Laaltin

One cup of coffee gone cold,

then,a couple more

A forgotten summer,

 and a decade past

Glass walls in muesums 

and glass walls in shopping malls

An urgent desire to dive headlong

into love,

a consistent disinterest swarming around it

From understanding one ideology

to another,to making sense of none at all

People I've forgotten exist,

words I've forgotten exist,

half written poems,

fantasies grown flaccid before climax.

Phallic symbols I need to stop seeing,

all the labels that musn't weigh me down.

Power cuts and kerosene lamps,

musquitoes and string cots on a terrace

the ice candy man's bell in the 

sweltering street,

nostalgia with its memories 

sticking out like old screws

in a wooden bed by a window,

where a silver haired woman

sits,shivering;more with excitement

at winning a card game,than her palsy.

The courtyard well with dead 

magura fish at it's bottom,

they swam exactly for a day.

Laburnums

When I first moved to this city,about a year ago,it was a little past peak summer and the laburnums were fading out of sight.

It's peak summer now,and they are in full bloom in the courtyard outside my room when I wake up on an obscure May morning.They're so familiar,so close,unlike the ones I used to look at from behind car windows while we drove through streets whose names I did not know.
I pack my life into a cardboard carton,seal it tight with space just enough for whatever will happen in the year to come.Staring at the dusty duct tape shadows that remain on the wall above my bed ,after I've taken my posters down, fills me with a profound sense of loss for a second.

Like the laburnums,
so much else has blossomed,
blossomed with metaphor,
meaning blooming
like annotations around a poem,
handwritten interpretations unfurling
like petals out of printed verse.
So much has withered,as well,
so many friends,so many dreams,
so many notions that used to be.
Black and white binaries aren't for me,
I understand neither extreme,
I've learnt that to let something grow
you have to inevitably let something go,
a friend once said to me,
"you grew,they withdrew."
if you love,you will love to know that you'll lose,
if you don't lose,how will you ever find anything you
love with that intensity again?

You're the laburnums,
firework,transient spark,
chandelier,crystal clear,
reflective,fragile,sharp.
But poster-less,whitewashed walls
and flower-less green foliage
can only mask
that you've been there,
not that you'll arrive again.

Wonder

What I'm most afraid of is waking up one morning,aged fifty five,having lost all sense of wonder for the day ahead of me or the world that awaits me with all there's left to learn.I'm hardly an adult now and on some mornings,I already wake up having no sense of wonder for what the day could unveil or the people I could meet.I know everyday cannot be exciting and monotony is an inevitable part of life,there's only so far away you can chase it before it creeps back in,in one form or another.

I'm not afraid of ageing or monotony,I'm not even afraid of mediocrity..these are only the limited and limiting constructs of a hypercompetetive society.

I am afraid of losing that phenomena,

where you discover a new word and then you see it everywhere-it pops up on your social media and on television drams or when you notice how fascinating someone is for the first time,and then,they seem to be everywhere you look.Almost serendipitous,like writing a poem about a moth and coming across a poem you wrote about a moth three years ago,based on a memory about moths from when you were three years old and you tried to contemplate the wonder of life and death and all the unanswerable questions fit in between infinity,at the sight of a lifeless moth lying on the floor.Wondering if you should be happy or sad at the sight of the moth.Watching the marching band,with white hats outside the window and car with flowers cello taped all over it,even its windscreen,wondering what the music meant or what the beat of the drums taped glittery blue,meant.Finding old posts of moths on instagram.A chain reaction,butterfly effect from one thing that you are fascinated by.

I want to never forget what it feels like to look at someone and wonder how it would be to kiss them or hold their hands,I never want to stop looking for little whirlwind galaxies of water draining from a bathtub.

It does not matter what this wonder materialises into,that's the best part,it's not about the materiality or even some kind of self-rewarding,self-actualised concept..it's just that

the childlike wonder of finding a pink bead in your shoes,or a shard of broken bangle or teacup in the sand of the playground,pocketing a feather or a dandelion blown by the wind,watching a lime green caterpillar in the corner of the swimming pool or hearing the word "kind" for the first time and imagining what it must mean,something like a kite,one of those things that fly? It must be blue in colour,it sounds like a blue glass window or the sky.

Sometimes,not even a physical treasure to stow away in a box,just a string of thoughts all woven into each other like a intricate lace labyrinth.

Wondering is just as important as knowing and if language is symbolic of how me construct our worlds,we're learning to wonder through words every moment,although we've been wondering from before we had the words,for we've had symbols as thoughts to articulate wonder with.

I'm afraid the more I know,the more I might kill wonder and forget that there's infinite realities I cannot fathom.On some starry nights,I forget to look at stars and feel,not insignificant or inconsequential,but infinitesimal and this worries me.I don't want to swallow yellow paint of being consumed by everything I know,even when it consumes me like an ocean wave I didn't anticipate because there are almond blossoms waiting to be awe struck over and written about with wonder.

Mustang

The loneliness of being young is often forgotten,

left behind by adults who change in ways usually
not noticed until the change is concrete.
We become better at deluding ourselves
into believing we aren't as lonely
and we buy into the romantic notions
of youth,promised to us by pop culture,
the market capitalizing on the glory days
of coming of age.
Mustang means stray animals
in Spanish,I suppose
and that's what being in college is like.
I realise that home is a construct,
well,everything is,
but it's the only construct where
clothes smell of comfort (the fabric conditioner,you know?)
and potatoes and drumsticks are cooked in ground mustard,
rooms smell like dogs have been around the place,
it's never too late to catch a sunset in solitude
and it's never problematic to take a nap without worrying
about the wasted hours,
Home,with always enough,endless supply
of green tea and coffee stocked up in the larder.
I once read somewhere that home is a person
but that was young adult fiction,idealistic,
read owl-eyed at 4 in the morning,
(In my defence,I still really like YA)
I'd stayed up all night to chase away the mystery of teenage romance,
struggled to stay awake for school the next morning.
I'm twenty now and home is not a person to,me,
it is people,yes,but not always the same people
that I go back to.
When I first moved out of a place I'd lived in
almost
literally my entire life,my friend said
Home is creature comforts,
he was right,but I felt it was more,
it was nostalgia,it's a permanent abode
in imagination,
Memory
and more.
Maybe I'm just as destitute as the hostel cats
and campus dogs,
living on the leftover mercies of human beings,
getting by on the affection they anticipate.
 I watched people blur into each other's
movements,from the distance,on a grassy slope,
next to an oversized Labrador,Ash,
he recognised me even on days
I hid a sob fest behind a bathroom stall,
he soothed me with his presence,
 making the telltale red nose from crying ,vanish.
Does that mean I'm trying to be stronger?
I'm better at hiding my weaknesses now?
I don't know.
I wanted to be alone,get some fresh air,
clear my head,breathe,
go on a walk.
That's the recipe to feel better,
everyone says,
but it's in these moments
when you realise
how illusive totality is,
how impermanent home
or anything wholesome is.
Maybe being older is lonely too,
just being lonely around more people,
a far cry from going home to somewhere
you belong.
For now,I'll just roll down this grassy slope
and watch the sky become the grass become the
sky again,
till I'm dizzy and the blood rushes to my head
and I'm laughing so hard,I can't breathe.
I will try not to think about how itchy the grass is
and the bath that will entail as a result of this
spontaneous exercise in the spectacular now,
There are only moments in a day,
nothing more,nothing less.

Walled City

Within the walls of a walled city,

my thoughts grow invisible wings ,
born inside a closet sized,shoebox like room.
They struggle to take flight,
stumble and fall,some taste the dirt forever.
A cat we called Tilly Kettle,
as the namesake of a modern artist,
often purrs in front of my door,
I don't know what it is that she's been asking for,
it seems a lot like all the things I struggle to
say.
Labyrinthine is the structure
of most things I've understood
 cannot be fought.
I'm not yet sure it's impossible
to transcend these concentric circles
of creation,perpetuated
through walls we've build
because humans love
to categorize,classify,stick people and objects
into glass jars as specimens,alike.
Ideas might be just as futile in their ambitions
as Icarus,
or the renaissance man,
their waxen wings might not endure
the sun's strength,
or the ocean's might,
within walls born,within walls
predestined to crash and burn
like stars,
just as distant
and alluring.
We spend our entire lives
moving from one room to another,
walls within walls,
familiar we make them,
the ones we sit on,some we even cross
over,
only to realise we'd have to leave
 them behind anyway
to meet new walls.
Within the walls of the walled city,
I've come to learn to let go,too
not only to look beyond walls
but to make peace with living
within some of them,
as long as I can paint them in shades
of grey,
grey is not just monotony,it's comfort,
it's not just uncertainty,it's exploration.
Some of us might never break down
walls in this lifetime,
but it's enough,sometimes,
to see them as more
than mere walls,
paint them in shades other than the
standard off white
and black.

Faiz,Fish and Feminism.

In no particular order,
like stream of consciousness writing,

like the endless afternoons and 2 AM silences,

Shared,as we sprawled ourselves,

under the ceiling fan

laid bare our most intimate ambiguities

 in the summer.

Played a poem on loop,

it rendered out a refrain that stuck with us,

it claimed to promise us a time in the future,

when we'll get to witness the

mountains of injustice that loom over us

blowing away with the wind like cotton wool.

I don't know how revolutions work,

but I've walked with fleecy cotton wool,

floating by my feet on a late summer evening,

lingering on the street,final attempts at shadowing

the seed from losing it's sheath.

I've seen dandelions losing their feathery tufts,

in the pattern that was printed on 

my sociology professor's cotton shirt,

like the plausible cover of a novel.

I realise that all those that are vulnerable 

are endangered because they're frail,but this very

vulnerability will become strength,

letting go of inhibitions,

even if it means letting go of the fleecy 

blanket they wear.

Her lapel has a tiny brooch,she wears a different one

everyday,today,it's a fish,mustard and red,

it's eye staring down at me,

like those fish filled with swirls of Madhubani strokes,

ubiquitous in folk art.

Is it a hilsa,a flying fish?
Is it koi,the fish that symbolize luck,
the ones my roomate yelped with excitement
at,the first fish she ever saw,
 realised the childhood dream she dreamt,
having grown up up in a desert.
Is it one of those tiny river fish,
I swam with in my father's hometown,
wild and free and slimy,they tickled my little feet.
Is it the kind of fish my sister grills

with basil,

its tender flesh dissolving on one's tongue

like a strip

of acid,

at least that's how they show it in the movies.

Look for love,

and you look for love,

but it's not where you're looking for it.

It's not about others

loving you,

or how much you deserve,

for that is just an age old way

of preserving

"who should be loved,how and how much",

pickled with salt,heirarchies and whatnot.
Often,in your confessional mode
you mete out poems
about love that is not a commodity,
about people that aren't commodified.

Saltwater fish swim in doodled seas,

sketched beside annotated texts,

clouds of cotton tumble past time,

what is sublime?

Look at the moon,I'm dead

Said my friend,so burnt out from the consumption of a neon culture we didn’t necessarily create for ourselves,but perpetuate,nonetheless.The moon looked huge from where we sat.We sat on some rocks,with a vantage view of the rows of shingle roofed houses we’ve lived among for a few years now.All of them aligned,identical,except for the different number plates behind the white picket fences guarding the well  manicured gardens.Paths for people to take evening walks on,but ones not meant for dogs to “dirty”.Are any of us human beings or just parts of a well oiled machine? Stepford wives and Complan children.

We munch on green apples dipped in peanut butter,sip on Caprisun,snack we think we’re consuming.In earnest,it’s the market consuming us.

It is a dog eat dog world,they say.

I dream of forests and wake up wondering why I only visit shopping malls instead of these seas of green I see only in a state of semi-consciousness.

Shadow Of An Almost

Faiz wrote,
and I echo,
When the scars that missing you has left behind, begin to heal,
I begin to find reasons to miss you again.
I let you go,
because that's what loving means,right?
Every word of small talk
I say to you ,silently screams,
of wanting something I never had,
but dreamt of every night when I fell sleep,
every time you said goodnight to me.
I keep waiting for you to say goodnight
again.
What hurts,
is not that you've found somebody else.
What hurts is that you took half
of my hope away with you,too.
I used to tell you,
of how I've always wanted to know
what being loved without asking
for it,feels like,
but you forgot,
forgot to see the pain I'd let you into
the realities of my most horrific dreams.

Colour schemes

My sister always told me

She disliked photographs

In black and white,

colour looks better,she said.

I arrive home at midnight,

From the flight,I watched the city

Scattered like purple pixie dust,

Mocking the stars,mirroring them.

Woke father up,he looked haggard

In his royal blue kurta,

creased with fatigue,worry lines.

He enveloped me,sealed a kiss on my forehead.

I’ve been trying to find home

In the off white drapes

And aquamarine couches in the old age home,

Pastel has always seemed inviting to me.

I search for home,cling to the idea of it

In the soft silver hair of Nanna,

In the moist banana loaf she cuts up carefully

For us, the mellow lamp lit beside her.

I speak in fragments,it’s all there’s left

Of home,some term this post modern,

I call it mere poetry,when we watch yellow 

leaves fall for the summer,nature’s confetti.

 We laugh,as we savour our bubblegum jelly

Ice lollies,losing colour to our tongues,

turning blue.Colour looks better,she said,

I look for hope in colour schemes.