I have muted the TV’s voice, the crass cacophony of the radio channels. I have tuned in to a mirthful song where jazzy beings play at being in love, wooing, laughing, hugging the trees, gyrating, pirouetting in joyful bliss. I watch and watch and imagine they are you and me, us in our days of youthful glee. Youth shouldn’t have left us though, I am only 27 and you 28 or so, but outside our bedroom window the sky has gone grey, the grass in the garden dry and yellow, sorrow has been sitting on it for so long. And when at night, you are sleeping by the baby’s side, by the cold moonlight, I hear you sigh, and I count the wrinkles that cling to your face and the frozen tears that don’t come out. And I climb out of bed and press my nose against the frosted window-pane and in the garden I see Him, sitting silently, morose and grim. He looks me in the face but I am not scared, I don’t think I’m strong, I’ve just known him for much too long! You have come back from wherever you had gone. You ask me “ Have you seen the news honey? Read the papers? Heard anything in passing?” I point to the ashes that remain of newspapers; I burnt them...they reek of blood so! Then you say, “A killed B and C gunned A down. In Austria there have been homicides in a town…They were in their twenties who wielded those guns…” and I say “Stop! Don’t fill my ears with the sound of bullets! Stop! Don’t fill my tired eyes with slaughtered people’s blood! Stop! I lost my childhood sleep dreaming of lost souls! Stop! Don’t stain me red, I have my baby to tend. Stop! Hush! Drop the topic now! Love me, kiss me, hold me close!” You do so. You know I am right for you lost your childhood sleep too, once upon a time. For you are scared just as I am, when the baby cries what is it for? It’s not hunger, it’s not pain, it’s a terror that congests his chest, and returns again and again and again! I’m scared if he dreams of guns, I’m scared if he smells blood, like you and I do. I have seen you burying your nose in artificial flowers. So you go on, like you are told, loving me, kissing me, holding me close. But the sky is grey and the trees are bare, the waters calmly flow, and outside our window the world ages so, and in the garden I see Him. And when I love you and you love me and we both love and try to find a refuge and some warmth, I can see Him seeing us two and I can tell that you’ve seen him too! But you tell me to close my eyes and think of baby, you and love and you help and I try and I try to not give up and we try to stay alive.

Darkness falls like a curtain.

And between the two of us

Words lose their way

In hidden mazes

Of the treacherous air.

I have communed with

The dead and the past.

But dead now

And banished to silenced words

How do I touch your hand?

Words are the most unruly of all things

They don’t fall in place.

And nothing, not love, not hope

Can ever transcend death.

And that night when I kissed you,

Pressed my lips on yours,

Your skin rippled under my fingers

And I could feel the waves

Travelling through your candid frame.

Your eyes were closed,

Your mouth rosy and ajar.

I knew I was pushing you to madness,

To the point of no return.

But this isn’t an apology.

I don’t deign to console your grief.

It was a mistake I had made

Thinking Love would impart some warmth,

Melt the chestful of freezing loneliness

That made breathing so hard.

It was then that I let you go

Unfastened those encircling arms

That trusted and clung,

Feigned indifference to your frenzied tears.

Because, you see, I was afraid,

Afraid that your heart,

So young, so eager to love, so prone to life,

That lay on my cold withered one

Would freeze to death,

Like hers had, so many years ago.

There is darkness enough in there

To bury myself in…

Like in daddy’s huge, black overcoat

Silent, safe and sweating in it…

Through games of hide and seek

On long summer afternoons.

You stretch your hands to touch me

There’s mastery in your fingers, and triumph

As they try to unbutton this coat of darkness

And expose my invisibility.

I cringe as the black turns grey

Fading, as drops of knowledge

Inundate my existence.

There’s a better darkness somewhere,

and darker still.

So in the dark pool of non-memories

Sprinkled with pieces of a broken self

I drown…inside me.

Polka dotted blues drape her body

And she wears a smile.

People think she’s charming,

Bubbly like the froth

In a goblet of champagne.

I’d have thought the same too…and happily

Only if she hadn’t said

“My eyes are stars

They can only twinkle.

Forgive my up-curving lips.

They can only smile.”

The wait is long…

It had started in this star-lit valley

Twenty crescent moons ago

When the ghost of the faded moon

Had not yet left the mauve sky.

Through incomprehension

And blankness of burning days

It grew old…

Evening has descended on the leaves

Of gently swaying palm trees

And their grey shadows have grown

Black.

The moon has burst upon the bare sky.

With a vengeance.

The leaves shine

The smell of wet mehendi on beguiled palms

Waft in.

The silken feathers you had clipped

Have grown again…stronger this time.

I want to fly, yet I want you back.

The wait is long…

And the night sky allures me.

I’m on the verge of a take-off

Return soon and fly with me.

The pent-up anger of a burnt out day
Sublimates into a purple haze
Of rain, smoke and dreams.

The earth is angry.
Trampled to dust
By numerous pairs of marching feet
(so alike in their fated doom)
Kicked and mauled
Day after day, night after night.
It is as thirsty as desire.

The red eyed traffic monster stares at
The impotent anger
Of people who lose against time,
Dissolving into eddies and puddles
Of slime and rain.

The earth has licked the rain,
Sucked in its share of
Ambrosia
Before the lesser gods strike again.

Tonight the city shall sleep.
Tonight it might dare to dream
Before the red-eyed monster devours them
at mid-noon...
tomorrow.