Event Horizon

 “I cannot perceive beyond the shadows I live in, I cannot seek beyond what I cannot see; I cannot live beyond what I cannot choose. When you walk past me I am merely a thought that shan’t linger beyond the next vision you encounter, may be a bird, a falling leaf, or just a musing, but I shall not live that long, for you to look back and wonder. But that does not mean I am not there, that I do not breathe, or that I do not exist.”

Lost in my reverie I could hear all this ringing in my head, throbbing like a bickering thought, incessant and belligerent. It troubled me, like the sight of a dead bird, or a diseased stray dog. But it wasn’t a dog, a bird, or a pile of uncouth, unsavory entrails in an abattoir. Staring into the oblivion with a deeply entrenched vision, wrinkled skin, emaciated and hopeless, she sat there in the middle of the road. Her eyes had dried up; not that I expected them to rain like that of a dryad on a famished earth.

Staring at her I could very well picture a fading black and white painting, her eyes glistening in light and I could see the minute shadows between undulations on her skin. The silence on her mien travelled down her back to her feet in a vibrant way, leaving out all the worldly noises in their pitiable places. Was this some meditation, or some trance that made her an unperturbed and an undisturbed monolithic idol?

 A part of her clothing covering her head would move a bit in the malaise breeze barely revealing her hellishly black yet bleak hairline. Her chapped lips, her parched cheeks and her inundated thoughts were like a painting in the Louvre. Just that here there was no one to draw interpretations from her eyes, the color and hue of her skin, and the unending impossibilities of her dilapidated life. This epic seemed like it would stay this way for eternity, but it did not. Amidst all the burst of colours she moved her knee a bit revealing something. All I could sense was a fettering stone in the continuum of sanity, of the self-proclaimed normalcy of one’s existence. Whatever she had on her lap just lay there in peace. Was it a child, an animal, a toy, or an apparition of a thought so strong and resilient that it took the shape of a vision I could not wipe off the parchment of my mind? She seemed to cherish the presence of that object a lot, she held on to it for a long time, longer than time; maybe she grew this old holding onto it for this long, a thought, a mere lifelessness in one’s lap. Did she just turn her head, did she just nod, in dismay, in despair, or was it an illusion of my overly hopeful hope trying to mend the retardation created by her in my mind’s sanctum?

Pondering on all this I kept observing her. She looked down; I could see her eyes fade into a cascade of disbelief coupled with realization. I saw her hand move, the veins sticking out of her skin, as if they had relinquished their duty as the bearers of her blood. Her frail fingers twirled a bit, perhaps to feel the thing on her lap. I could imagine the immense pain she had to undergo to make her move from her current poise. But, how could I imagine something I could never feel? She moved her hand to and fro, in a way of reassuring herself of something. But she abruptly retracted; for once I saw the tiniest spec of life in those eyes, teardrops waiting to dry off like a thousand such before. It was strange how people walked past her without looking at her, without looking at those eyes and those lips, and that thing on her lap.

My reverie had turned into a trance, a limbo where sanity, logic, and all ideation collapsed into one singularity; a metaphysical singularity, synesthetic and bright. Suddenly there was a question that flashed in my mind. What was so amazing about her? Was she beautiful, was she holy, did she achieve something great, feed millions out of an empty bowl, walk on fire, or spoke to God? No! The only thing she did was to dissociate me from my perception of reality, from my version of starkness and brought me to a world of cogitations that I had never seen before. Some bystander might pity her, throw some money at her. Some writer might pen down the apparent miseries into a journal on human sufferings, or some social worker might want to “rehabilitate” her into a popular world. I wouldn’t do anything of that sort. I would just sit at a distance and witness reality unfurling all its colours as it did then.

 In such moments of illusion imagination is like fungus, it shall grow wherever it can. I would imagine her dancing and singing. I would imagine her in a beautiful red dress. However, my imagination would fall in the colourless pits of her darkened eyes that would swallow every thought beyond her current state. I turned blind to the dancing, deaf to the singing, and the redness of the dress turned to a shade of grey like  a wilting leaf in scorching sun. Her presence was profound like an Event Horizon where nothing could escape, eventually collapse to nothingness. What remained was a mangled perception, a tangled up motley coloured realization of everything, carnality, happiness, serenity, anger, lust, humour, melancholy, and eventually a stupor.

I looked at my watch, five minutes had passed. Strange, all it takes is a look and the passage of banality stops, the entropic world halts, giving way to a stoic and controlled dystopia where everything happens slowly, in our knowledge and with our consent, even if it may destroy us.

I was possessed by a realization, an understanding of the situation I was in. What importance did she bear, that I was so captivated by her existence, an existence that resembled that of a billion others? Her presence was as important as her absence. It never mattered to me whether she was there or not, but till she was, I was tethered to her.

“I do not intend to be you, to see the world as you may, to feel the world as you would, but I would be you, to feel what it feels like, not to be you, not to feel what I felt not being you. I shall be you, just to celebrate not being you. But I fear, what if being you is better, is more fulfilling, or, what if being you is no different. What if I can never give up being you?”

Her presence, her sheer existence made me sick, made me feel that the lack of starkness, the lack of truth is an easier life. She did not have a life, she had clockwork. What was happening to me, why was her absoluteness in truth giving way to doubt? I had started to sympathize with her, with her condition, her solitude, and her burden. I wanted her to feel better; I wanted her to be better. The standards of morality would mark me as immoral, but it was true, what generally stood out as her misery, was her beauty, the reality that she carried with her embellished her all the more. She was devoid of any wants and desires then, she did not know riches or comfort, and that is how I wanted her to be because she made me feel nice. I was feeding onto her being. I do not care! She shall die like that, she shall perish in want. How does it matter to me? It shall be a glorious death, quintessentially true, how death should be, without people to mourn, without people to glorify. I wanted her to be there for a little while longer. She made me pity myself. Yes! Self-pity is the opium of life. Why was I there, staring at her for this long? Because she made me realize how foolish I was in desiring all that I desired. I could have been her, living for those few minutes and then dying; only to be thrown away like the carcass of a road kill. I knew she had no qualms in dying; it would not have made a difference to her. I guess it was the thing on her lap that forced her to live. Why did she bear it? May be she never wanted to, may be fate had its way with her on a weak and feeble night. I do not care for her miseries, they are not mine. However, the more miserable she is, the more I pity myself, and hence, the more I opiate. After all, I am immoral by the standards of what gives meaning to my life. Does it take immorality to see real beauty? Perhaps it does, perhaps it takes a sick man to know what it is not to be sick. How can I feel what she is, unless I am what she is not, and become what she is?

I walked away, my Catharsis was done, and maybe she died, or grew older to die one day. I do not care, the Catharsis shall not last that long for me to care. What shall last is a memory, of a day when I saw what it is not to be me, to be something worse, and realizing how worthless being me was, but how necessary worthlessness was.
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The Light

That we couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't imagine, but only smell, lying surreptitiously beneath our feet, beneath our coruscating hopes and visions. Truth that they have is a version of their own endeavours, their own volition to create a perfect world in all the disparity and dystopia they live in. But that is truth after all, undeniable, infallible, unquestionable. Yet, not true.

The gutters lay glutted with the stench of human faeces, not churned up by their gleeful guts but by their decadent souls. Those bereaved souls which never spoke of truth but of denial of it, of mere superimpositions of reality with convenience, of belief with faith. Human bones mangled up beneath healthy skin, spineless and servile, standing erect only in imaginations profound enough to blind them. Dead women and children, and men alike, floating underneath our unconscious minds, the blindness gifted to us by our version of truth, we do not want to see the dead and the rotten, with their entrails regurgitated like it were some bad meal, killed by the denial of the living, killed by the conceitedness in their own lives. No one likes to step into that murk, not to clean it, but to find a familiar face. They are dead; they have departed into the dark oblivion of our short lived memories. Fragile as it is our vision of the world we live in, of that we lose and let go off while holding onto things we perceive important, when we quantify events and objects within them as right and wrong or true and false skipping mindlessly the possible starkness of the life below, within the sewers, within the drains, flowing out with a gushing sound doused by the apparent liveliness of our apparently lively lives above.

Then we sit back, and think, precluding every other thought from our current deliberation about the conundrum that we are in, about letting go or adopting and adapting. We like the liveliness, the surrogate consciousness, the outsourced truth and the quintessential delusions that make our lives go smoothly, yet we might cry one night, only to let those cesspools to fill up, bloat up like sacrificial lambs, filling up further like a hungry beast happily swallowing more, guffawing at how we like to kill, to murder mindlessly every day. Kosher human cadavers dried up of blood, of life, with gaping holes at their throat, waiting for the long and unrelenting decomposition, of complete obliteration, from memory and from world. Such is life, or what we think is life…

Necropolis

What lies beneath the myriad strands, of glory, of radiance, of fame, of brilliance?

What human remains on its penultimate heave, on its waning belief, momentously bereaved?

What Pantheons built in gleaming eyes, in glittering minds, on splendid grounds, hide?

Grandeurs of my obituary enshrined in a valedictorian stone, carved, and sequined.

Hymns and chants of eminence, vanguard catatonic minds through the lanky air.

Men wallow in grief; men cry in glee, men yelp in herds of mindless in resonance.

But what lies beneath the pageantry of anguish, beneath the lustrous sorrow,

beneath the fame and valor, beneath the distinction and honor?

Some bones, some dust, some death and lore; a heart, a relic deplore,

There is life in the shadow of martyrdom, in the blinds of posthumous wisdom.

There is soul within a hollow design, within a clockwork benign.

Yet the inanimate be venerated, revered in infirmaries adulated.

Mere cadavers commemorated…

To A Forsaken Glory

Look around, what do you see?
A forlorn glory reduced to lore and stories;
An East and West stained in Red, A North and South with power hungry Mouths;
A Center that is writhing in Its Painful Past;
A Crown that reflects Inhumanity Aghast;
But we do look ahead, towards Prosperity and Peace so serene;
Because there is a promise, a hope, somewhere in the Saffron, White, and Green.....

Despair

The light was thinning out, the doors closed upon me sooner than I could take my next breath. It wasn’t the usual feeling of despair, or that familiar weight on my chest I felt, which smothered me. Like a quagmire I was being sucked deeper into a blissful oblivion which promised peace and rest but I had this undying fear within me which persuaded me to escape it. A vision flashed in front of my eyes, was a familiar vision, of a child sitting in the cosmic lap of time and stretching its arm out at the stars. It was my representation of freedom, of a chest full of breath. How sadistic! What I need the most comes to my mind when I cannot have it.

It is a losing battle. I find no way I can escape this. However slow and tedious it may be, I feel light is escaping me very fast. You say I need to take it easy, it shall be alright soon, but you stand on the other side, where it is greener, where you don’t have to view the world through a tiny chink on a glorified wall. But you still ask me to calm down. I have trusted you, and shall keep doing so. Ironically, I have a smile on my face while I go down under, I have this assurance that even if I fall it shan’t be that painful, you are there to assuage my pain, placate my nerves that writhe in apprehension. Why are you so far away, where I can see you just as a memory lingering barely in the forgotten corners of my mind? Like a playful wraith I find you philandering with my suffering, pointing at me and laughing, clucking at my helplessness and watching the spectacle of me annihilating myself. Ever seen a spider spin a web around its prey? Graceful, isn’t it? I wonder how the prey feels, suffocated, afraid, hapless and hopeless, a being that has given up the will of being one? I try hard to feel that web around me, try to feel the pressure around me, but all I can see is your glorious, coruscant face slyly mitigating the seething pain. Do you want me to perish happily, with content and without remorse?  I shall do so, for you, for your happiness, for the trust you have in me, for the belief we entail. But tell me once, softly, that it wouldn’t hurt, I am afraid of pain, of blood, of darkness. Just tell me once that you’d be happy, that you’d like it. I know it wouldn’t hurt then.

Watch over me, while I fade away…

Providence

Often in your words I find peace, light, an irradiated awe so bright

Often in your words I find dismay, despair, a battered hope beyond repair...

Often in your eyes I find love, desire, an allaying fire

Often in your eyes I find listless, aching, howls from a soul shrieking...

Often in your heart I find a space, embellished, by sequins so cherished

Often in your heart I find end, of perseverance, dark beyond deliverance...

Eden

Prevalent in these, woods are some strange rituals;

of unknown deities, and unseen Daemons!

Tis where they, do not hack down fraternal prey;
tis where they, do not devour brethren in mindless affray!


Tis where you shan’t find, splattered entrails and crushed souls in a grind;
tis where you shan’t surmise, your own’s demise!


But in these woods there is a lingering disease;
of cloying love of a seething peace!


These woods stink of perfection and a silent abjuration;
of life of strife of a will to survive!


These woods are abstruse, of elation in wound of joy in bruise;
these woods are divine, of blindness in the brightest sunshine!


Here you may lose your way, letting your imagination astray;
here you may live a bit fine within a clockwork design!


Tis a wondrous world where you reside;
garnered by death darkness and a glorious divide!


Please visit it more often than not;
for here is where all ends is brought!!!

For Gandhi, The Mohandas

What end is there in my obstinacy, breaking the pliant with my insolence;


Lashing on the dead skin, there is no blood;

But there is a screech, a silent wail, in those wet eyes, in that brittle voice;

A trembling hand reaching out to a closure, though inhibited by a benign petulance;

Do not accuse me, I am an idol, an axiom, a providence, a prophet;

I am not hollow, but brimming forever, I am not dismal, but a frail fervor....

Fragile

Dazed was I, looking at the blinding aura of the black night sky, lying on my back tethered to a recluse, searching myself amongst the myriad those glittered.


Dazed was I, at the soporific halo that shone around my dreams, crashing yet one, subliminal like a wraith smiling at me from an intangible distance.

Dazed was I, from the beclouding of my eyes in the wake of the silent glory, brittle and simmering, in the tepid touch of the environing blaze.

Dazed was I, watching the immiscible spectral cavort of an invisible danseur, from cold to warm in a warping inanity of draping skin.

Dazed was I, praising my own frailty, collapsing onto my own volition, imbibed whole into my own softening singularity.


Dazed was I, at the egression, gloating onto a diminishing trail, a scent left floating in my withering dimension.

Congruo

There was a sea in the middle of my bosom, ebbing and tiding within my dead spaced blossom,



A sequined death to the glittering fate's denials, dividing life into mere conforming trials.........

Espoir

From the deafening screech of a catatonic mind,
Languid and livid from the verve left behind;



Death by a smile so virulently divine,
Ascension to the Sol in my aubade's design.....

Reverie

The upstate of my demented, passing away into the calmness unintended;
 

Catch those souls running by, that dove which could never fly;
 

Stoned am I to have you kiss me, opiated for those apparitions I see.....

Pythein

That ringing haze in my head, one place where nothing bred;

Desolation in the farm of the dead, quenched by something dull and red;

Tangling in my legs while I run, tearing through my skin, a little pleasure a little burn;

Holding tight onto the dangling skin, the torn limbs, the broken joint, galloping endlessly to where life aroint;

A place where the phantasms at rampart, bribing with blood and flesh my vanguard;

They are the vicissitudes of this visage, the lore of a glorious forage;

Enshrined within this epitaph are those undead dreams, raising from their graves they chew through the living seams;

Infect the sentience render a philandering bereavement, the joy, the felicity, a farce of my embalmment;

The virulence of the cloying amour, no ears for that putrid clamour;

Drag that torn limb over the barbed fate, no more soul left to claudicate;

Hack me again till I smile, a sheared skin was never servile;

Like juvenility playing in splashes, my frivolity livens in whip lashes;

And then the blood bespattering, colours of a monolithic simpering;

To rot for ever they lie, be born for end is nigh…

Besotted

What is that I see, the haze past the midnight hour,

Senseless and fogged, of hoodlums near and far;

Walk this hour, in the demureness of my immodesty,

Drenched in pity, to the days a mere travesty;

The clink of souls, when I merge with the spirits without,

The parched conscience, soothed by the proliferating drought;

Lost and forgotten, unable to tread the meanders of the day,

Doused and extinguished, the cradle where my nights lay;

Dragging the sounds, were they the songs I left behind,

Swaying to the nothing, were they the beauties I would never find;

A forsaken path, I cannot keep my eyes on,

A dwindling will, there might never be another dawn;

Count my steps, they never fall where I intend,

What power is you, to whom my vigor shan’t pretend;

What way is it, how you imbibe in me the catalepsy,

What way is it, how still there remains strength in my palsy;

Inebriated tonight, there is no other lay I can sing,

Flowing in veins, you’re the poison to which my titters swing;

For the next day, I do not care for the onerous gripe,

Before that dawn, let me wallow in this intoxicating tripe…….

Forgotten

There somewhere in the corner, where memories lay dormant, mostly in a stupor, is a pot full of colors, vestiges of the shimmering glory, sequins of a life now gone. I hold a brush, trying hard to paint the canvas back, but alas, it's dry, crusty, mostly dead & forgotten.There is nothing new but redundancy and the various hues of it. Remission of remembrance, & a bit of resilience of theirs. They stay, forever.

Tears of Sisyphus

Once trickled down the blessed way, with pain, with repentance the worlds sway;

To the bidding of thee, shall stand until eternities flee;

Pushing fate up the fate – less slope, without amity, without hope;

Never to elope, never to grope, that elusive sin, conscience so allusive within;

Dwindling vigor, a spineless fervor, still bickering, still sneering;

I did not chafe the heavens, I did not revile the Daemon, prodding in the murk, never to find the bygone;

Yet I push fate on that dark slope, a perdition to my what I never could ope;

I fulfill to see it born still, to fulfill but never still be never still;

For love, to cleave be behoove, shall adhere, to no fear;

For I cry not, for I croon not, for these tears are not, for this is the toil I fought;

My debility, the obscurity of my ubiety, still obsequious, still lascivious;

I trek my promenade, to retrace it alas, my sweat my blood all rendered farce;

Could there be no redemption, a reprisal  forgiven  for damnation;

Yet I push my fate less fate over the fate less slope, undyingly glim at life lope……..