The Stench

I am saving my teardrops,
gathering them
one by one -
Now I have
a pool of them
somewhere inside me
where once there was
a heart
devoted to your moments.
Moments of love,
of laughter,
of tender fights,
of clamoured arguments -
Moments that have turned into memories
that the heart
cannot hold
any longer.
I have drowned them all
in my saved pool
of tears.
Now all there is
are rotten carcasses
of what once smelled of you.

March 24, 2013

Poetry

Poetry
Does not
Come out of
Well-layered thoughts
Or well-meaning ideas,
But through pain and restraint,
Insanity and poise,
With a little bit of happiness;
Poetry comes
When the world comes to you
In a flash of reality,
Well-imagined. 

Incomplete poem

I started a poem that I could not complete,

I wrote a verse I could not sing, 

I chased a dream I could not see, 

I failed a test I could not attempt; 

Life's stream passes me by, 

And I know not where to rest my feet – 

Darkness and light play games with me, 

I know not how to move on, nor give up. 

Verses have a way

of coming back when least expected; 

Like unheard stories 

they haunt the nights, 

And plague the days

with hazy images. 

My incomplete poem lingered on,

Till I could not rest, nor sleep;

And when I touched my pen today,

It flowed unabashed from the tip. 

The Sound of Silence

Silence sounds like the breath of a flower,
the heartbeat of a rock,
the kiss of the soil;
Silence sounds like the chatter of your eyes,
the words from your heart,
the depth of your thoughts;
Silence sounds like you and me,
cuddled on a couch,
sharing dreams and love.

- Dedicated to Jennifer D'souza

Life (Dug up from a 2007 hand-written note)

I.
The sea of life
is spread before you.
You have to swim in it.
Not with the hopes of reaching the shores,
But with the dread of not being alive for another day.

II.
The monotony of life
Numbs you to quietitude.
And every time you move,
it hurts.
And so long it takes to come out of that numbness
That you lose every other sense.
In the end,
Nothing.

III.
Life is a long search
For love.

You find it,
lose it,
come across it accidentally.
Destroy it by chance,
Discard it,
Run after it...

It eludes you every time
And yet deludes you into thinking
that you have it.

The long search ends without triumph,
And yet you are happy. 

On finding meanings (Dug up from a 2007 hand-written note)

Grass flutters before me,
I see your heart in there.
Insects hover around it -
Is that me?

Investing your surroundings with symbols
Is very easy when melancholic.

Art,
Cannot arise from it.
Poetry does not build itself on symbols alone.

The strain of the nerves
on your temples,
The flow of the blood in your brain,
and the barrage of images
before you
Can make poetry.

To feel,
and to write,
Are different things.

My hand writes,
as the mind tries
To find some coherence in the words.