Circle

There’s always a circle

which no theory talks about

it doesn’t disrupt my

everyday functioning

for I’m still gliding through to do

what I have to do

like an unworn skate

on a slant surface

of both pleasure and pain

and if I glide through for long

the dose of regularity will

prevent all my palpitations,

I know,

except in that accidental moment

when those half-internalised tunes 

flow in the background 

carrying the scent of 

Urbino’s bitter almonds,

I become aware of the circle

and palpitations resurface

I am an empty flat in some

suburban part of town

where noises are always heard

from the unfamiliar outside

while a nauseating silence lingers inside

compressing the air too hard to bare

I want to shit out memories

Do you see now?

sounds, smell and shit

always in a circle

revealing the lie of

gliding like a skate

but even if I know that you see it

there’s hardly any solace in this state.

                  

From The Inside

At the finishing point of a book

chosen insecurely from the pile
that should rather be read

before anything else,

hours spent in the makeshift spot on

the mattress that has made a pit

hugging my ass like it was never to let go

of a favourite tenant,

like it had never known any other before

and the ass and I diving right into

the only habitat that would accept

us without anything asked for in return.

My sister,

she’s been on four phone calls

since the last few hours,

Four long intense conversations with

friends from the old days from the old cities,

while I’ve been twitching around in my pit

making an aspirational hollow

and measuring my irregular hair strands

with the words on the page

a message from the boy I fell for

a message from the boy I slept with

and the unmoving I stuck in the pit carrying

all my weight

for it would never complain about it

or anything else,

for it would never ask for a response

from she who mastered the fucking

art of unresponsiveness  

like the hermit who but for their ideals

desire sociality, except that weighing

down deep in the pit was never

my ideal.

Colours of Yellowed Letters

And as it happens with distant memories

you begin to question their existence

always ending up with “maybe,

I just made it up”

But those yellowed letters are a story

I am not creative enough to write.

Where did those words come from,

I think now

Was it the grey December and

shivers it sent through my body, that

spark of romanticism that bursts

out of nothingness

or the whiteness of the paper I laid

myself bare on, screaming out rainbow

stories I can no longer make up

the end of,

or perhaps it was just that blues-

stricken face of yours I conjured up

to believe that emptiness has a colour

as mine,

to answer your “So, tell me about

your dreams” for purposes other

than storytelling itself, until the cigarette

stubbed

It is on nights as black as these
sweat-soaked body meek, that
feverish yellow appears shiny 

which makes me wonder, maybe

I just made it up.  

Patterns

A tear trickles down her eye, a pair which seem tired not of age or overwork, but of the latent sadness of life itself, a clockwork of dissatisfaction, as she had read somewhere. It crawls down her cheek towards the nostril, as her face lay tilted, when she snorts it in. There is something peculiar about consuming your own tears. She considered it as a kind of solidarity with herself, as the salty tear which was produced in the fluidity of her own eyes, ultimately doesn’t fall on the keys of the laptop, or on a page of the book she had been reading at the time, but goes inside her own body.

I see her going through the whole process, over and over again.

In a moment, she breaks the pattern and changes the song of the same band that had been playing for the last twenty minutes now.

“Associations. Fucking associations! They can make you fall in and out of love with a piece of music.”

She doesn’t really mean it, not with the same intensity. Although, she has a certain sense of repellence brewing up inside her, when she listens to that same piece that had made her appreciate its introducer, and feel appreciated, in turn. Somehow, it made her feel like she was good enough to listen to that kind of music; like she deserved it. Now it can’t make her get up in the morning, so she doesn’t. It loses its “feathers of hope” and rather makes her cringe, leaving her in search of something else.

I see her naivety, while she is subconsciously thinking of an Emily Dickinson metaphor for wording her mind. I note the helplessness in expression, but I can’t do anything to make that better. Does she even want to make it better? Expression is a twisted thing; I get that from a lot of those human minds. Once you master that art, there’s nothing left to aspire for. You reach the pinnacle, and then you are left stranded in a lonely place with others only feeding on your creation. Perhaps, she knew the truth too closely, that her creation is only going to be an inspiration, at the end of the day. Why should she even try? Perhaps, she wanted to be the one feeding herself, rather than being the bread and wine for others. I can only speculate.

“Sometimes, playing Ostrich is delightful. Putting out the lights of the room, playing the music, and becoming averse to the world out there. Like the mosquitoes inside. I bet these silly creatures wish for their lives, that sucking the blood of a few of us would keep them content, fulfilled, knowing all along that they’d have to get out in the air sometime, or they’ll die of inaction.”

I know I am drawn to her with an unusual force, but like a rational observer, I take note of her examining the strands of her hair, one by one. The irregularity in the texture of each strand irks her, not like something unwanted, but rather like the crack in the middle of a wall. She can’t understand the reason behind it. And she craves for some kind of order and regularity, over her hair at the very least, since nothing else was in her control. Or so she thought, which would be in keeping with my previous observation of her naivety.

She had nothing else to offer that night, since I had carefully followed her mind. So, I left.

***

She read this account that I officially submitted the next morning, which left her generally satisfied. It proved to be ‘real’ enough for her with the part which detailed her naivety. Too much positivity leaves them in doubt of the authenticity of the observation. She got what she wanted to know, like so many before her.  

At Four in the Morning

I only hear the chirp

of a single bird

and see the three

circular patterns

on the ceiling,

formed by the reflection

of the still glowing

street light through

the drapes.

When the line between

fiction and dream blurs,

when negatives

-not photographs-

are the only remnant

of falling in love,

when all thought surrenders

and gives way to only emotion,

and nothing else,

it is then that I realise

why the only bird out there

had to chirp,

why the only thing inside

will be echoes. 

The Anomaly of Trajectory

Throughout the history of rock n' roll, eccentricity has been an embedded element. That is to say, it is not forced or showed off but is just something that develops as a part of the musician's artistic development. And that, it is ludicrous to reduce rock n' roll to just that. However, when we fail to experience that erratic spirit in a musician or in a piece of music, the genre feels incomplete. After all, almost every great rocker in history has been a wild child. What comes to mind almost immediately are iconic rock n’ roll sounds of The Doors’ ‘Wild Child’, or Lou Reed singing ‘Take a Walk on the Wild Side’ or Suzi Quatro’s ‘The Wild One’.

The elusive Quatro, apart from being related, in public perception, with the old rockabilly song ‘Suzie Q’ and considered as the first female punk musician, successfully became a cultural symbol for the feminist thought in the genre which was so far considered a men’s game. I remember when I first heard that young, course voice singing, “I’m a blue-eyed bitch, and I wanna get rich. Get out of my way ‘cause I’m here to stay. I’m the wild one” a young teenage girl myself, I could feel that angst arising from a well-known position of suppression on accounts of gender, mainly. But the larger picture would similarly have musicians producing loud, raw sounds out of a certain sense of anger, frustration or personal distress. No doubt Cobain chose to begin with the line, “Teenage angst has paid off well” for one of their better worded ‘Serve the Servants’.

So why is it then, that as these great rockers age, (of course, those who got the opportunity to age) they lose their wild side, somehow, and go on living their lives and well eventually dying, like the rest of us? And when they do continue making music, their sound attains a mellowed down effect and structure. Agreed that the iconisation around the genre is an out-and-out humanly created phenomenon, or that the angst remains to be largely a product of its times, from the many intersecting movements, anti-war, second wave feminism, gay pride etc, of the 60s to the anti-glamourisation of rock n’ roll itself in the 90s. The anomaly still remains to be about the lifestyle choices and thus, the music of the said rock musicians being sobered down.

Thus, you would now see an almost transformed Trent Reznor, from his dark, nihilist, hardcore industrial rock side to becoming the guy with cropped hair, producing music for movies and making albums like ‘Hesitation Marks’ which would have a softer, experimental touch to it. “I am just a copy of a copy of a copy. Everything I say has come before”, sings Reznor in the record.

Or an Eddie Vedder with his long locks, climbing the high scaffoldings on stage while performing, back in the 90s, and writing angst-driven songs about high school massacres to now creating ambient, and probably the most soothing sounds in mainstream music. “Circles, they grow and they swallow people whole”, goes a line in a song from the soundtrack of the movie ‘Into the Wild’. This track ‘Guaranteed’ along with 'Society' and other ones on the record, became an instant rage among the young for their themes of breaking away from unfounded socially created shackles; the circles of similarity, corruption and materialism. It, thus, turned out to be a significant moment when the so-called youth angst came to be manifested in such softer tunes which can be fulfilled only by an acoustic guitar, contrasting from a ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’ of the 90s.

 Even our beloved Plants and Pages of the 70s, or Quatro herself, for that matter, chose to shift from their initial genre of hard rock to either experimenting with softer Morroccon tunes or country music, respectively. And if a true lover of Plant’s voice, you could notice his music becoming less about the high pitches and notes he used to hit, and rather about the melody itself.

This is not to suggest some sort of gross generalization, though. One can very well look at exceptions all around, what with young-and-wild-at-heart oldies like Jagger, Ozzy, Iggy, or Alice Cooper still going about their business. But for me, as I followed the musical trajectories of artists I’d admired since the time music became an essence in my life, I felt this transition happening right in the forefront.

To say that people age, including rock musicians would be an oversight. Probably, it is just the way life treats you, and I’d have to go through the same circles to comprehend that, or maybe, it is only a personal, musically challenging choice that they choose to make. One can only wonder. As long as it's pleasing, hard or soft, wild or sober, eccentric or not, I don’t think we mind.                  

While the Setting

You try to absorb the sunset

which looks a thousand years old,

like a past lover

you had once known,

now stored in a drawer

somewhere.

But the sketchy sense of déjà vu

betrays you

just like the time when you sought

to sew that blanket of stars,

or made an effort to

bring tears in your eyes,

and found none. 

Sunday

Open eyes.

Crowded noises.

Brewed up coffee and quarrels.

Four lives together again.

Six days of singular routes.

Jammed cross-section on the seventh.

Medical tests.

Medicine boxes refilled.

Appointments to regain normalcy.

Crystallised conversations.

Vacuumed air cleansed again.

Close eyes.

The Only Way

I must open those boxes

for that which doesn't exist

in text anymore,

has been blotted

in there,

that fucking repository

called memory.

I must carry searchlights

to look for reasons

in that muddle of

overlapping passions,

for keeping my distances.

Does this increase your

list of assholes?

Yes, I don’t like many people,

generally, and you've become

nothing but another

number.

I must do all that and write,

for it is the only way

I could, eventually,
end these periodical asides 

while reading my Burgess

and having my tea.

I rub off the dandruff

from my hair,

and think that this is

the closest I’ll ever get to

watching a snowfall.

If only,

a semblance of.

She Who Was Called The Myth

(For Emily Dickinson)

There seem to be a lot

of I’s,

which may be one

of the things we share,

I’d like to think.

Writing about ourselves,

to ourselves,

and why not?

‘tis our closest subject,

and why write poetry,

if one is to make shit up?

Even though when you

write of dawn

I see the night,

somehow,

we may be closely mapped

on the coordinates of time

and space, I imagine.

Did they call you a

bourgeois bitch

when you shut yourself in,

hoping that the walls

of your room will not let you

shut up in prose?

Did you, at last,

feel freer with wood, paper

or ink around you,

than you did with people,

out there?

And in death,

did you, after all, realise

that your verse will remain

alive for me and others

to feed on?

I can never know, for certain,

what was inside your head,

only knowing what is inside

mine. 

Untitled

We are all lazy asses here.

Waiting with our daily cups of chai

and a stipulated number of

cigarettes,

served in makeshift routines

having more late than early in it,

to drag on to make

something of our lives. 

We are all so bored here,

waiting for something to look forward to,

after having walked the same roads

and looked at the same faces

and heard the same music,

that we raise our eyes

 in unison,

to look at the hurried woman hurl

out of the almost hugging doors

of the Metro.

We have all grown thick-skinned here,

waiting, even while

leafing away to degeneration

like an autumnal tree,

incapable of accepting

that there will be no spring,

ahead.  

Long Stares

There were only silences,

latent ones,

like those in Cohen’s songs

Of which words make

poetry of their own.

I stared into space

conscious of the silences,

somehow not complaining.

Then he wrote.

Empty spaces filled with words.

Lonely words turned

to conversations.

And I stared into them.

Words written to me, for me,

had a rhythm of their own

But that wasn’t enough.

So I stared further, longer

for it to turn into music

for he, like me,  was enslaved

by it, the weight of words

turning too heavy, without.

And like any other conversation,

this too, ends.

Back to silences.

You don’t listen to Cohen’s

music particularly, do you?

He has the words,

all I have are long stares.