Would you find your way?

Of time that could make or break

and memories that would wither

Of vanished places in the wind where

no wolf dare to whisper

Of mighty sundials that could care no less

and mountains that asunder

Of skies that would roar of sulfur and

make us all surrender

But

in that end of a blue blighted world

there are stories that would 

stay-

where

if love and only love was enough

would you find your 

way? 

The evolution of the photograph.

Death's forgiveness.

I believe in fairy tales and my movement is like that
of water inside a rock- stealthy and virulent in
habit; with that efficient saunter. My means are more
practical but my desire is not sharpened by the beetle leaves
that you plant in your garden, it’s sharpened by your ignorance
of the finer things. I can’t explain my existence,
but let me tell you, I was there before you.  

When the dawn of the weeping star touches my forehead and
a meager supernova subsides in the hope of a stymied creation,
I take out a wingless angel by the highway and slaughter it
so that delirious truck drivers could wake up and get control
of their life. I do not strike them, but angels die when fools
are out controlling the movements of the
world.

Here in the midrib of your vacant world, emotions are lost
in tepid storms and flash floods. Do not blame me, for my
existence should be alone enough for the good feelings that
must jolt your heart yet why do they come and go away and
you with your large brain do not fathom it, and nothing
remains for the empty days- not even your
emptiness.

I am not the showman who slaughters angels for an effect, I am not
the one who runs the clock, I am not the one who plays roulettes
with your bashful creation, who draws close the pulse of a
pulsating dove, I am merely a reminder,  I am who I am-
the means to an end, you store me in your  heart all the way, 
I am the prayer of all  the answers in your heart: the day you
chose love I came to you in the form of a deceitful man with a
red rose, the day you chose vendetta I was the aimless
hipster assassin, the day you wanted to corrupt yourself
I became your rapist father, and then one day out of
sorrow and disgust you decided to choose me,
the real me you had always desired-

when you chose me I did not come with the
vengeance you had gleefully imagined,
for I am death and I forgave you
when life
didn’t.   

I had a Poet Sister.

I had a poet sister
 or should I say a poetess?
She was a little fairy and when she was twelve
years old she wrote a poem about a birthday party
that  made my mind go sad and arty.


Do you ever wonder how sadness
permeates the world of twelve year
olds who roves by the moon but is a creature
of the noon. Broken beautiful creatures is a cliché,
but then there’s another niche-
the ones with heart of gold.

Writing this I feel sad, perhaps a little lonesome and curtly

bad. The candles were all burning right,
the friends hadn’t lost her for a moment’s sight,
gifts and love was all at large,
there wasn’t any sadness barge.
But all she thought of was a delightful culinary
that reeked of heavenly flavor. And when the party was
over she wrote,
yes she wrote a line that I must
quote:

‘Did they celebrate my birthday or a chicken’s death?’

(As I read those lines again today my heart trembled a little.)

I read those lines over and over again
for I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t written
since then.

Diary of a Piano Man.

I lay here in the bathroom floor, my eyes are yellow
from last night's puss,
some-days they are like the sun too. 
I lay here and think of
how I arrived here - in the juxtaposition of
space and time, 
or
perhaps 
in transposition of 
joy and sorrow.

Last night while in the bar, I played another 
deceptive cadence,
I played on and on: 

"let the music last until
my fingers run out of breath" I told myself; 

There was silence and tears amidst 
the tone friendly 
drunkards. I don't forget the ovation,
those sparkling eyes, it was strangely beautiful
like always.  But you know what, at the end of it
I didn't hear what I played. I heard
another voice.  

Do you know how the music goes on
After the music has stilled?

My back aches now, 
the walls are littered with
parallel lines of water, but why does this smell
of ammonia invade my 
nosebuds? It's bitter, 
God save me. 

Where is that voice?
I feel safe.

Last night I rose, I rose in that cadence, and
I rose higher and higher, and then in that momentary
crescendo of intonation 
I fell.

The end of music is like the end of a love affair-
And the love that stays on hurts
the most. The love that stays on.
The redolent voice
of the past.  

(Beautiful things that heal,
go astray and 
kill.) 

I am hurt, 
my backbone aches, poor are them whose
heart don't ache. 

I wake up here in the bathroom floor
of a Picasso Deli- a left liberal graffiti
of Lord Shiva etched in the wall 
looking over pissing mortals- trying to say 
something, but
what do pictures say when the Lord is 
silent?

My hand stepped over a broken syringe
that reminded me of those noir-novels, so effulgent
in violence and decadence, writing about
fallen people like 
me. 

The voice has stilled now.

I wake up here in the bathroom floor and I 
wonder if I arrived here in the 
ambulance of forgetfulness or in the 
bubble of a pill-laced dream that burst 
too soon, heaving a mortal sigh. I lie here 
and think, and think, and think 
if music couldn't heal what 
could?



Perhaps death, 
but 
I will live.

The shadows of goodwill.

‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’

Tennessee Williams. New Orleans. USA. The movie was amazing too. Marlon Brando. Vivien Leigh. So much drama. A streetcar named Desire. I know what I am about to say has nothing contextual with that beautiful line. But words always convey different meanings to each one of us- we understand and percept it differently, we filter out whatever we don’t want to percept or sometimes we even delimit our perception for our own well-being. Being someone who has this penchant for writing sappy things, I have always wondered what the point of studying literature was, you know, like there’s the circus and the joker has a role in it, and there’s life and some say literature has a role in it. Mind the analogy, I don’t want to hurt any feelings.

Since you like specific identities, I will tell you this- I am a science student, and since you like categorization I will tell you that I have been a lot around literature students- most of them were pretty girls. 

I have always wondered what the point of literature was and this was surely unchartered territory for me. For I am not supposed to wonder about these things. What do I know about the realists and the post modernists? What do I know about the catharsis and hamartia? Fancy words I must have come across somewhere. People make careers out of those words. So I sat in this lecture hall and listened carefully to everything this US University literature professor was saying. I could hardly understand much, but I did have an idea about ‘Modernism’ and the likes (thanks to this creative writing course I had back in IIT days). I did feel a sense of comradeship in some of the names he mentioned- like Joyce, Baudelaire, Flaubert (he mentioned Madame Bovary- there’s this entire Julian Barnes book dedicated to that novel which I had the good fortune of reading and wallowing), Eliot, Woolf, and the likes. I wondered if everyone felt like that too. Did they feel their bone shiver with the mention of their names, did they smile in acknowledgement or were they still busy hardwiring their brains trying to decode the ‘–isms’ that words didn’t convey. 

Oh how great those names were- who captured their age and place in their own way and here we were discussing them over power points in closed auditoriums. What would posterity know about power points? Who were we then? What were we doing? Facebook literature? It won’t last a year. And then there were names I haven’t heard of. At the end of that academic talk I felt that my level of intellect had risen a bit which was all good until something happened that made me a little sad.

Compassion has never been my strongest suite, it is hard being compassionate I accept, and this is a selfish world and we are all out here making careers, minting money. But sometimes I try to be principled and I try to feel. It bothers me how the world works at times. I don’t know if I pretend to do that, I have always been hard on judging myself so I will leave it for the ‘other’. Here I was standing outside the auditorium, two books dangling out of my hands when an old man with missing hairs and missing teeth walked up to me and in broken English he told me-‘this is something new. Want to read?’ It was a booklet in Bengali and it contained five or six, what you would call tiny stories.   You know I normally don’t practice philanthropy. On bitter days, I despise beggars. But I do eat in small shacks or tea shops by the roadside because I feel I owe this much to these people who don’t have much. What more can a privileged dreamer do? This old man was no beggar. He was selling stories for twenty bucks. I looked at him through the lens and wondered if that’s how I would end up. I bought his booklet. I had already made the judgment of supposing them to be bad stories even before reading them. Such strange creatures aren’t we? I don’t know if it was compassion or a sense of helping out a fellow who claims to write ‘different’ stories that led me into doing this. But whatever it was, it felt real good. Everything always points back to the ‘I’, doesn’t it? I felt good. It was about me. I bought it and walked away and you know what made me sad, rather surprised me-

‘We are not interested’ said a few literature students whom he approached. (I am sorry for this categorization but I had to do this because I have a point to make.) But it only costs as much as two standard cigarettes, I thought. Perhaps they were not rich like me.

 I wondered if being ‘disinterested’- in your age and time, in your surroundings or in the stories of an antediluvian figure is the theme and heart of our age. Is that what we as youth collectively represent in this free flowing material world? Disenchantment and a singular vision of a wealthy, healthy and a banal life – is that the dream?

And therefore, I beat myself in the head and wondered into those labyrinths of useless thought-did literature not teach human values anymore or did I just do a better job staying away from ”-ism people” and getting wasted with those who never read much books but would rise and fight against everything that was wrong with the
world.         

‘But I have always depended on the kindness of story tellers.’
I hummed it to her while I walked away from the semi-lit quadrangle of a place that was once known as Presidency College.    

Online Hindutva- regarding the dire strait of education

Last time when I was coming down from New Delhi I met an well educated man working in some finance company. He was really pissed with the Indian educational system. He was saying to this other person what was the point of studying history. It's of no use. 'Mera koi Kaam mein nahi ata hain yaar. Point kya tha parneka." One practical man I tell you. But then he says 'yes histiri - fistiri Jaisa subject bandh Kar de na chahiye.'
My earphones weren't working. Had I been a better orator or had my Hindi been a little more fluent I would have liked to say something. Alas I am not much different than him. I chose peace and indifference when the virus was spreading.

With the advent of social network, the extent of human stupidity and the hegemony of general badwill comes to you with nerve wracking speed. Recently , Times of India posted a photo of a US journalist who was about to be beheaded by a militant. The photo was shocking just like most these photos are- it generated an interesting and predictable comment chain in the social network.

After being part of one of India's most prestigious institutions I will forever be skeptical about the kind of minds they produce: not worried about the money minded and indifferent lot, to some extent we all are; what worries me are the ones with a false sense of ideologue who thinks by the virtue of their education they are very important. Let's not damn our Indian society that feeds their ego. We are hard wired to glorify such achievements , we weren't taught much about humanity.

I was honestly lacking work and looking for materials to write so I browsed through the comment chain. Some of the comments made me throw up. A certain MBA from Mumbai- says 90 out of 100 Muslims are evil minded. She also says I am not saying all Muslims are bad though but well she knows her numbers. Indian education. 

Someone from a certain St. Xavier's college in a neighboring state said keep calm and support Israel. I sincerely hope he meant it in the context of a football match. There were many other inane comments as usual.

The climax was rather nice- when a certain mechanical engineer from a very rich city with lots of malls said that we needed a world war to clean all those evil scums. I must mention he is a very good looking man with a good job- a suitable boy tailor made to extract a large dowry.

The Help who serves us food doesn't know how to read or write, hell, she doesn't even know how to count money- and she doesn't give a shit what gods you worship. ( I used god and shit in the same sentence. I mean no harm. )

Poetry 17/18?

Me:
Remember childhood
excuses to stay home:
little abdomen that would never ache,
But schools that felt like jails could
make our hearts break?

Remember when you grew up
Those excuses to stay away
Could be bought for friends
And lovers who decided not to
Stay?

I wonder where I am
In that child or in that man
I wonder if i am safe inhabiting
None.



Her:
Remember childhood
excuses to stay home:
little abdomen that would never ache,
But schools that felt like jails could
make our hearts break?

Remember when you grew up
Those excuses to stay away
Could be bought for friends
And lovers who decided not to
Stay?

I wonder where I am
In that child or in that girl
I wonder if i am safe inhabiting
All.

18th August, Jadavpur University
Kolkata
(words forged while
sitting in a nanotech lab
and doing nothing)

An Awful Story.

A friend once told me that to win the affection of another person you have to tell that person a good story. He is no more alive. A part of him perhaps lives in me through his words. Today I decided to tell her a story. She knew I was fond of her, if only she knew how much, but the idea was to make her fond of me, just a little. I kept on thinking what it would be like to say an honest word or a sentence that would poke her heart with the warmth of a winter afternoon. With her it was never easy. What would be the point of my love if I had told her a sappy story that ended in rose gardens of affection? Many people could do that. Some were doing it already. This made me jealous too. I could feel myself saying- she deserves better than just sugarcoated words, she deserves better than that. But what was I doing anyway?

Nothing much.

To start off with I had decided to tell her this story of a bad man, a lion and a house in the jungle. It was banal and boring. As you can guess- she fell asleep halfway through the first sentence. Most of the time I know, I can’t tell a good story, but when I do she is always in there somewhere- in every words typed out, in every honest sentence. This is why I would tell her this story of a girl who had a lamp whose light turned yellow every evening because the sun would come and rest inside it. It happened one day long ago when this girl was very sad. The sun had arrived at her place to console her, and ever since that day, seeing how nice and lovely she was, the sun had promised to come down to warm her up. The sun was truly in love with this girl and so it found a safe haven under that lamp, so that it could spend time with her and subdue its fire. The girl loved the sun too. Everything was fine until one day the sun got a little too careless in love. The skies lit in fire and it burnt the house where the girl used to stay. The girl died in that fire. As usual, the people blamed love for her death and not the careless Sun.

I would tell her such a story because she prefers a tragic ending-but if I were to tell her that-in her sleep the girl was dreaming of the sun and her life together, and a dream sometimes last an entire lifetime and by the time she would wake up she would have lived and loved, perhaps tasted it all, would that make any difference?
I guess I look for meanings in the saddest places.

Stories end, either happily or sadly, maybe with a tinge of both. Perhaps it all depends on how it’s told, perhaps it depends on that last sentence of the last paragraph. Stories end, but lives go on. And that’s why when I tell her I love her, I don’t limit it to paper, it extends beyond this and I hope she feels that you know, for life is infinitely more beautiful than a fairy tale.

“Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite.
‘Fool’ said my muse to me, ‘look in thy heart and write!’”


She is smiling now, it’s an awful story, she thinks.

Lets exchange Places

I had this beautiful woman friend in New Delhi, and when I say beautiful I mean it. This beautiful woman friend in New Delhi wanted me to exchange places with her- I know she meant it in a strictly poetic sense, but her loquacious nature also made her pretty honest at times and that’s how I got to know that she wanted to know me better. There was a time when I could pretend to be lost in my head, and I mean the word pretend because you know what, I hardly smoked any weed back then and yet I could redden my eyes and I could look at the sky and say ‘’hey I am groovy kinda high’’. Free of everything and by everything do I mean feelings?
It was a talent of sort they said, and then words would come fluttering out of nowhere. Damn them, words. That’s how I got to know her anyway- through words, but perhaps more through those accidental touching of skins while crossing the bruised traffic in rush hour, circling round and round through the edges of Connaught Place, unwary of the world. We could talk. We just went on and on. Our quibbles would touch forth the various spectrum of knowledge, sometimes revolving around conspiracy theories but mostly resorting to our mutual doped out ignorance of what the other deemed important. It’s kind of funny how we never settled ever for a truce- blaming our cultural and gender differences. 

‘Let’s exchange places’, she would, say.
‘Fine let’s do it,’ I would tell her. 

And we would keep on walking the sprawling boulevards of the new capital. Sometimes we would see peacocks. Sometimes we would see fornicating dogs. It seemed we could only agree in silence, in the unison of our vision, because in some distant corners of our heart perhaps all of these made a different sense. All of this meant something different to us. Yes, we were story tellers who would write each other letters at times. Sometimes she would mention her boyfriend who lived in some other city. I didn’t pay much attention when she talked about him.

I left New Delhi.

Here in Calcutta, there are so many people who dress and talk like me, who read the same books as I do, listens to the same music and radio- that sometimes I feel I have no identity here. I wish that I could go back to the capital where my beautiful woman friend lives, now with her boyfriend. Sometimes I do feel like exchanging places with her, only to know what she was doing. I don’t write letters to her anymore, all I can do is wonder. We are both busy in love. We are both busy in life. We inhabit different cities and when darkness settles here she is perhaps still enjoying the dim November sun in a Mughal garden. Does she still fight like that? Does she still fight for every word and everything she deems important?

All I can do is wonder.

I took a rickety-rackety government bus today from the southern end of the town where the lakes still harbor sea-weeds and fishes. I sat by the gate and watched the road with the corner of my large glasses. I put on the earphones and as I could feel Vivaldi dulcifying my ear with four seasons the bus hit a red light. A passerby hurriedly came up to the window and asked me something. I couldn’t hear him so I took off my earphone only to enquire what he was saying.

‘Lake Town?’ he demanded to know.
‘Haan,’ I shouted back. 
This kept on happening through the entire arduous journey back to the north and I didn’t mind it. But at the end of it I realized that I had kind of exchanged places with the bus conductor. My heart ached a little only when I realized how back in those days, I was hopelessly in love with that beautiful woman from New Delhi.

‘Let’s exchange places,’ she used to say.

Googol.

‘There’s a subtle joy in huddling together like animals, tasting the sweat of each other hands, saliva dripping here and there, smelling the mass fart suffused in high velocity- as long there’s a destination that’s more like a home or a dream.’

This is how he describes the scene. Time to move on to the character’s more didactic voice.

‘The dream of a better humanity often shadows the humane and like scuttle marks left in prison walls they are etched in history books only as facts and statistics.’

At this point, he talks about the importance of stories.

‘Reminders in real life do not come with alarms, that’s why you need stories. The stuff of stories give a number its meaning. Good stories are the alarm clocks of humanity. A Googol is one followed by a hundred zeroes, but what if we say a Googol is a boy who works in the day and masturbates in the night, we will share him with the human experience of many Googols out there. What if, let’s say, he be remembered as a leader- ‘one’ man followed by a hundred ‘zero’ men. Such a nice image it is.'

There’s physically no joy in travelling in a crowded bus (realities of a heavily populated country), often hanging like an animal in those slaughterhouse trucks but perhaps it calls for an intellectual stimulation. Sometimes when he is hanging out there holding those steel rods by the gate, he imagines letting his hand go- his frail body falling over, bending and rolling for a while before another speeding bus goes running over him and making him all gory and dead. He often thinks of doing it, but his destination always remains the same. Someday he will reach for the moon. We can say that such imagination perhaps issues out from watching too much of those fancy little b/w art films. To me and you, depression is overrated anyway. Nevertheless, he never minds such a thought. Neither should we.

The denouement of the story comes in his voice.

'I do not want to be a part of that accumulating Googol of humanity that only ends in the tragic misunderstandings and power-play of others. I want to make a difference. I want to live and fight. I want to love. I… am...’

Bam, we lose the signal. We think he’s cured of his ailment. But we feel helpless anyway, who doesn’t like hearing an inspiring speech every weekday morning? I will instead try cheering you up a bit, so here’s my insight and please take me seriously.  It’s true that although a Googol is just another meager name assigned to a number: numerals repeated in space, but you know what, it’s kind of vast and if you are the geeky kind of a person you can tell your beloved that you have a Googol of love stored in your heart for him/her. I can’t be held for any sort of bitter consequences though. You can thank me later. Send me a letter and all your love?

The signal comes back again and all I hear are those final words. I know you already turned off the channel so I will tell you how it was…it was like the ending of some good book - a stab in the heart but in a very good way. I don’t want to ruin you with those words for I want you to imagine something sweet you will say to someone at the end of a pestilence, imagine a rhyme, a little poetry that’s nothing but the projection of your honest heart and trust me when I say it was something like that for those words were not his they were yours too. It was always words like that, you know,

it was something that

you must always

hum for

her.

Letters to the Self: Two

Dear People of the Earth,

It’s my birthday tomorrow. 
With that ‘theme’ in my mind, I write this. I must warn you though, this post shall be filled with narcissism and if you aren’t particularly fond of me, you will hate me more after you read this. I wouldn’t want that. You know the good thing about growing older is you grow wiser- never mind the thinning hairline. Whenever I begin to write anything, I don’t exactly have in my mind what I would write down. I think all of us who suffer from the creative process would agree with me. It’s just that, with every key pressed- there’s a thought in the head. For instance right now I was thinking what would she think when she reads this. I am even thinking whether mentioning her is at all relevant here. The muse is always there somewhere. Omnipresence of the muse-I even plan to write something about that.

So I write. 

Let me tell you something about myself, right now I am in a certain juncture of life that I chose for myself because I didn’t want to be around people who don’t dream. I don’t know if I am being unkind to them or this is my childhood fancy coming back to haunt my head but it’s true in a way I chose something for me. I definitely had favorable economics to back me up with. I fear social judgment because there’s an innate superiority complex I suffer from, and I don’t want it to be under scrutiny. But then, I have seen many around me talking about dreams and never taking that leap of faith. From where I come from, I know how hard it is to afford ones dream. Am I being a little pretentions? Perhaps, but here I am –‘’taking a break’’ in the words of mortals and dreaming a little more; what’s the hurry to get somewhere in life when love is all around?
I don’t know when people talk about success if it’s a lot of money or having a lot of friends to pour beer. It still bothers some people when they see my aimless life- ricocheting between the murals of lifeless figures. I don’t blame them either- what would they know? But I think we all evaluate the world in our own way- the difference between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’, our personal morality and its ever shuffling dialectic. I mustn’t get into those philosophical debaucheries, but let’s say we all owe something to our early generations and thank god parents exist. Oh, I hate shopping malls - it’s one of those random thoughts that just came to my mind.

Adulthood in a way has been a little painful to me- but if you are fond of American movies I will tell you that it was like a roller coaster that preferred shutting down when it was in that upside-down position. I think unlike the teenage kings and queens, I have always felt alienated. I remember a friend mentioning back in those halcyon college days,

‘everybody knows you, yet you always roam alone.’ 
I didn’t have an answer then, but perhaps I do now. Age does that. It gets you answers that you don’t regret. I don’t really know, why I like people as they are but I have never ever liked people in groups. That was my childhood condition that made me feel bad, because of how the world around is. But I have always found people so interesting, just as they are.

I remember shattering many people when I used to tell them, that I didn’t mind going to the movies alone- if it was a good movie, why not? I know in the era of ‘masala’ and ‘chat’ good is pretty ‘subjective’. (I like masala in the morning and chat in the evening.) I remember someone telling me that
 ‘’those who can go to the ‘theater’ alone, are capable of murder.’’ 
Bob Biswas (baby faced assassin) even made that a possibility for me. But it’s true whatever people don’t do or can’t understand- it overwhelms them. In a way perhaps it threatens them too. We have all been there. I don’t understand why people become smokers. I try to sometimes- free will and all that shit. Age will provide me that answer I hope. I had never been good in asking the things I want- fearing judgment and mostly rejection and yet I believe that as I will turn a year older this time I will be pretty alright. I am saying all of this to myself, you know, sometimes you do that to help your own self. Let me rewind exactly two years, back to when I was stuck in my hostel room surrounded by warm people who wanted to greet me- realizing that it wasn’t my cup of tea-I shut myself off and didn’t meet anyone. I was sad and dramatic. What more can I say? Just a year back, I was pretty sad too and whiny- the world outside didn’t match the one inside me, but this time I had seen so much of 'happy' people in the virtual forum that I wanted to play that role- so I invited everyone and we had a birthday party, where I got photographs and said, ‘hey look- I am so happy.’ I was like them who deliberately told the world that they were fine rendering it believable. You don’t like this version, I understand, but I am just being honest. Happiness and you perhaps exist and I write this only to help myself, just like all of you do from time to time. Sadness as I have observed doesn’t exist in stupid people. It’s true. Don’t be sad though since it’s my birthday tomorrow. I am not much excited this time, because there’s some contentment and there’s this sense of age that asks me not to pursue lower pleasures. I don’t need to be like everyone else (how often do i say that?), because I am privileged in a way. If you are listening, wish me a happy birthday only if you mean it, because like many of you I do mean the words I say and I don’t enjoy formalities. Happiness is perhaps in the daydreams, it’s perhaps by a seaside resort, perhaps in a home made by a little mountain hut, but as of now I like it here in this concrete apartment of my
humid metropolis.

Yours
The fool on the Sill
‘
11th August, 2014
Calcutta

The Skies that could Rain.

The rain has subdued.

Soon there will be cicadas blowing their noses
and frogs gurgling for another spell of heaven.
If you are awake a little longer you will 
see that,  it will rain again because such 
honest voices are always answered 
by the skies. Yet we will go on sleeping,
ignoring those nightly calls of 
lovers.  


So as the years rolled by,
we did become poets but we could 
never become the skies that could 
rain. 

Letters to the Self?

Dear People of the Earth,

Do you write letters to yourself? (Because, I have been doing this for a long time now and it suits me since I have absolutely no other work.) But I realized that sometimes it’s perhaps beneficial (sounds selfish, I know) to share what you say to yourself, so I write this with my heart filled with an adolescent hope that some of you might read it and help me understand what I have written. More than often I do not understand what I write, you know.
I know in times of riots and war my words are not only insignificant but perhaps impertinent to many. Yet, I write in the hope that some of you will perhaps relate. I have often believed in gestures like this. I do not know if they have any meaning but these little gestures like writing letters, like sending little notes over digital drives, remembering little dates of little events are the anodynes that used to keep me happy once. But as I grew older I realized that I forgot all the dates, I grew lazy and I stuck myself in cramped spaces only writing letters to myself- to make sure that they always get answered. In some ways all my trust riposted back to me. I could not trust people with words and more than that I could not trust them with feelings. In some of the places where I lived it was told that-be a man, goddamn it, hide your love away, like that Beatles song, and in some ways it worked miracles too, I think. There was no possibility of being hurt, there was no possibility of being loved much either, the usual story.
Sometimes when you like someone, you do things that may seem stupid, still they mean a lot you, and if you are lucky they might mean a lot to that person too, so I think one should take that chance. Just one life. How many times do we say that to ourselves? Despite my cowardice, and all that fear of getting shattered by indifference I took the little joy of sending a book to Her- with an anonymous note (where I definitely got to be a Superhero). That’s how I do things anyway.

'When the war is over the letters remain, don’t they? That's why you must write them, more in times of war.'

And sometimes you got to wait through the rainy days and the pallid winters, sometimes you got to wait just a little longer. And for some people, a thousand days over.

Yours
The Fool on the Sill 

Out in the dark

One hazy woman
throws out the dregs of leftovers
from the tenement window. Four dogs
come running through the darkened alley,
wary of bloodsuckers. The golden
streetlight hides everything that darkness
could have shown- like those hungry dogs,
like that vampire scuttling veins.

One of these nights when the streets
are half-empty and with no lights,
our feelings like fragrant balls shall collide
and there will be nothing but the
nakedness of
sight.