break broke broken

remember how
we used to fall
in little puddles of love
in the midst of dancing
or prepping a chicken
for a recipe
your mother took thirty minutes
to explain to you

and do you remember when
your name would light up
my tiny Nokia phone
announcing your arrival
in your blue car which
would take us zooming
to the next available
film show
or be patient as we
spent hours deciding
where to eat
in the small suburb
home to me
maybe even to you

it seems as if
I'm going to be
sending you a lot more of these
"remember when's"
through the unspoken dimension
that has settled between
you and me

one that was patted
like a sand castle
teased by the salty balm
of the sea breeze
and the thrashing of
the waves alike
but still held strong
even as the moat would
fill up with the stinging
ocean water

whatever happened to
the untainted happiness
that our nineteen year old hearts
realised together

remember when.

it's after 2 am...well, almost

try to pen verse.

then prose.

and then backspace

on the digital spaces

that thoughts

poetry

dreams

all the noise

that this life 

is, will be -

have come to 

become

numbly

but blaring

voices of truth

try dispensing

what they think

is life-altering

advice, or maybe

it's just nostalgia.

maybe

the five-lettered name

that I call myself

has now come 

to stand on

the outside.

maybe his fingers

can trace

fogged bathroom mirrors

or windshields

without remembering

the bends of those syllables.

come on.

it's just a couple of them

anyway.

and here you are -

beating yourself

with your demons

and cheap liquor

at least sit

with seasoned wine

and have a glass

seated across

the devil.

it's only done.

I hunt around

for inspiration

in words that 

are being penned

every now and then

across the Atlantic.

speaking of the Atlantic

do you ever think 

of stories

that could have been?

of hands that

were too close

and then too far away

all at once.

cry freedom

cry freedom

he would say

with the corner 

of his lips

and his fingertips

when silences around

you both

would strain to engulf 

the otherwise merry songs

bursting forth in your

hearts.

oh how I long

to tell those crooked

eyebrows

that I miss the stupid gaze

underneath

and the way those eyes

would crinkle

everytime I made them

laugh.

one two three million

maybe we're all

on our own journey.

maybe my street is

never going to be yours

and my fruit vendor

who fancies 

people call him

"Two Brothers"

will never make you chuckle.

or maybe there is

a grand plan

or a cosmos

that we're all a part of.

who's to say - 

our stories are our own.

are we canvas.

or the brush?

I'd like to think

of myself 

as both. 

the painter and

the paintee.

however - what if 

I was intent on painting

your hairline

onto my story.

the tense seems

to have changed

and I will have to evoke

whirlwinds

to really know.

Landin'

I've been landing on you

after all these months of

travellin'

if I took a blue car

and drove around the hills

at the dead of night 

would the blue

of my car

be blue with the blue

of the night

I feel a little bit 

faded and cracked

around my edges 

like the tea cozy

that found itself a victim

to Cub's gnaws

it's with the same ferocity

that life gnaws at my edges

and my insides

and I try to outrun it

fast and pacy

trying to get places

that I know nothing of

but cups of tea

are always a friendly constant

earl grey, mint and ginger 

it's like their smells are

going to mark

passage of time for me

through wintry Januaries

and monsoons 

which bring with them

only more poetry

leaving Cub and me

musing on the balcony 

maybe the next time

January is around the corner 

I will have the same question

for it - 

must you?

strangers in the house

maybe it's geography
or the bridges that mark
your topography
that separate

rather than doing
what they're meant
and named for
bridg-ing

maybe it was that
one saturday morning
where he wept,
yearning for my return
while you wept
yearning for me to leave
leave from the
deepest corners in your soul
that I had come to inhabit

and leave I did
as someone fond of
a sea-side apartment
is suddenly made aware
(notarized et al)
that this is their last month
as tenants
of the breeze coming in
from the west

and torridity
replaces the smiles
and blue wagon drives
and the cool blue
of tropical monsoons
parching my heart
leaving it yearning
for those eyes
which I no longer see

which I may never see
even as I cry
cry for freedom
cry freedom

port code

full circle
and / or numbered squares?
will I be punished
for trying to play
tic tac toe
with this great plan
that is life

I sit wondering
what cities and people
skylines
and names of rivers
mean for you and me

it's a bad idea to
return
to read old poetry

You'd think you know a city

... but then one Tuesday morning

you take a particularly rickety bus 

down Calcutta's oldest streets

named after forgotten zamindars

but one which is lined by derelict buildings

and ruins

which still speak of colonial times

in the typical tongue of 

red-brick-yellow-shutter-windows

the yellow of the windows

has long leaked into paths

that found their way into the sea

to be replaced by the wilderness

which has mauled its way into

balconies, crevices, ornate carvings

refusing to be overshadowed by

this world

and its neons and its fluorescents 

your bus struggles for your eyes 

to meet the Grand Oberoi,

peep into the now-empty

lane of New Market

before you chance upon the 

vast expanse of the Indian Museum

it takes the commercial towers

of Chatterjee International

and Tata Steel to lull you

further into mental notes

of the poetry happening within

before the suburbs are hit

and these words are buried under

the noises of everyday

deadlines and subsequent futilities