If Thoughts Were Audible

If Thoughts Were Audible,

Would you try to catch & make

Every fluttering thought your Bible,

In your craving

To come face to face

With that one thought

Which would have the answer

To what is the question,

That has gnawed at you since birth?

What if you bumped against

Hitherto infrasonic tremors

Of a morbid sigh or curse,

While hoping to tune into

A blessing or yearning?

Would you consider yourself

The sniper of the Panopticon

Or a prisoner of it?

Would the nail-biting curiosity

Of groping the trail

Of fragmented thoughts

From all (how many?) corners

Make you lose your own 'stream of consciousness',

                         as they would call it?

Deaf now to your own mental utterances

Would you (n)ever speak again?

[Since,

Your eavesdropping mind

Would already know

What the other has to say

As would he, about your thoughts

Before either uttered the first syllable.]

Or,

Would you start thinking

About what to think first

And what order to place those thoughts in, next,

So you could fool your mental trespasser,

Sending him off to a parallel trail of thoughts?

But of course he would be able to

Hear through your strategy

As he would also know

Of that moment

When you decided to

Guard your own thoughts.

But the question is,

Do you have any left, now? 

A numb stare is reflected

In your mental neighbour's eyes

As you both confront

The fact that

Deaf people don't have

Songs stuck in their head.

Presence.

I am
A question mark 
Slouching, lurking behind the wall
Waiting to stretch out 
Into an exclamation mark.

Identity

They, you and I.
Are?
Interpretations, opinions, 
Fears and convictions,
Likes-dislikes,
History and anticipations,
Of life.
All, save the living of it, maybe?

A song heard months back in time
You mused over the major & minor,
I'd pondered over the rhyme.
Each of us 
As convinced about its presence.
Winter tastes different in my memory.

Epilogue: 
You must choose between
His bespectacled vision 
And my retrospective conclusion
But you must know 
Which you chose
And why.


Context: 

We live but one interpretation [actions being interpretations] of our experiences, chosen on impulse at times, shortlisted by some preset path on other occasions. Is it about the choices chosen and lived? It isn't so much about 'your' life really, that being a myth for we are constantly interacting with many other lives every day. An interaction of interpretations hence, converts to fears, beliefs, and so on. But what about our identity in essence?

Is life to be described in terms of the experiences [and their interpretation] that I may have had [hence unique to me and to the world] - like the difference in reflections of convex and concave mirrors of the same object, for instance. And how those experiences molded me [or I let them!], my beliefs, and preferences, since that too is a unique cluster held together under the umbrella of a name? 

What about the infinite lurking before and after - Are we the entity or the impressions?  

Living Things

I often have conversations

With objects around me -

From

Mindless banter snowballing into

Heart-to-heart conversations,

To

Waking up in the middle of the night,

Fumbling for the right switch in the darkness

To put the lights on so I can see

For a split second,

Things obligingly lying still in their place,

As they stagger through burdened time

To lull myself into sleep

With an assurance of familiarity.

On days I enter my room 

With bottled thoughts, when these things, 

With all their weathered, withered strength

Spur me on to etch out utterances at length

Knowing as they do, 

You don't always seek 

A response, reaction, remark, judgment, 

To something you nevertheless feel the need to speak, 

Which at times starts to turn incomprehensible

To yourself and to the other, 

As your tongue rolls them out

In the gibberish of vowels and consonants.

So I start off on a mindless rhyme

At times confessing my mind's crimes,

Scraping out fears rusty with neglect

Pulling out halted thoughts from a staggering stack,

Laughing as I admit to myself that joke was funny.

Crying with relish for I won't be accused of being weak.

Stretching out a tune I'd only ventured to hum [in public], 

Into a song, hearing my voice sing & strum,

In a long time.    

                           [Hitting the table with a pen 

                           To make up for the beats.]

Dancing with awkward steps on my two left feet,

But dancing nevertheless.

[Thank goodness I have feet to dance.)

P.S At times, when the familiarity 
      Of my own presence poses a threat,
      I need their company, these non-living things, 
      The only solace sensitive to my minds' mutterings.

“I do not believe,” [Edison] said, “that matter is inert, acted upon by an outside force. To me it seems that every atom is possessed by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousand of ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements, forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do this without intelligence? . . . Gathered together in certain forms, the atoms constitute animals of the lower orders. Finally they combine in man, who represents the total intelligence of all the atoms.”

“But where does this intelligence come from originally?” I asked.


“From some power greater than ourselves.”

The Company of Solitude

Now, I seek solitude for company
Waking to the spectrum of vitality within,
Enough of your rhetoric,
Now's for my soliloquy.

Beneath the semblance of the Silence,
On the verge of bursting any moment.
Silence, spelled as chaos,
Sitting in fear till now,
At the sight of sound and the voice of light,
Stabbing itself with self-consciousness.

Where no one can reach
Neither the notorious comfort of darkness.
Nor the shadow of light.
Neither my thoughts, 
Nor my circumstances, can reach.
For they just are.
And I just am.
When no one's watching,
When I'm not thinking.
(For to start thinking,
Is to not be yourself.)

P.S. Not a narcissistic retreat of self- pity, this.
       I look within myself,
       To rise above myself, eventually.

The Evacuation

Skin flaking away to shreds
Breathing a fresh whiff of mockery your way, my way,
Shrouding their compliments and
My pride that turned stale
As they were uttered.

Alphabets 
Lisping out of my mouth
Numbers
Trickling out of my mind
(Not a hospitable host,
This existence of mine, they recount.)
Fears & dreams 
Going into comatose.

Clock-hands pointing at me, 
At the stroke of wakeful realization
Like arrows, yanking out and
Darting past me, in all directions
On a time-bound mission.

Sounds, gone out of tune inside of me
Screeching out of my ears
Favourite colors, smells, sights 
Now driving me nauseous
A choking cough that echoes 
(Was it not supposed to stifle it, like in movies?)
Of all of these
Crashing at me, 
Trying to weave again
That familiar path on that train
That leads to the crossroads of that maze
Of self- destructiveness 
That I seemed destined for,
No matter where I'd exit from.
("The exit is only a dead-end!", a fleeting voice quivers)
As I stagger under weightlessness
While familiarity squints into a blur 
and
Alienation burrows a happy home
Mute stares from my end lasting three nanoseconds
Angry for they still don't get it
Thrilled, breathing a sigh of relief.
For I get it, lest I should forget it,
This, where I had arrived.

Or

Was I inhaling stagnant complacency 
Slipping into the reprieve of familiarity again,
Of accursed i-dent-ity
Wait. Am I getting familiar with myself?


P.S. Things you held dear
Where are those now?
Were they yours to admire?
Or mine to own?

The Shadows in the Mirror

अब आईने ने खुद पर धूल की परत चढ़ाली है

छुपा लिया है उसने खुद को

मेरे चहरे पर सोए अर्सों के साए से । 

मेरे दिल में अश्क़ों की धुंध  

भी अब जम गई है, 

सिकुड़ते- सिकुड़ते, रोशनी के खौफ़ में । 

उन पाज़ेब और झुमके की ओर नहीं ताकती अब मैं, 

मैं ने अब खुद से ही मुँह फेर लिया है । 

खुद से नफ़रत करने का शौक़ चढ़ा है, 

खुद को खो देने का एक खौफ़ ही अब  
मेरे ज़िंदा होने का ग़वाह रह गया है । 

उस लाल शॉल को अब ओढ़ना नहीं चाहती शायद 
२२ साल पुरानी वह क़िताब में लिखी गयी 
मीठी शैतानियों और प्यार की अनगिनत कहानियाँ 
मेरे लिए एक ख़िताब हैं, 
जिन से मेरा आज भी लगाव तो है 
पर उस क़िताब के पन्नों पर सूखी स्याही को  
मेरे आँसुओं के कलम ने भिगोकर 
उन घावों को हरा कर दिया है
अब उस क़िताब को खोलूंगी नहीं फिर शायद
अरे अब तो मैंने खुद से मुँह फेर लिया है ।

उस दिन घर से यूँ ही चल पड़ी थी,
बेवजह हँसी के ठहाके ले रही थी
उस दिन आईना नहीं देखा था ना |
अब उस शीशे के टुकड़े पर तरस आता है 
क्योंकि उस आईने में 
जिसकी  खुद की पहचान नहीं 
उसमें मेरे खौफ की परछाइयों को 
अपनी पहचान समझना छोड़ चुकी थी ॥ 

P.S. This poem is an attempt to peek into the mind of a woman who is hitting menopause- probably in her late forties, and has just about started to come to terms with the fact that she is no longer the pretty damsel she used to be in her heydays. However, she mistakenly assumes her physical lineaments to be what primarily is her identity- she dearly holds on to her past, her fears are magnified to the extent that she thinks that her very surroundings are disappearing into darkness, as if alive and consciously moving away from her. But she lives in this world only for a while. She soon does realise that a mirror- a concrete, finite object, cannot capture even a fraction of her identity, which is infinitely evolving. The larger inference being that, never must we assume that we know ourselves, there are different levels of truth, yet at each higher level we become complacent with the thought that we know ourselves the best. 

Overall, the poem touches upon the issues of identity, notions and truths, relativity of truth, the constant urge to define ourselves under categories of the symbolic order we've been living in for ages. Interpretations are welcome.