That Kaleidoscope Guy

Lost Voice

2025-12-18T15:53:00.001+05:30

Lumiere. 67 years since the fracture.

It is the day of the Gommage. Far in the distance, the Paintress sits beneath the monolith that glows with a stark, luminous number: 34.

Gustave looks on, dreading the arrival of this hour. Today, his longtime love, Sophie, must face the Gommage. They shared a love that could never truly bloom; in the world they inhabit, love is not meant to thrive, it only births agony.

Gustave goes to meet Sophie one final time. He carries a single rose for her final journey, hoping perhaps to say the things left unsaid, or to hear the words he has never heard.

They meet, their eyes lock, words remain spoken.

With a silent nod, they agree to bid their true farewell at the shore when the ritual begins.

The Paintress rises from her latent stance. With a fair swing of her brush, she wipes out the 34 and paints 33.

As the light takes hold, men and women of Lumiere start to dissolve into delicate rose petals, drifting and disappearing into the sky. Sophie remains for a moment longer, tears shimmering in her eyes, her gaze still fixed on Gustave. As her essence starts to fade, she is afraid, yet she is happy to be standing beside him in this final transition between life and death.

Gustave, with unwavering eyes speaks to Sophie, "I’m here."
"I know" She whispers back as she begins to erode to dust and petals.

And soon, she's gone - another sacrifice to the Gommage.

Gustave’s own Gommage is only a year away; they both knew it. He joins the Expedition today, to seek and destroy the Paintress on the distant continent of horrors and haunt.

He couldn’t tell her he loved her, not today, on her last day, knowing his love had no power to save her. Sophie, too, could not say the words; it was all for naught and all too late.

Two people, fated for a journey into the unknown, separated by the Paintress’s hand.

Two lovers, one unspoken truth - a love that lived in the heavy quiet between their hearts.

Promise

2024-01-15T18:37:00.005+05:30

I have stared at this space for too long but it is a promise I have kept.

A promise to write a story, about us, the unwavering imperishable link between us. I may finish our story tonight, or maybe not, but it is a promise I have kept… to endure and press on. It is a promise I have kept.

I have told your stories before, in some sodden summer rain or grim winter nights. Quoted in one of my many contemplations, underlined and embolden in my ruminations, tilted and encaptured like a chapter in this solemn place. But you were never a chapter, no, you are the paint that sheaths the poet in me from sun and rust.

You are a perplexing power, a story untold, that wrings me asunder in tatters yet whole. You flow unclothed, unchallenged in the marrow of my spirit.

Some days have passed, and I stare at this space, wading through hours I devour minutes, seconds, and I reckon there is much more to be told.

Recently I spent some days, doused in the olden ways, with you. But I have returned. Now and afar, I reminisce how I saw you diminish in the tail lights of our car. As the distance lengthens, I reflect how frequently I recollect the effects you have on me.

Now, with the passing of time, when I am no longer the same person, the same old, but I am a little more… Now when I am with her, who is my present, my past, my evermore… I feel your presence around, keeping me safe, sound.

You shelter me and now you shelter her, yes I see. It is your promise, I know. And when we are even more, when we are three or four, when our love blossoms into flowerets, when my old soul constantly frets whether they are happy or upset… You will shelter them too.

Many days have passed again, but time bothers me less. I confess, I will truly regret if my words fail to capture the subliminal rapture of your presence in my life. But it is a promise I have kept.

You are more than a location, a point, a destination. The soil of your hallowed grounds makes me float, like an untethered spirit. You stir me to write, to sing, to dance, to love.

Sometimes I wonder if it's only me who feels this way, about a place, about home. I amuse myself to believe it's only me, I thrive in this imagination of exclusivity… Imagination is all I have, and you gave that to me.

I strive to fathom your riddling mystery, chalked in the tapestry of my life. As I write these lines, I resign with contentment and a sigh. A sigh that cries not of relief or burgeoning grief but echoes the tunes of “finally, I tried… to write you a story in depth, like the promise I kept”.

When I am old, and truly old, when there is not a story left in me that is untold, when my mind seeks slumber more than my body, I will come to you, and write a final chapter on your shores.

A last attempt, by a man old and unkempt, to tempt your elusive form, to unveil itself and talk. Standing at the edge of life, I will share the stories of mine, in hope to listen thine.

In those final seconds, I will pen down with all my might and conclude your story. The thudding sound of a heavy book closed, no more a chapter but a story told. Beneath starry night, our pact kept, by an old man withered and inept… it was a promise I kept.

Sweet

2022-09-09T20:37:00.005+05:30

Part I

“My Liege”

Said the tired and weak man, with spent spirit. On his knees he went, with weariness and not fealty.

Clad in armor from skull to toe, only chipped in places where the Liege had struck… it still shone bright, even after months of war, much like the shameless arrogance of the man himself.

His helm, once sparked the proud sigil of the Emperor of the lands, now held firmly beneath the boots of the Liege. His sword, once a symbol of prestige now fiddled by the Liege’s soldiers, scraping the hard blood and grime off their boots.

He was brought up by a hundred chambermaids and manservants, never batted an eyelid, moved a muscle. Born in a mile high castle… Velvet below, gold above… Higher than his subjects, higher than God.

And now, he trembles with fear and shame, staring at the grounds of the very castle that once housed his dignity.

The Liege smiled, after many moons. “What an unfamiliar sensation, has it really been so long?”. The Liege had spent years in the same castle, walking the same gardens, sharing the same high seat, and… to much much chagrin… the same bed. But it could never bring the same joy, as it did to its former Emperor.

The Liege was happy, she was finally happy.

He said again, whimpering, swerving his frightened gaze up and down post-haste .

“My Liege”

Part II

“My Liege”

She said, as she fell on his feet. Wailing and begging for a slight glimpse of mercy.

He was salivating from the mouth, eyes dyed wine red, drenched in power and unprecedented monarchy.

He kicked her away, laughing maniacally, as he continued hacking and slashing her brothers, sisters and young borns.

Her husband was the first to go, as much as she could recall. Her memory was fainting speedily. Everything was moving too fast… turning red and black. She couldn’t evade the last memory of her husband. The lips, moving ever so slightly, but the dead white eyes. Why were the eyes pale white?

She remembered more… the whinnying of the horses, the wild triumphant guffaw of the enemy soldiers, the cadaver, the pike and finally the head.

Never had she felt a pain so sharp, so swift that it even ripped out the grief – leaving behind a hollow shell, a lifeless canister, a memory of what once was and never will be.

After days of plunder, rape, arson and murder he, and his handful of vassals and henchmen, finally left. As a token of triumph, slaves were taken, so many slaves till the town was only left with the old, broken and sickly. She was one of the slaves. His personal favorite, hand-picked for his pleasures.

Still grief-stricken, she followed suit and joined the queue of slaves, slowly getting dragged in the muddy tracks.

He looked at her with a wicked grin, “I like you, I will find you a right place in my kingdom”

She said nothing.

He dismounted, approached her and pulled her hair back, and repeated himself with an addition, “... you will answer me when spoken to, and you will address me as ‘My Liege’”

“Yes… My Liege”, quivering lips spoke, gasping for air, courage and hope.

And suddenly, like a wish granted, the hollow shell of her body was filled with grief – a small moment of melancholy followed by a silent shriek, remembering her husband – then the grief escaped, now replaced by anger, the paleness flushed and she steamed hot with turbulent blood – then finally arrived calm vengeance, a plot, a hope, a pathway to retribution. The thought of it made her, ever so slightly, smile.

“Good”, he said, “I am glad this appeases you, you will make a great addition to my coterie”

With an unfazed gaze and an undithered motive, she replied -

“My Liege”

Part III

“My Liege”

She said calmly as he climbed on top of her, slithering like a cunning snake, vicious in his movements, and vile in his desire, building up the poison.

“Y-Y-Yes, yes, I am your L-L-Liege”

He spluttered, driving his ravenous organ inside her, craving for her innocence to be beguiled… itching for her to be bewitched by his manliness. He shook like a plague ridden dog, sweating, panting, howling.

He swung. He writhed. He finished.

She got up and cleaned herself up. She looked out of the jewel and garland studded window, the palace was lit up with celebration, it was a betrothal after all. She remembered her wedding night, in her small town. It was nothing like this, she remembered much less flowers, much less jewels, but there was joy… and fulfillment.

She glanced out the window. The kingdom was lour and gloomy.

She knew this, she knew the kingdom frowned and spat at their Emperor, behind his back. A kingdom of slaves, bandits and vagabonds – all of whom had their homes wrenched away from them, their loved ones murdered and made one with the dust.

She looked at him, drunk and collapsed in his virile achievement.

She looked out the window again. “None of these slaves could ever make it to the palace chambers, but I have. I am overlooking everyone, even the Emperor”, she thought as she sipped sweet red wine from an adorned goblet. “Wonder who he murdered to steal this wine?”, she thought. She put the goblet away, it tasted like blood now.

She could kill him right then, make a run through the castle halls, leap the palisades and disappear amongst the vagabonds and slaves. Then what? Starve and shiver through the nights, sleep in the filthy streets like a derelict just to wake up the next day to see a grand cortege, mourning the Emperor and celebrating his life?

She could live her life on the streets, ultimately contracting an unknown sickness, slowly rotting away in the city ditch while he gets a giant golden effigy to immortalize him.

“No” she thought, “Not this way”

A tap on the door broke her chain of thought. She opened the door, and slid outside.

“My Queen, my apologies. I have news. Does he sleep?” The man outside asked. The Queen’s personal guard, an old, well built man, another slave who made it to the palace.

She nodded.

The old man looked around.

“May he lay senseless forever. The commander’s sons plead allegiance to your cause, they offer men. Many strong men. They will remain silent under the veil till your orders…”

“Excellent”

“My lady. He still outnumbers us, ten times at least. Be it wise to proceed? We have more mouths and ears in the kingdom now. What if we are revealed?”

She smiled at the old man. She was no stranger to doubts and judgements.

“We were outnumbered twenty times yesterday, thirty a month ago, hundred a year back.”

The old man calmed down and took a long breath. He was content. He smiled back and bowed to take his leave.

“My Queen… and by the gods, very soon”

He continued…

“...My Liege”

Part IV

“My Liege”

“Must it come to this?” A wise smile on his defeated face, “I have friends beyonds the oceans, the mountains. We can foster a great relationship!”

“You use that with such… thoughtlessness” She spoke for the first time.

“Use… U-Use what?”

“The phrase ‘My Liege’... how does it feel?”

He was silent.

“How does it feel when you say it?”

He remained tongue-tied.

“The corpse of my dear husband feeds my village grounds. Weeds and wanton vines now crawl endlessly over his remains. His hollow head is a shelter to worms. My brothers and sisters are but ghosts in the fields, scaring the crows. I left them behind, I walked with you and called you ‘My Liege’. Do you know how I felt?”

He remained still as a pillar.

“It envenomed me with shame. Every last drop of love and happiness was siphoned out of me. I lived but I was dead. My only desire was to see you squirm in pain like a trout choking on air, like Prometheus getting his liver devoured by the eagle, everyday, for the rest of time. I did not want you dead, I wanted to be that eagle.”

“My body is tainted, it turned evil and sacrilegious the day you touched me. I stabbed my wound three times that night to ensure I never bear your progeny. There was blood everywhere, even the healers were aghast but the gods saw to it that I live. Despite such brimming pain and abhorrence, I still walked beside you and called you ‘My Liege’. Do you know how I felt?”

He was turning pale, with shame and shock.

“I felt the devil playing in my spoiled wound. Every passing day I felt it getting bigger and bigger, till today, when he is finally ready to devour you whole. I felt pulled down by the weight in my belly. I had to foster evil to end your evil. This devil is my vengeance, this devil is my child, I gave my blood to it and even after you are gone, I will live with it.”

There was silence everywhere except for a few distant roars in the kingdom as the usurper was announced.

“The Slave Queen… Praise the Slave Queen!… Liberation! Freedom!”

“So what now? How do you wish to end me, exact your revenge?” he asked.

“I don’t”, she said as she slowly approached the empty throne, “You do not understand. I don’t want to kill you”

She gently caressed the armrest of the beautifully ornate chair, “This moment marks the beginning of my vengeance – To see the arrogance sucked out of your armor. To witness your soul crushed in your helm. Death will not come so easily to you, oh no, your life now is my avengement.” She took seat on the throne, a gale of emotions hit her, but primarily, it was the contentment.

Bemused and amok, he tried to get up, but was held down by her soldiers. Another company of soldiers charged through the main door.

“Take him away”, she commanded.

“W-What? W-Where? Withdraw your traitorous hands!”, he squealed.

“Oh Don’t worry”, she leaned back, the arch of the throne fit her well. She sheathed her sword. crossed her legs and breathed in the fecund air of dominance, “I like you… I will find you a right place in my kingdom.”

Part V

A year had passed.

Thievery and poverty were a thing of the past. The kingdom was now thriving. The old slaves now held positions of powers, their possessions restored.

She became a stalwart figure of omnipotence. She took no man for a King, bore no one’s child. She adopted orphans – the victims of the kingdom's pillaging past – as vassals, cupbearers, even possible heirs.

Dusk was near, it’s when she would go out for her daily visit. She knew where she was headed – the steps outside the temple – where he was always found.

Friendless, dejected, with a despair-shaped dagger struck in his heart. He was half the size now, and lost most of his hair, if not all. He had lost sense in his legs – some say he tried to kill himself by leaping off a bridge. But it was a weak attempt and the townsfolk didn’t let him die.

“Death will not come so easily to you, oh no, your life now is my avengement.” The Queen’s word is the kingdom’s command.

She climbed the steps and found him staring at the sunset, with a pale, blank expression. She sat next to him and placed three things, slowly, one after the other.

First, A Flask of Water… He grabbed the flask and emptied it within a moment’s time.

Second, A Raw Lamb Shank… He clawed and chewed the raw meat, drooling from the sides of his mouth like an uncultured boor.

And finally… Third, A Shining Dagger with the Queen’s sigil on the hilt…

There were no sudden movements this time.

He looked at the queen, with tears in his eyes. She kept smiling, looking at the resplendent sunset. Not a wrinkle of concern on her face.

He snatched the dagger and swiftly brought it close to his neck… but he stopped… He did not have the nerve… courage was never his strong suit and she knew that well.

“A few more inches, damn it!” he thought

She smiled a little more, as though she heard.

A quick look at the hilt, the Queen’s name shone in a golden red hue under the slant rays of the sleeping son.

“Death will not come so easily to you, your life is my avengement.” The curse, the judgment, the first and last words of the demon child of vengeance.

His hands weakened and the dagger fell on the steps, with a loud crash. She picked up the dagger and packed it neatly in its sheath.

“Maybe tomorrow” she said, unconcerned, as she started her descent down the steps.

He began to sob uncontrollably.

The winds were stirring a tempest… the orchestra of trees howled a requiem… as the sun lowered the curtains on the Emperor’s tragedy.

Rain

2021-02-23T20:02:00.000+05:30

I see a great light today, warming my dampened soul, the bends of my shoulders, silencing the creaks and squeaks of my arching back.

I am a tree, of timber and oak.

A glorious sun awakens me, and my bough grows, stretches longer, like Adam’s reach towards God. My bark firms, hardening manyfold, sucking in the soul of life from my roots like a rush of blood, a gushing life force.

I sparkle with leaves, resonating and waltzing to the cadence of the wind, Nature’s orchestra – I take the first seat and I am the last, I am the instrument and the instrumentalist. As green as the Earth deems me to be, as vibrant as the world asks me to be. I unfold with a crescendo, the high notes, the climax, and hush… I am the silent applause.

The tips of my bough, a lonely flower blooms, a flower called life.

I am a wolf, of cold and winter.

My limbs ache, tiny crystal flakes nestled in my grey fur like winter’s hatchlings. They begin to melt, and I feel the warmth careening along my body.

I lick my talons clean, forgotten taste of an unfortunate prey? Or perhaps my own. I remember my struggle, the hunt, the chase, the collapse, the fading shadow of my sustenance and the piercing sound of its gloating bleat. I remember how woefully it matched the amplitude of my hunger.

I lick my talons clean, forgotten taste of defeat.

I am a wolf, defeated yet not crestfallen. The moon shines upon me, igniting my fur with a silvery conflagration. I become one with the wind, soaring through the icy forest like a wildfire, pranced atop a hill, I become the winter’s howl. The alphas shudder, their packs scatter, their whelps whimper.

I am the lone wolf, estranged yet feared. The moon shines in my eyes tonight, a shine called life.

I am a mountain. Tall and stalwart, standing against time brazenly. I fear nothing, I feel nothing.

My nonchalance covers decades, my indifference spans eons, my heartlessness is beyond conscious and conscience. I have become God, as I am awake, and everyone still sleeps – a self-anointed crown of thorns.

A heavenly rain bellows and sweeps me to the earth below, I fall asunder like a boor, taste of mud splattered across my lips. I fall from the great heights of delusions into the pits of truth. Vapid atmosphere of vainglory no longer befool me. I drink the ambrosial stream of rainwater, that I once discarded.

I feel the gallop of the gazelles, tickling my senses. I feel the rain covering me like a lover’s embrace. And I, like a child, break down into tears – endless rivers of tears.

I am a mountain, overgrown yet not overpowerful. A figure of love and not of hubris. I catch a lightning at my peak, a thunder echoes, a thunder called life.

I am a man, of flesh and bones. Murky visions of the future, clouded eyes, as pale as snow. Hands, gritty and chafed, like a wood worker. I see no light, nor does the light see me. I am a forgotten lore, a misbegotten progeny.

Confused by the weight of the world, disoriented by the onus of expectations, demented by my acceptance of slavery. I am far from what I was, far from what I can be. I am slipping off the tangent against my circle of life, a cataclysmic fall that may never arrive, a slow ride to infinity in comfort of many parallels such as me. The grim geometry of life.

But today I halt, I bury my feet against the tangent to decelerate. I grind, I crawl, against the gravity, up the tangent, up towards my distant circle of life. I see clearly today, my vision restored, my limbs vitalized.

I scurry up, pacing like a wolf – defeated yet not crestfallen. I grow, like a tree – old yet blooming. I rise, like a mountain – confident yet grounded.

I am home, my circle of life – a familiar face greets me, “Welcome home, I am so proud of you”.

She wipes me clean, my tainted unstructured form is invisible to her. She sees beyond such things. Her unearthly figure seems almost levitating and I am lifted with her.

I am man, uncouth yet not unloved. Bent but not broken.

In presence of her – my sun, my moon, my rain.

Of Love and Tales

2020-05-29T11:57:00.000+05:30

Hello.

Yes.

Hello you.

Past few months have been glorious, haven’t they?

Difficult? you say? I chose to disagree but let us not start poles apart.

So… hello…

It has been madness out there hasn’t it?

But you have held on, you beautiful thing. Some haven’t, I know, I have lost someone close too… but that is a story for another day.

Back to us and the present. Every day we see a counter of human souls ticking, like god’s own gambling machine as we peep from within our closed windows, with withered eyelids, waiting for the sun to set, and the new dawn to bring tides of good news.

Strings of lives getting cut, and the strands floating in the air somewhere. Nameless, just numbers for you and I… nameless.

But you and I aren’t nameless. We don’t want to be… numbers… We are trying hard to say hellos and goodbyes to moving figures on a small screen. We sing, cry and send kisses through an invisible tunnel, ever so frequently asking “can you hear me?”.

Our hearts fall to a sullen pit when we hear nothing back, panic sets in, we scamper and fiddle with machinery like toddlers behind a car wheel… till we hear “yes, I can hear you”.

Our hearts rest, it is a good feeling to know you are heard, to know that someone somewhere wants to listen to you, see you, be a part of your story.

They say “to love is to be vulnerable” and we have never been so vulnerable, thus… we have never been so much in love… and to truly love is to truly, unflinchingly, undeniably let everything else fall, clear the cloud of clutter that has cramped our muscles and stunted our hearts.

To love is to rend the shackles of our own hubris, vainglory, and pomp. To fall, in hope to get caught. And if not, then to fall in hope to get hurt, and in hope to heal and fall again. To fall, in hope to be vulnerable in love and invulnerable to everything else. To love… is to hope…

Sometimes the sweetest joys in life pass us by in the blink of an eye, and the best thing we can do is to make sure we do not miss the next one.

Life is like a raucous train station sometimes, everyone is in a hurry, everyone’s journey is more important than the other, you drop things, you lose things, there’s a cacophony, a tremor underneath, a storm above, and amidst all that we can sometimes miss our train. And it is alright, there are hundreds around us who have missed their trains too, find a companion, find what you have lost, find your train.

Soon. Our bones will become dust, our memories consumed by history and our kids will tell tales of naught. Soon, our kids will turn to skeletons, like their children thereafter… and your story? Disappeared, forgotten.

Only love lives on, and what are we but tales of love.

Everything ends, and there is beauty in death and decay, to take your last breath holding someone you love. To remember the days spent, the stories, the will to never give up and go on, till death and beyond. And to finally reach the beyond, is beautiful, its where love becomes immortal and our stories become fables, fairy tales and songs for our children to sing and dance to around a night fire… our stories find home… our stories become someone else’s dreams.

And through every invisible white hair of wisdom that I claim to have, I tell you this. From every warm and bleeding corner of my heart I invite you to be part of my tale…

“If tomorrow starts without me, and my bones do turn to dust,

I wish to kiss the meadows, and not taint away in rust

I wish to fly amongst the birds, and look upon my love

Send her gentle rain and the fairest winds from above

I’ll tell her that I miss her, so terribly I do mourn

Ask her to remember me by, and never feel forlorn

That lucky night, those simple words, that strung us bound together

How we swore to hold our hands, through fair or foul weather

How our story thus continued, with friends and kins alike

Stories that made me forget often; what grief feels like

I lived a hundred years or more, but still it feels so less

But I pass in mirth and smiling content, in death’s humble caress

If tomorrow starts without me, my life wasn’t spent in naught

I thank you, one who reads this verse, for playing a role my plot

For what is life, but tales and fables, of love and all its glory

Waste not a single second, to love the characters in your story

Life is full of blanks and dots, fill it up with tales

Waste not a single second, this boat eternally sails…”

Ghost

2020-03-14T17:37:00.001+05:30

The highway burns like miseries.

Obscure lines of livestock and trees.

I feel a weightlessness with you, a silence of unanswered questions, questions you never ask whenever I return.

I am very happy, believe me. Your colors are different from my world, you smell like freshly watered sunflowers turning gently towards the first rays of the morning. You dance like a thousand glowing angels under a moonlit night. I feel no gravity here, I float somewhere in between you and everything that pulls me away from you.

Street boys running by my car, getting quickly outpaced, grubby mouth and colorful hands, their eyes shining like the sea, you keep them close to your heart. I know, I was one of them.

I am cutting through the avenues, trying to find my way to you, I am breathing fast, my heart is pacing wild. I am fumbling through my words for you, my soul is filled with love and blues…

Staying away from you, always was and is surely now, a flaw. If this is home, then I wonder when my cold veneer will thaw, and I settle here in your warm embrace and resounding grace. If this is home, then I wonder what I have been searching for all my life? To what avail is this ceaseless strife and the stabbing pain of the unreachable knife piercing my back?

I wonder when I'll thaw, I left you here and I wonder what I saw?

Narrow streets and the glimmering lights, like fairy tales on every step. Time is slow, the seconds flow like trickle down a slope. I am back in the womb, miles away from my living tomb. You are filling my soul, like a breeze that’s cold in an empty house, full of dust and ashes of my life.

Your world is golden, shimmering like a chandelier. And I float, along your hundred boats, in the Ganges that flows through you like a blood vein. And somewhere in between, I float, I hide, I giggle and chase memories, cups of tea, packets of cigarettes, bird’s eye view of home.

It’s raining.

I scurry along the muddy steps, my back against the walls. I see you drenched, shy and shivering, looking beautiful. The chandelier splits into a million crystals, dispersing into fireflies as they hit your gentle skin.

...

Go away now. This is a pipe dream. A temporary joy. Go away now.

The wolf howls. The clock arms move.

Promise me you will not weep, and be the hammock to comfort my final sleep. I see you standing there, with your golden hair, and those deep and glorious eyes… the queen of chandeliers.

I am abreast, of the troubling nest, of wicked lies that pain my chest. I am scratching through the surface for the light... You’re miles away, at the river’s bay, that fed the youth and memories of my child. The child that still wants a cradle to his life.

Swing me again. Swing me again oh life.

This is an ode to you. My pen, this page, a silent rage yet hopeful I am, that one fine day, I’ll be one with you and you’ll be one with me. When the curtain calls, I will not stall to rush into your warm embrace.

Hold me down, hold me close like a child... Hold me down, hold me close till I die...

I don’t know where I am going, but I am taking you with me. I am a ghost of you, you’re a ghost of me.

Hold me down, hold me close like a child... Hold me down, hold me close till I die...

Jehlum

2020-02-09T14:29:00.000+05:30

War on either side.

Embers in the sky like stars on earth, splinters flying and an acrid taste of anger in the air.

She thrusts her boat into the dark clear waters of Jehlum. Another loud noise reverberates, startled she reaches out to catch the arm of a ghost. A grief saved for a later time.

The boat creaks and squeaks, she places something wrapped in a shawl on the boat. She wonders if the boat can survive the weight of the wrapped bundle, she wonders if it can survive the weight of her grief… a grief saved for a later time…

Drenched in dust, ashes of a forgotten past and forgotten warriors, she braves the atrocity of war and jumps into the boat. Another loud thunder bellows, she reaches out again, all in vain… tears diffidently careen down her face leaving a trail of black, like the streams of Jehlum on which her boat gently floats.

The riverbank fades slowly as she scutters from one edge of the boat to the other, holding the wrapped bundle close to her rapidly beating heart, whispering something lightly. Patience and luck are all that is needed now… unfortunately she has an abundance of one, and severely lacks the other.

Her thoughts float like the boat, she remembers a time when she was young. She would come to the banks of Jehlum, with her friends, and throw stones in the river and count the bounces till they inevitably sink. She would talk of young boys and marriage, of her ever-growing youth and sinful pleasures. They would laugh and scamper like a flight of swallows, upon hearing their mothers’ distant scolds.

Adolescent dreams of running off with a man, who would take her inland, to cities of blinding lights and towering buildings. Wealth, happiness and a family. She never wanted to be a sheep herder, a village woman with the burden of an earthen pot on her frail shoulders, weaving Pashmina shawls for a living as her loved ones get crushed like grass under the stomping feet of two nations fighting to claim a land that they themselves destroy with each tedious march.

She reaches out again, to feel the arm of her husband, now feeding the tall grass somewhere in the war ridden lands. For once, she hoped the fates would change, somehow all of this becomes a dream and she wakes up next to him and he would comfort her, like he used to, by saying “Shh… It’s just the rain… It’s just the rain”.

She remembers her wedding, a beautiful affair with a man she had never met. She remembers the shivers, tightness in the throat, anxiety, excitement, fear? Maybe. A reservoir of emotions, but everything went to rest when he held her hand for the first time. A firm grip of a man willing to keep her safe, a man willing to love her till his dying breath… and he did, didn’t he? He really did…

She remembers her home, her herd of sheep that she had begun to like, she was doing better than she had imagined, till the war broke… months of fire and embers, of inciting news, and a village pillaged by rape, war and famine.

She had escaped somehow, with some prized possessions and a bundle wrapped in a shawl. And here she is now.

Jehlum had been crossed. Dust and gunfire blurring her thoughts and vision as she jumps in the murky waters carrying the enwrapped bundle close to her heart… Her heart, that beats faster with each step… half stumbling through the mud, a long yearning smile almost makes its way to her face…

Suddenly…

A loud noise pierces the air, a gunshot and silence followed.

She falls to her knees, eyes popped wide open. Dark and violent silhouettes of men disappearing slowly on the other shore. It was too good to be true; she places the bundle on the ground, blood stains tainting her prized possession.

Almost as soon as that, a gush of blood pours out her chest and covers the ground below like the first rays of sunlight in a dimly lit room. She starts to unwrap the bundle, hurriedly, as time quickly ticks, she feels no pain, just an enormous onus of misery …

And there it was… there she was… her only purpose in life… the bundle unwrapped, revealing the face of a baby, her baby… smiling, oblivious to the torture her mother shielded her from.

She says something in Kashmiri, time for weeping was over, she won’t let her daughter remember her like this… broken, desperate and dying…

She runs her fingers in the water of Jehlum and writes something in mud on the baby’s forehead. She prays for might and strength, picks up her baby and starts walking, as far as she can, as far as the Gods will allow her.

More shadows appear around her, hazy and smeared in blood… friendlier shadows, trying to hold her as she falls. The last essence of life drains from her listless body, but not before she passes the bundle to the unfamiliar men. They carry her away from shore, tend to her wounds and look away in dismay for destiny had concluded her story with a woeful lament. Another man holding the bundle in his arms, pulls the shawl down and notices the begrimed letters on the baby’s forehead.

It makes him smile, for he knows what the letters mean. He knows she will be valiant, resilient, ready to brave the war the stubborn nations fought.

She will resist, persist, bloom and flow in the nature around her in sheer magnificence... She will do her mother proud.

The letters will be her name, a warrior child baptized in blood and war, the letters glimmering proud –

“Jehlum”

The child that survived blood and war…

“Jehlum”

Like the river that will see countless more…

The Chagrin

2019-12-03T12:26:00.000+05:30

He drags his cold listless feet, amidst a herd of blind monks, practitioners of the mundane and the unordinary. He scoffs at them, but much to his chagrin, he knows he is like them.

The dimly lit city encompasses the monks like a tenebrous umbrella. The march continues and he joins in, his will had been shattered years ago. Hundreds of spineless men and women, devoid of energy and light, lost in the energy and light of their personal devices.

Millions sending emotes of laughter and smile, yet the faces tell a different story. He despises this. He tries to disconnect and alas, much to his chagrin, to disconnect he must get lost in his own device.

After an hour of scrolling, scribbling, and scorching agony of the outside world he finds some solace in his home. A damp dusky household – broken pans, grimy windowpanes, flickering lights and pile of books - a celebration of his solitude.

He drops his heavy luggage, but the luggage of life weighs him down and he collapses on the bed. For a moment, he can forget about his day, but the pedestrian churn will begin again tomorrow. He gets up, drags himself to wash his face. He doesn’t want to look up, but he does… his reflection in the mirror, years in his eyes beyond his age, marks on his face like forsaken crevasses, a crushing disdain slices him in half like cold steel through the heart, an endless barren field of reaped melancholy… what has he become?

“I wish I could destroy this life and go back to the womb” He thinks often.

He picks up a book, but his mind is at unrest, like a million beetles stinging his back, bile crawling up his throat, venom boiling in his stomach. He picks up his coat and decides to go for walk, to calm his senses.

The streetlights glowing like equidistant fireflies, lighting his path. He walks alone with the pale companionship of his shadow. Counting fireflies, measuring steps, anything to clear his mind… and send him back to his grovel… a grovel fit for a gaunt.

But it feels different today, like the final string of his living desire finally snapped. He had considered ending it all many a times before, but this slow and steady slaughter of his life through the daily drudgery, he cannot handle any more.

At a distance he could see a group of children in a park, playing in pure nonchalant amusement. The summer rains paint a new picture on the canvas of their youth, yet the same rains have washed away every ounce of mirth from his heart… year after year…

He looks away… He realizes he needs to be alone, but he cannot stand the forlorn and dejected gloom of his house. He rushes up the stairways, skipping steps, panting and breathless till the silver moonlight splashes his face like an ocean wave.

And there he stands, at the edge of his world. A myriad of reasons to make him question his decision, a million more voices saying yes. He has no family, no children to take care of, no wife to love, no friends to run away with. It’s him against the world… the wretched world, that spends more time staring apathetically into a virtual light than the light the world provides.

He has decided.

He will not be the mundane. He will not be the sheep left for the wolves to devour.

He edges closer… to take the final leap… in hopes to wake up in a new world like a new-born fruit that lusts for the dew of morning, like an infant seeking the nectar of motherhood…

He loses contact… and he falls… and he smiles for it feels like flying…

As the essence of his decrepit life paints the porch red, he closes his eyes… his body finally at rest, and prepares for a new life… a better one, in better times, in a better world…

A shriek from a passerby, the children in the park gather around him, staring at him with awe and disgust and seeping sorrow. A funeral circle of unknown faces, looking at him through their personal devices, capturing his slowly draining life for a few seconds of entertainment for the blind monks.

Millions share his death, but none his life… a series of sad emotes, but the faces tell a different story… his death becomes the story of the night and is quickly forgotten before the dawn of the new day… as another man drags his cold listless feet, amidst a herd of blind monks…

“Imagine blindness; unoriginal, plain and mundane blindness. Imagine no lights, no smell, no taste. Imagine benumbing of skin and blood, of bone and marrow. Delude yourself of science and calamity, of cause and reality, of excitement and banality. No senses but the sensitivity of existence. Imagine you exist, yet in what way? For what purpose? And most importantly for whom? Answer this and you answer your existence.”

That Kaleidoscope Guy (August, 2015)

Patricia and Kubrick

2019-09-13T02:09:00.001+05:30

Patricia looked out… gasping in delight and terror, clutching her onyx pendant tightly – a gift from Kubrick. She stared at the fathomless stretch of darkness. Distant stars glimmering like restless fireflies in the night.

A sight to instill infinite horror and trepidation, full of misgivings and challenges beyond timid minds of human imagination.

But Patricia saw hope.

25 years of hope scattered through the endless void in front of her, as her capsule floated light years away from a place they called ‘home’ to search for someone she called ‘home’.

Communications had been jarred for days now, maybe months, even years. The capsule powered by the same hope that drove her to this limitless abyss of stars, planets and space.

She dug deep in her utility box, scrambling for something. After a while of struggle, she pulled out an old piece of paper. Crumbled and weakened after numerous failed attempts of throwing in the bin, ripped and taped back together after countless tries of forgetting the message it contained.

Kubrick’s last coordinates, his last message.

Another look she gave to the box – Kubrick’s old possessions, a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, pills, pills, more pills and a photograph.

Patricia had avoided looking at that photograph since the time she stepped into the capsule, burying it deep within the utility box. But she knew, this may be the last time. She looked and she saw -

A boy no older than 10, dressed in plaid pants and blue shirt, sitting atop a dark mahogany stool, smiling. Innocence poured out of that picture torrential downpour.

“Be still” Patricia said to herself, placing her hands on her chest, gently rubbing. Tears gathered around her eyes, unable to fall, viscous lumps attached to her cheeks like the agony of knowing she will never see her son again. Of never being able to see him smile again and run her fingers through his dark luscious hair, much like the Onyx pendant. Kubrick’s pendant.

Just like that she was back again, in a world surrounded by a legion of stars, and a capsule floating towards its final destination.

She read the note again, the coordinates were correct, the destination was here.

The capsule swiveled, creaked and made noises like the last roar of a mountain lion. Patricia held firmly onto the decrepit internal parts of the capsule, as the capsule braved through the violent unfamiliar atmosphere of Kubrick’s last abode.

Despite its screaming blemishes, Patricia’s capsule had done its job, now it could rest for the final time.

Patricia stepped out, clad in sealed suit and two breathing apparatuses. One for herself and one… for Kubrick… if he needed it… by the gods, she hoped he was in a state to still need it…

Purple sand dunes, the size of pyramids standing stalwart facing each other… creating a corridor to welcome the lost Patricia of foreign lands. The ground below her feet crumbled revealing a deeper shade of red, as Patricia took quick steps towards the final coordinates… leaving crimson footprints behind her. The winds were harsh, pushing her back almost begging her to turn back. Patricia touched her pumping chest again… “Be still”

She kept fighting the storm, moving against the wind like a battering ram. A woman on a mission, one final mission, the only mission that mattered. Patricia fought for hours, maybe days, the sands turned from purple to red to blue. Miles and miles of red footprints behind her, like invisible soldiers of her misfortune.

It is then. She saw.

At a distance, a figure in a suit, just like hers. But… there was no helmet.

Patricia ran, the winds, it seemed, stopped. The storm couldn’t break her spirit, a calmness befell.

Patricia’s leap towards a hopeless destiny, a failing pipe-dream. She knew what to expect what didn’t know how to accept it. Perhaps that is why she came here all the way, not to investigate the unknown territories of the cosmos, but to explore this uncharted feeling in her heart. To see Kubrick one last time, for one final goodbye.

Her knees buckled, she fell, crying loudly. The first sound of human emotions on a distant planet, the footprints started to disappear, the quiet retreat of the invisible soldiers leaving Patricia alone with Kubrick.

She looked at him, a part of him still alive. But it was too late, Patricia knew. Kubrick’s skin had dried and withered, the unearthly air hadn’t been kind to him. His eyes had turned grey, the wonders of vision stolen from him eons ago. His lips quivered to say something, but it was nothing but a moaning sigh of a man more dead than death itself.

Her oxygen tank was empty now. She had a spare, but she had no purpose.

She leaned to kiss him on his fragile forehead, one last time before their passing… and she spotted his pendant, exactly like hers. Of course, Kubrick was fond of Onyx, and pendants.

Unlike Kubrick, his onyx pendant still shone bright. Patricia couldn’t help but smile as she opened the pendant and she saw…

A picture of a girl, no older than 10, atop a dark mahogany stool, with long black lustrous hair covering the length of the stool, smiling uncontrollably.

At the bottom of the picture, in a child’s unkempt writing –

“Love you Daddy! Come back soon!
- Patricia”

Patricia’s heart broke down and she began to sob irrepressibly.

“You never came back, did you?”

Kubrick, stared at her with his grey eyes, saying nothing, feeling nothing. A distant howl of an approaching storm. The wind began to pick up, the enigmatic alien land started to serenade.

Patricia slowly collapsed on the ground, in the comfort of the eerie sands, as life slowly gave way to the infinity of death like the stars that surrounded them.

She stopped crying. She stopped moving, tightly clutching Kubrick’s pendant in her hands.

Kubrick kept staring at the abyss in front of him and the lifeless figure of Patricia, till finally his hand moved, very steadily, shivering and creaking, as he it placed on his chest, mumbling undecipherable words.

The grey eyes turned black, as black as the Onyx pendant.

A billion stars bowed in honor of Patricia and Kubrick, as the storm covered them with a cold blanket of sand for their last tranquil slumber, a final journey through the stars… but this time... together.

Black Waters

2019-02-23T15:14:00.002+05:30

“Hey”, I said, uncomfortably avoiding eye contact. Restlessly rubbing hands together, searching for a way to start talking again after years… so many years… teetering about the corners of a smoke infested room.

“you need nothing…" “a familiar person said, “you never did”

“it’s been so long, I’m scared of letting you down. letting myself down… to find out I’m not you anymore”

“you never will… you never can… I exist because of you… and you do because of me”

He looked. After years he looked up, lifting his eyelids like two pieces of cinder-block, and he saw him again… the sandals, the skull cap, that kaleidoscope guy…

I write after 3 years. A little older, a littler uglier, some wrinkles that I carry well, some marks that I don’t. Some hard-earned victories, and some wounds – fresh, warm and blood soaked. Some blemishes, blots, smears of my unruly disposition, my unlovable mold and a mountainous ego.

As someone who wrote stories to float in the waves of troubling times, like a drowner in an ocean, I chose to hop onto a boat of comfort. And atop the boat I fell in love with the embrace of a prepossessing sea maiden, luscious auburn hair that glistened in front of the moonlight.

Her voice felt alleviating and melodic, as if Apollo himself played a hymn on his harp to allure me. Her skin felt like a fabric weaved out of a heavenly loom. A metaphysical apparition, an enigmatic spirit, seemed false but so real? To no surprise, I was charmed, enchanted and instantly fell prey to love.

As she touched and healed my dead and broken limbs, she smiled and had me smitten. She inflicted me with a mirth unbeknownst, a pleasure uncanny, a lust untameable.

As the black waters around me called, the kaleidoscope guy gazed from the deep dark depths never uttering a word. I lay there on the boat, safe, under the warm embrace of the maiden.

Years passed, the maiden kept loving, caring, stitching my lacerations and abstaining me off my sins. But the soul of a man is crystalline, once addicted to the pangs of solitude and containment, no amount of love can keep him together, and I was no different.

As I lived on, the will inside me kept getting weaker though on the outside I remained intact. The maiden had cared far too much, for far too long. And one night when she turned away, tired and withered, my will shattered.

My inescapable desire to drown in the black waters was too much for the maiden to bear. I wept for her, and tried to not submit… to the echoing blackness inside me, the ravine of emptiness, the cold dreary black waters that I call my home…

She understood but didn’t. She smiled one last time but didn’t. she knew I had to do this, I was turning into a grotesque figure of disdain and discomfort… I was capricious, lacked lenience, and perhaps complacently believed that despite all my imperfections she will never leave, believed that Apollo will never stop playing… and how abruptly did he stop…

I leaned back… pushed away… leaned back a little more… she turned towards me apace, the maiden with her luscious auburn hair… but they weren’t luscious anymore, I had sapped her of her beauty, her skin defiled and wilted, not anymore like heavenly fabric but more like a piece of cloth used to scrub a course malignant object.

“Push harder you evil man, push harder…” I thought to myself, “… before you kill her, because she is ready to die for you… push harder and fall already, you accursed vermin”

Splash…

And I fell, the maiden rushed to the edge of the boat and leaned in. Her tears touched the water before her gaze, and how the tears made a louder splash than my fall. The reverberating sound of which slowly diminished as I sunk deeper in the black waters.

Deeper I fell, back in the tight cold grasp of my home. I could see her mercurial image looking at me as I go deeper, almost invisible now but she looks on still, I know.

I write again after 3 years, in my house of abject loneliness. I am one with the kaleidoscope guy, familiar walls surround me, stacks of paper with illegible scribbles, dust, smoke, cacophonous silence, peace of mind and an unfathomable happiness.

“Welcome home…” he said… we said…

The Last Colloquy

2016-02-13T15:48:00.003+05:30

“Must you seek discourse in such uninviting circumstances” said the child.

“Uninviting? This shelter of timber and bells provides a most suitable invitation” he replied.

“So be it. Tis tedious to proceed, like this, even more to see you leer” the child’s gaze stood firm penetrating him grievously like a shard. “What’s done is done. Lament is but a fool’s gesture”

“Perhaps you speak the truth… but I am stricken… painstakingly… as you may see” He said gently caressing the child’s ghostly brows. “I had dreamt of this moment countless times but not in such…” he looked at the child and smiled, “… uninviting circumstances”

A smile cracked open upon the child’s vapid face, “Yet still you persist. So ghoulish, so fiendish, sadistic to feed the voracity of your ravens.” The child took a pause, “Blame yourself not. Fend yourself from your self-inflictions. This festival of inflictions, desist it, it pains me more than a rupturing womb”

“I blame none but all” he said.

“Hush fool! Spit out that jester’s tongue before it consumes you” The child thwarted, “Unbar your mind. Speak well and speak true for this may be your last… or mine”

Tears scathing his cheeks like acid, “I am your culprit. I am not the dagger, but worse, I am the one who holds. I loved her, I wanted to save her and she was all I had, then more than ever… I did what I must… I just want you to know”

“Needs must when the devil drives” said the child.

A moment of taciturnity followed.

The child murdered the silence “May I ask… upon whose feet do you place this gold?”

“I am afraid I do not understand” perplexed he asked.

“Which God offers you paradise for your penance? Who is it that you are trying to please, convince, satisfy? The more you utter, the more discomforting this is becoming. It is unbecoming. Desist, like I said, you blight our blood with your insolent whines”

“I am in mourning. Tis visible in manifest. I grieve for my losses, I grieve for my faults, for the murders. I beg for pardon… from you more than else’s” He spoke with a tearful demeanor.

“Pardon? Who am I to give? I lack in emotion as I lack in blood. Pardon’s a motley my dear blood giver. Tis Kaleidoscopic, a harlequin of empty hope pardon is. I cannot forgive you. Emotions never invigorated my gentle fingers to understand what pardon is. The scorch of the sun never burnt my skin to understand what feelings are. Thus, I lack in ability of granting what you deem me as most capable”

He crumbled into a fit of despair. Crying like a squalling harpy. “I was short of options. The doctors had declared. A decision was imminent from my side. I did what I must, I loved you more than the God’s had decreed”

“But you loved her more. Understandably so” the child spoke nonchalantly, “I am being expected. Fare thee well”

“No… Wait… You must wait… I need your pardon… for I fear… death’s consummation” he screeched.

The child gave one final look, a scouring look full of answers to the questions never asked. “Death? You are already dead, my dear blood giver. More dead than death itself. You soul is tainted, branded by the hellhounds who will forever howl your name. The Reaper shall dine with you every fortnight and tell tales of decaying infants. Till eternity thou shalt suffer… and mark my words as it is my last… pardon shall never kiss thy nape”

His rugged shoulders fell miserably. “Now avast and avaunt for tis time I pass”

The child vanished.

Almost instantaneously a gentle hand touched his shoulders, “It is time… come”

“I am not done yet” he said.

“Who are you talking to?” the gentle man said.

“He speaks… he always spoke… I told them… I told them countless times!” he turned around and screamed, visibly stirred. A disheartening spectacle, even for a church.

He turned back, only to stare at an empty coffin, bijou in size, for an infant.

A larger coffin was waiting outside.

A rare breeze of clarity gushed in from the doorway…

And he understood…

The smallest coffins… are always the heaviest.

To Needlessly Ambulate

2016-02-02T00:14:00.001+05:30

We are humans…

Not by our highly elevated state of emotions but by our powers. We can act, enact, perform and get paid for it. Every action we do empowers the next or weakens it, there are decisions we make with every microscopic tremor of our nerves.

For the sake of this conversation, let me give a brief introduction of an ill-bred emaciated mongrel that routinely and needlessly ambulates around me for a scrap of bread everyday as I leave my house. Though the sight disgusts me but adjacently makes me feel powerful.

Powerful, yes, I compare myself to menial things and feel powerful because that is the only true meaning of power. Power is not when you become strong but when you feel others are weak… destructible… and unquestionably expendable…

And not just me, it is you, who can read, write and pick the colour of the socks you wear. You are powerful because you can choose and determine. You choose how you want your eggs every day, you choose the size of your wall mounted TVs adding inches to its screen as the zeros in your salary increase. You have shoes for running, stilettoes for getting drunk and slippers for when you take your morning dumps as you gently sip-sip-sip our coffee reading about what the other sip-sip-sippers did the last day.

Our options are endless unlike that ill-bred mongrel that searches for food every evening. You don’t travel for food, food travels to you with a few tap-tap-taps, blurring names scrolling down the screen like a hankering blizzard till you stop at… ummm, I donno, a Chinese place? Tap-tap-tap… The blizzard hankers and tankers… maybe Lebanese? Tap-tap-tap… the screen blurs in a hazy storm… perhaps a biryani? Tap-tap-tap ... Till midnight doth asunder thou wretched blizzard… for I and you have the power. The power of making decisions and not needlessly ambulate for something as banal as basic nourishment.

And then after a spree of tap-tap-taps your fingers get tired but god bless your kind you have a useful left hand, which now all of a sudden is not your designated shit wiper but a tool to help you keep going in a world of tap-tap-tappers.

Don’t get me wrong, this is power. Power of inscrutable, unflinching decision making. Power of choosing what you want, from the clothes you wear to the people you fuck and the ways you fuck. All manners and grotesque styles of carnal entanglement written in that lascivious book. Ah yes, that book, written by you… congratulations you powerful little guttersnipe!… Another book to fool another you in believing you have the power to do it.

How needless are other creatures compared to you? Utterly, isn’t it? Or is it? Questions that become difficult to answer as they become persistent. Questions linger because you have the power to think.

In your heedless, but not so needless, desire to become powerful you end up opening a world of questions. Such penetrating, bone puncturing questions which begin and end in three syllables.

“Or is it?”

In your harmless predilection to play God, you tend to forget why God left us in the first place.

We… are humans… a wretched embodiment of everything detestable, discernible and sickening.

God left us because we spawned like a malignant plague, and we wanted to consume it all… even God…

We live in a goddess abode, where millions play God. Every day you wake up counting the names on your fingertips of the people you will beguile, defile and usurp… just so you can wake up the next day a few steps higher on the ladder…

In this abhorrent quest to become God, you have churned and minced your innate desires, the desire fed into you by God... that is now no more. You will never be a rock n roll singer, you will never write that book you started, and you will never be able to travel to the vast extremities of nature breathing in a sigh of fresh air without the concern of pinging smartphones.

Pinging smartphones, popping notifications, sending emails to hundreds of people who are sending emails to hundreds of people who are sending emails to hundreds of people who are sending mails to you. After a long day of reading texts, sending smiling emoticons when you yourself frown upon them you come to realize that the only conversation you share with childhood friends is “Long time no see” followed by another “Long time no see” followed by another.

Amidst the raining chaos of meetings, coffee room discussions, emails, calls, texts and other godless communications you forget how you father sounds like but you can imitate your boss’s voice well. You forget how your mother’s breakfast taste like but you can easily distinguish your local Foodpanda restaurants… tap tap tap… you know them all…

Your elder sister has become an elder folklore which you had once heard about. Your brother visits often but his face is a constant blur like the million others you see in the metro. Your lover shares the same bed but a different world and somehow different sides of the bed now have a different story to tell… she closes her book… you close your tab… lights shut, eyes shut… lives… shut…

Counting the slowly diminishing seconds, counting the names you have obliterated today…

5… counting the sheep as they leap… 4… counting the “Long time no sees”…
3… counting the pages in your unfinished novel…
2… counting the aging wrinkles on your guitar… 1… counting down till there is nothing to count…

0… hoping to change tomorrow, start anew, finally fight your way out of this… shit
0… hoping to be powerless tomorrow, away from this godless power struggling herd

0… hoping to be a dog… that needlessly ambulates…

0… hoping to be dead

0…

…sleep

The Extent of Love

2014-11-24T23:00:00.000+05:30

Cephissus, the Greek river god, was possessed by Liriope, a Boeotian naiad. Her beaut was such that Cephissus found himself bedevilled and exiled from anything besides. Through his godly eminence, Cephissus by and by made Liriope heavy with a child… a son… named Narcissus…

Narcissus possessed a comeliness surpassing his mother. Warned by a blind seer, Liriope hid all the mirrors for if Narcissus would witness his own beauty he would be doomed for life. His beauty would consume him.

Many humble hearts were bewitched by Narcissus, many pined for him and yearned for a single glimpse. One day Ameinias, his neighbour, could quell his love no more and asked Narcissus to be his lover. Narcissus said not a single word, nor did he flinch, he plainly walked away and sent Ameinias a dagger wrapped in cloth… Ameinias got the message… heart rendered and dolorous, with that dagger he took his own life…

A few days heretofore, my sweet love and I were discussing about her project dedicated to homosexuality and morality. Our minds were submissively trapped betwixt choosing a moral objection to homosexuality and the definition of morality itself.

Or perhaps homosexuality and the true meaning of it. If a man can be bold enough to call himself truly heterosexual, then that man is a fool or mayhaps his intentions of intimate succour is plainly carnal.

Red finds himself enjoying the company of Blue, they have been best friends for vaguely a year now. Red handpicks his mother’s best cookies and gives it to Blue and Blue always saves a seat for Red away from the splinters of rain rupturing on the windowpane. A certain assured smile of gaiety is drawn upon Red’s face whenever Blue trots down the spiralling stairways of his home.

This one day, after a long tiring session of hide and seek, Blue slept off in Red’s arms. In that very moment, when phenomenons froze and occurrences of anything else but that moment came to a halt, Red was met with an unfamiliar yet familiar feeling of love, he leaned and kissed Blue on the lips… soft quivering lips swamped with slumber, did nothing but twitched to an expression which Red believes to be a smile…

30 years later, Red is a father of two after being unsuccessfully married, twice. Every night Red makes love to his young wife, looks upon her charming face sweating and pumping during the coitus, and never wishes Blue to there in her place. But on days, when venereal voracity is overpowered by a vim of veneration and when his wife sleeps so tenderly in his lap looking ever so serene… He wishes… and no matter how much it torments him he wishes… Blue was there…

Amor platonicus… Platonic Love… a love devoid of everything erotic. Perhaps devoid is a strong word, suggestive of ‘lacking’. I understand platonic love is free of lascivious exuberance, free of physique, free of bodily orgasm. It is like fornication on ethereal grounds where you are neither the dominator nor the dominated, neither male nor female. An orgasm of mind, the ecstasy is unparalleled and there you lie in a bond eternal.

Be it said here that I do not hold a loathing for carnal activities in fact I believe true platonic love leads to it. Carnality is discovery of body, and love is discovery of soul.

Then love is nothing sexual and it is purely homos… which in Greek deciphers to ‘being same’… you are in love when you are in state of homos… Heterosexual coming from heteros (‘being different’) and sexual, plainly implies being sexually attracted to difference of body as per my beliefs… but then you may be heteros by gender but always homos by the mind to truly find love…

Thus your sexuality may be heteros but your soul is homos… you search, hunt and pursue to find a soulmate, one who would mate with your soul and not with your body. A person who is the same as you, same thoughts as yours, same criterions and sub-criterions as yours... homos… Lo and behold, all this while you search for homosexuality, a platonic establishment for only then life seems fulfilled. And if the Gods were to play a mockery, they would infatuate us with our own self till time’s end… and then laugh at our miseries…

This is but tip of the iceberg of all the thoughts dancing in juxtapose inside my head. Perhaps words cannot define love this easily, or perhaps sexuality is just a hedonic aspect of love. I believe I am a small critter who wishes to cross a mountain, with limited cognizance and knowledge and I dread the attainment of such knowledge would only consume me…

After Ameinias’ passing, Narcissus once went to hunt, thereby catching a deer’s eye by the arrowhead. Whence deeply involved in the ordeal of skinning the deer by the spring, he caught a glimpse of himself in the clear spring water. Big eyed Narcissus glared long and deep at his own image, beguiled by his own beaut. Then tears of grief rain down his cheeks, for he recalled how smitten was Ameinias with his splendour and how with such disdain Narcissus had wrapped a dagger in a cloth.

Narcissus wept for hours, and hours enamoured by his beauty shouting “I love you, I love you” but the face in the water made no sound… Ameinias made no sound… Narcissus at length died there, his once beautiful countenance lay twisted and contorted…

Such is… the extent of love…

The Vexation of Rosemond

2014-06-05T00:10:00.003+05:30

Mahler’s 9^th Symphony reverberated the dimly lit room dressed in minimal décor. The walls were draped with no paintings, no trophies, no mementos; nor any pictures of juvenile misadventures, adulthood memories or flourishing offsprings.

The room stood bleak, blighted and blanched in a blend of blissful blankness. Rosemond was no war veteran, not an exemplary father, neither an epitome of philanthropy.

No colours decorated his coat, no flowers bloomed in his garden. Rosemond was not a leader of men… nor did he chose to follow… he preferred stagnancy, immovable dormancy…

A shattering cold storm waltzed outside with the music of swivelling branches and rustling leaves. Many a time and oft, shards of lighting stirred a crescendo in the torrential orchestra as Rosemond remained buried still on his massive chesterfield.

“How the gods play a horrisonous symphony on their harps, affrights and daunts even the most draconian souls. There is death and deconstruction in the air tonight, a stench of animadversion and rebuke, a foul powerful air of chastise, chagrin and choler goes in with my breath... but I feel a peculiar familiarity with them all”

“A familiarity, a tradition, of endless vexation and cold damnation. Of falling stars and souls ajar, of hearts black as tar. This night tonight, the rain outside reminds me… of a life I never cherished, where melancholy relished and endearment perished. Tonight when innocence trembles, my heart doth rumbles in hope for the baneful halberd of the Gods above, to quell us like doves... oh tonight I pray for love… tonight I pray for love… For who am I but a man of flesh, bone and sinew, vanquished to ash and hew, to be born anew.”

“This night I think, this night I sing a silent lay, hear the woodharps play, and put my fears allay. Kindred, Community, Authority… all have put me into dissidence, chafed my chest, mithered my mind and against all this must I recoil? 'No' utters my sanity… for never against such inhumanity I fought that blind war of vanity against this antagonism. I am an old withered lion against a voracious horde of hyenas… I chose not be the sacrificial goat, so with a knife in my throat, I eternally doth float…”

“I am weak, perchance, that I never took a stance against this demon dance of my menial adversaries. Each day I grow wretched, each day I grow dolorous, and each day I grow weak to fight. One day these hyenas will gnash and gnaw, rake and claw, but hark to my words, the lion’s mane maybe grey, kill him, you may, but defeat him? Nay… through his corpse will emerge a thousand pangs to dress the empyrean, in a dark Cimmerian… for he is more perfervid than you and us, and he is thus, the ‘Anima Invictus’…”

The thunder outside roared in a million tongues, speaking to the afeared beholders in a Delphic jargon. Rosemond nodded and tapped his feet, Mahler made way for Stravinsky and Stravinsky for Mozart. Where dearth and dreariness reigned as rampant wintry wyverns, now seem to be usurped by a pair of zealous basilisks, full of belligerence and babel.

“Dishearten me not tonight, for tis the night you benight. Lead us to apostasy, lead us back to your womb and let not the winds of halcyon settle”

Rosemond got up, and twisted his frail figure towards the study, pulled down a curtain to reveal his most revered collection. A pyramid of old dusty manuscripts, novellas and poems. His Magnum Opus, his own Poetic Edda. Leaf by leaf, page by page he went through them all and scattered them on the floor.

“My will has finally shattered, beaten and battered. These endless pages of scribbled writings, shall celebrate my passing in a fiery amassing. A curse to those who ever read my words, a curse to those who remain unheard, a curse to this theatre of absurd. With my last words I lay this malediction, enter the deathly dereliction, and end my diction”

Rosemond closed his eyes, and fell chest first on the floor buried amidst his Magnum Opus. As the lights began to fade, and the deep malady of his lifelessness began to encumber his senses, Rosemond had one last passing thought.

“Will I ride the summer winds over bright dawns? Will I play the lyre of the dryads and the fauns?

Will I be the benign dew of morning or will I be the malign rue of mourning?

Will death bring me elation or just prolong my vexation? Will there be strife and starvation or an eternal salvation?

Will I taste the nectar of motherhood???... Or did I never understood that even death can bring no good… even death can bring no good…”

March of The Dead Birds

2014-02-02T03:12:00.000+05:30

Men live on hope and fear, for forgiveness and eventual peace. Men live for loss and then salvation, accumulating long lost memories from a debris.

Men live to find the correct path in a labyrinth, a web work of rights and lefts and somehow decipher the right combination. Men live to find their demons, to fight them, make love to them, and then turn into one.

Endless hours behind us, constantly taunting, constantly slithering into our marrows and asking a million questions. The hours keep piling on, urging a lust for forgiveness for the crimes never committed, for a success unclear, for a love that will go unappreciated.

An asinine, mindless walk with iron shackles tattering and eroding against the solid ground. Attrition to consume our bindings, attrition to consume us all… sooner than we think, sooner than we hope… and then we shall smile… one last smile to end it all, a crooked smile feathered with frigid tears and gaping scars… and pull out that sorrow knifed in our hearts, pull it out like a dagger and paint our remains in a crimson celebration… a mournful serendipity…

I am no exception, I am not the enlightened chosen one, who will line his own path. I am as blind and emaciated as you. I chose to seek a different path, I chose to be vocal against the voices, I chose to hunt than scavenge… I chose to fly afar fighting the talons of the hours… but like Icarus I flew too close to the sun and then the wings melted. I fell headlong into an abyss, and in the darkness I lacerated my tongue, gashed my eyes and joined the march… with a smile… always with a smile…

A life of trepidation is what we all live nowadays, trepidation is our meat and mead. Fear alone shall make us run and fear alone shall carry us to our graves. As vulnerable as a whelps against a thunderous tempest, trepidation guides us all towards what? The light at the end of the tunnel is merely a headstone under a lantern with your name on it.

Such is the desire of God, and God himself shall rain fire and brimstone upon us, and cast great vengeance upon his unworthy blind mice.

“…Thrust in thy sickle and reap, for the time has come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the Earth is ripe…”

Time for forgiveness and strength has past, we are now where one shouldn’t regret, or hope to regress, or reproach our destined finale. Recall when ‘Death’ was the most ominous outcome, and now through our mendacity and mundaneness we have endless hours of the past, present and future carving extreme, excruciating ‘Nihility’ inside us… till that very moment when we shall begin to cherish ‘Death’… with a smile… always with a smile…

“… and there shall be no night, and no light of the sun, for the Lord giveths Light, and so shall he takeths…”

I predict no apocalypse, I am no soothsayer, I am as blind, deaf, mute and useless as you. I do not believe in an apocalypse… I see an apocalypse every day, every hour, every ticking second, gunshots in rhythm with a metronome, graves every two steps, epitaphs being murmured in remembrance.

What death shall the apocalypse bring to a horde of corpses?

What chaos can stir a heart maligned with rigor mortis?

What tears can these eyes shed, dried and full of sand?

For what are we but dead birds marching… to our marked graves…

and fall tranquilly with a smile… always with a smile…

and always in the right grave…
or we may have to march again…

Swansong of The God

2013-11-16T22:10:00.001+05:30

March 2^nd, 1996 was the day. A usual day in the life of a usual child… amidst the splattered layout of my memories of those times, I can distinctly recollect that day. Unkind weather outside restricted me in front of the Television, I was never a television person… it confines and confounds my imagination, still does…

Nevertheless I was there staring at the colourful pictures with paltry attention. My grandfather was sitting obstinately watching the television, unresponsive of his surroundings and getting stirred momentarily with emotions of joy, chagrin, hysteria and anticipation.

I remained indifferent, involved in unproductive, unyielding undertakings to feed my unrest… till I heard a chant… a hymn… almost like a mantra echoing in a synchrony…

Impossible to ignore, it was. It was like a psalm being sung in respect of a God. But I saw no godly figure with a laminating halo, no heavenly body with a spinning chakra in his hand… I saw a mere mortal, short in height… armoured in all manners of protective gears… a curiosity sparked in me and I asked my grandfather…

“Who is that?”

My grandfather smiled and replied, “That my child… is a master”

Since that day I have been curious about that sport and especially that little man my grandfather called ‘The Master’. 19 years have passed since then and that man turned from ‘Master’ to ‘Legend’ and finally ‘God’.

The sport kept changing every day, every possible way to an extent that all my eagerness to follow it drowned… but that man… that very man stuck to his duty, stuck to his dedication, ignoring the baleful jabbers and palavers of his naysayers and sycophants alike.

It’s the 16^th of November today, and I hear those chants again… for the last time perchance… I hear those fanatics painted in the essence of their god… I see them crying, laughing, cheering, and shouting… all for the last time… he may be the one hanging up his boots, but his fanatics are the one feeling a hanging pain in their heart… forlorn and forever lasting…

There is a lump in my throat… and I am an iron blood man immune to emotions and concerns… but there a dryness I feel in my throat, a dreariness in my body… those chants will end today, I knew he never heard me… I was never in the crowd, I never wore his colours but I spoke those words time and time again…

I was never a stern believer of gods, but you believe in a God when you see one… and this one you didn’t have to serve, he served us…

I shall gather all my strength, hold firmly to my emotions and chant in his name again… one last time, I know this time again he won’t be able to hear me but that never stopped me before so why should it stop me now…

So here’s to you ‘Little Master’…

here’s to ‘The Legend’…

here’s to the only single ‘God’ I knew... and adulated…

“SACHINNN… SACHINNN…

SACHINNN… SACHINNN…

SACHINNN… SACHINNN…”

Unrest

2013-11-11T13:40:00.000+05:30

Eyelids are heavy as robust steel, I cannot keep them up… I want to stay awake, I want to fall asleep… I am stuck in a tantrum of dilemma…

There is a cacophony in my head like pummelling of a thousand war drums. “I need some sleep” I keep on telling those drum beaters. Indeed a war needs to be fought, but not now, please not now… “I need some sleep”

I close my eyes and a world of utter grim blackness writhes and coalesces into a gluttonous black raven. It looks at me with an athirst, an athirst feeding on my dreams… the accursed animal keeps rapidly cawing and gnawing in my head… whispering in a soporific melody “you need some sleep”

My fingers are twitching with fatigue, my knees hurt like an eternal malady. It’s cold, too cold to fall asleep… but perfect to die… but death is a manner of sleep, only endless. And here I am unable to fall into a temporary one. There is a picture in my head, it makes me laugh.

There is a boor…
felling a tree…
with an axe…
and I am the boor when he strikes the tree with all his might, panting, sweating, weary and broken. I am the axe when it kisses the bark and loosens splinters off of the mighty tree, grinding, eroding, vexed by an agonizing pain every stroke. I am the tree when it falls asunder and yonder, the massive wooden edifice crushed and reduced to dead boles of timber for the hewers.

In the whole picture… I empathize with all three… I am tired, eroded and fallen asunder… there is an agony I have been impregnated with, a demonic progeny of triplets, who at birthing will tear me apart with a torture threefold…

I pick myself up… look out the window and stare at that dog… the one posed motionlessly at the pavement… deathly silver eyes like the crystal ice in the ninth circle of hell… they stare back with the same everlasting melancholy.

That miserable black hound bleeds from one eye and cries from the other, yelping and baying at me like a wolf under the full moon… I hum a melody as the mongrel bays, the nocturne to the sleepless night…

Another picture slips into my imagination, it makes me weep.

There is a field of coxcomb…
under vindictive wildfire…
with thunderous downpour…
and I am that flower that bloomed the brightest and now burns with the most radiance, as others around me burn as well, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I am that wildfire that is never satiated, rigorously spreading its fangs to devour it all like a demon Manticore, to prey on the weak and fall alongside their debris. I am that downpour that arrived ever so late… a mute and meek watcher of the carnage after the butchery, the provider of graves, not the preventer.

I weep… I weep ever so long… empathizing with the flower, the fire and the rain. The flower that bloomed but never blossomed, the fire that burned but never lasted, the rain that poured but ever so late… I weep for long… I weep for them all… children of the abyss, passed to the grave… my children, my abyss, their graves…

Hints of daybreak… come creeping below the doors and windows, dimly lighting up my barren room. A room of minimalistic décor, as empty as its occupant. It’s too late to fall asleep and too early to wake up… a fistful of oxymoronic situation is what my life has become… once again I fight the dreary battle against insomnia… “But to what avail???” I ask…

A last picture draws itself upon my mind… a moving picture…

A billion screaming people…
In front of a shining white figure…
A mighty sermon awaits…
The figure shines with great erudition and veneration, the massive aggregation of common folks look at him with gaping mouth and pale sleepless eyes soaked in tears. He said listen and they all listened… he said kill your love and they all killed their love… he said kneel and weep and they all knelt and wept… then he said pray and sleep and they all prayed and slept… so peacefully, ever so peacefully…

I stood there alone standing and sleepless in a dormant crowd of sheep, mongrels and dastards… staring in the eyes of their beholder…

“One day shall come… and you will say fall and die… and they all will fall and die???” I asked… he never answered… he merely smiled and faded away…

I stood there alone, awake and unanswered.

"There are questions unanswered, emotions untended, maladies unhealed...
There is a might unrest starving my slumber, reverberating inside my skull...
To cull this woe, must I seek that white figure?

Or must I stay awake amidst a sleeping crowd?...
Must I stay alive 'midst a crowd of dead?..."

Her Palace on The Hills

2013-08-05T18:45:00.004+05:30

“Must I still exist?” a thought perturbed her maturing slumber as she reached for an imaginary stone on the forlorn boulevard where she lay. For an instance she thought she could smell those familiar dandelions and those cocoa leaves but they were just talons from her past… a past as dead as her…

Overhead buildings surrounded her like the Mesopotamian Ziggurats. Looming shadows of ever present defilers and vandals, street hookers and eunuchs, rapists and voyeurs…

Night moon serenaded to the melody of a nearby minstrel band, merry makers sometimes made it to this side of the town in their most hapless days. She remembered the time she stepped on the padded pavement of this town with her ‘heart’ in her hand, she felt like a misfit… innocent and docile… pure and pristine… alas, that was eons ago and her ‘heart’ now lay in bits and pieces besides the scree and debris of the town… and her…

“Vstvay! Shlyukha!... Get up! Whore!” said the fat festooned harlot in red… the harlot screamed at her again, kicked her shins, mustered a thick globule of phlegm and spat at her… She had gotten used to the obscenities and the blemishes, the stains and the tarnishes… she gathered her stripped clothes, her remaining assets and the pieces of her ‘heart’… She washed her face in a nearby fountain and placed her unkempt dishevelled body besides the road.

The street sign above her head read “Kurtizanka Alleya” …Courtesan Alley… her eyes bled every time she looked towards that sign, her toes curled backwards with every step she took towards the alley, her throat dried every time an admirer approached her and asked “skol’ko?” …How Much?...

She waited by the sign board… waited… waited… for her ominous fate to disclose… what manner of a ravenous beast will satisfy his voracious hunger with her youth this time? A local hyena? A travelling jackal? A regularly visiting wolf? Or a whelp?

She remembered those evenings in the abandoned barn up the hills where she found herself… where she bent and caressed and moved about her fists for the first time, the cool winds kissed by the evening grass painted a smile upon her comely face every time, She remembered the times when the music she played with her ‘heart’ evaporated her juvenile displeasures… she remembered… she was dead but she remembered, her body had turned to stone but her memories were carved at the back of that stone…

She found serenity in detachment, amidst the playful green grass, the hilly winds of repair and remedy and herself. She was in solitude but not alone, she had made a palace of isolation and she was the queen of cipher, princess of zilch, empress of naught and she had never felt more powerful…

“Must I still exist?” she spoke out loud this time
A standing by patron noticed and asked, “Izvini?” …Sorry?...
She thought “Sorry? No one apologizes to courtesans… a whelp is it?”
She replied, “Nichto, ukhodit’… nothing, go away…”

Tonight she won’t be able to work, her mind was not at peace, and talons from the past had left her in a lacerated bleeding mess. She walked down the alley, and then she ran… there was only one ointment that could alleviate her agony, she was in solitude here too but this palace of isolation wasn’t hers… she wanted something warm and moving, to prove she still exists before she ceases to do so…

She entered a shop gasping for her breath, sweat drops from her winsome forehead dropped like icicles on the shop’s floor. The gush of wind through the revolving door awoke the elderly man behind the counter, profound wrinkles had formed a crevasse as if carved by the reaper’s scythe. Indifferently he asked, “chto vam nuzhno, shlyukha? …what do you want, whore?”

“A Ukulele! Quick!” she grabbed to utter her every word before her mind could fabricate it.

The man turned in an awkward shift, manoeuvring his venerable body in order to grab the nearest Ukulele. She deftly examined the instrument, smiled with complacency, paid the desired amount and dashed towards her heavenly abode, the barn atop the hills, the place where she found herself…

She leaped over the wooden fences and ran past the motionless haystacks. She sat on her familiar seat under the front porch and took a whiff of life… the scent still persisted, the palace still stood strong, she was still the queen… the only thing that lacked was her ‘heart’, she took out her new Ukulele and kissed its neck… whispering gently like an archangel talking to a newly born…

“Serdtse… Heart…”

She played long and vigorously, she cried even more vigorously, she laughed and sang and cried some more till her cup of happiness was full of tears… then the last tear fell in the cup already full, it was the tear of grief... the tear of a simple person who wanted nothing, the tear of an eye that wished to see nothing but green grass and unfathomable terrain…

She curled and hugged Serdtse close to her body, her heart pacing and her eyes glistening in a red conflagration resembling the devilish evening sky above. Her mind was in unrest, but her heart was at peace… a long desired peace… she took a sigh of solace and scribbled something on the Ukulele before dissolving into a slumber…

Dreamless sleep are often occurring, endless sleep only once… she wished for both and the Gods were kind… for once…

The winds kissed her goodbye, the grass fields played a canorous nocturne and the barn shielded her comely body like a coffin. The cocoa leaves smelled like ambrosial incense bidding her dasvidaniya and Serdtse lay there besides her speaking her last words again and again….

“The Uke of Vera”…

“The Uke of Vera”…

In continuation with:http://thatkaleidoscopeguy.blogspot.in/2012/05/uke-of-vera.html

Hold On Magnolia

2013-05-19T19:39:00.001+05:30

“Hold on Magnolia” he said, a distant whinny of a horse startled Magnolia as the autumn breeze brushed off against the walls of their wooden cabin. She was always scared, dubious, skeptical… Magnolia had already told him all this, her past had made her a cynic, an atheist when it was about feeling blithe and bliss… but he cared slight and seldom about any worldly thing… he kept on saying, “Hold on Magnolia”… that’s why she loved him…

“Hold on Magnolia” he said again, such a relentless stubborn lover Magnolia had found. She cursed herself on being so lucky and unlucky at the same time. He told her the almirah is infected with mites, the lawn spigot is leaking, the dogs shedding fleas and Liandra, their comely little angel, needs a new guitar and a set of dancing shoes.

“Hold on Magnolia” he said and clasped her sweaty hands inside his. “You said you don’t like my tiny sweaty hands” Magnolia whispered, “why did you have to be so random, stupid boy?” Outside the cold breeze kept simmering with the tranquility of a sage’s harp. The rustling of purple millets, the dancing of the maidengrass and the scent of purple hyacinth surrounded their abode. An abode which was once a fantasy, a fable of two lovers but now a thriving reality.

Magnolia kept turning away from time to time to hide that mournful frown, to wipe that teardrop, to discretely let out a sigh of grief without him knowing. She knew he felt scared whenever she cries, Magnolia tried… but he knew, like always he knew… she turned back to see him smiling, like always… she said, “Listen na” and he said, “Say na”… like always… and there was nothing more she could say.

“Hold on Magnolia” he said and let his gaze fall on her, Magnolia blushed and smiled in her own pristine pure manner. She remembered all those moments when he would just stare at her when she talked… she talked a lot, she knew, but he would never complain, interrupt or even appear to look bothered… he would just stare at her as if diving into some limpid pools of love inside her eyes. All the love in the world was in his eyes, she could feel those stares scouring her of all her sins, miseries and maladies…

Their wooden cabin creaked and yelped in that autumn breeze. Outside the hills gleamed in the twilight, the day’s last sun rays begged for attention as they slowly receded getting more vague overtime, leaving behind two lovers in a dreary gloomy room. “Hold on Magnolia” he said once more, his voice getting fainter and fainter like the sun rays, “I do not even recall how many times I have said this… you need to tell me that you will hold…” She had to intrude and place her small dainty fingers on his lips. “You… shut up” a smile painted forth her comely face as she said that.

They laughed, a jest they shared, the sun subsided into the horizon at that jovial moment, never had it descended down the skyline with such displeasure and demur, as if saying “let me look at them a little longer, let me shine on them a little longer.”

Distant neighing of the horses persisted only now accompanied by the chirring of crickets and the resplendence of the Ivorian overseer in the sky. As the room slowly began to radiate in the silver moonshine, an irenic serenity manifested itself inside the wooden room. In such crystal luminance and pristine halcyon, Magnolia shone resplendent.

It appeared as if the sands of time had overturned and the woman who stood before him was… Magnolia for sure… but older. Argent silvery curls of hair swirled athwart her forehead, her elegant hands had creases which had deepened over the decades, her cheeks showed modest signs of wrinkles but ever the goddess she was… and a goddess never loses her gleam…

Magnolia looked more graceful than an opalescent white peacock perched on some ethereal cliff in Zion or Arcadia. She always used to undermine her beauty and judge herself cruelly and speciously, never once did he believed her, always he used to say, “I will always defend you Magnolia, even when it is against you”

The realizations was brusque and overt. The purpose of the dream was completed, its manifestation into reality was made possible and it had felt surreal. The song he had written for Magnolia had been sung, the fable he had chalked for Magnolia had turned to a veracity, and the life he had purported to Magnolia had been lived… well… as far as he was concerned.

He still felt and saw Magnolia as a youthful dainty girl but he knew those were but mirages conjured by his aching sickness… and it was time… he knew it… the sun and the moon knew it… and most importantly Magnolia knew it…

Another swift yet scouring breeze kissed his dying cheeks. The kiss of angels perchance, the signal from the maker. That ominous moment was nigh.

“I think it is almost time” he said.

“Shut up…” Magnolia said, she paused for a jiff and spoke again, “no no… keep talking”

“Hold on Magnolia” he said… and then he never spoke again…

Magnolia brushed her bantam yet benign fingers across his face. Her eyes black as the obsidian, glistening like the moon in the night-sky. Her lips quivering like two siblings under a frigid hailstorm. She promised him she would be stubbornly strong and the least she could do was to respect his last wish.

Magnolia came close to him, kissed him on those ashen lips and said…

“I’ll hold on”

The Poet Who Died

2013-04-22T03:10:00.000+05:30

"The Uncertainty of the Poet - Giorgio de Chirico"

“There’s a manner in which a man must strife,

through his present state and eventual life

Attack, arrest and endless ache,
how much, truly, can a man take?

There’s a constant war ‘tween his heart and mind,
and ‘midst he stands both deaf and blind

There’s a manner in which a man must die,
under that bridge, or ‘neath that sky…”

The boy poet said to his niggardly father.

“My mind is not at peace boy!” the father said, “I’ve got myself scads of work to do boy!”, “go read to your bedridden mother boy!”, “can that scanty prose of yours fetch me some gold, boy?”

A few years passed, a few moons turned…
The poet lived, unscathed, unburned…

“There’s manner in which a man must live,
an ordeal of grueling take and give

A blighted frame draped in rime,
ruined by scorn and wretched time

There’s a constant war ‘tween his needs and wants,
his master howls and his gelding taunts

There’s a manner in which a man must die,
atop a saddle, or under a sty…”

The young poet said to his ailing mother.

“What did you say there lad?” the mother said, “Did you pray to the Lord for me lad!”, “Oh Give me to the Lord, lad!”, “Kill me lad! Kill me! End my agony lad!”

A few seasons passed, a few mountains aged…

The poet lived, unbent, uncaged…

“There’s manner in which a man must love,
a wreath of daisy and white foxglove

A dainty face with a faithful smile
buried ‘neath is qualm and guile

There’s a constant war ‘tween his love and lust,
a bed of nails in a smog of dust

There’s a manner in which a man must die,
aloof from his lover, or mortally nigh…”

The adult poet said to his lover.

“Sing songs of amour, my love!” the lover said, “Prose on my beauty, my love!”, “Tell me how much you yearn for me, my love!”, “Tell the world how ravishing I am, my love!”

A few springs dried, a few autumns wept…
The poet lived, though old yet adept…

“There’s a manner in which a man must weep,
when under a cairn before the endless sleep

An olden malady confounds his thoughts,
fight till death or yield to naught

There’s a constant war ‘tween his life and death
to finish that song with one last breath

There’s a manner in which a man must die,
with a gleeful smile, or a bleeding sigh”

The old poet said to himself.

“This casket I have built” he said, “This epitaph I have written”, “This tombstone I have chiseled”, “This funeral wreath I have sewn”

The lights went somber. The curtains dropped. Tears were shed.

The poet closed his eyes…

and his face suggested a demeanor…

an expression… an emotion…

The winters have frozen, the sun has died…
was that a smile? Or a bleeding sigh?

Explorations of Beauty and Decay

2013-04-06T03:31:00.002+05:30

There is a sound unheard of before, incomplete, a tone, a signal of sorts. Psychedelic atoms cavorting up and down… and down and up… up and up again… never moving in a synchrony, rhythm has lost all its meaning.

These colorful atoms leave behind a painting as they swirl forward. A painting that speaks no word, a painting that calls for silence and death, a painting made by Theos of the Old, the mathematician who formulated the snail and the butterfly, the sunflower and the galaxy.

Ghastly paleness surrounds the painting, a soporific stench of calmness encapsulating the anemic white world. Far at a distance, a limbless woman weeps relentlessly. The tears stream out her left eye and channels into her right one, a vicious eternal circle… at her feet there is a pool of black blood and bones, a hand reaches out from the debris time and time again never to be held… alas… a limbless women still weeps relentlessly…

There are hills as well, the hills of grey stone that sing the broken songs of the wind. The Godly hills, tapered at the bottom and immense at the top, endlessly transcending into the sky. And from deep within the sky falls grey flakes of snow which sing the hill’s serenades. The words they speak, the harmony they create turns to grime and grit when the flakes crash into the endless ivory landscape… alas… the hills of grey stone still sing the songs of the wind…

A deep blue fire burns cold like the northern wind. A freezing conflagration, if there ever was one. A girl recurrently crushes brimstone in her hands and swallows it, her mouth burns and bleeds with every gulp. She spits a mouthful of blood into the smoldering fire pit and the blue flame rises beyond the heavens. The biting chill from the cold fire provides her the mitigation she needs… alas… a girl still crushes brimstone in her hands…

A naked gray man holds a blighted claymore in his seasoned hands. An eclipse breeds where his eyes were supposed to be as he makes the blade kiss a colossal whetstone turning silently like time. The place shudders cold like Niflheimr, fog makes it impossible for the man to work but he is adamant. The kiss makes the entire white world tremble. After the tremor, the claymore shines in a glaze and the man holds the blade close to his face with elation. A single drop of tear rolls out from that eyeless face and careens down the length of the sword, blighting it once more… alas… a naked gray man still holds a blighted claymore in his seasoned hands…

A raconteur brushes his quill against a quire. He sits alone on a wooden bench, aged and withered. He fills pages after pages with illegible griffonage and runs to a mob of deaf patrons gaping the ashen sky. He reads and laughs and sings and dances around before finally taking a nod of delayed and pointless applause. After the cheering and the acclaim dies, the raconteur rises to see the mob gaping again, endlessly, indifferently. The pages in his hand have turned pale again… alas… A raconteur still brushes his quill against a quire…

“Ónýttur heili settur á brjóst
Og mataður af svefn-g-englum”

[“A Ruined brain put to the breast,
and fed by the sleeping angels”]

- Sigur Rós

Caterpillar

2013-02-19T15:41:00.000+05:30

Lately I’ve been too busy, not the content-busy which gives you the sense of importance or the satisfaction of a hard day’s work. I’ve been busy pretending to be busy, avoiding the songs that never seemed to change in both lyric and melody.

I’ve always fibbed to those who mattered, now I lie to those who don’t. Being truthful makes my throat dry, it makes me retch. Be assured, whatever you have heard from me recently was purely a theater of mendacity performed to entertain my bedridden mind and to ridicule your naivety.

It has been an absolute pleasure, I will not deny, I can live with any manner of guilt, scorn and detest with downright ease but recent events force me to walk down your sorry streets and howl with your wolves and cry with your cranes.

Mankind loves tales and I am a seasoned raconteur, I’ve shat on your hills and pissed in your dungeons. I’ve smoked the ashes of your loved ones and made love to your Goddesses. Now read if you must… a fable of a dishonest dreamer… a reverie of a caterpillar…

I’ve been honest to only two things in my life. My guitar and my writings. Overtime I have realised my dependence on these two things have risen to an all-time high, my head is vividly and constantly looming in the images of blotchy floating inks stains dancing to the notes of Jason Molina, John Haughm and Mikael Akerfeldt. Pictures of Bass notes so burdensome that they drown the swimmers in a sea of black and indigo.

Men of good repute have called me mad, but madness is a virtue, so I thank them. Pondering alone I think a lot, more than ordinary men. I think of a cabin and serene nakedness of mind and body, I imagine a room filled with the scent of smoke and vagina, of rum and blood, of death and life.

I imagine a burning hearth warming me in a cold shivering night, a perpetual night and endless hellfire in the hearth. I see myself on a chair of sinew and driftwood, snow tenderly falls on my forehead and then melts, gently careening down my face. An Oakwood table stands in front of me… a quill, a page and a bottomless ink-pot lies at its top…

I envisage a garden of sepia grass, under a warm moonless night. The cold touch of her thin fingers, six in number, each colder than the other. A warm breeze flows from the south and she makes a sound unfamiliar, her body of blue cedar glows with carnal intentions … so beautiful… I play with her with my own hands and she sings in an orgasm… A different aria every night… a new love every instance…

Many question my solitary nature and raise contemptuous eyebrows at my manners. I fail to understand them, must we define it as ‘solitude’ when ‘one has forsaken the company of humans’? I have seen lonelier faces and forlorn hearts in a company of thousand men and women. I have seen true solitude in a carnival of mirth and undivided ecstasy in the companionship of the dead and mute.

My nerves have turned to stone, my blood to mud and my emotions to glacial ice. I have watched death and felt absolutely nothing, I have seen life sprawling and felt absolutely nothing. The only things that beget a pyre in my eye are words and harmony. And why not, at least they speak true and have more vitality than all the humankind combined.

Money keeps making lesser and lesser sense to me as time passes, loved ones seem banal and the rest are but sinful indulgences. It seems most apt for me to drive towards my Shangri-la and let the caterpillar find its wings. In this state, I will lie to you, constantly, relentlessly and remorselessly for I know you will stop me… in the name of love and envy, I know you will stop me…

There is a madness in me that will tear me apart, take me, strangle me, kill me, but for the good I have foreseen I cannot tame this madness now, I thrive in its existence, and I exist when it thrives. The more I stay subdued, the more I feel the grounds trembling and the walls bending in. A claustrophobia starts to brutally fornicate with my senses.

Alone I was born and alone I must find myself. The wise ones have said, “You are born to write and make music, and alas destiny is sought not served on a platter. We are all born with wings, but are you fearless enough to fly?”

The more prudent ones have said, “Bards and minstrels lead a lonesome flight, and alone they pass to the grave. A lonely grave births an eternal melancholy. This ominous fate has made many a men and women retrace their path back to the worldly humdrum.”

There is only one thing I have always said…

“A lonely grave sprouts more flowers... flowers bright and blue like the ink on my pages, flowers glowing in an azure hue like my love of six-fingers… and they smell so sweet… oh so sweet”

I Won't be Found

2012-10-29T23:59:00.002+05:30

The things you see when you close your eyes. It’s funny how complete blindness can be so brilliant and animated. To listen truly, you don’t need ears… to feel truly, you don’t need to touch… and to see truly, you don’t need eyes…

I look around me now and I see tired red faces spouting words of anger and disgust. But I am not here to talk about them, I am here to tell you what I see… when I can’t see…

I see a hoard of people running towards a meadow lunging for the horizon. It’s so crowded at the meadow so I choose a different path. I walk away against the ebb of living and breathing mob. I fall face first on the grass below, lukewarm and moist, a result of night’s rain and morning sun-rays.

In front and all around I see giant endless plains like the elegant Serengeti, or the gargantuan Savannah, or even the Great Plains. I rise up and look around plotting the trajectory of my marathon across this plain like a youthful gazelle. And in that moment I am a gazelle, a wild gazelle with the warmth of the moisture gushing through its paws… and then I run… I force the Serengeti to disappear in my eyes, a blur is what it has become… I feel I have wandered too far away from my friends and family, they will never be able to find me… a smile is drawn across my face like paint athwart a dusty canvas… I will never be found… I won’t be found…

It is noon now, I am not tired, and I will never ever be tired here. But there is aridity in my throat; I yearn for a drink; I see a levee formed against a river. I jump rite in, there are no second thoughts here, and primal instincts are flowing like wildfire. I dive in as a gazelle and emerge out as a proud seagull, drenched and with a fat salmon in my mouth, I soar high… higher than the sky on a freeway to the stars… then I hear voices chasing me, rooks and crows and ravens as black as obsidian… familiar they all are, too familiar for my own good… they are faster I know, I will soon be found… I dig a hollow in the clouds and hide… the hideous black murder soars by me, surprisingly not noticing… I understand then, they search for a black companion… but I have turned white, seagulls are white… I won’t be found…

I breathe a sigh of relief as the murder passes, then I feel my wings receding into my skin, I take the skins of a ravaging lion, tufts of fur around my face, deer skin stuck in my claws and a deep lust for blood. Blue wildebeests scampering in a frenzy, zebras fading in a flurry of black and white, hedgehogs burying themselves beneath the ground. My mere sight instills such fear inside of them, I charge with insurmountable fervor and ardor Feeble hearted packs of hyenas and jackals follow me closely… poachers and scavengers exist here too it seems… but a lion has no fear, a king has no fear … I mount a kopje, and upon reaching its pinnacle I unleash a ferocious roar… no fear of being found here… a king has no fear… come find me if you dare, I am the king… a king has no fear…

Then suddenly everything evaporated to a bright light… a vertigo followed… then I am me again. An older me, there a slight pain in my knee… sign of a chronic arthritis to follow maybe… shades of grey in my hair, I reach back and touch the ponytail I have still maintained… I feel sand in my feet and the comfort of a reclining chair on my back… its dusk, or dawn maybe; I cannot tell… my fingers are locked around a glass shimmering red… wine? Cranberry cocktail? Or mayhap just grape juice…

A beautiful girl of about 13-14 years is sitting by a sand castle… she didn’t make that castle, I did, she has grown a little old for sand castles but I haven’t. She is reading a book, there’s a guitar lying quietly beside her… she has my habits, but not my looks… she’s got 'her' looks, long black hair, those pristine black eyes and those blushing cheeks. I wonder if we named her ‘Liandra’, I always wanted to name her ‘Liandra’… Liandra meant harmony, something I sought all my life… she was supposed to be the answer…

I call her by that name… “Liandra”… she looks at me, puts the book down, smiles and dashes towards her mother. It was then when I notice the mother, she still looks elegant like ever. So what if her hair has a few grey lines decorating the black ones, so what her eyes look a bit weary and her cheeks marked with light wrinkles… she is still a beauty, my lioness, my garnet, my sugar and my strawberry… she smiles at me… almost saying…

We made it through idiot, we made Liandra, and we won’t be found… ever…

Both of them stood there, my sweetheart and my sweetling, my queen and my princess. It’s one of those moments when you think everything around is too good to be true... and you’re right…

The shards of this imaginarium broke, my eyes opened and I found myself staring at my colleague, he was staring rite back.

“Thank god I found you; there is some serious work that needs your attention pronto” he said.

Hell and all its off springs consume him. I thought.

“Hey” my colleague snapped, “I said ‘serious work’, be quick about it and try not to disappear this time, I don’t want to go looking for you again”

Hell and all its off springs consume him, twice over. I thought bitterly.

“Don’t worry” I said, “next time… I won’t be found”

Home

2012-09-25T18:32:00.000+05:30

I wonder why I was there. But from the window of my room, the endlessly looming street appeared like a pathway to Arcadia. I saw its end gleaming with an austere lambency similar to a widow’s tear. It all appeared like a conjurer’s trick but then again… maybe it was…

The night looked like the soaked remains of a once burning carcass. The rain had been friendly in the evening and stuck around till the night like an overtly compassionate lover. The day had been hot, very hot, and the hefty downpour had been a necessary relief… till the time the amount of relief exceeded the necessity and now all but remained was a murky street with black pools of water shining at its end like polished onyx.

Beautiful crystal droplets formed at the top of the windowpane, silvery blue with the image of the world in it, and in the next instant abdicating its hold from the wooden frame… free falling… a leap of faith… till it crashed in the palms of my hand and slipped through the gaps between my fingers taking another leap… finally the droplets formed a pool of their own beneath the window. Broken glasses and wooden splinters lay in the debris beside the pool which shone like emerald… unlike the onyx one… which had previously caught my eye…

Listlessly I put on my boots and walked out my homely premise, pushing apart the heavy steel gates with all my brawn. It seemed the rain had added strength to the metallic gate whilst depleting some of mine. The heavy downpour had subsided to a moderate drizzle. I had cared enough to carry an umbrella but it seemed the night wished for a discourse as I looked up… and saw the heavens… it was dark as obsidian with globules of grey floating beneath that giant pearl in the sky overlooking the onyx pool.

I stepped out; a wet chilling breeze surged passed me and slapped me across the face. It felt pure and scouring, like a mother’s woeful slap, indeed Mother Nature was sad and angry for she had wept all though the evening and even in the night. And here I was impeding her peaceful rest after a prolonged state of mourn, I deserved a tighter slap… she had been too kind…

From the window, the intricate details remain hidden in the murky and sombre street. On a closer view, the smaller things sprang to liveliness. A suckling huddled inside the warmth of her mother’s embrace, a shelter from the drizzle, the suckling nibbled at the tips of its mother’s fingers, sucking and biting, asking to be fed. In a moments time the suckling was drinking its mother’s nectar, arduously draining out the milk from her swollen breasts. She looked tired and weary; another suckling approached, feeling jealous it started bawling relentlessly waking the three who slept nearby and a few more inside. I left her at her dismay.

Further a bunch of boys were playing a game of paper boats and were setting them at the firth of a runnel. They were to chase the boats through their journey downstream till finally the victor boats reached the end of the runnel at the onyx pool. Some boats crashed against the stream, some sank midway owing to faulty craftsmanship, some collided amongst themselves and some sailed heroically through the ebb and flow. Amidst the chaos, the group of boys ran alongside, the order decreasing by one as each boat crashed. The captain would fall back to attend its fallen galley, as the rules implied. I remembered playing this game in my childhood; I was always the faulty craftsman. At the egress, the water had accumulated to form the onyx pool, where a lone child stood with a soaked boat in his hand and head high with honour. Drops of water trickled down his brow and fell on the paper boat; the child wiped it clean and raised his left hand signalling triumph… The Columbus of my street with his immaculate carrack, La Santa Maria…

Lost in his conquest, I had unknowingly stepped on a pile of muck and filth. Drenched garbage accumulated at one side of pool, stench of faeces and morass filled the environment. On the opposite bank of the pool, an old man lay inside his shelter of plastic shed and weathered bricks. His face marked by scar tissues, deep wrinkles and soot on his pale cheeks. He blew out clouds of smoke, making it harder for me to see his eyes. I understand a man by his eyes, but the old man shut out that option.

A bitch meandered close to him, waggling her tail. She licked his face clean; the old man got startled and dropped his smoke in the onyx pool... A hiss of smoke and steam…a painful grimace drew across his face signifying disgust, hate, anger? I could not comprehend for it quickly turned to a smile. He clasped the bitch’s head in his hand and kissed her on the forehead. The man cuddled the beast in his warm laggard arms and placed her under a torn quilt spoilt by the rain. As he turned his eyes caught mine, grim and mucus laden they were, but spoke a word which never had a more defining significance…

‘Home’

The old man was at home than I have ever been; I couldn’t bear to watch him any longer. I turned around quickly and starting walking back. I saw Columbus sleeping on a single cot while his friends slept in groups of twos or threes around the cot. To the victor goes the spoils of war, I thought… A smile on his face, the comfort of home after a gruesome battle…

Further the mother held a myriad of children in her arms… six… seven… or even more… her eyes deep closed, moonlight shone across her face. She looked beautiful. The sucklings grabbing onto every inch of her beautiful gleaming body, her arms around them like a giant cloak of comfort. She was their resort, their refuge… their… home…

I was tired of watching, I hurried across them and pressed my hands against the metal doors, it took more strength then before to move those iron barriers. The gates opened with a crash, rain had improved from a faint drizzle to a light deluge and I had lost the umbrella somewhere.

Soaked in Mother Nature’s tears, I gazed upon the house in front of me.

Home Finally. I thought

Or am I?

He left a home they called his house

For a house they call his home

They made a ghost out of a human being

Now that ghost forever roams

And this is how we are fading…

Dorthonion

2012-08-28T04:09:00.000+05:30

I dreamt last night, an unforeseen change from the usual aridity of my slumber as my dreams are mainly comprised of dark corners and caliginous hallways; of endless rivers and unfathomable abyss; of dead birds and charred timber. But last night was different… at least it appeared so…

I found myself on the back of the great Thorondor, Lord of Eagles. Soaring at great speed at an even greater height, above the clouds, Thorondor took flight. My vision was blurry amidst the mist and the gargantuan elevation of the voyage was alarming, to say the least, hence I politely requested the magnanimous Lord…

“Great Thoronder, your chivalry is without a doubt unchallengeable. By allowing me to accompany you in this grand flight, you have brought a mortal too close to the heavens and I fear the wrath of the Higher Gods. A mortal needs the veil of the clouds and the skies above its head. I request thee, oh Great Lord, to put this mortal where he belongs”

Thorondor, the epitome of altruism, began descending and I found the clouds above me again. The Great Lord was now flying over the plains of Ard-Galen. I politely inquired about our destination and Thorondor spoke, for the first time…

“Dorthonion”

Behind us, I could see the prodigious Angband, the Iron Prison of the vicious Morgoth the Ainur. I was happy to know my destination lied on the opposite side of Angband, in the mystical pine highlands of Dorthonion.

Thorondor dropped me at a quiet spot in between the pine forests and took flight again, above the clouds, in the realm of the Higher Gods… Thorondor, the most benevolent beast of the Middle Earth….

I gaited the wondrous landscape of Dorthonion, walked on the rustling leaves, escalated mountainous rocks and leaped over yawning crevasses. The dawn of night now addressed the land, as I emerged out the pine forests.

Beneath the pristine moonlight, I came across a ridge overlooking the numinous lake Tarn Aeluin. The Moon appeared like a glimmering pearl in the intense blue hue of the lake as I walked up to the apogee of ridge to witness this bewildering panorama.

From there I saw Beren burying his father, Barahir. Alone beside the grave he stood, valiant and adamant, heart-rendered and desolate ― “but he wept not, for his heart had turned to ice” ― A flood of emotions raged a storm inside Beren’s heart; vengeance, envy, love, wrath… and a name inside his head ― Gorgol the Butcher, the Orc who slayed his father.

The coming night Beren will embark on a mission fuelled by vendetta but before that he must lay his Father to rest. Under the brilliant white blanket of the Moonlight, Beren himself will rest a little, before Gorgol’s blood can drape the sheen of his blade, Dagmor.

Driven by Beren’s valor, I swore an oath to help him through any means necessary. Both I and he will spill Gorgol’s blood and turn the cerulean Tarn Aelium’s water crimson red. Both I and he will drink in the name of Barahir and sing verses of his honour.

Amidst this thought, a sudden cacophony resonated in the environment, a thunderous lightning bolt struck the Lake and a grand wave of water surged up the ridge where I stood. In the wake of this event, the fibres of my phantasmal dreamworld disintegrated and I awoke to find myself incarcerated by reality.

Cold, barren and bureaucratic reality, a world of corporate sheep and office herds, of interview queues and coffee breaks, of global corruption and peace propagandas, of capital income and communal riots. I woke up with this heartache… only to realise waking up with it is one thing, living with it is another… and I have to live with it… an eternal heartache…

Beren will embark on his quest alone, and slay the mighty Gorgol. He will bring back Barahir’s ring that Gorgol stole and keep it as heirloom, but not in this world, but in the chimerical world of Middle Earth ― a fabric of imagination yet so much more vivacious than the real world.

Godspeed Beren… I pray for thee ― May your aim be steady and your blade sharp… I pray for the eternal glory of Dorthonion and Middle Earth… I wish for the sheep and herds to succumb and the stallions to rise… I wish for the dark silhouette of apocalypse to engulf this real world…

And if not…

I wish that I never dream again…

“…Dark from the North now blew the cloud,

The winds of autumn cold and loud,

Hissed in the heather; sad and grey

Tarn Aeluin’s mournful water lay…”

The Lay of Leithian ― J.R.R. Tolkien