A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You

When I said I wasn’t with another girl
the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it’s because it wasn’t actual sex.

In the February that began our radio silence,
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.

Not only do they make you look too young,
but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway

for writing poems about you still.
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still

believe you’re there.
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,

I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing

I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me

is like being alone with company.
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I’m scared you’re my pink pony.

Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.

I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.
I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,

I would not have said no.
It would never mean yes.




- Jon Sands
http://exceptindreams.livejournal.com/176573.html

Not Yet

The most beautiful sea:
                   hasn't been crossed yet.
The most beautiful child:
                   hasn't grown up yet.
Our most beautiful days:
                   we haven't seen yet.
And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you
                   I haven't said yet...

      - Nazim Hikmet Ran

The Problem

So this week's been sorta 'enlightening'; in the sense of self-discovery. I learnt that my friends think that confiding is not a natural thing for me to do even with those I hang out a lot with. And that I have a perverted paranoia of looking vulnerable, and so I don't (among other things) talk about my insecurities.  Needless to say, this is all very puzzling to me, as I'd thought I 'shared' nearly just as much as others. Iss khushi (yaa dukh, as may fit better) mein:

I sit at this writing table
Writing about the wonder in my mind
Wonder at the workings of the people around me
Astonishment at what makes me odd.

What was thought natural, is now
Against how it ought to be
What was believed to be sensitivity
Is now a sense of manipulation.

The fountain spews out water
As far as it can;
It thinks that's what it should.
It doesn't see the grimaces on the faces getting wet.

It seems like a flaw,
But no one's correcting it
Is it even wrong?
- But no one's judging.

Like a pentagon-sided ball
I roll around awkwardly
Another side will make me even
But no one's distributing.

Oh, we'll find comfort

The waves flirted with the sand
The snails lost out
They rolled over rocks and turned foamy white
But retreated again,
And the crabs waited.

The clouds play hide and seek with the sun,
You can hear them saying ‘I spy’
While the sun feels cheated.
That moment of no heat is so sweet,
But the sun doesn’t back down; it shines. Again.

Two birds fly behind each other,
Looks like they want to pluck each other’s feathers,
But they circle around in merry paths,
Circle the big tree,
That just watches the fun.

A lover is like that sand, that crab, that sun, that tree,
Forever waiting, wanting the patience to wait,
Not knowing what to wish for
The sweetness of bitter longing,
Or the bitterness of requited love.

'I will meet you yet again'

Today my mind decided on doing no work. Don't ask me, ask it.

Somehow I always get very interested in people who retain so much individuality, it shocks you how they survived, and even lived (differentiating on the basis of spirit, I guess) in the same world you're so fed up with. Or not. Point being, that they just stick to what they think yaar; it's pretty impressive. Like Amrita Pritam: woman lived in Pakistan and India, independence time, left the dude who was giving her a hard time, had two love affairs, wrote two autobiographies, ultimately lived in with a guy younger than her for nearly 40 years. Is that impressive or what?

I wonder if I have the same conviction in myself, at least a similar strength to just do what I want, what I feel like - right or wrong. I wish I do. I mean, obviously, na. But then comes in that whole issue of collectivism versus individualism. If I have this conversation with my parents or anyone from their generation, they're going to have a very typical Oriental response of society before yourself. Crappy hai. Bahut.

Anyway, now I've got to work on not listening to Carnival to Rust on repeat. So bye.


It's all a game, avoiding failure, when true colors will bleed
All in the name of misbehavior and the things we don't need
I lust for after no disaster can touch, touch us anymore
And more than ever, I hope to never fall, where enough is not the same it was before.

P.S. The title of this post is the title of a poem by Pritam. Translated, of course. Here it is.

That face

The music resounds

The beat fastens

The moment heightens

And then there is quiet

Then, it’s that one face in the crowd

That one shining, glorious face

Looking at you

You looking at him

And then you dance. 

I Wish the Bubbles on my Screen-saver were Real

I wish the bubbles on my screen-saver were real

I wish the tears in my heart would dry

I want to have a good, bad fight right now

I want to have a good long cry.

I wish the world would right itself

I wish there were stores selling sensitivity, and feeling

So everyone could have a bit of them

I wish people weren’t poor. I wish I could wish away all deprivation.

I wish life was all that happy, and people all that good.

I wish everyone would wish for all that I wish, so it might just come true

I wish the bubbles on my screen saver were real.

Chhoti si Aasha

I want to be a biker
and travel wide all alone

I want to feel the rush of air
On my face
and feel my hair flying

I want to learn to play the cello
Wear that dress and play on stage.

I want to see people standing in ovation
I want to be deafened by their applause.

I want to read my name on book-covers
I want to read fabulous reviews on the back

I want to be quoted by them, I want to be heard.

I want to influence. I want to inspire.
I want to affect, I want to move.

Move hearts, move feelings
Move people, move nature

I want to change, yes I want to change
I want to change this very world. I want to transform every cloud every leaf every speck.

I want I want I want.

Sombreuil Roses

A shield, seemingly impenetrable
of mind games, of
false safety.
Struck once, and fallen.
For this, all these years?
Make a wall to break it?

Except LHS is not equal to RHS here;
Cos the wall has broken what was growing on it.

'Push yourself up' - they say.
On what?
What was built upon a fallacy is now in crumbles.
'That was real' - you cry:
Who hears?

Left with a mess.
'Left with a test;
For your strengths'
Or for your courage?

Will that collapse too?
If it is false.

Who's the judge? - you demand.
Who knows?
The doubt lies. The judge stays veiled. Your courage is burning.

But wait! is that a phoenix coming through?

To the Moon

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, -
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?


- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sophía

Often I have wondered
What must it be like to die?
How does it feel?
Painful or painless?

What does one think?
- Of achieved glories and exploits,
Of debts unpaid,
Or of emotions buried?

Does one feel sad to leave the stage,
Or happy indeed in the final act of the play?
But alas! Who shall tell me this?
For I know none who's
dead and come to demystify this truth of life
Known to no scientist, answerable by no teacher ...

But one thing I know
A long life is not my desire
To be wretched and afflicted is not my way
With disease I do not want to sway

For now my friends, let us
Not choose our requiem
For we have books to read, and
Places to see
And miles to go before we sleep.