"Chopin was rich in feeling Eva, but not gushy. They're not the same. There's a great difference between emotions and sentiment. The prelude you just played tells of anguish that's suppressed. It's not about grievance. Take the opening for instance: it hurts but he never shows it. And then a short release but it's very fleeting and it hardly lasts, and the pain is the same, neither heightened nor diminished. Chopin was proud, sarcastic, passionate, tormented and very male. In other words, he wasn't a sentimental old woman. This second prelude must be made to sound almost ugly. Never allow it to become ingratiating, it should sound wrong. You battle through the piece and finally manage to end up triumphant."

~~Autumn Sonata

My lost daisies and daffodils
and silent walks
with Wordsworth on empty
nameless streets
living in dim lights.
Lamp posts and sidewalks
and cafe, monotonous talks;
Long winding lanes, avenues
of abundant green,
the touch of soliloquy
the end of rendezvous
with me and only me.
Here I come everyday
in my solitary walks
and suddenness
to carelessly embrace
fragile sense draped
in satin and silk of the east
Down seven feet my bones
lie in dust and to dust returns;
and dust comes tumbling after
my history and my reminiscences
of fragmented peace.
It is then that my throbbing,
vibrant present
of luscious lips, of moist eyes
pretend to cease
forever in solitary reapers
and tintern abbeys.
Here I bade my last goodbye
to poets and alcoholics
Because from this day,
this moment of history
they conquered me and started
inhabiting this shell
I call my own.
Now I contain them
and someday,
some dark, sympathetic
corner of time,
I shall contain you
like I had contained multitudes
before your time
and my eternity.

Chapter 1

So I woke up everyday to the sound of my silence and made love to my ability to love, forgive and forget. And then I would thank my sacramental vision one hundred and twenty four times and look forward with an occasional glimpse at the past. Past is every day, every recurring dream and it resurrects in my rendezvous with my psyche on desolate foreign lands. Serpents, moths, toads and lizards live and gleam in bright sunlight and fuchsia dawns and orange dusks and then they helplessly die their unceremonious deaths like slime on mud. Eagles dared and passion did not. Nothing sparked, nothing glittered, and love did not live like a flame because intent was dim.

Chapter 2

I have lived my life as Brahma and I have lived my life of Mahesh. Vishnu eluded me for an eternity.

Preserving love against decay, playfulness against sullenness, walking with a million against walking alone on absent dreams.

That's what Vishnus are for.

daughter of oceanus

starry night
sad songs
madness
methods
badness
pillow fights
sudden frights

creepy
weepy

rainy day
evenings
love songs
boat
river
styx
end
ticks

nameless

Like a stray dog
scampering
for food,
and love,

Shameless.

Like madness
creeping
Like love's
keeping,

Aimless

This one
is

nameless

ashtrays and cigarettes,
nicotine stained fingers
yellowing like a sunflower
while the sunflower looks up
at the sun, radiant and glowing
and asks it to draw him a sheep.
the wasp comes in gallantly
through the window kept open
curtains flying with the playful wind.
wind-chimes jingle and church bells
jingle all the way, a red nosed reindeer
trots into the wasp's personal
make believe rain forest
and befriends six other Rudolfs.
they follow the wasp, their pied piper
of Hamlin, only this time it was
a Piper at the Gates of Dawn
so there was a wind in the willows
and a willow in the wind
and candles many that blew
like answers which blew in the wind

bRaIn DaMaGe

The lunatic is in my head.
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane.
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me.

And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

law of specific relief

Made my blog a private space....had wondered many a time about the utility factor of keeping a blog where you can't rant when the objective happens to be able to treat this as an escapade of sorts.

Maybe I needed this..to be able to treat this as a journal finally, far from prying eyes, call this momentary lapse of reason, but this madness is the sweetest one in recent time.

life seems to run haywire without a direction, a course..like a car without brake and gear. and it sped like wilderness and forest fire despite the umpteen number of vehicles parked in front of my gate. and come to think of it, there was always a 'please do not park outside the gate' sign dangling there right in front of their nose. so the car broke every traffic rule and sped into the road. forget the signals, who ever cared, anyway? so what if they were damaged and damaged beyond repair? volenti non fit injuria, did i not tell you my friend?

and now, the brake refuses to work. waiting for the final stop. else a mechanic. one who knows his job, this time.

back to garage now, a make believe, temporary garage. it stinks!

Shhhhhhhh..........

"Whether this strange amalgam of various states of loneliness and lust articulates a message may be questionable, but it does, at least, resolve into a vaguely affecting experience that moves one like a vagrant symphony. Mr. Bergman has ordered his images as though presenting a musical score, with separate themes projected and developed and with supplementary phrases struck....But, unfortunately, Mr. Bergman has not given us enough to draw on, to find the underlying meaning or emotional satisfaction in this film. They say when it was shown in Sweden, its several erotic scenes were so detailed and explicit that they literally shocked audiences. Perhaps these scenes are essential to a superheated mood required for the psychological context. But obviously these scenes have been cut or trimmed for this market. Here the whole thing is rather tame, mystifying, and morbid. The Silence is almost like death."
— Bosley Crowther, The New York Times (1964)

i lost this last evening

i lost this last evening
when you came in waves
and receded again
with the thick smoke
of the distant factory chimney
and meshed with the outline
of the sky.
i lost this last sky when
with the paleness hanging around
the moon, my sister,
dropped a kiss
and then, dropped a moonbeam
on my palms, as i cupped it,
scared it may overflow
and find its way back
to the grey sky lit in
my distant absent dreams.
i lost this last drive
on the grand highway
when i hit the runaway black cat
and our earth stopped in its tracks.
and with battles lost
and war begone
i mourned once again
the annihilation of my civilization.

I hope and I pray that work behaves as my aphrodisiac to keep me moving on and away. I will regret this post later, I know.

For now, let me rejoice that it's working, my aphrodisiac as I have this almost orgasmic urge to forget and forgive and live. ;-)

I am already regretting this post. Shall delete it later, maybe.

Rip Van Winkle

What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails
That's what little boys are made of !
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice
That's what little girls are made of!

The stuff dreams are made of, you said

came in three---

the man, the woman and the third sex.
The stuff was kaleidoscopic

like memory gone crazy

in midsummer night’s fantasies,
like a play of pastel and colours

that run and pant

and take the final lap

on the moon.

The moon, in the nocturne

of my crystal gaze fades

and dies

only to revive

in the blazing fury

of attempts gone futile;

So those were stuff you said

dreams were made of,

and sometimes life;

like a lunatic reading ciphers;

and that is why men cannot cook

and women cannot read maps

and child is the father of man

by absurd union with his woman,

and Freud lives.

And they made up dreams you say,

like chocolate fantasy

with a dollop of ice cream

and a spoonful of chocolate sauce

at expensive coffee shops and tête-à-tête;

and so there was many a slip

between the cup and the lip

and when lips locked, memory mopped

the misses and savoured the taste

of dried lips and hasty kisses.

And now you say they made up your dreams

as I try to live it in my sleep

unsuccessfully in my life

as Rip Van Winkle.

saki, reincarnated

someone said somewhere,
maybe along the trembling gaze
of the tiny trail of water
holding moonbeams-
crystal and dreamy,
and yellow
like fire
melancholy and durable;
that
across
a thousand gem of Rubaiyat
and words of wisdom,
sanity
and philosophy
of insanity
lies a thirsty wanderer
on the golden sands
of kalahari,
desiring
another glass of wine
and a book of verse
and me,
the Saki of his time.

straightening up

There was nothing linear, ever. Tried to find a straight line and came across curves, thousand of them, meandering through the pan galactic phenomenon we call infinity.

Moving now. minus the poison ivy and the spammer. As Sartre said --"Death is a continuation of my life without me..."

so be this...

untitled

Tell them today

that music died in my head

like a stillborn.

So this is my day

to mourn the loss

of my unborn.

Tell them you came

and you saw

and you conquered me completely

like an agitated, restless roman

hastening the fulfillment of his aspirations

Which stood tall like

New York sky scrapers

In dizzy neon lights.

Tell them you fathered

the tunes I hummed

and cradled the madness

of music and wine.

Tell them today

Before we sail for

Lost seas and Atlantis.

Metamorphosis

This is like a midnight diary
I tried writing when the lights
were turned off; sipping coffee
lukewarm, hot and brewing when
brought and when the lights were
not dim. Now there is an astral
darkness warming me up and
my cold watery coffee.

Now i am the mannequin you see
in the street side shop , my life as
a doll, plastic and street smart.
Here i wrote my first obituary
mechanically like an author,
driven to workaholic nights.

You see that drizzle, the tiny trail
of water that meanders and then
is lost on my window pane;
lost in the merger of shiny silvery
watery crowd of drops innumerable,
countless like stars. That trail
was once me; now it's a lake lost
in winter when frozen in arctic cold.

I don't know these woods,
I need not know. I don't live there.
I lived here, in your startling city lights
once. And then I lived like an animal,
far away from civilization and
coherence of my urban thoughts.

Now I live here, perhaps,
like a sad song inside your head,
refusing to play when you begged me.
Loathsome pride, you smirked
as you looked at me.
But this voice crept inside your skin,
now blue like death,
and ate into your flesh
like a parasite growing on you.

I can't recollect your face,
not anymore when
you shunned my music.
Tell me now if I ask you
to hum my tunes and play me
by the orchestra in front of an audience,
waiting to hear me from you, will you?
I was your secret once and now
a hideous secret.

It did not really bother me;
what annoyed me was my hindsight.
How I had blindfolded myself against
the flow of my music.


And when I gaze at the mirror
and the mirror gazes back at me
and I wait with tired eyes
wanting to be the fairest of 'em all,
then it strikes me that I have been
coloured always. So I wept a li'l
and then I become a black feminist writer,
now sipping the same watery coffee
and writing away in fury
under the blood red sky
wanting to go starry
and bright like yesterday.

Orpheus Descending

Of the innumerable Greek myths that had fascinated me since childhood, the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice stands out by the sheer reverie it generated in me for it's poignancy. It is said that Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, fleeing from Apollo's son (who probably went by the name Aristaeus), ran into snakes which bit her fatally. Needless to say, she died. Orpheus, whom Pindar called 'Father of songs', shattered, played sad songs (remember, Denver's 'like a sad song'?). Pain was mighty and nymphs and gods wept tears of pearl. Undaunted, Orpheus traveled all the way to the underworld to persuade Hades and Persephone to return him his wife. His music saddened and softened them and they agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition that he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached their world. As fate would have it, Orpheus, in his soulful anxiety turned back to catch a glimpse of her; she vanished again, this time she was lost forever. The myth is unparalleled, probably only matched by the likes of Satyavan-Savitri, or Behula-Lokkhindar or Izanagi-Izanami of the East.


What fascinates me more, is that, according to Ovid's version of rendering the myth, Orpheus, after Eurydice's death, turned his back to the love of women and took youths as his lover.;-)

Was there ever a greater love or can there ever be?

The Mirror

The woman who screamed inside my head, like Edvard Munch's painting; the woman who shook me like an earthquake, like a volcano erupting in glee. The woman who killed me softly, ah, dying was such a wondrous thing! And then, the woman who blew life into me, like a wind rustling the autumn leaves. She bled and so did I. And when she died little did I know that she had bequeathed her poetry in the reflection that I saw in the mirror.

She has always been the woman to me.

it's the season to be bad because...

it's no use being good to people. give it them the hard way before they start acting smart. hard earned lesson of the day.

I have a new Philips DVD Mini Hi-Fi System now. And I am on a staple diet of nonstop random muzik, ranging from the usual Coldplay, COF, Grateful Dead, Collective Soul, Dylan, Beatles, S&G, Dire Straits to Assamese folk and Afro-Asian Jazz, with Sumon and Rafi in between. It's a nice, overall feeling .

chapter XXIII

I have lived more than a thousand lives, one thousand three hundred and ninety seven to be exact. And some day I shall hand over my secret list to you. You may call the list Pickles. But remember always. Never taste it. Lick it if you must but at your own peril. When you kick the royal bucket into the Prussian blue sea, I may be far away, wandering my one thousand three hundred and ninety eighth life as a fisherman waiting for his soul.

But enough of mediocrity and pickles. Enough of junk food and flavours of the East. I was also the mistress of Marco Polo in one of my lives, did I tell you? Sailors have wives at every harbour. Explorers also have a few. Promiscuity is inbred in them.

So was it in me. The brilliant golden yellow realization dawned on me on a sunny day, the sort of day you find conducive to put the sail before the mast. So as I was getting ready to set off with my roots to another land, far from familiarity and it's token contempt, I started comprehending the enormity that lay latent in me. There was a solitary little wild flower growing in my crannied walls. It had been there for some time now, it had grown, uncared for and alone. I had hardly ever taken anything more than a cursory glance at it. But now, as I inched towards the garden gate, ready to move out to seek a new house, I happened to notice it. And I took a fancy to it.
The next moment, I was making love to it.

Then I walked away leaving it to die indebted in my cares.



What do I tell you my friend of loving and leaving, of promiscuity and Apollos, of the tiny path between the fury of Hell and pure Mediterranean bliss? What do I teach you my lover of the ignominy of love?


-----------------

rainbow

this is the green sand
above which
life stands barren
like a eunuch.

this is the white wing
which took me higher
once when my blackness
was deliriously untouchable,

and this my crimson red
which burnt holes
in your wincing looks
in ancient rage of gods

there is also the blue dome
past the insipidity of gray skies
which stares back into me
in a forlorn impish gaze


how i wish i could form
a rainbow beneath my wings
in rainy summer afternoons.

thirst

in endless deep
Prussian blue
and northern light,
colours shift
past the contour
of my sea girl.

her lips quivered
'water'--
take it darling,
drop by drop
i'll quench your thirst.

amber eyes'
eyelashes
flickered and gaze
rested.
tequila sunrise
of myriad dawns
wasted.

down deep
few thousand feet
voices hushed
in lips luscious.
down there
sound came
in rasps
when she kissed.

Generation

I saw thousands of them
on the busy streets of my city
Crying and dying and screaming
and dimming like the street lights
at the surge of dawn.

I saw them wriggling in pain,
arms amputated; limping
on broken limbs and shattered faith.

I saw them blurring in ugliness,
their once handsome features;
they crumbled like a touch-me-not
in daylight's disgrace and ignominy.

I saw them chained
to unsung melodies
streaming across the Ganges
endlessly like time.

I saw them raped,
mobbed and looted
while the blinds of the place
prayed for moksha;
a suitable deliverance
from darkness unto light.

I saw them stealing cars
and money and things
money could buy or borrow
Stealing to whorehouses
to buy packets of ecstasy
when cocaine and marijuana failed.

I saw them greedy
when high heels walked
I saw the them hissing
In the predatory rapacity
Of a viper.

I saw them destroyed
like another Hiroshima
Like poetry stifling in the ashes
Strewn around destruction
of laborious love.

Little by little I saw
their generations
gradually burn out
or simply cease!