THE BUENOS- AIRES AFFAIR

Some days I really think I’m cheating on Susan
I mean not really but metaphysically
I’m with her but I’m with Winnie
This is like a writer’s block
This is like a mid life crisis


We’re sitting at a marble table, eating lobster
And sipping red wine
I’m forcing a smile
But it doesn’t reach my eyes
I’m not too crazy about the food either
In fact I’m ready to vomit
I don’t hesitate to take such actions


The waiter is translucent
He whirls like a blender and meows like a hellish cat
The room is spinning upside down
My pupils are dilating
Susan is talking
I can’t hear her
Some excerpts-
“This Gucci….”, “You never….”, “How could Vanessa…”,
“Dad would never…”, “I told you we….”, “I’m thinking of…”
“I went to this…..”, “She has this….”Look at me…..”
“You don’t know….”, “Look at me”…”Me, me, me, me…..”


This conversation too is probably as profound as
Tommy Choo shoes
Or as relevant as
The Pompous Mrs. Smith’s daughter failing her Trimester
Or as life altering as
The movie where she knew the killer from the first scene
It always is something like that
Her words are-
Shallow and urban,
Just like her


I hate Susan
I hate Susan very much
She’s annoying
She’s a bitch
But not in bed
There, she is boring
And she talks and talks and talks
Now, bitches say- “Hello!’, “I found a bone” or “Let’s fuck!” or “Woof!
That’s basically all she ever says


But I can’t complain
I have everything-
The charcoal- black BMW
The gold license plates
The Harrods bed sheets
The lunches at Four Seasons
The downtown condominium
The garden with a swimming pool
The champagne on ice
The three storey brownstone
The scuba diving in Maldives
The mingling with upper class
The monogrammed tuxedos
The Monet from the auction
The forty fourth floor office
The sand wedges and the eight irons
The exorbitant Opera balconies
The bow- wearing butlers
And of course the marble table, Susan and the lobster
I have everything today
Susan is my wife, by the way


S-U-S-A-N-
Who spoke French better than English till she was seventeen
Whose biggest achievement’s been redecorating our house thirty two times
Whose sole aim in life is to catch me in bed with another girl
Who still thinks Dostoevsky is a brand of diamond jewelry


And as she cracks open the lobster
With the concentration of a portrait artist
I wonder how life would’ve turned up
Had I ended up with Winnie instead


That fateful monsoon in Argentina-
The Erudite poetry
The Wodehouse wit
The Salinger sarcasm
The Guerilla lovemaking
The Gravity’s rainbow
The Purple magnolias
The Missing mails
Her elephant memories never truly left me
Even today


And then, amidst the translucent waiters,
The fading memories and the spinning room,
I see her
On the table by the window
I see Winnie
And a man and a young boy and a young girl
Like the little me and the little Winnie
The one I knew


I observe a few things about her
This one had bloated like the belly of an architect
The caked make up distorted her face strangely
As though she were in a dreamy opera
The eyes that had once contained the whole of Guevara’s revolution
Were now veiled behind a golden pince-nez
Most of all, she seemed to be in love.
Like famous child prodigies
She too had got her character too soon


I don’t really stop and think about what dreams may come.
They’re out of my eraser-head like nightfall upon waking.
But I realized that I always saw you in my dreams
Now, I saw
You’d become too real
I can love someone without it being like that.
I keep them a stranger- a stranger who’s a friend


Then suddenly, Susan’s nonsense started to sound adorable
She actually believed something was wrong with me,
When I told her how beautiful she looked
She thought I was a) either having an affair or b) dying of cancer or c) both
I smiled to myself when I heard that
The smile reaching my eyes and also my ears
And then almost on the verge of tears,
She told me that she was three months on
And that she loved me
And that she was not trying to entrap me into anything
And that I should not pick up the dinner plate and smash it against the wall
And that she had heard from the doctor just today, she swore
And that she didn’t know it herself all this while
And that she’d arranged for the whole evening to tell me this
And that she loved me


I reached through the silver cutlery
For her quivering hand on the spotless tablecloth,
She convulsed with fear, expecting a scene
And closed her eyes
And for the first time in over three years
I laughed
She opened her eyes in bewilderment
And with that, I fell in love with her


Susan has since fainted on the table
With nervousness and delight
I’ve paid the check and am carrying her in my arms
Smiling and unconscious
Into the BMW
I tenderly pat her bloating stomach
Long live the new flesh


And while closing the door to the car
I see Winnie’s soul fly on the clouds,
On a magic carpet
And I look up her skirt
For the very last time

MURDER, SHE SAID

“Let’s murder someone together
We’ll have to completely trust each other
And it’ll make us different forever
It’ll prove our love, just give it a thought”

‘But what if we get caught?’

“Come on young man, live dangerously
We’ll kill a random person we don’t know personally
So the detectives don’t trace it back to us”


I’d often wondered how it would feel
For a normal person to kill someone
And I’d also wondered whether
I could get away with murder


I believe it had all started with a question-
‘How were we to test our love?’
I suggested a runaway wedding
But rather than agreeing to wed,
Lying in bed, giving head,
Raising hers, “Murder”, she said
Ever so nonchalantly
As if she were suggesting that Italian restaurant we go to
‘Let’s order palazzo spaghetti and a life to go with it’


But just hearing her that afternoon
I realized I had turned a corner
I had made a choice
I had felt something change inside me
And still, I thought
If I commit murder,
Would my hand shudder?

NOT ON THE LIPS

The ravaged family we left behind, in shame and silence,
With our notorious, bizarre liaison
The new world too acknowledged us,
Fallen angels, with cautious bewilderment
Like forced, fleeting encounters with strangers on a train


Amongst the things we lost in the fire, the loss of our virginities was the most tragic
Good looking, twenty one year old, brother of one, lover of two, blue,
Now a dead man


It started when through a glass darkly, I saw her face
Her gaze was like water drops on burning rocks
But our love was meant to be forbidden, like rape.
Or kidnapping or dark, bitter, Swiss, Chocolat
Oozing in the tears of the bitter moon
And tied together by blood simple


That autumn sonata, there was so much beauty in the world
I felt my mister lonely heart was going to cave in.
But the first imagining October,
Our love became stranger than paradise


In the mood for love on the slightest provocation-
Our illicit bodies rhyming like chimes at midnight
Your red squirrel hands, down and across
Stolen kisses, not on the lips
Nestled nights like lovers of the Arctic Circle
Chinese coffee before sunrise
Soft conversations on hard subjects
Feeling Minnesota
Leaving scorching beds the color of the red desert sun


Once upon a rainbow in my blueberry nights, virgin suicides
Sweetie, I lie, with my mysterious skin, reflecting skin
In an odyssey to your infinite abyss
Where the wild things are
We are still wild at heart
Like the way we were
Like juvenile, delinquent, wild strawberries


And then the Summer Interlude-
The last metro of love left the mystery train station
I wondered whether our love story
Will explode in our palms like a bottle rocket
And the angelic conversation would turn into
A war requiem
Then I’d be left with heart broken flowers
And stardust memories


Today morning, the detective asked me
Two or three things I know about her
Now I am going for the identification of a woman
With the cries and whispers that echo in the lost highway.
And as tears go by now, I walk alone
Will this fire walk with me?


Before the ashes of time fade our love away
May I have the last waltz?
The saddest music in the world begins to play
Apocalypse now may come for all I care

THE HOUSE OF TWO OR THREE STOREYS

I hear the requiem sirens far away
As I open the gates once again
To the two or three story brownstone
That still stood there
Amidst all our love and squalor


Life, like music, has a rhythm.
This particular poem will end with three sharp notes,
Like deathly drumbeats
From my Smith & Wesson’s
…..
…..
I’m always drawn back to the places I’ve lived in
The houses and the neighborhoods


I walk down gingerly
The familiar, gravel and cobblestone path
Carefully avoiding the yellow tape all around
The dysfunctional, pentagonal fountainhead
Antediluvian sculptures popping out now and then
Fake Renaissance scattered about…
In overcrowded gardens like
Restoration Rembrandts
With the yellow and pink gladiolas and
The delphiniums that needed watering


Some of the birds I could not recognize
How should one interpret the happy song of the meadowlark?
Or the robust flavor of a wild strawberry?
Is this a key to life in general?


Inside, I see the
Careless, onceuponatimemade, scrawls on the wall
Magnet on the refrigerator
And the photographs under it
And the memories inside them


Vaguely familiar
Like those who introduce themselves
Those who jump up and say hello
We don’t remember their names
But we swear we have met them somewhere before.


Then, in the library mist
For an instant I thought I saw a shadow
As beautiful and lifelike as a Vermeer painting
With a part-of-a-pair, pearl earring


That’s when I cried for the first time
In two and a half years
The tears are real.
What is this thing called a tear?
There are even tiny ducts, tear ducts,
To produce these tears, should the sadness occur
And the day when the sadness comes ... we ask:
“Will this sadness which makes me cry….,
Will this sadness which makes my heart cry out….,
Will it ever end?”
The answer, of course, is yes.
One day the sadness will end…..


And then I saw her old clothes,
Her hyper real clothes-
Effused with her vaudeville lifestyle….
Touching them, they reassured me
That she was there
Around me, somewhere
I stood in front of the mirror and wore her blue velvet gown


Yes, look in the mirror.
What do you see?
Is it a dream?
Are they mirrors?


Then I sat for an hour in the pendulum armchair
Which I imagined her reading Capote in
With quivering lips silently speaking each word


I searched the defrosting refrigerator
There were leftovers as though she were
About to walk in through the door
The bed hadn’t been made
Blood lay splattered on the floor
It was red, almost too red,
Like pools of tomato sauce
Masquerading as blood


From the French window, one could see
The lake with the houseboats
Across which were the croissant shops

The houseboats are still waiting
The bakers are still preparing tea
The sun still rises
But you’re not going to be there
Tomorrow morning
Or to share the sunset with me
From the porch in the evenings



I search for clues- DNA, footprints, fingerprints,
Hair strands, happiness, my childhood, my lost love…..


Our world is a magical smoke screen.
There are clues everywhere, all around us.
But the puzzle maker is clever.
The clues, although surrounding us,
Are somehow mistaken for something else
And this something else, we call our world


Why did it happen?


Behind all things are reasons.
Reasons can even explain the absurd.
Do we have the time? I think not.
Some take the time. Are they called detectives?


Today there is sadness in this world, for we are ignorant of many things.
Yes, we are ignorant of many beautiful things ... things like the truth.
So, we seek the truth
But then also the sadness comes.
With the revelation
There is a depression after an answer is given.
It was almost fun not knowing.
Yes, now we know.
At least we know what we sought in the beginning.
But there is still the question, why?
And this question will go on and on
Until the final answer comes.
Then the knowing will be full
And there will be no room for questions…..

She died, an unsolved mystery, twenty one hours ago

ILLICIT LOVE

Winnie died.
No one cried.
No one but me


Love and loss and death
My themes have darkened
But for every truth I disclose, I hold back so much


For the world she was an enigma
A walking mystery
They didn’t know her but I did.
I knew Winnie


I met her for the first time
When I was working on my second novel
At the forest guest house near McLeodganj
Where, from the rainy window,
One could see the multicolored mynahs
The mothers teaching the young ones how to fly
I wrote some great lines that July…..


Taking a break from work,
I’d thought: “I’ll do what my heart seeks”
And I had been writing off and on till then
For a couple of weeks


I loved going off for a month every year
By myself, into the wilderness
Places invisible on a Railway time table
Places traveled less
Places my colleagues had never heard of
Places that usually depressed


But I loved discovering the simple secrets
Of these pristine places- their bus stops, their eating outlets


Each of these places has its stories
Some of them are sad, some are funny.
Some are stories of madness, of violence. Some, ordinary
Yet they all have about them a sense of mystery.
The mystery of life, sometimes the mystery of death


For example, I discovered that-
There was a shop called Dada- Boudi in Panagarh
That sold delicious Jal-sandesh
That at Chittaranjan’s haat, the street vendor violets
Were always garden fresh
That there was a two hundred and twenty year old tree
In Chamoli- a hybrid of Ashoka, Gulmohar and Neem


This one time, I had also gone to forget someone
To erase my mind of her tormenting memories
(As if it attainment of happiness were that easy)


Singularly incapable of making eye contact,
Those were days of great introspection:
“Why do I fall in love with every girl I meet?”
“Why can’t they love me for who I am?
Like I love them, every single one of them?”


Then one night, partly out of heartbreak
And partly, sheer monotony
I created Winnie


Ingredients- two tablespoons imagination and love to taste
She could be appreciated either as a Lewis Carroll fantasy
Or understood as a Patricia Highsmith country house mystery
Or interpreted as a double bluff in the spirit of Borges and Pynchon
Or felt to be as distinctive and palpable as Salinger’s characters


She was like an optical Illusion I liked to show
Where I’d severe my thumb or shorten my elbow


She was....
Four parts Ingrid Bergman and three parts Virginia Woolf
(Minus the suicidal tendencies, obviously)
And one part each of the three women I ever loved


I never beat her in chess
I often took refuge in her mechanical chit chat
She would speak to me
On bloomless Sunday afternoons
In her automaton ballad voice
She used to say:
“If our love lasts a lifetime
Let the lifetime be a millions years”


And after that, I wrote at finger-blistering speed
And a first draft of the story emerged
I remember the rest of it in a haze, even now
It became a bestseller and my reputation surged


But she became more famous that me
I began getting envious as can be
The world called her unreal, out of this world
They were ready to do anything for this girl


And why wouldn’t they?
She did have the-


Joan of Arc eyes
Helen of Troy hair
Venus De Milo nose
Cleopatra lips
Mata Hari hips
Holly Golightly legs
Anne Frank’s innocence
And that Monalisa smile


Did she love me?
Even for an instant?


Then I remembered,
She used to say:
“If our love lasts a lifetime
Let the lifetime be a millions years”
Of course, she only spoke
What I wrote!


And now my lovely bitch
Had transcended the world which
I had created for her!


And so in my next book
It was her life that I took
In furious anger and blind rage
I strangled her on the last page


And the next morning, I got a million fan- letters
All accusing: “You brute! You murderer! ”


There was anger.
But no one cried
No one shed a tear.
No one was surprised


And then they said,
“She never really existed”
That she was me
Was that the reality?


I made her.
But she made me too
But I made her first

Her body went back to the earth.
I have a memory of her.
The memory is all that I have left of her

And the world could break apart with sadness in the meantime.....

MRS CHATTERJEE

I had seen that window on many nights
During my struggling writer days in Manali
And glimpsing from the dark alley way below it
I always imagined the lives it veiled-
Their melodrama
Their secrets
Their comedies
Their tragedies
Their stories


So many times, I picked up the pen
And so many nights, they pulled down the curtains
And the moment would pass


She was perhaps forty two or forty three
Some five years younger than my mother
Two children, strangers to her
One husband, oblivious to her existence
Never, a considerate lover


It was at her Terracotta balcony that I saw her for the first time
Mellowed by the winter afternoon sun
Looking down from the North West window
With a sad and longing face


Those searching eyes still haunt me
From time to time
What were they searching for?
I forgot the next lines in the song I was humming


She stuck out amidst those Western Landscapes
With her moon sized bindi
And her dazzlingly colored chiffons


A friendly banter with the colony milkman
(And a ten rupee note tucked into his palm)
Revealed that she stayed alone mostly
That her daughter was either married or dead
That her son studied at a boarding and was terribly ill- mannered
That her husband, a noted attorney often slept at his office
And traveled frequently out of town
That Gopal (the milkman) was certain that he was having an affair
And that he felt sorry for poor Memsaab and that…..


She never confirmed these suspicions
Even to me, later
Only that he did travel frequently
She had been suspicious at first
And then stopped asking altogether
I guess, he was just indifferent to her
He didn’t beat her or anything
I mean I didn’t see any purple bruises
Under her blouse


While her husband’s eyes were vacant
I could see the whole
Calcutta in her eyes-


The coffee house
The college street
The cutlet cabins
The unannounced rains
The tranquil trams
The traffic jams
The student politics
The Marxism
The Romanticism
The intellectualism
The animated Kieslowski discussions
The rhythms in the humdrum
The surreal Anglo- Indians
The Planetarium
The Victoria Memorial
The mustard mackerel
The lights and sounds
The poetic madness


For around a year after I first saw her
Tea was always at the Chatterjee’s
For she had the afternoons to herself
And that was also the time for the neighborhood siesta
Occasionally, she would prepare elaborate savories to go with the tea
That my mother couldn’t make and I, relished
And she would watch me eat, enthralled
As though I was showing her some optical illusion
I learnt later that she planned these meals, weeks in advance
But served with such selfless nonchalance
She was a fantastic cook
Of course, Mr. Chatterjee never appreciated that
Considerate as he was


And there, one afternoon,
In the French style kitchen,
For the first time, we made love


I also still remember their master bedroom vividly-
The thin cushioned, Charulata bed
The yellow and orange bed-sheet
With rows and rows of printed palanquin bearing elephants
The mismatching pillow covers in broad lime green checks
As though hastily stitched from curtain leftovers
The engraved Mahogany roll-top with a silver knob
The antediluvian carpet, coming out in faded clumps
The red lampshades that spouted diffused light at nights
The voyeuristic window that opened to the balcony
With her money-plants and delphiniums
That I observed, were in need of watering


All this
And always a vestige of Mr. Amarnath Chatterjee-
His horn rimmed spectacles
His Holmesian pipe
His erudite books
As though silent, testimonial witnesses
To our clumsy, clandestine, intercourses


But we tried our best to hide our love anyway
From her unsuspecting husband
From her tongue wagging neighbors
From her tormented conscience


We hid it in a hiding place where no one else would go
And here I would like to share something
I knew vaguely back then
That he probably knew about us
But why did he not do anything? Why?
I ponder….
He didn’t tell her anything


And she didn’t tell him
She didn’t tell Ria or Rahul either
But she told me one night
Just like that, draped up to her neck in the sheets,
That on one afternoon, one particular, winter afternoon
After turning off the stove
Looking longingly at her family album
And changing into her best Saree
She had gone inside the bathroom
Searching for one of Amar’s blades
After finding them, she stood in front of the mirror
And toyed with the idea of her touching her wrists with it
That’s when she heard someone humming Rabindra Sangeet
And that was the first time she had seen me from her balcony
With her Calcutta eyes


She confided this in me
The day when my heart too, was broken;
By a woman I’d hoped to marry


And apparently the same December day of the same year
In 2003,
Into her house and mine, came a stray canary.
In two widely separated countries


She believed in serendipity
But she also believed Iraq had WMDs
So one couldn’t always take her seriously


I always remember that conversation
Another thing I always remember
From those get-togethers
Was the incessant sound of the Television
In the background
She later told me later that she slept too, with that sound
A surrogate for conversations
She missed having and never had
Slicing sound of cars passing by in the distance


After that I remember nothing
But her red and white bangles
And her large, dark eyes
Exuding intellectual sensuality


Some days, she would only hold onto me
Refusing to let me go
On certain days, she would be continents away
And then there were days
She cried inconsolable tears


One random day, amidst careless playfulness
She revealed her first name, almost inadvertently, to me
‘Radha’


It was a beautiful sight at twilight
We would sit in the balcony of the house
And sip red wine in the light of little oil lamps
Unless of course it was a full moon
We didn’t need the lights though, did we?


Slowly, I began to miss her
Thinking of her
Looking out of my window five or six times in an hour
I started looking forward to our
Hurried, scandalous unions


Sometimes when I would arrive
I would find her with her purse
She looked forward to my visits
To surreptitiously leaving the apartment
She had spent her day alone in


At one of those instants, it became apparent to me
That she loved me
I was the only totally unanticipated pleasure in her life


It turned out we were from the same part of Calcutta
She would be playfully combative
As we discussed our shared passions
Cinema, Travel, Shesher Kobita
(Among some of the treasures she lost
During the wanderings of her adult years)


Slowly the mist started lifting from her past
Her daughter, Ria was married to an ivory merchant
Who was from another caste and settled in Kent
Theirs was a runaway marriage
Of which she had never approved
And the lovely bitch had punished mother
By severing all ties with her
Their only communication since last June
Was a haphazard, placeless postcard or two


Her son of nineteen was at IIT, Kharagpore
And didn’t need her anymore
The mysteries of anti matter
Of which he could never get bored
When she called, he thought she was being nosy
And that he was supposed to be very busy


And then I got my first publishing contract
And I had to move
Our goodbyes weren’t at all, melancholic
For we presumed, brazenly
That our separation was temporary
That our affair would go on forever
That I would come back on the 24th
And we would elope out of this country
But I never went back


We wrote to each other in the beginning
But then I began writing
And was seldom inspired to write back
It perhaps became clear to her
That I had stopped needing her
Abruptly and definitively
Just like Amar and her children had


And then four months later and exactly four years ago to this day
She died of a stroke on the stroke of midnight
In that very apartment she dreaded
She had wanted to travel
She had wanted to be truly loved


Today, when I see Mr. Amarnath standing alone
On that same terracotta balcony
I wonder if he knows that I’ve been a privy
To some silent secrets in the Chatterjee family

VENTRILOQUISM

I hide with words
Like a ventriloquist
Conceal myself in metaphors
And obscure the gist


But sometimes, my soul seeps through my writings
Like an ink stain
And I reveal myself
In odd pleasures and wistful pain


Because I write myself
In the words I make
In the turns they take
In the hurt they evoke
In the truth they suppress
In the bloodshed they cause
In the scandals they prevent


A word is a release- Therapeutic
A word is an Image- Calligraphic
A word is a field of study- Semantics
A word seems a Riddle to a Dyslexic
A word is a fractal in Interpretation
An image is a word via Representation
A word is a mirage- Non Sequitur
A word is a clue- Key to a Cipher
Silence is a word- Pantomiming
Words form lyrics in songs we sing


Some words spell the same backwards
They call themselves Palindromes
‘Hi’ is the most common English word
On every town and gin joint, it roams


“Why didn’t they ask Evans?”
Six Words etched in history
Those were the last words of a dying man
And then ensued a murder mystery


Sometimes words can foil a terrorist attack
Remember the Kandahar hijack?
People said Osho’s words made one heal
And Cobain’s words made them feel
But that’s all bullshit
As a mode of expression
Words are ultimately unfit


Our words like castles in sands
Will be gone one day
It’s all temporal
It will all go away....

PRIVATE DETECTIVE

There's so much more to say
There are both riddles and word play
Make sure you find the time
For these complex poems of crime
Because they seek your full involvement too
If you can't find the time, they're not meant for you
Interpret them as you may
Try again tomorrow or today
For example, if to begin, I say:-


”Anuj, my understudy,
read daily;
enigmatic riddles,
horsing around,
sitting often comfortably;
contemplatively
understanding
recursive, rhyming,
elaborate dialogues
in nearly two hundred eccentric poems,
obfuscating even me“


….Then what do I mean?


And the rest of this poem is also fraught with suspense
Alibis, Motives and Forensic Evidence
There are several clues in this thriller
I dare you to break the code and catch the killer


Here, everything has to rhyme
And there has to be a mystery in almost every line
I’m sure it will enthrall you and me
And also abide by rhythmic meters and melody


Before you ask, “What happened next?”
Remember, it’s a deconstructionist text
Everything happens within only these lines
Meet the suspects, be the detective and observe the crime


Do you understand what I’m saying or have said?
One day, a pedestrian, noticed a man, lying dead.
In front of a bank with currency notes strewn across
They called Detective David to inspect the cold corpse


Without any delay, David started to investigate
Assuming rightly that the police would, as usual, be late
He called out for witnesses and questioned them in succession
A few facts emerged from the interrogation


Apparently, shortly after the incident, a man was seen at that time,
By some in the crowd, scurrying away from the scene of the crime
They described him as wearing patent leather boots
And an expensive, pinstripe, tan colored suit.
He also wore a blue or green shirt and a red or black tie.
Then the coroner told David when the victim had died


Death had happened at nine at night
When the security was reportedly, not all that tight
And then finally, when the police came around,
Strange marks near the victim were found


Ah, a twist in the plot!
I like it a lot
And then?
Did anything happen?
With its smashed glasses and tattered shirt
The dead body was lying in the bloody dirt


David thought that the reason of death may be a little hazy
But he couldn’t yet rule out a conspiracy
The marks could be a secret message for the detective to save
Left by the killer whose description people gave


The contents of his pocket and wallet revealed
A letter of appointment at ten with a “B”
A set of cards, restaurant bills and keys
A cryptic message the victim had tried to conceal
8-14-24-26-17-14-3-4-20
Letters from a woman who was not the victim’s wife
And several threats to his life


A receipt showed that a lot of money had been withdrawn from the bank
But most of the money had vanished and so, David’s hopes sank
Was it a serial killer crime or simply a case of Theft?
Were there any other clues left?
Was the killer’s name, a palindrome?
Did the killer suffer from a syndrome?


And then it struck David
Thinking over various things
That it was not a palindrome but an acronym
That killed the victim
The name was a warning in itself that you couldn’t ignore
A self contained warning filled with gore.


And before I give you the final clue,
Let me say this to you:-I didn’t reveal the end as though I had something to hide
Even David couldn’t grasp it no matter how much he tried


Although half of what I say is meaningless
For the other half, I digress
And parts of it can’t be understood.
It is often gibberish. And gobbledygook


Do you find it elementary, my dear Watson!
Finding out whodunit and how it had been done?
So, then, you’re right, missus and mister
This poem was sinister

1:2

(A casebook on how same set of words can be differently used)

Mr. X:
I remember the star,
which was plucked from the sky
by my father
And touched on my forehead by it.
I remember---Then a beautiful wave spread over the World


Mr. Y:
Remember my father
Was plucked from the World by
A beautiful star---
Then spread over the sky
And I touched on the wave by my forehead
By which I remember

STAR BABY

I lie awake on the naked rooftops
Of cloud lapped skyscrapers
And I feel cold....
Until I feel your starry gaze upon me
From a million feet tall,
Synthetic billboard.....


Before you embraced the silver screens
You played only for me
But you were only playing your part well
That I could never see

And now you would only
look at me from afar
You are nothing
But a busy shooting star

(A) “CASE OF VERONICA’S TEARS”

Excerpts from the diary of Veronica Ray (2008)


"Your honor, I’m representing Ms. Winnie Banks
In case number two filed against Ronnie’s dad
The couple is now separated
And the joint estate’s been probated
The alimony will cover the court fee.”
“Mr. Attorney!
What was their divorce plea?”


…Irreconcilable Differences…
I know many difficult words
They permeate my senses
Disorientation reigns
Sympathies feigned
With clucking of tongues


Like my most hated uncle, Winslow
Who I see watching from the back of the row
His brown pullover almost camouflaged
By the mahogany of the room
And a few of my parent’s friends
One of whom I recognize from my last birthday party
Because of his rockabilly hair
Baba never liked him either


It’s just like in the movies here
And Perry Mason novels
Murder trials
I see the court draughtsman capturing the scene
I see the Baillie typing furiously his transcripts
If I am to think later that all this was maybe a nightmare
They’ll show me the pictures and the canvas
And remind me that it wasn’t


Justice is wearing a robe but not a wig
Justice is blind….and deaf and dumb
His files fall with sharp claps or dull thuds
Depending on their weight
Today, I’m told, that he and I
Will decide my fate


Meanwhile….
Argumentative chatterboxes
Talking without speaking
In their blacks and whites
Mamma clasps my hand tightly
I see Baba’s tears
And I remember their fights


I used to pretend to be asleep alone
One afternoon, Mamma left home
And I was forced to accompany her
Like a useless decaying rag doll
Come to think of it, even today
I was forced to miss geography
Order, order!


The judge has a benevolent face
With rotund laugh lines near his crinkling eyes
Any second now
He’ll condemn me to the Dickensian workhouse
“Rigorous Imprisonment for having your agonized your parents
With your sheer mockingbird existence! ”
And then he’ll laugh!


The first few hours have been rather eventless
Now, they’re beckoning me to the stand
I’ll say the whole truth and nothing but the…..
“Veronica, dear, I know this must be very difficult for you
But I want you to tell this court whom you want to stay with”
………….
Silence
…………
I looked at them
One in her Swarowski crystals and the other in his vintage suit
I shouldn’t judge them
Both undoubtedly loved me and me them
…………...
Silence
…………..


And then, as soon as I had the chance, I blurted out
“Baba!”
“But, even after knowing that he’s an alcoholic…
Your honor, I move to strike!
I present Exhibit A-
Max doesn’t have a job and he cannot possibly take care of a…”
“Order, order!’,
Said the kind judge-
“She has made her choice and the case is closed“


Mamma and I shared a long, last, devastating caress
She smiled understandingly
I could see her once a week at her place
But I can still see her every night in my sweet dreams
Her face at the power window of her limousine


I pondered just for a second for what I had refused
And what I may someday miss
All about my mother
But someone else had needed me more that day
And as he held my hand and we walked back home
I felt, that finally, at long lastJustice had been served

(B) “IN THE YEARS OF NO MOONS”

Excerpts from the diary of Winnie Ray (2004 to 2007)


Once, there was a man.
I knew him.
Or at least I think I did


He taught me compassion
He taught me love
He taught me the pain of a broken heart.


Somewhere down the line
We stopped loving each other
It was so unlike us


How are we not ourselves?
It’s like our lives got lost
And we haven’t located us yet


Our life was what passed us by
When we were busy making other plans
And what happened to the love that we once knew….


It’s been so long…..
Since we took the time
Since we looked at each other
Since we held hands
Since we really conversed
Since we made love


Although love is the most irrational phenomenon of all
He doesn’t love me anymore
I can see it in his eyes


His eyes are distant
The man that once used to make me laugh
Has become poignant


And on rare occasions when I speak to him
It’s like I’m speaking to a stranger
I hate
His inscrutable silences


Our love has faded
And we’ve become like those couples
We swore we’ll never emulate


It’s like a constantly ticking time bomb
How will the sadness come and when?
We fought again on Thursday
Over the sensitive topic of asparagus, no, my career


Often when I trace the sources of our fights
I laugh in retrospect
Our reasons are so shallow, like excuses


Sometimes, in the early days of our marriage
After every argument and strife
When I refused to speak to him for days
He wrote an apologetic letter to me
And despite the nullity of his writing talent,
I admired his attempt
For he admitted to missing his wife
Not many would
But then slowly
The letters stopped


Anger and hurt and intolerable pain
Pain, pain- be gone
You shall have no more of me
I strongly feel we both deserve better
And often I wonder if we should just fall apart


But then I look at Ronnie’s angelic face
And I think I would put up
With any torture in the world
To just be there for all the moments
In the life of my little girl


Can you take me back where I came from, can you take me back?
Cry baby cry, make your mother sigh
She’s old enough to know better


Someone could take a picture of the three of us
Him and me
And the society in between


Nervous about meeting J that night
Decked up in my avant garde make up
And my diva clothes
I felt as if I were in a Fellini film


When suddenly, he walked in
His silence lurked dangerously
Like a robber in the dark


And then he spoke the words I had for long expected
With Beckett’s devastating economy
And then he left
And I was left

(C) “SOME KIND OF PARADISE”

From the diary of Max Ray (1997)


She is…..
Like a delicate goddess made of brown glass.
Like fragile butterfly’s wings,
Like a rare orchid,
Like a terracotta figurine.
If you touch her, she’d almost get smudged.


She’s intriguing and baffling at the same time
Like a painting by Dali
She’s deceptively unsure of herself
Like a tackle by Paolo Maldini
Her image I can instantly evoke
Not having to skillfully recreate,
With shut eyes,
On the dark inner side of my eyelids,
The optical replica of my beloved face,
A little ghost in natural colors
This is how I see Winnie
In the laboratory of my mind


She just walked into the bedroom
Oh, she’s looking so totally hot.
I could totally have her, right now
Yes my lovely bitch
Then she bends over
My shoulder
And asks me what I’m writing
“That’s such a misogynistic way of looking at women….
Treating them like sex objects….that’s so inhuman”
How is it human to not want sex? I say
And then we kill the lights


I love waking her up so that I could talk to her
And I love that as she listens with her big, sleepy, eyes
She looks at me incredulously, every time
As if I’m the best thing in the whole world
And she’s surprised as to how I don’t know this
Incredulous eyes


Eyes that had more melodrama
Than a Mexican soap opera
Cinema is dead.
Godard killed it
I incarnated it in her


I love watching the hair strands on the neighboring pillow
First thing in the morning
I love the wild, imaginative sex
Last thing in the night
Winnie- light of my life, fire of my nights


Today we stayed in bed
Wild attempts we made
We sprawled all morning, in,
And took advantage of every blessed moment
In space and time
To touch each other;
To graze each other's hungry lips;
Her quivering mouth
On mine
I love her scent of some kind of lavender biscuit


Her mysterious intake of breath came near to my face in the dark
With a generosity that was ready to offer me everything
Her heart
Her throat
Her entrails (of which more later)


She trembled and twitched
With the expression of a dream upon her face
Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together
I was on my knees
Solitary ecstasies


And as I’m going to work today
With my aching veins and a telltale smile
That four poster bed,
The haze of her caress,
The tingle of her touch,
The flame of her mouth,
The honey-dew skin
And the ache,
Remain with me

(D) “THE ANGEL AT MY TABLE”

Excerpts from the diary of Max Ray (1995)


Poised pen
Breakfast at seven
Waitress Women
Passing by me
Morning coffee
French toast
Immaculate tablecloth
Oatmeal roast


And then I see her with her emerald pies
And thousand island eyes
She gives me Word Salad
Dressed in an olive and honey gown
She just glanced at me
And I just looked down


The Angel at that table-
Her smile lingers for a second too long
And then that gaze
Maybe I should stop writing and go up to her
But what would she say?
Should I just walk away?


Excerpts from the diary of Winnie (1995)


Finally
That Wes Anderson look-alike (and that can’t be bad)
After a dozen or so
Stolen glances
Is walking over here
This should be something


Generic Greeting
Generic Greeting accepted and reverted
What’re we supposed to do?
Silence
You just said silence. It doesn’t make any sense
Interesting conversation follows
Romantic notions persist


Emerald eyes
Beehive hair
Motor mouth
Dulcet voice
Small talk
Wrong adjectives
Bellhop bowtie
I observe


And I think:
‘Do you do this regularly? Hang out with strangers?’
And I realize that I don’t
He must be quite something then
“Think of a number between one and ten
It could be love, if it is seven”
“It must be fate, I said
It was a six“
“We were almost there”
He’s such a romantic
A Catcher in the rhyme
If only…..

SUNSET CAFE

Winnie? ...........................................................Oh my God! After all these days!
Um, hi ……………………………………………….What’s HE doing here anyway?
This is so surreal. Remember me? .........Say yes; say yes, yes, please
Yeah, I remember you from school.. I never forget how I used to feel about you
Me too………………………………………….... Do you believe in Déjà vu?
I know………………………………………………….So long ago
Was it just a dream? ....................................Seemed so real to me
Maybe………………………………………….. Perhaps we’re still inside our memory
We can’t prove anything, right? .................Space is an illusion and time is a lie
Eternal now- We’re never born. We never die……Why did we meet again? Why?


What’re you doing here, Max? .................. I wanted to run into you, Winnie Banks
I’m writing my next book ………………..Oh, do you realize how lovely you look?
Oh, what's it about? Tell me……......A writer- that’s all he ever wanted to be
Um, it’s a thriller…………………The twist is that the detective himself is the killer
Sounds really interesting………… Tell me more. Are you rich? Is it a bestseller?
So, I became a writer; ………………….What did you make of your loneliness?
Winnie, what are you up to? ......................... Last night, I had a dream about you


My story is fictional too………………………………..No place or event is true
What do you mean by that? ...................... Are you saying we’re in our flashback?
I’m a locked room mystery…………………A character living out of your poetry
Listen, I want to keep talking with you…………….. I hope you do you too?
Let’s take that table…………….Once, silences were not this uncomfortable


Think of this as time travel……….…It’s 19th December, I hope she remembers
I hope so too………………………….….We were talking. Just me and you
It’s as if that memory never ended………..……….Time is flying past
Time goes by and people cry…………… And everything goes too fast


Being part of someone's memory…. Seeing myself through your eyes on me
All I can remember is us fighting…..Looking back, I’ll complain about nothing
I guess a memory is never finished…… Inside each moment is another memory
You really believe that? ........................ That everything is fate and destiny?
Is truth an illusion? Was the Buddha right? ... After a day, is there always a night?
Am I speaking or is it being written for me? ................ To be or not to be
I feel these words have telepathic properties……And we are reincarnated entities?


There was a writer who wrote the future…….thought he knew the answers at last
Maybe he wrote about the present & called it future……… for he lived in the past
He found romance in remembrance. I did too…..In my implanted memories of you
Winnie, where did all those years go? .......... We saw the world through tiny keyholes
If you’re not careful, they get away from you…..And there’s nothing you can do
Why were you so cold in the end? .......... You didn’t reply to the soulful letters I sent
Max, I knew, our love would fade someday..... But I fell apart once you walked away
I looked away when you had tears to hide…..I let you cry alone and I stood aside
I know we’ll miss those times always ...….At least we have the sweet remains of our days


I wish I could lock up your laughs in a box….So I could listen to them some day
The past is immutable, frozen, buried………….. It was meant to be that way
There’s nothing you can do to change it…….. The years shall run like rabbits
Even if you go back to that day? ... Can I see the future if it didn’t happen that way?
Or even tomorrow in other’s caress…………My heart will stay yours until I rest


They don’t just remember the conversation……… They’re there
They’re in both moments simultaneously… If it is a memory, they don’t care

A DAY IN BOBBY'S LIFE

Morning coffee
Marmalade memories
Wandering thoughts
Wild blueberries
Limousine love
Tangerine tart
Sunset plane
Ocean apart
Surreal sorrow
Ballerina grace
Existential mystery
Monochrome days
Nuclear nights
Kafkaesque seclusion
Fantasy parades
Daydream delusion
Technicolor afternoon
Angelic conversation
Eventful evening
Limerick location
Interstellar skies
Chandelier eyes
Chernobyl tears
Wistful sighs
Bodyline shame
Madonna lips
Lust gnaws
Jeans ripped

MEMORIES IN THE MIST

invigorating long chats,
writing graffiti on campus walls,
the randomness of thoughtful Sundays,
the gruesome Mondays,
the instant noodles,
the casual irreverence of youth,
the mindnumbing seventh periods,
discovering Salinger,
trying to discover oneself,
the inspirational jam sessions with Aniruddha on the rooftops,
writing soulful poetry for Binya,
devouring idealism,
thinking about particle accelerators,
getting drenched in rains,
‘Lost in Translation’ at Picaddily,
the long hair and Guevara Tshirts,
the thousand possibilities, the million dreams….


I miss them all.
Whenever I see the old slam-books, I miss them all.
Whenever I tell you about them, I miss them all
For they were all part of me
But do they miss me too?


I feel that they still remember my name,
But I fear tomorrow they will stop.
I fear it because I love it.
And everything you love, you fear you will lose.


But as of today, if you go to GMNC, Mussourrie
make a point to visit the first storey
of the old Science wing
behind the pine and oaks, besides the tennis court
engraved under one of the desks,
you shall find my name
I was there
And the class of 2002


I can still feel the cacophony, dissertations
hear the echoes and snatches of conversations
I still go there
From time to time
In my memories in the mist


‘Sic Transit Gloria’.
Glory Fades…..
But we had actually thought that it was possible.
We had dreams in our eyes once.
All those years, all those sacrifices.
Once…..


I often think of those days
When we were trying to change the world
Who did we think we were?
And the world may not have changed in a thousand ways
But at least, we tried. We did all we could.
We believed
We almost won.


Even if you amputate a person’s arms, he can still feel them tingling
The past clung on to my fingers like gum
The days of being wild


I'm walking along the beach in a howling gale-I hear the voices of dead friends wailthe voices from the past, wistful reminiscences,
a longing sadness and remembrances
Voices that echo and slur
and then were lost forever


My pen chased this story across the page tossed this way
It was quiet today in yesterday
But we had filled that classroom with the echo of many voices

It had welcomed many summersEmbraced many laughter and tears
Yesterday stretches, yawns and is awake.Here I am, again in the waiting room. It’s going to rain
And when it rains, it pours


Let the rain wash away the old, dried paint of my classroom
And the colors and sorrows of the past
And when the rain goes away,
These memories in mist will remain at last
One day, far into the future,
Again the clouds will gather.
And again it will rain
Will history remember our name?


For we were there once
The 2002 alumni list
And we still remain there
In our memories in the mist

CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL KILLER

I feel lethal on the verge of frenzy.
I’m in ceaseless pain
I’m having another manic attack.
Enjoying going insane


Sunday evening when I was driving by an old, rickety lane
I saw four or five young girls, passing by in the pouring rain
And suddenly, I was swamped by an urge so wild and dense
That I felt my heart was going to burst with thoughts so intense.


I imagined them, undressed- bound and scared and submissive
The desire was strong but I tried to be calm and felt I should let them live
That one of them might get killed sadly
But I knew he wanted to kill so badly
Acting on an impulse, I followed them quietly,
Treading on foot, ever so lightly


Waited a few more seconds till the coast was clear
For me to choose the twenty- seventh victim
She’d usually be a pretty girl with a coy exterior,
Except when I selected on a whim


Today I picked the red lipped one
With the hair in mahogany guise
She wore new blue velvet.
Bluer than velvet were her eyes


When they were looking away, I crept up from behind
Dabbed her with chloroform, avoiding traces one could find
Then waited besides her and waited for it to get dark
Before I could roll her back snugly in the trunk of the car


Then later I drove away from there,
My exhilaration too much to bear
For seventeen long hours after that, he sodomized the woman.
He scared and beat her half to death but it felt like so much fun.


I punched her real hard in the face
That threw her rolling all over the place.
She whimpered and moaned helplessly
Crawled back in fear, looked up for help at me


She gasped and sobbed, with terror filled eyes
And a horror heartfelt
And I smiled at her, sympathetically first
And then, unbuckled my belt


And I felt this wonderful feeling then
Just have to go on murdering again

LAST TIME I CONTEMPLATED SUICIDE

I’m not going to tell you why. I’m simply not
I’ll only ramble about the ‘how’ part a lot


First, there was this one time in kindergarten
After I had got punished by the hostel warden (don’t remember why)
I decided to eat lots and lots of chalk,
Thinking it was some kind of poison
Ten chalks later, I learnt my lesson;
All I got was indigestion
No rewards for my indiscretion
No, no death, sadly
Even though I wanted it so badly
I threw away the chalks and the eleventh chalk broke


Then I grew up and went to college
Where I met Winnie Banks as I said
But she went out with Lenny Hall
And I went on and….graduated
But before I did, I tried to see the cloud’s silver lining
Always went outside when it precipitated
Tried my very best to get struck by lightening
But it never did and thus my heart broke


Then I got married
Entered into an argument in the kitchen with my wife
When she threw the chicken at me, I picked up the kitchen knife
I said theatrically, “What’s the use in living in all this strife?”
Proceeded to slash my wrists with it but couldn’t end my life
Our cutlery was plastic, like our lives and the plastic knife broke


Then, when I screwed up at work, my boss had a go
And I made an attempt that caused much consternation
There are several worse ways to die, I know (eg. self strangulation is the slowest)
But none more embarrassing than autoerotic asphyxiation
Once again the plastic broke and broken plastic saves lives


When my wife left me, I drank and gambled and got ridden in debts
I took a loan and bought a gun and planned an instant death
I decided to shoot myself in the mouth
As that would cause the minimum bleeding
Anywhere else would be too messy
I wanted to leave my corpse good looking
I wrote, a suicide note
So that later, my wife would get upset
I pulled the trigger but nothing happened
I remembered I hadn’t bought the bullets
I couldn’t afford to buy any after that or I’d be completely broke


The last time I contemplated suicide
I actually carried it out and died
Although I clearly didn’t because I’m writing poetry
Unless of course you believe in supernatural entities
Breaking and Entering into broken lives, please undead me

I WANT TO BE A GIRL

1)
I WANT TO BE A FOOL
Then life wouldn’t be full
Of unanswerable questions
Existential angst, pain and pessimism
And I could get through in this life
Thinking that it was gonna be all right
Not thinking for a change that life was illusory
And that all we do is meaningless and arbitrary
In course, satisfaction, slowly replaced philosophy
In bed, giving head, fed up, she said,
“What difference does it make to me?”
And just then, in the python like grip of her lip,
I had, what alcoholics refer to as, ‘a moment of clarity’
It makes no difference from where you come
But where you’d like to be

2)
I WANT TO BE A GIRL
See how the other half lives in this world
Making the world go around me
A femme fatale, an anatomical mystery
Writing verse, prose and poetry
Without being branded effeminate
Getting away with writing badly, a Dostoevsky wannabe
My work could even afford to be late
I could make my publishers wait
Never meet deadlines on due date
I’d charge an exorbitant rate
My Beauty reassuring my fate
In the meantime, giving stock Beauty Queen speeches
World Peace, Mother Teresa, bikinis on beaches
Woman of substance before substance abuse
My platform to misuse
I could avoid working altogether too
Throw it all away, make merry and laugh
And before drying up, marrying the jerk
From the first paragraph
And I’d become the girl I always wanted to be
Feel my breasts whenever I want for free
I want to be inside her mind,
Feel her thoughts, all of a kind
I want to be her because that’s what I have got to be
To feel her thoughts to know if she felt anything for me
If I were her? Would she love then?
But when now I’m her; can I be me again?

3)
I WANT TO BE A BEE
I find insects fascinating and honest
They eat, defecate, procreate and rest
And when you get down to it
It’s all we ever do too
But we kid ourselves into believing
That life actually has a purpose and meaning
To be or not to be
That’s not even a question
To be a bee or not to be a bee
To be a bee but not to be or to be but not be a bee

4)
I WANT TO BE A WEREWOLF
I think my secret would somehow make me special
Girls would be attracted to me being vulnerable
And when I turned into a wolf on a full moon night
She’d moan and think that hairy men were quite alright

5)
I WANT TO BE A PARAPLEGIC
I’m not flippant. It does have some logic
THEN maybe it would be enough to just keep on breathing
Not another thought in the head but incessant paining
Yes, pain but at least facing life with it would be braving
Content with your disabilities;
Fell down the stairs, neck down paralyzed
Content with being a frozen vegetable,
Everyone sympathized
Without these things, one is supposed to chase after enlightenment
Only to end up less happy and in utter disappointment

6)
I WANT TO BE A DOMESTICATED, STRAY DOG
I’d get lots of sex and sunshine and regular meals to hog
But would not have to wear a collar or to stay leashed indoors
Bark needlessly and only when I want to, save my voice from getting hoarse
Wave my tail perfunctorily always and make squealing, false- gratitude tones
Whenever the lady of the house, in her sexy blouse, fed me the leftover bones

7)
I WANT TO BE EXTRATERRESTRIAL
Creature of unknown origins and surreal
A long, long time ago in the future
In a galaxy far, far away somewhere
I could be born an alien in a space odyssey
With more than even astronomical probability
But whether or not we’re the only ones in the universe,
And we may have our families, friends and homes
In our own ways, on this earth, it really is worse
That we’re all already aliens, we’re all alone
And is there a need for a war fuelled by Artificial intelligence?
With Bush already having taken actions that were nonsense
He should be abducted by our UFO silver space ship
He should be made to see
The ravaged earth he left to me
From beyond the stratosphere as he goes on his infinity trip

8)
I WANT TO BE A SUPERHERO
The one superpower that I want is to be able to do anything
And that is all
Also wearing the underpants over my trousers
Without being obscene at all
Yes, I want that too. That and the X-Ray vision
Not having to question life or my mission
Jumping from buildings without a safety net is hardly fun
And I have to try not to be a disappointment to my woman
She’d be expecting a superhero in bed
I don’t have balls of steel, mucous membrane instead

9)
I WANT TO BE A POET
Maybe you can tell that by now
Perusing through this poem somehow
Can’t write more, sorry, I’m bored

10)
I WANT TO BE LOVED
It’s all I ever wantedAnd THAT is all

THE INSCRUTABLE POLITICIANS

CONGRESS
Odious sonorous ostentatious
Nebulous garrulous loquacious
Impresarios of perfunctory un-laconic
Impugn via glib gossamer phonetic


BJP
Bourgeoisie, ubiquitous
Inexorably fastidious
Lambently perambulated
Indefatigably accosted
Veritable verisimilitude
Inexorable platitude


THIRD FRONT
These lexicons of ribald salacity
Obsequious incarnate fraught periphery
And their spectral, antediluvian indictmentsIncite paroxysm in cantankerous delinquents

MY UNFINISHED NIGHTMARES

Godhra, 2001. A communal riot ensued one night.
It killed people left and right.
Strips of bloody flesh got wedged on the building wall
Naked limbs lay scattered afar with the bones sticking out of them all


Bodies precipitated from the sky
Churches were charred, children fried
Men died. Women died. Cats and Dogs too.
One of the guys in my college disappeared. A guy I scarcely knew


He used to read quietly
In a corner in the library
He liked solving crosswords with his earphones on.
We often smiled, passing each other. But now he’s gone
I never really got around asking his name or talking to him.
I found out later, only from news reports, that he was a Muslim


This brings me to the second part
And I start
To think of people that went missing,
In my life and others, often commingling
Most familiar, all mysterious,


A few I know from rumors
Some from a random newspaper on a rack


First is that beautiful girl whose face I saw
In a train window, some nine years back
Then that waiter who always served us with selfless care
During our late night latte days, sometimes for half the fare


My thoughts also go to Eva,
Our neighbor in our old ancestral dwelling
Under whose maternal gaze I spent my childhood,
My days of clumsy fledgling


My best friend in school who left his home
For adventures he envisioned
My mysterious uncle who sailed ashore on a naval ship
As he went on a secret mission


Alexandra Powers, the ingénue I adored
Who threw up her acting career and got lost in Scientology
And DB Cooper, the notorious hijacker,
Who jumped off a flying plane to disappear with ransom money
Lastly, the Fallari twins- Pulat and Ipson
Who were reportedly abducted by Aliens


I think of people who went missing and I am bewildered
I wonder where they are, who they were and why I suddenly remembered


I’m often haunted, in my sleepless nights
By the memories of an unfinished face
That belongs to one of those
That disappeared, without a trace

THAT SUBMARINE FEELING

May 3rd, 2009, Wilderness

The room is dark as a deep, black, night
And the eerie, cold, blue colors from the mute television dance silently upon my face
They play on my face, getting past my half closed eyelids and whispers to me
I’m afraid now


My name is Ronnie S Ray. I’m twenty five, male, Scandinavian (kidding)
I work for a multinational by day and write poetry at night
I am a closet filmmaker too. I look like Wes Anderson
I love the Beatles. I like reading anything by Salinger
Six hundred and twenty seconds ago, I consumed hundred milligrams of prussic acid
It kills usually in an hour but if taken on an empty stomach; a lot sooner
My writings should not be construed as a suicide note, however


I’m not delirious. At least, not yet
I’m sane
I’m not dead also yet
Just feeling submarine


I sip my last cup of tea
The steam rises lazily from the cup and arouses memories of my childhood
Winnie’s memories
And that spent- together winter in Manali, our one getaway
Oh the heart yearns
For those times
When the morning skies were bluer
The nights painted a thousand colors
The dark, cloudy, languid afternoons
Tempestuous in a way that was never the same again
Greedy lipsRenaissance eyesBlue skies
And the tea on the porch
Some days, Amit and Lavanya used to come over
Mon Amour Winnie


I don’t miss your face, your hands or even your scandalous lips
But I quite miss your eyes
I search for them in every person I meet;
Alone,
in a crowd,
in every stranger,
in every sudden smile,
in every furtive nod of head,
in every vigorous handshake,
in every flirtatious gaze,
in every helpful look,
in every word of admiration
But I haven’t found you again,
Yet
So I tried incarnating you in inferior others
I continue reliving you through my writing,
in every word they make,
in every turn they take,
in every truth they decipher
in all the pain they evoke
You used to love words
No one but you, could cause such bloodshed through a single sentence
Except Harold Pinter of course
And perhaps Mamet as well…..


I imagine seeing you and I imagine speaking to you
Why did you love me?
Because you actually liked me
And my allegedly irresistible dimples
Winnie
To you- I bequeath my writings
And your terrifying yarns which I listened to bravely,
Not because I looked for the truth in them
But because I looked on them as racy, unputdownable novels
Of course, also because I loved you


But what if this present
Were the World’s last night?In the setting sun, your love fadedDied in the moonlight
The earth is dying every day and we do not notice it.
I know now that time would end
After tomorrow at sunrise
It would not catch me unawares
Time is what keeps the light from reaching us.The fathomless abyss of the void of life
For our time is the passing of a shadow
Our name will be forgotten
In timeNo one will remember our work
Our life will pass like the traces of a tear


I’m not going to tell you why.
Whatever be my reasons, they are mine-
My own, private, Idaho
But do not think for one second that my reasons are not legitimate
Do not judge me
A hundred and forty people die every day in road accidents in Bombay alone
The truth is there is no logic to life
Or to the big questions of life
And about the universe in general
Why are we here?
Where do we go?
Should I be doing what I’m doing?
You see, it doesn’t matter what you do
Aristotle said that
Or did he? Or was it the other fellow?
Anyway, this will be my last poem
Before I die


CUT TO:
The face of Winnie
Her perfumed, long, black tresses (with an abundance of brown in them)
Now visualized as she sat opposite me on that twilight terrace
The strands shimmer for a second and then


FADE AWAY:
To the smiling face of my nanny Eva
Bones sinking like stones. Oh, all that we had fought for….
My transvestite sister
Elevator music spawns
Memories evoked
Memories relived
Memories
Slipstreams of consciousness
The image is a prison of the soul
The camera flash
Old photographs
Folded
Moth-eaten
Torch lit
YellowedLike my yellow infection
The doorbell buzzing or my imaginationLazy days, gazing by the window
Looking out for the last time
The sky blue butterflySways on the orchidLost in the warmth
Of its blue green hazeNow, I wish I had not consumed the powder


Senses scrambled like (sorry, can’t think of a simile, my bad)
In here, it is as quiet as a tomb.
Here I am again in the waiting room.
Waiting for my name to be called:
“Prisoner no. 1883”
I have no friends now who are not dead or dying.
HB killed himself - how did he do it? I never asked.
I was afraid to know, even if it meant never finding the truth
And here I am incognito
I am scared to walk into the labyrinth


I say to myself
“Open your eyes”
My pupils dilate like blue velvet unfolding
My mind is going. I can feel it. I can…..feel…..it. I can f…e…..e……l……i……t


MORPH TO:
Two light bulbs
Dimly illuminate
These flaking walls
And the fridge is defrosting
Indescribably grim
The doctor said
Well of course
‘It is terminable’
A drift of empty snowflakesWhiting out memory

Across my bed, as a fetal JesusI lie hereFanned by the billowingSails of forgotten shipsTossed by the mournful winds
Of the lost VoicesI look forward to
Sleeping foreverIn a dear embraceSalt lips touchingIn my submarine stateThe flavor of herDead good lookingIn beauty's springHer blue denimsAround her ankles

All my notes are muddled
But I know
I have so many unrequited dreams
(How does one dream?
Acetylene neurons fire high voltage impulses into the forebrain and these impulses form pictures.
But why only those pictures?
No one knows)


I wanted to run away with a beautiful girl as the world came to an end
And we’d build a log cabin by a lake near the mountains
I wanted to live on a hill station too and have sex with a native, nubile, very young girl. Just kidding… or am I?
I wanted to see my mother. I never knew her. I killed her. In labor
I wish my father would forgive me
I wanted things to work out with Winnie


I also wished I had saved a beautiful girl from dying and that she would fall in love with me because of this.
I also wanted to tell you that I did indeed love you.
I wish I were immortal.
I wish I could live again.
I wish that I never had that argument with my grandfather


I wish that John Lennon didn’t die
That ‘The Wonder Years’ never ended
That my dog didn’t die when I was five
I wished I could take a day off from work and fall in love with a schoolgirl
I wish I had read more books and learnt how to play bridge


I wish I had spoken to my father more pleasantly and more often.
I wish I had met Aniruddha when I was home last time
I wish I could play the guitar properly
I wish I had made more movies
I wish we never had to work


I always wanted to be a station- master for railways when I was in sixth grade
I still do
I wanted to fuck my aunt when I was in the sixth grade
I still do


I wish I could read all the Archies in the world. And Tintin
I wanted to be immortal…have I already told you that?
I wish I could befriend the woman in Payne’s Paris je ‘taime and take her to all the places she wanted to be.
I really wish her to be happy
I’d love to die in the arms of my lover, a romantic notion I know


I wish I could fly.
(My father had a fear of heights. I think I don’t. I want to experience the fall. Imagine how it would feel to have the wind blow into your face as you tumble down a cloud lapped skyscraper)
I wish I could hear Duran Duran’s ‘Come Undone’ now
(I could’ve listened to it yesterday but for some reason I didn’t. And I thought I’ll listen to it today. But…)


And I want to know who killed JFK
How the Pyramids were built?
What is the Bermuda triangle?
Is there life after death?
Who was Jack the Ripper?
What became of DB Cooper?
What did Bob say to Charlotte at the end in Lost in Translation?


I wanted to be famous
I wanted to fuck someone famous
(Life has made us such perverts. I can be forgiven as I can’t even type properly anymore)


I wish I could go back in time and live my life all over again
Can I replay my most favorite moment and live in it forever?
I want to go on a long drive with you in the rain….
Back to Manali
You know that beautiful stretch of road that leads into the valley?
Where the tunnel shaped trees are?
There are days when I’ve driven by that place
And I’ve always wanted to hold your hand on all those days
It’s impossible for me to be happy without being sad at the same time.
I can’t enjoy a sunset without thinking
That it could’ve seemed better had you been with me


If I ever get out of this, let’s never fight again. It’ll never be as much fun
I wish I could eat pastries and apple pies but I’m allergic to eggs
I wish no one would die of hunger in this world
I wish I had infinite wishesWhen you’re dying, you realize that your life ha

ONCE UPON A NIGHT IN SARAJEVO

It was raining in Sarajevo that night.
That particular, eventful, November night…..
Then she called me in
She was……


HAIR: auburn (bobbed)
LIPS: scarlet (salty ‘Bloody Mary’)
EYES: somewhere between arctic blue and aquamarine
AGE: six thousand three hundred and twenty eight days.
GENDER: Femme Fatale
TONGUE: peppermint
MOUTH: Big, bright and talented
HANDS: Velvet
EYELASHES: Lamborghini
MEASUREMENTS: Buxom circumference: thirty four;
Waist: twenty eight,
Hip girth: thirty-six inches;
HEIGHT (with stilettos): sixty seven inches;
MASS: fifty nine kilograms;
FIGURE: curvilinear; hymen present,
TEMPERATURE: Sahara
IQ: 131
COMPLEXION: Californian Beachside (6:45 pm, pre- sunset)
FLAVOR: Chanel
DRESS: Champagne on ice
SHOES: Multicolored mirrors on her hob nail boots
IMPRESSION: I always wondered how much she looked--had always looked--like Botticelli's Venus--the same smudged surreality, the same blurred beauty- painted by the artist in recollection.
She was……something


She showed me her apartment
And all her furniture-
Norwegian wood, teak furniture and teak furniture, antique furniture-
Memory too is like those pieces of furniture in the attic, par obsolescence,
For which one develops a sentimental fixation. Neither is discarded
Rooms. Doors. Doors. Windows. Doors. Rooms. Corridors. Rooms. Windows. Doors
China floor, still intact
Earring Chandeliers
Tea cups
Original Mink Vases gracing the cupboards
Spurious Rembrandts gracing the walls
Strains of Rabindranath’s ‘Shesher Kobita’ permeating soothingly, hauntingly
Sofa covers- Moccasins and Crochets
I observed her apartment.
I approached distant nooks and crannies and cobweb ridden corners to find her.
They were there but she was not. Not even in the fridge anymore.
Your darling, tucked away in memory


Set the scene.
Relish you take in the chitter-chatter pervading the scene.
Set the mood.
She kept on a talking in her wayward, Californian tones
I could stay if I wanted to.
She stressed: “Only if you want to”
Do you love me?
Such suffusion of love really
And she went past the bedroom door
I went inside
The more I went inside
The more was there to see


Her gown seemed like a wistful French ballad,
Strung together by some fugitive rhymes
Fluttering athwart the rhythm in swimming colors
Glimpses of her mountains of agony
Her hand, half-hidden in the darkness, beckoned me
Her slender pale fingers descended nearer and nearer
Her opalescent knee embarked on a tortuous cautious journey
She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, leaning back on the bed,
One felted, well shod, foot on the floor
And the other embracing the armrest
She said opening her eyes and raising herself slightly,
If I would like to
I, who had been leaning near the fire to keep myself warm, said yes


She stretched herself, as though, stifling an unrealized early morning yawn
My automaton knees went up and down
Losing sense of self
Neutral illumination
Morbid inquisitiveness
Calculated carnality
Avid caresses
Ardent tongues
Solitary ecstasieseerie silhouettes
Distant thuds with the awful stabs
The raised eyebrows and parted lips
She whirled like a translucent blender and meowed like a hellish cat.
A petrified paroxysm of desire
The scepter of my passion’s aching veins
My senses were suddenly filled to the brim
The waterfall nuisance pursued me of course.
But I never realized how wafery their wall substance was
Imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul
Reflected despair, dissolving in human tears


The sound of her last sob incongruously vibrated through me
I needed to see something. I tried to say something but my voice was ugly. I felt mortified when I heard it.
“You took advantage of a girl you lustful devious one. Nefarious tempter! Hell bound, bastard!”
“You enjoyed the meal, the swift efficiency of the conversation and then you enjoyed the woman’s body under yours”
“Even as your fire incinerated the lass, you didn’t mind. Her body burnt away speedy as a newspaper.”
Do these words enter your mind and eat at you like a parasite?


I ran away from the feared apartment
I drove away in my blurred car.
The several blocks went by rather uneventfully.
But the final one was paradise.
For on the crossroads, on the Fifth Avenue by West Street
I saw her again
She looked just like a surreal Botticelli’s Venus
With her exquisite Renaissance eyes
And I stood at awe at her and verily did I love her.
And lustful passions she did incite.
And love she did incite.
And I was but a passing mortal.


If somebody wrote up her life or that night, nobody would ever believe it.
Even I have camouflaged everything, my love
But it’s all true
Though you won’t know the facts till you’ve read the fiction
It really did happenIt happened one night
Once upon a night in Sarajevo

1883

Love is a cipher- 1,8,8,3
A detective case, a locked room mystery
(Keyboard under my fingertips, confessional words flow as the seasons revolve
As I write this song of suspense, it contains a secret message for you to solve
All the lines in brackets are clues and all the words have nostalgic hues)


So long ago, was it just a dream?
Was it a year or so it would seem
(Looking back at a love of long ago, “It isn’t time that’s passing us by, it’s you and I”)


Or did it denote the blue combination key
That would open the box of your memories in me
(The persistence of reminiscence, moist surreal branches dripping with poetry)


Was it the phone number of her mezzanine apartment?
The brownstone that burned to ruins when she went
(The boulevard is fading. The memory is decaying.
We’re hidden from each other’s eyes. So much sea! So much sky!
A home of hearts; A house of cards; A castle of sand
The address I can change with the wave of my hand)


Was it one of the left over cryptograms I used to like to make?
For she may no longer be there but the clues are there to take
(1 for A, F for 6, substitution matrix; melancholic prisms and linguistics)


Was it the suite number of the hotel room?
Where we swapped our solutions that afternoon?
(DNA, Marks of love, imprints of time and traces of longing-
Found upon the crime scene by the two sleuths later that evening)


Maybe 1883 was everything I never could find
A date, a code, a helpline, an address- a state of mind
(Some mysteries are better left unresolved. Some love stories are better left unrequited…
Everything has to rhyme and there has to be a mystery in every line
What then may the truth be? Once upon a time in 1883…. )

TO BE CONTINUED……

CRYPTOGRAMMAR

This is a cryptogram and so I start
That day
As my world was going away
I didn’t ask Binya to stay
Why didn’t I say?
And whilst now both of us may pray
To go back to that day
To actually do that, this is but an only way
In our own flashback right now
Did this occur, or that and how?
4U24G0T


MAX:
Look, Binya! It’s going to rain


(FILL IN WITH ANY RANDOM WORDS YOU WANT TO PICK)

WHAT DID YOU THINK BINYA SAID?

BINYA:
Option (a) It will wash away all our pain
or (b) So you and I will start again
or (c) You and I’d go our own ways as it’s all in vain
or (d) World will look at us with disdain

BINYA (thinks)
(I got so hurt)

MAX (thinks too)
(Did you burn all my stuff?)


WHAT IS MAX DOING IN THIS STORY?

MAX is sitting with BINYA on a roof top inn, in Kashmir’s famous wood cabin, drinking hot cardamom cappuccino, that, immigrants pour & it is about to snow; in itsy bitsy consonant clay cups-


WHAT AM I DOING?

It is Sunday night and I am in my room with its blinds drawn
Had flown all this way to try writing my third book
This too was about Max and Binya and try I did till dawn
No inspiration so I put off my laptop to go out and look


It was that instant, that I ran into Binya again
You and Max got talking about our days at St. Johns
In that long lost past
So many days ago. So many things unsaid.
Things that didn’t last
I say this looks as a doughnutYou say - "Oh, I thinkIt looks similar to our world"Sinful, dark and so hollow
You still talk with so much symbolism
Binya said, ‘My husband is coming back from Norwich tomorrow’
And nothing; following that. Was that a sign I didn’t know?
So nothing to do but wallow in my pain, ASSONANT my sorrow
Look, it’s starting to snow
Hurry up or you’ll catch cold


MAX:
You look now as that Binya whom I got to know. (Thinks) (Or I thought I did)

BINYA:
I’m not that smart and I know that. Just gigantic boobs and that’s about it. I also know that you, as any romantic, think that I boast of this background story that adds to my profundity. But, in fact, I’m just shallow and urban

MAX
Why didn’t I? Just think if you and I…..

BINYA:
What is that story you try writing?


This is a cryptogram and I start and now that I command your rapt captivation this is just a kind of an illustration with which I will try to show how words can actually do many things of which you did not know and possibly did not think of trying although writing this way is akin to dying as if I had my hands bound substituting usual words with words not simply found and whilst a random word is probably not that important to you but for writing it is probably that only comfort to go back to as avoiding particular words could turn into a bad habit though that proxy word could also turn out grammatically fit and also various long words such as Floccinaucinihilipilification could form without it and Ringo Starr did not own it nor did Aishwarya Rai and Brad Pitt



WHAT IS AL UP TO?

Although, aloof Al, also aloud, almost always, allows all, alright Almonds (All- it)
But who is this Al anyway?


WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT?

Habitually solving Sunday Crossword- down and across
Failing at cryptic hints, you try quick hints but still at a loss
And I could go on and on but post a point, any point
Would start to irk and so I put a stop to all such rhythms
And such idiosyncratic wordplays and criticisms


WHAT IS THIS PLAY ON?

It is a play on words.
It is playing at my Auditorium
Along with good music
And Football- Hull City against Aston Villa
All work and no play?


WHY DID YOU SAY ‘NO’ THAT DAY?

I am not fighting you.
Am in no mood to fight
What you say is right
In that infinitum word map
‘Pat’ is similar to ‘Tap’
This is a kind of an anagram
I also know of ‘Antigrams’
Various words also look similar
From both ways looking familiar
‘Dad’, ‘Anna’, ‘Otto’, ‘Kayak’ and so on
Backwards thinking, dusk for dawn
I may also talk about Acronym
That stands for short form or contraction of a word
Dad is from Daddy. Mom is from Mommy
Apt is a sound acronym, just right, grammatically
Though I am not saying what it stands for
For I would spoil it all by doing so
Acronym is a main basis of Acrostic Writing


WHAT IS ACROSTIC WRITING?

Acrostic writing
Subliminal writing
Hypnotizing writing that brought aspirations to light
And in my boyhood, it was raining all night


WHAT IS ITS POINT?

That shows us that unusual ability of words
But this story at start was romantic
This story is part of that story
This thing is going awry and astray
No?
I didn’t think of you that way
I was, you know, in a lot of pain for I truly thought you and I... didn’t you?
Why?
And I always thought about you
Ok
Kya kaha?
Was it you?
But I know
But how do you know?
I don’t know
No?
I know
I know you know
I know you know I know
I know you know I know you know
I know you know I know you know I know
I know you know I know you know I know you know
I know you know I know you know I know you know I know
I know you know I know you know I know you know I know you know
That as an absurd living iconoclast of today
And having said all that I had to say
I finish.
But I say this again.
All of this was a cryptogram.
Saying that, MAX and BINYA walk out of that inn, hand in hand, and I follow. I am finally in ________

TO WINNIE, WITH LOVE

August 1st, 2002

The Banks
Prospect Cottage
84 Charing Cross
Kent, England- 133001

Dear Winnie

Skipped sleeping again. Missed you. Again. Three nights in a row now
Often, lying on my back, staring at my off white ceiling,
I would think about you, in my insomniac nights
And I would often wonder, “Why were you so cold in the end?”
“In the end”, sounds so melodramatic, I know
Winnie, what can I say?
Our ending was perhaps inevitable and perhaps even necessary.
For one has to, I suppose, get over their first love, in order to be free.
Such connections as ours are rare and maybe happen just that once
Maybe it is better that we drifted apart.
Maybe we were only good at fleeting, short term memories
I already forget how I used to feel about you
Who am I deluding?
Am I in denial?
Am I sad?
You think I’m mad?
But I’m telling you, I want someone so bad to come kidnap me.
You kept going by in my dreams


And then one Thursday, you went away
But I guess you can love someone without it being like that.
You keep them a stranger- a stranger who’s a friend
You kept going by in my dreams
Once, I knew you. At least I thought I did but I didn’t.
I wanted to write that masterpiece, you wanted to paint and travel
One day, you went away
And I wrote a car and a house with a swimming pool.
I could never write a home.
I could never write the book I wanted to
You stopped painting. The colors faded. The canvas lay unused
You kept going by in my dreams
My writings became very scholarly, very verbose and very dry.
I started hating them one by one
All the while, you kept going by and going by in my dreams


It’s started to rain outside. It’s that same eerie, howling sound you used to love
But it’s not the same
Copenhagen is a nice place. Very cold, in fact it snows often. The whole of Scandinavia is like a small island just north of Europe
The creed here is to be brisk and busy. Everyone says, “How’re you?” but then you eventually realize that nothing ever follows that “How’re you?”
Often, on my way to my apartment, I got lost
Every man is ultimately an Island
Everyone wants to be saved
Whither shall I wander?
And still, you kept going by in my dreams. Going by and going by


It’s funny how you miss the most trivial of things about a person
For example, last Tuesday, I suddenly remembered your face and it flashed before me: your tiny, microscopic cut, just above your right eyebrow. Then, I remembered that I never asked you about it
I looked into your eyes so many times and yet I never asked you
Is it possible, Winnie, that I just didn’t see you?
For I took your gaze for granted
And now, I miss it like hell
Sometimes here, I take nostalgia to embarrassing extremes
Winnie, you know, near my apartment boulevard, there’s a beautiful fountain and an old railway bridge over it. You’d have loved it
It’s around three hundred yards and one of those that have an echo effect
I often go and stand at the edge of the bridge- it feels as though the bridge joins the past from the present- the beginning to the end. Sometimes, I feel I could touch you if I were to my hand in the mist. What am I afraid of?
That it can never happen again
And yet, you kept going by in my dreams


I watched my watch again. Time had stopped there
And here
The second hand of the watch was parading on its dreamy dial.
Again, the pendulum swung
Sixty seconds deep
On so many cold, sleepless nights, I wanted to shout out aloud:-
“You have played a lot with this rubber soul!”
Then I’d remember how you had looked at me with those aquamarine eyes and then, I would hear the beat of his eyes, along with the raindrops, as if they had a life of their own
They were large eyes, a little blue, a little green- shining beneath the sunlight in your hair
With your poignant eyes (and, um, your gigantic bosom too :) you were too much
And you kept going by in my dreams like……


Butterflies
Delicate, fragile, fluttering, colorful; like dreams and memories….. Somehow you want to pin them down on a board or something but actually you don’t. It’s a stream of consciousness thing. And the butterfly effect- one thought leads to another and another and another…..
My greatest regret is that you decided to love someone else
But I always hope to run into you someday
One day when you become this incredible bewitching woman with two kids in tow
And I this bestselling author, going grey around the edges of hair that never grows
We’ll meet somewhere, in the rain
I’d still fall for you- Cellulite and all
You’d look sexy as hell
I smile as I think of what you would’ve said to that?
“But why do you always mean that in a good way. I would have become fat and repulsive and annoying in a few years and with my constant nagging, you would never have been able to write your books”
The thing Winnie is, I never want to write again. It’s been kind of a terrible experience. I don’t even want to work again so I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to do anything. That’s the problem.
What does that mean?
You kept going by in my dreams…..


So many dreams we had…
Oh by the way, I’m seeing someone. Her name is Tania. She’s pretty, simple and nice- basically, just opposite of you. You’d have hated her. I know you.
So, tell me, what’s up with you? What’s happening to your salsa lessons? Did you finally go for that interview with O&M? Do you still buy eleven pairs of high heels on gruesome Mondays? And are you happy?
In other things, what’s happening to this world, in this world? Children are dying in Sudan, Pakistan is falling to pieces and we are on the verge of a nuclear apocalypse. Even our love was not THIS complicated. Slowly but surely, the world, as we know it, is coming to an end. One day, you’d close your eyes and snap your fingers and it’ll be all over. Just like that.
And you kept going by……


Winnie, I know I’m never going to be able to send this letter to you but you know, I wanted to tell you about so many things. That HB has come back from London. He didn’t finish his thesis- the bugger says he wants to become a musician. That Aniruddha is getting married to Meera. Remember her? But most of all, I wanted to tell you that I managed to get a couple of my books of poems, published. This is one of those poems. I finally feel as if I have found a place to where I belong. Publishing house or otherwise, I hope you have too
Goodbye, Winnie
For we may never meet again
“Sshh….Never say never, Max!
That morning will come”
You’d say that and fill my heart with hope
You kept going by in my dreams
You kept telling me in my dreams
“We’ll always have Paris”
And you kept on going by and going by and going by in my dreams
And I couldn’t ever sleep

Wish you a very happy birthday, Winnie!! This year, I remembered

Your
Max

PS: I dedicated my poems to you. You and Tania, tied actually. Kidding… take care.
PS2: Are you going to be in my dreams tonight?

THE SPRING THAT WINNIE DIED

I miss the seasons. Miss watching the leaves change
Ever wondered Max? ‘Whatever happened to Winnie Banks?’
Winnie of the forget- me- not eyes, eyes of blue, sky blue skies
Blues and all the vaudeville hues; sometimes they were green too
Eyes that danced and swirled, eyes that contained the sadness of the world
But she was my world, Lou
I know. She was mine too
And the ragbag colors of her hair, tawny streaks of night with tousled auburn, so rare
You were so filmy, smudged and surreal, like a cardboard angel
We gave her all the things just to sit at her table
Gave her our youth; gave her our whole senior year
My own clandestine, Martini- soaked, memories of her
Her in a swishy satin skirt with a smattering of Pashmina fur
She was a fragile eyeful in so many different ways
But was going around with Lenny Hall in those days
The dream was over. The dream became you instead
My head was in my hands and my hands were on my head


October rain around the iridescent pain
Postmodern Nihilism, acres and acres of urban loneliness, punk rock volume 2
Bar fights, melodrama, temporary insanity
Introspection galore. Insomnia reigns. Existentialist jargons in thy head
What if everything was one man’s dream?
If everything was nothing then anything could be something
People playing parts, Kafkaesque claustrophobia
A daydream delusion, illusive utopia
Infinite abyss. Imaginary love
Love fades. People drift. Life goes on.
I suppose one has to live. Lambent numbness indeed
Lop sided romantic disease
Traveling Incognito, letting go of the baggage, enraged
You’re the labyrinth. It was all you.
My self often seeped through my writings, like an ink stain
Incoherent mumblings; my notes are muddled and my fingers strain


Teeth chattering January. Snowflakes like confetti
Left the note under her door with a bunch of street- vendor violets
Hoped and hoped that the note be read, forgot that she liked carnations instead
In the spring, a postcard came,
Sealed magenta with her lipstick kiss
And then nothing. It seemed she was finally dead
I wanted to write to her about so many things, things unsaid
And still there’s the hopeless hope that when the rain glides down the windowpanes in her faraway home, it makes her think of me
Home with the echo of many voices, like long dried paint
Time would end
Once, just once before ending, may it go back?
I place a carnation, red and white, upon your grave


The Spring that Winnie died
We were all taken by surprise
She was like old winter clothes, comforting and familiar
Like reading unputdownable novels on Sunday afternoons
Drinking tea from hot clay cups in cupped hands
We were both in love
You’re only seventeen once
You left and it left me with a surreal touch in my mouth on the left
Through the bloomless descending blue, I looked back upon the boy I had left behind
And the girl
Now we look back upon those days with a smile
When restlessness of the mind was the only thing for a while
I forgot and lost her then, but I remembered trying to find her again
Forget it man. We never even touched her
But we loved her!
Love? Is that all what you men think about?
And in the end, all we were left with, were the red and white carnations
We’ll always have the carnations- dried up in old, moth- eaten diaries
Carnations- red and white…. Oh red, ascend. Oh white, arise
With a thousand dreams in those, her velvet eyes
But we’ll keep asking each other, Max
‘Whatever happened to Winnie Banks?’