And I can see the world hanging upside down
Tied to the Earth in the Sky with
A brown strand of my hair
When this city rains . .

:)

3 A.M.

You have been up
half the night already
listening to a man
fighting demons that
he created and fed olives
to, in his own mind.

It is a drunk night
that smells of cheap vodka
and broken dreams. blue
skies with stars that you look
up to, from your gutters.
stars, unreachable.

A night of Cohen, Tagore
Haikus, O' Hara and
tunes unsung, songs
unwritten. captured in
a bottled tucked away
deep in your mind.

A little man weeping
tears of glass from
his eyes that sting of ash,
falling on your hands
that hold his. unwanted,
your heat is, but still.

Your hands start to
scathe and scald
and words form out
of your burnt skin
making their way of
the window.

Out of the window
towards the moon
in dancing shadows
shadows of you
and him, loving.

You drain yourself
of all the words
that were remaining
to be spoken
by that filthy mouth
of yours.

Words he didn't like
words he never liked
words that mocked you
and words that tore
you from your being.

What does it matter.
you never were of much
importance, to begin
with. an unimportant,
lifeless, dreamless,
little woman.

I have never been a great lover of Nirvana.. hell ! I've hardly heard Nirvana or Kurt Cobain himself. And yet, this note .. speaks to me, in a way i can hardly begin to explain. Perhaps it is the fact that he could not appreciate all that life gave him, or the fact that he loved a few people very dearly but could hardly tell them so.. I really do not know.
But Cobain speaks to me.. like he were sitting right beside me and reading this letter to me.

"It is better to burn out, than fade away.."

Epitaph..ish

She was a girl. An ordinary girl. There is nothing much that one can say about her and there isnt much that one can write about her. She was not exceptional at anything particularly and she was nothing extraordinary. She was just another mortal and she never learned to appreciate the gift of life. Although she tried, and once, she even thought that she had learnt to appreciate the gift of life, but that was just an illusion .. like the million other illusions her world was made up of.

She was not perfect, far from it actually and she never could really decipher what perfection meant. She was never a good student and there isnt much to speak of her achievements. She didnt have too many friends and she couldnt keep any if she made any. She liked to be with people elder to her and she found the conversation of her fellow people mundane. Her parents disapproved of her and her Ma never had the chance to call up relatives and tell them about how she had scored so well in her exams. Her teachers thought she was stubborn, arrogant and rude and her school mates whispered amongst themselves about what a witch she was.She was not someone who was very strong-willed and she was not ambitious.

She was not always honest and she didnt always have a clear conscience. She did things she was ashamed of and she said things that rued later on. She hated studying and whiled her time away. She ran away from home a few times, and she spoke words so hurtful at times, that they would slash through your skins like swords. She was disrespectful to her Ma and Da and sometimes in a rage, she would tell them that she didnt love them and so could they please disappear.

But she loved her Ma and Da. She loved her friends and she would give her life to a girl named guddu. She loved reading and she loved books. She had always thought that she should have been a character in a book or a pebble on the road, but not human. She loved Eliot, Frost, Auden, and Wilde and she thought that Godfather was the only kind of reality she could ever understand. She loved music. She loved the way music flowed through her veins and she would get high listening to Pink Floyd. The only time she was true and honest was when she was singing. She believed that the only thing that would truly remain hers even when she died was her music. She was passionate and her soul burned with an unknown fire at all times. She loved Ireland, colors, literature, blues, writing, smoking, pencil sketches, art, films, jazz, rain, Cal, wind chimes, snow, Calvin n Hobbes and the dark among many, many other ordinary, uninteresting things. She was a dreamer and she dreamed her life away. She lived in world of imperfection and vagueness and dreams and illusions. She liked to make people happy and she liked to help people. She never learnt to forgive but she never bore a grudge against anyone. She loved to eat and she loved chicken and palak paneer.

She was an agnostic but it wasnt because she didnt believe in God. It was because she could not bring herself to believe in God, no matter how much she tried. She loved kajal and disliked make-up. She was melodramatic and she used to say that what's life without a li'l exaggeration and spice. She liked babies and she liked the way men's cologne smells. She fell in love and she wanted to fall in love again, because she knew that it was one of the best feelings in the world, but it was alright if she didnt- she had fallen in love once and she was surprised at the amount of love she was capable of. And there were million other things for her to love.

She would always smile a happy smile and if she was unhappy, she could not disguise it. In a very strange way, she was honest. She had tried never to lie to herself. She wanted to become a writer and she found solace in writing. She wanted to go to England but at times she thought that it would be betraying her country. Dont ask me why, she was absurd. She wanted to do something in life so as to contribute towards something noble, even if in a very minuscule way. She was always scared that she would not be remembered with fondness when she died, but she always hoped she would be. She was always one to hope a lot. She had always hoped to achieve happiness, to make her parents proud, to be successful in her own small way. She had hoped that she would one day become a writer, sing for a good band, teach children English Literature, live in Ireland and die a painless death.

She wasnt much, but she was all that she could be. Perhaps you wont remember her, but if you are one who at some point of time, had made any difference to her life then think of her with tenderness because at the end of the day, she was not so bad and she loved you. Even if for a very short while, she loved you. And if she didnt love you, then she must have felt something else for you. But she did, for certain, feel something for you. And she always thought of the people that made her feel something because it reminded her that she was human.

The Poetess and the Madman Who Loved Her.

So is it important to judge ?

Is it important to bring down a conscience and destroy a being ?

Are second chances never meant to be given ?

Forsaking everything you had, is it fine to pine and perish in the eternal hells of love ?

Once you could drink the stars holding his hand and walk on the seas.

Once you wrote songs together, creating and destroying worlds with your words together.

Once you saw all your life in that moment when you looked into his eyes.

Once reasons ceased to matter and life felt endless in every second.

Once you held hands and walked by the Ghats of a city that you both loved and named your children.

Once you argued Dali, Wilde, Ray, Tagore and returned to one another's arm as the night slept.

Once you dreamed dreams of a life where just the two of you existed.

Once you fell in love.

But now all that has changed.

and now, "love is so short. Forgetting is so long."

You bear a grudge against him, and he

On his part, doesn't care.

You dare not probe beneath the surface

For you wouldn't want to rekindle a dying flame.

Love is a strange word now.

Perhaps you don't remember what it means. How it feels.

And so,

It is important to judge.

It is important to bring down a conscience and destroy a being.

Is it ?

This thing called Love.

Reasons are few. Unreasonable, mostly.

Expensive even, Oh! Very- Telephone bills.

Arguments of Logic cease to exist,

Becomes rather Roman-ish, you see.

Sense & Sensibility? Not so, I should think.

Scenes of dragons and knights in armor

In the backdrop of a sky,

Roaring and thundering.

Classical. Quite so: this thing called Love.

Smell apples and vodka on his breath.

It's like a match. Strike it against

Another life,

And illuminate that desolate corner.

A house. White one with picketed fence.

In the midst of paddy fields. A horse

Is a must. And a Jack.

10 o' clock. Dim lights and

The sound of feet.. pit-pat pit-pat p.......

Pasta, wooden tales, old fashioned latches.

I soar, and soar high up, beyond the skies

Carrying with me, some

Diamonds and some Rust.

I grope, I can't.. I fall.

It ends. Bittersweet, perhaps,

But love. Love all the same.

(photo courtesy: reetika ghosh)