Life at Cross-Roads

There's no going forward, and there's no going backward, for it's not a regressive backward, it's not a forward-leap, either, for how do you know which is which, when can you ever claim to figure the coordinates of any point in infinity? There is no path because the path e-merged from the whole. To be sure, all paths lead us there, but all paths had begun from there, so there's no mid-point limbo where you're stuck. And all those paths, they spilled in all directions, criss-crossing each other, overlapping each other, like strains of water sliding down fogged-up window, suddenly giving you glimpses into the other end.

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.

On Curiosity

How do you define something that always escapes us, 

Something which we sense only by virtue of its anticipation?

Curiosity (at times),

Turns out to be nothing but a tale

Waiting to be deciphered and interpreted

In a new way each time

For without the other, neither could exist.

There are Times

There are Times

When I am

Groping at the vapours                         

Of nothingness 

Hoping to churn out

Life and hope from it,

(With a desperation 

That makes me feel

As though I were 

strangling emptiness itself.)

There are Times

When I wish with all my might

(Believing for just that dead moment 

that my thoughts are powerful indeed.)

That the concrete reality 

Would crumble and melt

into nothingness.

There are Times

When I remember 

That it's darkness

Staring at me in the eyes

[Threatening me or encouraging me, 

                                          I know not.]

And I shut my eyes

To crawl within 

The cold comfort of familiarity

That I first meant to escape.

There are Times

When I seek to

Merge into a shadow

As the gust of Light, 

Having shot out 

From unseen corners and walls of impasse 

Now straining its eyes at me

Sears and sieves through

The dust of opaque fear

Settled since long before I was born.

There are Times

When I realise, a truth

Shall not be uttered by me

Not the right time,

How do you set a time for truth?

There are Times

When I must not let

The truth run amok

Lest it wreaks havoc.

P.S. / Epilogue 

Don't tell me that you

Have already forgotten

That there were times, 

You did not know 

Or even want to know

What you wanted to do, or 

What you ought to have done.

 There are times when we seek hope, in the form of an opportunity, a person who could guide us, without realising that the only person at that juncture to help us, would be our own self. But there's a constant wait for (Godot?) something to change things, as if trying to make the universe say that we were in an unfair place that could not be helped, and only a definite pattern or turn of situations would give meaning to one's life. The manifestation cannot be, prior to the determination. 

There are times when the opportunity doesn't merely knock at your door but stays put like a silent comrade waiting for you to pack your bags, so it can bring you to a new dimension of you yourself. Many a time, our fear stifles us, overriding the striving that seemed hope enough till now, only to bring things back to status quo.

There are times when one feels that one needs to take a stand, make his/her voice heard, to try and bring a halt to something that shouldn't happen, and is happening, yet. But circumstances spell out a different path altogether, and then we are faced with situations where we'd rather not let something be known to everyone, because it would do more harm than good. What is the truth, then? 

On Education

Indeed, over the years, all the definitions, I scooped up for exams, have been washed out from the accessible corners of my memory, thanks to them getting used to not being summoned for recollection. This is of course, barring a few things which happened to be of interest to me. For I still remember the day when mom-dad woke me up to have me get ready and wear a new set of clothes, socks and polished shoes, when I realised that was to be my first day at school. Since then, I have only gotten used to knowing, and not understanding education in the context of fourteen years spent at school, besides college, and in terms of qualifications that keep getting dropped like fused bombs around me. Taking up literature for my graduate course, is probably the best decision I have taken so far in terms of pursuing something that caught my interest. Learning and remembering things taught at school perfectly, and trying to pin them in all four corners of my memory, through semantic codewords, if I may term them so, sounded a little restricting, then and now. For despite 'words' being frightfully cradled by 'definitions', things go haywire. Miscommunication, failures, and so on.

Experiences or observations, translated into retrospective memories, having left most vivid of impressions on my memory/mind, are one of the few things I instinctively refer to, when stuck in situations I need to get the better of. Also, I would any day prefer to have something catch my curiosity and have me chase that thought till I reach a hypothesis, a conclusion, never mind if it's a dead-end. I don't want to wait for concepts to squint my very vision of myself, the world, and all that exists, and all that waits to be discovered. I would rather die thinking too much of things that make me wonder, with me progressing towards it, one step at a time, some forward, some backward, for the aim remains to go one level up in another dimension. That is when I day-dreamingly wonder when, or rather IF, I'll get to use a few or every thing I 'absorbed' like a sponge in moments of 'devoted student-hood'. And that's also when in a half-correcting, half-disappointed mode I remember what I've heard often - 'Every moment of your life, has something to teach, just that you realise the worth of it at such-and-such time.', and that's when I feel, that it doesn't seem to fit in with this situation. Maybe education in this symbolic order is just, self-regressive in nature. One that you may be aware of, but not necessarily be able to help.

On Procrastination

I have procrastinated for months

To eventually write this poem today

Ironically, this time

The poem to be penned

Was meant to bring to an end

To my pet peeve of procrastination.

I thought my writing of it

Would be bring me face to face

[Oh, no. I am behind time and Procrastination is ahead of me.]

With procrastination.

The Dance of Shadows Part II

Stuck in the rut of 

The (so called) dye-mentioned reality,

You walk past your oft-mentioned

Thoughts, fears, cravings, yearnings, 

Learnings, ramblings and musings 

Squeezing them into 

[You say they were two-dimension-ed?]

Shadows that remain there,

Brain-dead, 

They play havoc now

As their amoebic infinity

Spreads like an endemic,

Ending your sanity, morality, duality.

They were meant to save you either ways.

Don't you complain them thoughts of sadism yet!

Of Memories.

I - Choose to forget,
Choose to remember
Things from my life's history 
So as to think "That's [my] Life.", someday.
And what If, Life chose to forget me one day?

The Best Time to Write a Poem

When should I write?

When boredom gets sculpted into motivation?

When a distracting thought 

Bothers me long enough

To make me turn to it instead, 

With ardent concentration -

Thereby perhaps making it

The topic of my next composition?

Should I risk completing that sad poem

I’d been working on for a month now,

When I’m in the best of spirits, today?

Should I try and imagine

What being happy sounds like,

In an unfamiliar milieu of words

For the sake of completing my poem,

Hoping it’ll lift my mood too?

Should I scribble away

The cold downpour of tears with

The harmless, vicarious vengeance of my pen,

The one thing I half-guiltily hold dear

When my anger endlessly battles with helplessness?

[Or are they not worth being written about,

As many tongues would simultaneously utter?]

Must I write in a state of ecstatic frenzy?

       Or could I have to leave that precious thought 

                                   Annoyed, hanging in mid-air,

                                            When a trifling rush of new thoughts 

                                                  Crashed my way, making me forget, 

                              Why I was holding the pen in my hand, 

                                               after all.

                                                       Epilogue: 

                                               I think I must write now to find out,

                                               Before the ink of my existence dries out.

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.