Every now and then people appear who are like a small piece of ice, who look like they could melt easily and who pale in comparison to the stones and the rocks and the boulders that stand firm, beside them. You wouldn't be surprised if they just disappeared, vanishing as fast as they came. But when they stay around long enough to gather just that little bit of momentum, you'll see all the tiniest pieces of snow around beginning to stick. And then they roll and roll, picking up more and more snow until they're so big and tall that they can topple over the biggest rocks and most giant boulders that stood before. And so what started as just little pieces of ice becomes so heavy, so enormous. They can shake the world like an avalanche.
Meri Amma
Twas a while ago, now 22 years
when cut from your womb
I embraced the doom
A broad-chested fury of tears
No doubt you dried them from my eyes
19 years ago I stumbled onto root
and my crushed wrist
Gave your heart a twist
They gave me a cast, comic book crude
And then you dried the tears up off my eyes
Indian farmlands
Sleepy fields and dreamy crops
Rows and rows stretched out, yawning
Swallow man made huts
A Majestic milieu blossom like fruit
Seedlings sprout
Ragtag farmers like [...never finished this sentence, and there the thought ended, to be revived many years later]
Sitting in this tent at ranthambore, a single consciousness, I reflect on all that flutters around me. A friend on his own journey accompanies me. A mosquito net not in use. A small electric heater quietly chugging away, warming my bones. Lazy day. Restless night. dimly lit. Bundled up, lying, thinking... Searching. Beautiful words escape me. the prosaic feels acceptable today. Tied up, pressured, anxious, the writing is forced. Resting and waiting for my birds to chirp. Outside, people gather. Voices reverberate Iike strings of a lyre. A spontaneous symphony with no composer, no conductor. Crescendos and diminuendos, orchestrated to its own social rhythm. American or India, pick your poison...Or draught or potion or elixir. Ambitions and traditions, acts, events, happenings, the universe is in motion, it is plain to see. galaxies twinkle far off In oblivion. Neither watching not caring, friendly and aloof at the same time. How many eyes and hearts have invested their own existence into these distant heavenly bodies? So far removed from mankind, and therefore so beautiful. we all desire to travel away. The spirit will always climb to higher altitudes than those at which our bodies graze. Meadows in the skies. The spiritual arts lead us there, only briefly. A guided tour all too short, how we long to stay and yet we're soon back in the gift shop.
The world appeared to him like the pages of a book, flipping endlessly before his eyes, a black and white blur of letters and shapes and symbols that he couldn’t wrap his head around. He hadn’t yet learned to read, and so what he experienced in his illiteracy was a mere whirring and flapping of papers, on and on and on. It never struck him that something could be eluding him, though he wondered where the colorful illustrations from his childhood had suddenly gone. And so he went about his business, wandering great expanses of time, advancing from school to college to work, without questioning the muffled hush, the muteness that was his world.
He lived in a city of millions, but the walls of his apartment kept them out. His ears hung out with humanity when sounds trickled in through his windows in the night and poured in during the mornings. The honking and screeching, the blaring of police cars, the wailing of ambulances and fire trucks—it never let up. His friends lived such troubled lives, he thought. He only heard from them when they were busy being cut off in traffic, getting arrested, becoming deathly sick or lighting their houses on fire.
You were so bright, you shined light on my dark side
Perfect sight, still you were blind, even wide-eyed
My plight, Jekyll and Hyde, at times disguised
Misguided, you tried, drowned in the flood tide
Hereby, thereby, what do I imply?
Swallowed pride, we sighed, we cried, we died
As he shoulders his fate,
In between a boulder and a plate,
The rollers flatten him into an awkward shape.
His death is slow, the pain is real,
How did he end up with such a raw deal?
How was he flawed? Where his Achilles heel?
His bones crunch under the weight of the wheel.
His skull now splits open, he relinquishes his claim
To the words inside that are now given to fame,
Distorted and contorted, they are bound to his name,
As his precious thoughts are smashed out of his brain.
Time watches him go, swept away in a blink,
As the meaning of a corpse is lost in its stink,
So is his soul and mind, his work’s only link,
How much he has suffered to be written in ink.
What sounds does the trumpeter blow from his horn?
when there is no stage, no lights
no audience
When in his band are
a fluorescent bulb buzzing and insects chirping
outside his basement window
When his songs vanish as he plays them,
never to be pressed into a record
or a soul
These silent sounds,
they intoxicate him
so that even he cannot recall how good they felt
