Like the ball that rolls.

This time of the summer when the rains are home

I sit awkwardly with my lap dog,

he is a curious one just like

his folks-

What's that sound? What's that fuss?

 What does it mean?

Why do they all run?

This is fun. 

My dog seems happy. Perhaps, he senses

comradeship in play.He senses comrades

in players. I deny him play.

My city denies him the green grass. So he

jumps between sofas and beds, chasing

tennis balls, that weren't meant for him.

The signal ricochets between layers of the

atmoshpere, this live television thing is

history too, you know,

seconds lost in moments

of satellite transit.

This time of the summer when rains are home,

an emaciated child with magic feet sits

in his little home by the slum, singing

prayers to Jesus. One day he will get on that zeppelin,

but today mother is  sick. There's carnivale for his

kind. It has come to the town.

He seems happy today. There's a big match in

the Maracana. The rains keep on falling down,

and in the magical Americas sometimes they even

go up, only if you want it to.  

He wants to play. He is ready.

The city gives him dirty mottled

streets.  So he scuttles along- and chases chickens,

and kicks the ball wherever he wants it to land.

Do they deny him?

Between football matches and effeminate

ginger talks, inebriations occur.

Here in my head,

its three fold.

(Don't pity classifications,

how will you love otherwise?)

The first one is like the Mexican wave when

alternating parts of the brain rise and fall

between highs and lows.

The second one is like the dribble that conquers

any defense- like an unguent of love,

it soothes the heart.

Like the audience that makes the game,

the third one is this delirium that make

me scribble puny words on rainy

days.

So

when the footballers have gone home,

when some dreams have broken and

some dreams have come true,

when some prayers have been answered,

when I had time to run across a green

field into the arms of your

imagination-

sometimes playing ball,

sometimes chasing it,

just like the life that we so wanted,

please don't deny

us.

Fruits like life.

Some like to have fruits as they are- solid and edible. Some like it juicy after a hard hour's squish. Life if you may live a little, is itself like those fruits of earth and can be had in many ways- the hard, solid, tangible way, or the soft, juicy, intangible way, but if you may ask me which one is better, which one would taste better, I may not have an answer- but isn't it just good in itself that it just 'tastes'. 
Yes, just that? 

Oh there's a football match in five minutes and it definitely tastes good around this time of the year.

When in Haridwar.

Between 'samosas' and 'matthis', between wise temple stories and flash floods, between thirty years of accumulated memory - he told us many things of which most I would forget in time, but when we were just about to leave he told us something that like a good movie line would remain with me-

'A man doesn't need to eat so many animals to live, a man doesn't need to do a lot of things.'

The blades dangled on, distorting our faces with that puff of artificial air and we ordered another round of tea. 

It was twilight in Haridwar and the gods were everywhere.

The Dangerous Animal

On the farther side of the town
Mistletoe laborers fought over
The death of a strange bird.

The pheasants had died out last
Winter, the flu tethered me
Here in oldtown where the whiskey
Is cheap and the girls were 
Pretty.

I remained drunk through the day
And when the night fell like
Teardrops in this godforsaken ghetto
I took up this strange habit of
Articulation.

Birds were bringing disease to man," a rabbit's
Disease" hummed Miss Tortoise. 
They were killing the birds everywhere-
Blue birds, Black birds, Grey birds, Lady Birds. 

A Machiavellian incarceration of chick figures, well
Who gives a damn about that?
Life without my chicken culinary, that's
What's bothering me!

Miss Tortoise makes it hard
By calling me a bard.
I must appeal to the 'killer humans' she says
and mains her doe eyes
With acid. 'Its madness' she grieves. 
She is one sensitive woman, doomed to be born
Here, where billions may die to save a thousand,
As long as the thousand were-------

I lose words there. 

So let me live my licentious
Life, with this decadence of
Strange habits.

Let me invite the dipsomania
That heals my soul on shoddy days.

I will drink and fuck, 
But for you Miss Tortoise
I will sometimes
Write. 

Above and below.

Beneath every cloud

lies the speckled oratory of

                             land and water. 

And beyond some cloud lies

the freckled cities of

                        worn out men.

Boredom teaches salvation, does it not?

And activity

kills the ozone layer,

it does, it does. 

Above that cloud lies the warm

sun

And there is a man 

Under that hidden sun

                     who is on the run

from

the Universe of working men.

The man is a maniac of love, 

                                they say,

                                        three times over, 

                                                         
 if not more.  

So the clouds disappear

   and the rain smells of clove,

but don't you wonder if he ever 

                                    found love?  

On Chatting up.

I have lived with it. I have lived without it. I realized I was talking with stupid people all the time. And there were people who would suck you up emotionally. And there were people I just shouldn't be talking with because it didn't feel right.

And then through the apathy of some interesting 'others', I realized it wasn't a way to deal with my loneliness, so I stopped chatting altogether. I have always had someone or the other in my life, not strictly girlfriends or lovers, but you know, like someone to talk at night, someone to tell my chores, someone to hear stories from - but then i decided that i needed to get out of it and it was alright. I felt that if no one wants to know if i am alive or dead, or the ones I wanted to get validation from didn't care, why do I bother to try my best to be an angel to them? 

It was hard to come to terms with initially, the sudden pangs of solitude, this sudden feeling of being all alone in a big bad world. A sense of giving up. I had always been used to a lot of attention you know, so it was difficult. 

But I know now, loneliness can't bring me down anymore. I enjoy my company and there's nothing more sweeter than 
that. 
  

Prayers for the Pretty

In this world of burnt out 

burnt ends

She does what she does to 

pretend. 

We keep her arbit stories 

apart

To make her jingle with her

popart. 

Her speech is made of moisty 

bellow

She is pretty, so we find it

mellow. 

Her meager water blue in 

color

Can scream of all her daddy's 

dollar.

Her stymied wit can make you 

ponder

Of all that worldly sinful

wonder. 

But in this world of burnt out

burnt ends

Can one find her in their

amends? 

Dreams of Dahlilia.

I wake up now
And take a bow.


The fat noon sun
It makes me burn.


I take a bath
To flee heat's wrath.


I see a dream
Of lovers’ stream.


She boasts a smile
I reel in beguile!


Her hair is blue
She trots like a shrew.


Her glass is green
It reeks a sheen.


She comes this way
I wave her away.


She now sits still
On my sill.



I take her hand
But she won’t stand.


I sit nether down
She calls me a clown.


So I stand up
She yelps a laugh?


She takes my hand
And ties a magic band.


I feel insane,
Like Van Gogh’s brain.


We dance and dance
In a cosmic trance.


We play around
In Shiva’s mound.


Here and there
We travel in flair.


A starry starry night
Of absinthe delight.




And then I fall
In arms of a doll.


I wake up now
And take a bow


The dream is done
I had much fun.


Can dreams come true
In an Earth so blue?