Badly Drawn Girl

2010-07-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

2010-05-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

You can easily see that we're both birds. With wings and tails and cans of worms that are best left unopened today...

2010-04-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

Small. InbetweenthecoversIfeelsmall.

WhenIthinkoftheworldasonesingleplaceIfeelsmall.

WhenIimaginetheseawithinaconchshellIfeelsmall.

WheneverydaythetreeoutsidemywindowhasanewguestandnowtherearemanyIfeelsmall.

WhentheroadsneverendonthehighwaythatIoncetookandthedistancesaretoobigIfeelsmall.

WhenthebirdsflysohighthattheyseemlikeinkstainsIfeelsmall.

WhenthephoneringsatanoddhourandmyheartskipsabeatbutitisnotyoucallingIfeelsmall.

WITHOUTyouIfeelsmall...

2010-04-12T07:13:00.000-07:00

Our feet they will take us in different directions.At times mocking, at other's coaxing us to go and find a path, an unfamiliar path with strangers up mountain roads or cold seas....The feet will always say you are empty, go fill yourself up with someones laughter, or a story that someone sent out with a prayer on the wind's edge....and we shall look at our feet sometimes and be surprised how they seem to have come from somewhere far away....not even our own....These feet will take us elsewhere, where the sounds are different and the silences too....do you think your feet will ever stop, perhaps, many years from now to think about my feet? Will they recall, in some quiet hour the patterns we had made together in sand once?

Or do feet once removed from each other never look back at the roads they walked on?

Love

2009-11-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

How much shall we travel today?

on the buses through the airwaves

between hot oil massages and football games

between being late for work

and the embarrassing admissions of last night

Of course it was nothing but the alcohol talking

In the funny way it always has

Quiet now again and fidgety

Lets forget about it and move on

I make a secret mental note of your favorite film

Someday that information will be useful too.

One step closer that's how much.

The Idealist's Song

2009-04-23T00:41:00.000-07:00

Search (one)

2009-04-19T22:37:00.000-07:00

2009-04-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

2009-03-01T04:38:00.000-08:00

...and then Stella looked him in the eye and said
FUCK OFF Astrophil...

If It Could Be Said

2009-02-25T06:10:00.000-08:00

If it could be said.

We would not muddle over mojitos
All night. We passed by this road
And kept getting lost at the same
Red light. Turning a violent green of the
The heart. But it aches and nothing will
Kill this pain. Not until

It has been said.

2009-02-25T05:52:00.000-08:00

He slapped me for no reason she said.

When Emilia asked what the blue face was all about.

Then she thought of all the other men she could have been with right now.

Men who had sworn to love her perfectly.

And amongst them she thought of that boy,

Who, would stand under her window,

Drunk like the gondola he was on

Plucking an elaborate tune on his guitar.

She thought of his slightly ugly face

How his hair had curled, in all the wrong ways.

She thought how pathetic he had seemed back then

On his daddy’s boat.

But today she took out her phone book

And called him before she could change her mind.

She wanted out of this prison island for good.

And his daddy’s boat didn’t seem so bad after all.

She dialed his number, hoping he’d still be there.

It rang and she could tell he was on roaming.

First ring, second ring, third ring, she decided she’d hang up if he didn’t pick up by the fifth ring.

Fourth ring, she was desperate…she decided to hang up on the seventh ring.

Fifth ring, then a beep and a voice on the other side said “hello”.

She lifted her head and looked into the mirror. The voice said “hello” again.

In the mirror she saw her life with him, in shades of pink and blue.

She ran to her bathroom because she thought she would be sick.

She hung up.

But that night she went to bed with a swan – song and a dagger.

The song was for her husband. So was the dagger.

Tomorrow she thought to herself, as she lay in the dark for him to come to bed.

Tomorrow will be mine…

Wednesday

2009-02-13T04:51:00.001-08:00

"Estas astravesada como el dia Miercoles"*...
..because you bring with you the hindsight of hope
and the foresight of heartbreak...
sometimes you're like an impossibly bad film
at others you're a friendly cafe in the middle of nowhere
when I've walked for four hours and there's only four more to go...

*"You are like a wednesday"
These lines are from a fantastic play by Sarah Kane called Crave

To you all; the keepers of my culture,honour and shame...

2009-02-10T06:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Boys from the Ram Sene (and such like),
I admit that I have been a complete failure at upholding my "honor" even though I am an educated, intelligent adult citizen of this country. I have been quite vexed at my own actions and I must confess my crimes immediately to you -
-occasionally having a quiet drink with friends at a pub.
-going out dancing because I love to dance and have always thought it a great way of unwinding after a long and tiring week.
-going back home on a bus with a boy who studies in my college. I see why even though we live close to each other we must not get on the same bus to go to college (i will suggest to him that he should always take the later bus, so what if he misses a lecture...afterall we're talking of "honor" here).
-wearing "western" clothes because they're comfortable and easy to manage.
-speaking my mind and striving to forge my own identity as a woman and a human-being.
-falling in love and showing the person I love that I love him.
-acknowledging my body and its needs and desires.

You have opened my eyes now. But I regret to inform you that since I've spent too many years in the habit of being shameless try as I may I am unable to do things differently. This worried me quite a bit until last week when I saw you all on t.v. I am so delighted that I no longer have to worry about my honor since you have decided to take care of me. What would women like me do without you?

And so I am thrilled to send you my pink panties today. As keepers of my shame I hope you will take care of them. I will now roam the world less burdened with this matter of my honor and reassured that my shame is well taken care of by all of you who have so graciously taken the role of being the "keepers of my culture, honour and shame."

Yours sincerely,

A Shameless (& now obviously panty-less) Indian Woman.

Gaza

2009-01-19T19:34:00.000-08:00

There is a war out there.
And no one is able to say who started it.

There, people shrouded in glowing white
Move around, mostly children.
It is a silent procession through broken down buildings made of alphabets
A playground that came apart under lights, like a nervous acrobat
With a spine of cactus.
A little farther down the road, is the " Dead Mothers' Lost and Found Dept."
"Finders keepers", they say, "Losers weepers", they say.
Continuing into the night, they will find their favourite film star,
On fire, frightened and not such a hero afterall.
He will die, forever, and the thought will break that girl's heart.
They come upon a barbed mirror and ask;
"Are we on the wrong side, or is that the right side?"

Then the youngest and weakest of those children
That boy right at the back of the amnesty queue
Who has silently been fitting together these pieces of alphabets, acrobats, dead mothers
and broken hearts into his jigsaw puzzle memory,
that boy will say
"I can't wait to grow up and find out"

Do you ever wonder
about the terrifying whirligig of time?

Love Song for Mephisto (1)

2009-01-12T23:30:00.000-08:00

In your eyes, Mephisto,
Are promises of a hellish love
I'll take it; Because you see
In these years I have come to doubt
That there is any other sort.

www.oleanova.com/gambling_art.htm
By the artist Olea Nova

Trust

2009-01-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

with some i can never find
and others i was completely blind...

2009-01-05T07:27:00.000-08:00

There is such sadness in the music that the Cello brings. A sadness capable of immense inspiration or it might unravel all fortifications that one makes around the soul. The Count said to the other courtiers - no he did not say he asked because he did not know himself - the secret of forgetfulness...

Why are we taught to fight all feeling? Especially feeling that might make us honest or vulnerable...Truth is fragile and often breaks like old women's bones. A broken heart. A scattered smile. The wish to draw tortoise shells on all the walls and breathe life into them...But

Never go so far that you may not return. After all death is so incurable. Static and stubborn like a finishing line. It takes away the beauty of a place, borrowing from it its eternity - never, never to return that moment of the sea.

This is who I am. Who I wish to be. Why must I fear that eye which looks at me. It is mine own. I must speak because this silence will drive me insane. Sometimes the music envelops me - lifting me from this room and beyond the forgotten owl's nest. Only sometimes.

Then what of those green burdens? Can I leave them for the cart to carry when it takes me away? Power, Courage, Honor, Right, Success - I try to believe in all these things. Perhaps I even do. And it shames me so the believing and the non-believing only because often I get greedy for an answer, which is which, who is who.

And then you say there will be time for everything.

Ah! that these days might have passed by a blue sea or in sun flower fields. But now these things; the blue sea, the goldmines of a sunflower field, aquatic life, other galaxies and the sadness in the music that the Cello brings - now they must be collected and pressed into folds of words - one day, a Spring day, to be found out again and thrown away into that place where we throw away everything that ever mattered.

2009-01-02T03:09:00.000-08:00

Poetry has left the room...room has left the poet...left poetry in the room...

2008-12-30T05:35:00.000-08:00

Cat.

Are you contemplating the sum of your nine lives
or simply bored?

Did you ever want to go to sleep and not wake up? Has the world been good to you always?

Oh Cat.

From Here to There

2008-11-20T23:51:00.000-08:00

A poet once said
Don't ask me for that love again...

I know you who are there
Walking these same streets that I crawl on
I can see your face changing color like the days
When you pass a familiar ruin.

I too have played that chameleon game once
And I pay for those passions even now.

But so much has changed between our lines
Then when we did not know Love we thought that she was all we needed.
When nothing was old or new. I could lie then, without speaking.
And you believed me without listening to anything I said.
Such a world it was without a hell; only the promise of it.

Now hell is in my mind, in my clothes, and in all the bottles on the table.
I choose only one hell from another to consume everyday.
How can I love like that? Now that I know Love. She is as ugly as Truth in the old tale.

I know nothing. Except that they had us fooled all along.
They were only selling another miracle drug. And you know I don't pop pills so easy.
Now I run into people who've seen you mumbling to yourself at the corner of the street.
They say you look well and happy when no ones watching.

There is so much left to do.

I have little time left.

Surrogation

2008-06-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

Everyday I swell for someone else
This joy is not mine to spend or invest
They come with gifts. Food for my joy.

Everyday I bury myself under shame
This is what I do for life...I make more living things
So that my own can live.

Don't you dare judge me.
I don't sell my body. I give boons to those who seek them.

Year after year this body swells and drops like ocean waves
And I am as unattached as the waves. High tide, low tide.
These are only technical terms attached to the profession.

One day these boons will take everything I have
And there will be one less goddess on earth.

But don't worry you who comes to me
My sister, she lives a few villages away
Is in the boon-giving business too.

2008-03-28T04:44:00.000-07:00

Each point has been put forth
The facts of the case are all out in the open
The judgement to be passed is on a woman's character;
The jury might claim it was her double who killed Bluebeard afterall.
The slave girl;
Dark, violent, the sea, beautiful beast.
In China they consider beasts in bottles -
Submit (they say) to every kind of distortion or be locked up in footwear forever.
Such joy to watch the sea turn to pond or painting.
Quiet.
Still.
Dumb.
Dead.

2008-03-28T04:27:00.000-07:00

At the edge of language I swim with you tonight as words dissolve in to prussian colours. I see you through latticed memories that are sweet in my mouth and bitter in my throat. Voices escape and make way for something more languid. Don't say a word, you might break the wave that is coming on. Can it all only be understood backwards? Shall we return through wires and electricity to where darkness lives to make that fall come true?

Fragment

2008-02-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

These are deceptions that you and I tug at,
Like blankets on a winter night.
So quickly we have given away our words - the good words.

The time has come to speak badly
We exist ever so casually in our distinct hemispheres
That shall not come to any sort of agreement on dawn or dusk.

And we wonder...

(but never out loud)

So soon. Ah! Must it be so soon?

Narcoleptic

2008-01-15T06:20:00.000-08:00

I sleep, therefore I exist.
Nothing provokes me because I am
where you cannot touch me.
I make the rules of my dreams and break them as I choose.

I sleep on these streets of hate and love
Dirt on my face like light from the sun.
I can be anywhere, the roads are all the same
Sound, your sound does not touch me then, like a caress.

Born here, and looking for my mother
Dog, lost on a crowded highway
Sure to be run over if I turn too brave
No one to shelter me when life rides away in a taxi.

Hyperventilate in a strange room
They leave me alone these men who want forty-dollars worth of love
Love is not death; death is sleep but I always wake up,
On a pavement or hotel room, it is all the same.

I celebrate at a funeral
How an old man lived and died of a broken heart
I look shallowness in the eye and scream - shallowness is fear.
I sleep again and again and again.

Let me sleep, I owe you nothing anymore
Thieves take all, someone picks me up
The roads converge at Idaho; potato country,
Where a green house still stands from memory.

Written after watching My Own Private Idaho, a film by Gus Van Sant. It is a really good film. Here's a link to a trailor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA0U0otWuzE
Thanks Aazar for lending me the film! :)

Maid

2008-01-09T10:36:00.000-08:00

Girl of so many colours
I would never have known had she not asked
For a bright pink dress last diwali.
And so I had picked the one I hated the best.
She loved it.

Girl wants smooth skin
As smooth as the lotions on my dressing table will make it
In my sick mind I can't allow it.
And so I ignore the roses she leaves on the bed while I'm asleep.

Girl of bright sparkling eyes
Talks back like any other teenager
But she's different, when she bends down to clean our dirt.
Mutineer, I must be revolting to you in my sunday garb, cigarette in hand.

Girl wanted more
More is not as much, but I can't give her anything
So she stole what she could not have.

Girl runaway.
Does your laughter still ring in someones ears?
Or have you grown up; still as if you were dead.
Dead to your fate.

Funeral

2007-12-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

Playing languid games with you, sister, on summer afternoons up in the attic room.

Time would seize and the world would disappear except when interrupted, we always knew how to keep an ear out for any kind of sound.

Do you remember that pleasure of little fingers finding each other out? And I would see you quiver, only slightly, as I touched the many lips on your map.

We were so happy and proud. We were sacred then, in our oasis where nothing was forbidden and no one withered away because they ate. We paid tribute to our hunger and no one stopped until they were satisfied.

What happened then sister mine? Do you remember that dreadful day when we began our first lessons in food?

Learning to measure Want, like it was an ingredient in a dessert recipe; Only a teaspoon each for us, any more could turn flour to stone.

How easily we lost and looked away from each other. Hate flowing between our legs, hate lying where we had lain. That was the last time we went to the attic room. The last summer when heat was word.

We never speak now, you and I. Lovers have come between us, with their armor and their weapons. It was always a war out there and through all these years we were molded to be honest soldiers. Shedding our clothes when the orders came. Singing an anthem that no one ever bothered to know the words to.

I could no longer bear for you to see me, how ugly it is this cold steel mirror I wear as a face. And on those nights when I dream of you I wake up with fear crawling around me. What if you died? What if we both did? No one would be the wiser because when they killed Desire that summer no one really did notice that the light in your eyes had stopped burning holes into the sun.

You had once saved me with your love. Now the time has come for me to jump and I know you won't hold me back. You won't make promises that we have already broken. The world would've been a better place, had we the feet to stand. But those too were cut, to use as fuel for the fireplace one winter. How can I tell my children a story again. I cannot hide the shame on my face. The shame that comes from letting a love to waste.

Father

2007-12-21T09:56:00.000-08:00

a little buzzing in the head
fingers moving
sounds from the television - ringing all evening
full stomach almost too full
should i fill this glass again - that honey liquid calls.
we hardly ever talk, but take comfort from being in rooms next to each other
he's always wondering if i'm upto things...clever things....dangerous things

if only you could see
i'm lonely just as you,
having learnt nothing from your mistakes.
i'm the same person you tried not to be.

Dry Comfort

2007-12-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

This suspicious air that we breathe
Stories half heard.
Made crueler in their retelling.
No I was not there, nor were you, but…
Drawing out hair from cues at the cinema
This could be your killer, the bomber, the rapist.
His eyes, his clothes and his face give it all away.
He’s the one to blame for the lack of food on your table
He’s the one who got what you wanted.
I don’t believe in anything that is not mine. Mine is everything that is yours.
Loudspeakers shout at passers-by.

“Buy, Buy,Buy,”
“Beware”
“Grab”
“Shine”
“Bounce”
“Fly”
“King”
“Queen”

Dulled with this longing for better skin, a better body, life after death.
Hoping for self-help. I hate.
The monk who sold his car – how much was it worth?
And what did he do with the money?
We know nothing of each other. I’ve never been to your home.
Do you live in a green palace? Saffron scares you?
On this side we speak correctly.
Except when caught at a bad time.
“Those people are strange. Yes I know I might sound wrong but really they are”
It is entirely your fault this crazy world. Who started it? Who should end it?

Evaporate.
Mushroom cloud for us all.
Honor.
Lesson.
Enslave.
Justice.
Divine.
Kill.
Consume.
Faith.
Blind.

At birth I could not see. I learnt to touch, then speak and then walk.
Then they said don’t cross that line.

Yours.
Mine.
Together.
Apart.
Distance.
Boundary
Walls.

Can be broken.

What's The Difference?

2007-12-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

Man flew off the highway
We watched. Time didn't stop
So we moved on to places we had to be.

Why I thought,

but decided to play music instead.
Cold day to die

I thought.

Was he a boy whose future was filled with phonecalls?
Was his alter ego called James or John or did they take turns at identities?

Cold cold day to die.

And how would they know who was who and which was which lying there underneath the flyover - James, John or the Boy.

Far worse things happen. Like being shot at by a classmate when school ended. What a moment of shock when the first bullet went through him.

Did he think "but I was just playing?' Or did he go down with a curse. There's honor in death too like the heroes have.

Boys will be boys. "Another toy gun for you little one, now go and learn to be a man".

A little bit of fun never did anyone any harm

or did it?

cold days these.

Candle

2007-12-10T03:01:00.000-08:00

In the night
You unravel like a spring flower
Your light meets my face and pauses briefly as if it remembered something but then moves on.
I want to answer every question you leave unasked.
Desire that you burn like winterwood, warming us and keeping us still
like the wires and boxes. We sit around you in a perfect circle - if only someone painted us now, then we'd remain here.
We never tire of speaking except when we want the pleasure of silence,
To witness your beauty, veiled in blue but always falling apart.

****************

Now that your unraveling in complete

You lie alone, a thing of beauty on the floor

And we have all crawled away like little ants to our own solitude in the wall.

How long shall you lie there Joy? Through every kind of delirium.

Fallen thing, your colors change with every passing hour.

That Autumn turns to grey is an eventuality we can no longer deny.

You keep your dreams of last night in every dying horn that shall blow and every layer

of dust that will take you farther away from our vision. Red flower

I fear holding you in my arms when I know you shall crumble away like love.

But I cannot leave you here or give you up to strangers or their feet.

Jailbird I must make you mine atleast in my small mind and see you wither away until I forget even to look at you through the door hole.

That day you shall truly have died like Summer.

Candle in the morning

We have been cruel in love but it always was for the best.

"A Poem For You"

2007-12-02T22:07:00.000-08:00

On this grey wintry morning
I try to write you a letter and again these words
They fail me. Shall I say that your love was incomparable
To mine? Shall my words be sorry or pointing you towards hope?

Blurry mind. Memories of when we were children - waking up next to one another.
Will you ever wake up and smile again? What I hate is that I am a coward. Poetry is for
cowards such as I. Talking in twisted tongues, slurring; drunk on beauty even when there isn't
any. But in your voice is truth. Truth always was your friend. She buoyed you up on her tides.
And you saw her reflection so perfect and languid in the water.

I'm the one who stumbled upon truth on land in her cave - and found how ugly she really was. Horrified
I could not forgive her for her lies while she smiled at me slyly; knowing that my fate had been written in so many inks.

How I wish you could remain simple and yet know these things. That your heart would know love but not know breaking. If I were to commit a crime would they cut off my tongue - so I'd never have to speak again to you.

As I make room for new tenants I find what is good is yours and decide to send you the things that belong to me. Suffer - isn't that how we came to be. Will Truth be your guide even on those nights when your body craves for food and death - will she say to you to let this pass while you can't comprehend the agony. I worry for you, but only that much. I fortify myself with words because I worry for myself more. I could not accept your gifts when you curse me. The thought of banishment shall keep me awake until the day I find sleep has justified everything perfectly and I am only a little numb.

We all lost. In forests, in water, at the races. There are no rewinds on this one. Wounds that take their own time to heal - some faster than others while some never do. We must choose which we will be for each other.
At a crossroad where our names clearly point in different directions; don't follow me. I no longer fear my own shadow and I can't stop storms that are yet to come.

Find yourself another song. Lamentations are just the end of this one. More tunes will come by and by. Do I sound like a cheat quoting hope at you? Not even my own.

I've been mad once and been strummed between chord variations I did not like. How can I ease this shade when it is not for me to ease. It is for you to cherish this blue. And sink until you wish to save yourself.

Her Secret

2007-11-28T06:59:00.000-08:00

This secret of ours. Shall we throw it to the wind?

And follow the trail, to where it all began.

I could not bear it if time were to stop here and no one knew,

What a moon eats that makes it so full.

Shall I tell or will you?

Or should we build another maze,

Intricate enough only for whispers.

Keep quiet! Don't breathe

So our faces grow red.

Red eyes could mean so many things.

Laugh suddenly, its mine to spend as I choose

For you I can spare some at midnight.

And sadness what of it?

Except when we try to catch a second but its too quick for us.

Fill Time up, and take a sip, roll it on your tongue,

words flow from her, even when Time is bitter.

Secrets are meant to be told on summer days she said

But winter came so suddenly, lasted too long.

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

Inspired by Christina Rossetti's(Fascinating, Beautiful, Manic Depressive Victorian Poet) poem "Winter:My Secret". Here's a link to her secret...

http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=2981

Image after image inside image...

2007-11-26T06:23:00.000-08:00

First; "Lines":

She runs on my television screen - while two neat black lines
Follow her, precisely hiding what we must ignore.

Simple mathematics in a glass building shows that it would be easy
For us to imagine her without breasts. A woman without a vagina.

Hideous but in better taste, after all the news does come at dinner time.

How bad can we feel when neat lines divide her body and numb our pain.

No she wasn't born with those lines, and when the boots were kicking her those lines
Did not exist, the boots weren't dented. They only came later for easy money and to protect
Our drawing room conscience from hurting too much.

Second; "Cameras"

Mute stone men, catching the moment on cheap phone cameras
Like reciting the story of her humiliation to a blind man - except he can clearly see the things he wishes to.
City street full of them - drowning out her scream in their manic silence as they watch.
After she was dragged down, the cameras decide on an encore.

Third; "The Voice"

Remorseless speech, though certainly apologetic about the damage to cars and shops.
"Unfortunate" incident, "undivided" we shall always remain. Inquiries. Justice. Woman - who?
Nudity is a bad thing for our children to see back home.
Men on the other hand can strip who they choose - anger is best let out.

We shine much like our country. Moving onto other news. Sell me the camera again. Move on to someones success.

Fourth; "Image"

Slow it down to a walk, so I may forget that there was an image this evening of a half woman
running for help into nobodies arms.

-A peaceful protest on a street of guwahati (assam) turned violent. an adivasi woman was stripped naked, chased after, kicked repeatedly on her breasts and vagina and paraded down the street.This news played over and over again with a caption on the top right of the screen saying "Shame", while Assam's chief minister was heard in the background calling the incident "unfortunate" and still saying that "they remain undivided". i don't know the woman's name - the journalists reporting the incident did not think it necessary to say.

Night City

2007-11-25T06:39:00.000-08:00

We decided after we'd finished doing what we did best, A walk. Late, long walk. And this is what we found...

...The night is born of another light. Bastard city. More exotic in its loneliness.

What is it about the night that we have feared so long?

Like intruding upon someone else's set - dogs disapprove, while some
have had better experiences with us. Blue tents, lit up on an empty road, huddled.
We stop to look, eavesdrop on two people snoring. But how lit up - like a gypsy abode.

We arrived at the palace of god, to find him locked up in a cage, giving the housekeeping a piece of his mind.
Cold night, cold floor as our foreheads pay in obeisance for a midnight snack and congratulations.

On further contemplation we discover that the night is feared because there are people out there taking care of us. Like ghosts they appear and we know this fear of not belonging, of hiding in the darkest spot.

Then from no where a two wheeled chariot appears, riders seeking to be heroes for one night - even a token would take them off towards the moon, if only we had something to say like "Help!"

Men dressed in secrets walk past us as though making for home. Would dinner await them? Or even a careless gesture to say welcome. I think they must have dreams in the songs floating above us.

We who belong to pavements of early morning, while they spill laughter on these streets without any concern for the price.

At the station where half-men-women leave at an unearthly hour. Escaping to a newer dream. Lipstick just a little smudged on the right side of the upper-lip. Mirrors could help but why must they try?

Coffee, and fake food numb us. We are the spotlight. Alone and happy, still have what we started with. Time flew on and again another familiar city takes over these figures. And we all go back - circus like into our tricycles of morning, noon and night...

Untitled (or Orgasm)

2007-11-25T06:28:00.000-08:00

In a simple revealing way I love you.

Still as dust suspended in the sun - waiting to leave the room.

I know your message will come for me

In the morning, like tea and newspapers.

Sending me further into the blur of blankets.

Then when it really shall be you when I awake,

Euphoric I will be a cat purring...

(In the vacuums under the sheets, spaces for you to fill, things no one says; you do.

I want to make dedications at this point. Give a glorious speech to no one in particular.

Stretch it - forever isn't elastic enough. Can poetry be in sound and the time it takes for us to get there? Little stories unfolding in a big world, winter mornings spent dancing to music that makes little sense amidst all things sensible? Or a book on a shelf, waiting to be read...)

...This could be a simple thing if I knew how to be honest.

Longing For Greece; Yesterday

2007-11-23T22:58:00.000-08:00

"Blue Window's Woman" by Braddy Romero Ricalde

In a silent way we're all flowing On medium wave. At times electrocuted with sausages frying in oil Music comes to us, slowly from far away. Not as strong as the sound of writing In front of a window, into which the blueness of the ocean is reflected. And the sun will be over us when we go for walks all by ourselves. Or even on picnics by the sea.

Can we remain unchanged? Can nothing ever hurry us? That we remain patient forever about the things life will bring. Gifts of pain, or sorrow, even gifts of stars and morning We may forget living here now, today will sink in some distant horizon. But the sight, of songs, of insanity and childhood and conversation will stay in our minds.

Clay Song

2007-11-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

Idol maker...

Sculpt me into many bodies,

in love and despair, I will speak to you in my clay voice.

When you've finished these patterns you're making on my hand

I will touch you on the deepest night and bring you a gift of tranquility.

Your desires are new like the smell of my thirst quenched in the first rains

Your fears I know, when the flood-gates open and I hold on to nothing - that slipping away feeling.

I shall belong to the earth you stand on when you're tired of running

Pick me from my stillness and let me be the birth of an idea.

Walk in fields where I live cared for by the sweat of women and songs

of children when they first understand the beauty of freedom.

Imagine me in twilight, when all is lost, and you have to let me go

Throw me to ether and I shall travel through many stories once more.

Follow the voice of the dust storm then, and when it tires of raving and ranting

I shall be there as Morning.

Take this clay and start again,

to make me.

Dancers

2007-11-16T03:36:00.001-08:00

You always led, and she followed,
That is how you taught her to dance.

She believed you when you said,
her life was important - in silence and perfect china, she'd find meaning.

She tried her best to make you smile,
you felt like a "man" and she believed that was all that mattered.

Then one day you left her. Her feet don't know how to move, oblivious that they once had chosen their own maps. She shakes with every step, unsure, laughed at, alone and apologetic.

What do you have to say for yourself?

Looking...

2007-11-15T05:25:00.000-08:00

"Objects in Drawers"

by Nick Bantock

Manchild,

I look for you hurriedly in the many faces of the city

random faces tucked behind windows.

"Objects in drawers" in an artist's mind. I sift through them all, wishing i'd find that,

which i had seen only yesterday, but now, oh how it has disappeared like one which is

kept away carefully and never found again.

"If Only We Didn't Have To Go"

2007-11-12T01:05:00.000-08:00

At this place where loves are lost and found,
I claimed yours.

The wind carries your restrain
As if you were never here but at a sheperd's hut
Where I walked only yesterday.

And Remorse is a pattern I'm beginning to draw, for
keeping this time too long
would only be
Like painting a perfect sky, blue.

Don't speak of it then because words
will only wrong all the rights of this quiet equation
Silence will do; if you don't know how then
Listen to the mountains say nothing...

North Campus Yesterday

2007-07-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

"I'll have my tea with two drops of rain"...

I've been to these places before,
when the weather and people were sticky and never dull.

These corridors filled with promises of a fantastic love
and life that we'd share.

Instead ending after the first night on a dirty hostel room bed
sharing only cheap rum and our bodies.

The people are no longer the same, but the faces
still betray secrets from last night.

A smirk, a touch, a seemingly profound pick up line
"I've been here before on a rainy day".

Boredom

2007-06-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

Watched a kite and then a bird
Just like my mind they flew changing directions
Ever so often. I wish I knew that there was just one road
To take me to where you are, if only the sign posts were clearer
And the milestones were not of numbers but "hot", "luke warm and "cold".
Are the songs on the radio all clues?
Is dusk a time when everyone comes back home?
Will the phone begin to ring if I stare at it hard enough?
Would the books read themselves to me?

Boredom...

2007-06-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I spent
with you in my head as i tossed and turned
between a variation of chords - D, G and A minor
and incessant conversation analysing your life
fucked up as it is...

Then when the ringing began, strenuos and agitated
I walked out of this green room we'd locked ourselves in
to see silhoutted mountains at the edge
that could have been gold if our maps had been the same
and our clocks if they'd clicked in the same tongue.

Instead beyond our stares there was a blanket pregnant with golden flowers
embroidered into a grandmother's pattern of long waits,
by the window.
Old as it was - the memories faded into lights that a photographer craves.
The flowers fell as i fell from you
and I know the world is still a better place, because tonight
weren't we fireflies?

Labernums

2007-05-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

A yellow June

The clocks in her house

strike disbelief and nostalgia

While canvases melt into one another.

The heat is a sensation of dullness and drifting through dreams.

Like in a film I see her,

Taking charge of a scene that makes little sense .

Sepia Afternoon

2006-11-23T02:54:00.000-08:00

little box,
one of many.
pick me pick me it seems to say
with its bright yellow wrapping and green bows

little box,
took it home.
present for whoever finds it
left it under the christmas tree - fake and gaudy

little box,
nobody found you.
changed color dust and grime
now who will want you ugly box

little box,
put it away.
under the shelf where it fits
unobtrusive spent life, under surveillance and duties

always introduced last, if someone notices
under- medication- schizo box.

What is it you said?

2006-11-20T03:15:00.000-08:00

How do I show you
the shade of blue in the fields
when the giant-wheel makes its
death sounds will you listen?

My mind's made up, or half -made
egg that it is.
I'll be out here amidst the yellow birds
but will you call me when its not urgent?

To think that this is the beginning
and everyones happy because
they have new things this evening
will you laugh even when you've heard these lines before?

REM

2006-09-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

I see today with a newsprint fray
My night is colored headache grey
Don't wake me with so much.
Daysleeper.

I woke up with a letter. and an accusation. I woke up with the doorbell serving lunch, guilt and ache...the songs are all mixed up. they make sense that way. honeybee gives me a high. jazz is alright. nostalgic speeches, and i see you're yawning and wish that i would stop...so i do...and next thing i know you're fast asleep...

Sunday

2006-09-03T02:51:00.000-07:00

Your sunday starts here...

City

2006-09-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

I live in a city. of madness and magic. Its always crowded, they say it even has a "spirit"...but this crowd is made up of strangers. people who go about the business of living alone. they say its a city of dreams...my dreams are bizarre. i don't know about the rest. because we're all strangers. we hardly ever speak. is it possible that people on the trains are pushing and shoving each other only because they want some human contact?