"

- Coldplay

You are the world, shrunk into a human. 
Why do you have to search for smiles outside yourself then?
Don't get consumed by what other people do to you, be your own consumption. 
You are enough for me, so let your little heart dream, of not the man who kissed you yesterday but the self who has been with you since years and will be there tomorrow. Don't let that self, bend down. 

You are a survivor; you can survive anything and everything. Rise above the love that hurts you, the hatred that stops you and makes your mind wander hopelessly amongst the flocculent clouds. Walk out of the mind corralled with the thoughts of someone who does not care, of something that splinters your spirit. 
You are a map, find the empty spaces and fill it with the happiness not given by the 'other'. Perfuse the ocean with the echos of your soul. Occlude the States not with the bright light that blinds you like the darkness, but the sunlight that fuses life into the body each morning. 
Yesterday he held your hand and he felt good, he kissed your neck, your ear and his heartbeats escalated. Today, hold your hand and make yourself feel better, turn your head away and don't let the scars of his kiss remain. 
Walking away is difficult, but it is not impossible either. Leaving memories behind is harrowing but they will fade with time. 
Work on yourself and let the love, love you; let the care, care for you; let the brokenness surface you in a way that it heals you. 
Be your purest self and I will love you the way I loved him yesterday, the way I carried his heart in mine, the way I took care of the new book I bought; the way, I take care of the words I write. 

You are the world shrunk into a human and a single person cannot break this world down.

She Was Alive, Beside Me

And again I stood outside the same cafe, where I saw her, sipping from her mug of coffee with her long fingers wrapped around the mug, as if warming her cold hands on a freezing wintry day.
Wait? Do you know me? No.
We never met.
Hi! myself, Kabir Malhotra, a Literature student, by fate.
So, let me begin again.
I stood outside the same cafe, where I saw her, sipping from her mug of coffee with her long fingers wrapped around the mug, as if warming her cold hands on a freezing wintry day.
She looked weird, distorted, her features - sharp, her fingers - long, her hands - slim. The word 'slender' would describe her better.
And a point to be noted: SHE WAS NOT COLORFUL.
Had I known that I would fall in love with HER, I would not have thought of her as weird and bizarre. But a person's hypothesis should not be ignored and I am a person, a human. And my mind is more of a person than I am, as a whole.
I miss her.
Offbeat? Yeah.

I miss her like the desert misses the rain and when it rains, the desert regrets about missing it so much.
We often make a perspective about someone which is wrong and only I know how broken she was. She was a havoc in herself. A black chaos, waiting to be resolved.
Her silvery eyes mirrored her spirit. How strong she was!
The burlywood colored smile adhering on her lips spoke so much about what always remain unsaid.
I liked it when she tied her ash brown hair into a bun and the auburn brown colored curls hung near the edges of her ear.
And a point to be noted: THE TAPED BOOKS SHE READ.
The different colored books she read spoke so much about her. The black words she had underlined told so much about her mind and heart. It was as if she always carried them in her reddish heart.
Her white silence always comforted me. Whenever I heard her breathe under the blue web of an immortal silence, I thanked god for she was alive, living  beside me, with me.
She loved only a few people, others were just a herd for her. And I am glad that for one minute part of my life she loved me too. She enjoyed staying around me. Her words tasted like cannabis, taking toll over me everytime she spoke.
And then she was no more.
I put color into her because I saw her colorless. Dark and pale. She didn't love plenty of them and maybe, after her reincarnation, she would love them a little more and appear colorful.
Colors - most of them she hated.
Colors - here I fill into her.
One fine day - daffodil smile - 'I am alright, Kabir' - pale eyes and a soul to lose.  

Survival Of A Facade

Often I think about the word 'survival'. A word too complicated and delicate. 

"It is the fittest who survives"- they say.
But it is the deceiver who survives. It is the person who lies that survive. Someone jeopardizing others, survive - I say.  

Everyone is fit for everything, it is just that the person who bears the vibrating strings of deception cutting into his soul, fails. 

While walking down the memory lane, I meet so many people again and they all seem so new to me because, maybe, I just saw their color and not the shades of it.
Shades which I see now, while walking down the dull, dark and real memory lane. 

You see, memories can be realistic containing REALizations.

A friendship often starts with a "hi", leads to "friends forever" and ends at a "goodbye", silent or loud, that doesn't matter.
A lover's relationship with his beloved often starts with a "hi", leads to "I like you" further leading it to "I love you" and then one fine day they realize that this "hi", "like" and "love" never happened to them. *VOILA!*

A facade, I would call it. 

And therefore, this world intensely scares me. 

Whenever I look around I see people sowing the seeds of lie, sharpening their tools for undermining the cavity of damage, nourishing themselves for injustice they do, knowingly or unknowingly. 

I fear this world like I fear the word I met recently, without a dictionary in my hand, like a whining sentence waiting for me to construe it while I am in my deepest slumber. 

This fear, this horror, time and again makes me want to stay at bay with what is going on out there. I, then result in alienating myself, because sometimes people appear too monstrous to me and a few felonious words just are not in my dictionary. I constructed a new one for myself while I was E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N.