Woolgathering

[neenzeitgeist]

The Fallen Love

From the topmost branch of the ebony tree

in front of my house, love fell. 

It fell on the puddle left behind

By last night's rainfall.

It broke its wings and let out a squeal. 

Love didn't try to get up.

Love didn't flap its wings.

Or even look up at its nest made of twigs and straws. 

It was done. 

Love was done looking up at the skies 

from the topmost branches,

And wishing for the sun to bless its wings.

Instead,

It chose to drown in the fury of winds

and the sneer of the muddy earth beneath it. 

Love breathed the last of its songs,

And quietly closed its eyes forever.

[neenzeitgeist]

The generous stroke,

The dawn of the racing breaths,

And the twilight of the mingled flesh.

The amber lights that shy

Through the panes of the French window.

The crescent with its beauty spot,

That stares nonchalantly.

I light up a smoke,

And gaze through the open window,

The smoke that raises up

To meet the lonely sky.

When all is quiet,

The little secrets I share with the lonely sky.

[neenzeitgeist]

[neenzeitgeist]

[neenzeitgeist]

[neenzeitgeist]

[neenzeitgeist]

[neenzeitgeist]

She gazed into the mirror in front of her. There was a face she did not recognize. Drops of blood oozed out from her nose. Dark patches around the right eye. The eyeliner on her left eye, the one she carefully drew along her eyes after countless redoings, hasn’t worn out yet. Even after all this! The brow looked quizzical. “Is it me?” she asked herself.

The bright red she painted on her lips in the morning had changed purple. Were there cuts? There were! Right beside the mole under her lower lip. They used to call it her beauty spot. Now, hardly visible. Thanks to the curdled blood thick under her lips. Little did she know when she decked up in the morning that she’d face herself in this situation.

She slowly raised her right hand to wipe the blood away. She realized then that every inch of her body hurt. She slowly brushed the red specks under her nose. It hurt! That’s when she noticed the bruises on her knuckles. She looked at them as she remembered. “I did not give up without a fight. But… it was a mistake! I should’ve listened to my mother! Boxing is not my forte!”

[neenzeitgeist]

It's been a while

since ink bled

through the hermit fingertips.

Poetry, when it calls you,

in unimaginative places,

The thumbs answered

on the whitewashed screen,

never exhausting itself.

Today, I returned,

The urge was real.

A pen, an old book,

The same open window,

To find the words

playing hide and seek

in the neem leaves outside.

Scribble and tear!

Will thy joy

be ever present

on the dull blinking screen?

[neenzeitgeist]

Current mood: I need someone to talk to, but I don’t want to be the one to reach out. I have a million things in my head waiting to be voiced or typed out, but I just can’t seem to find the courage to open up. 

PS: Posting this after years! Lost track!

[neenzeitgeist]

The walls in my house

Could not decide

What the colour of my house was.

Baby green,

Claimed the one on the right.

No, it is duke orange!

Yelled the one in the hall.

I see orange and yellow,

So the house is dual coloured.

Well, this is a nasty blue,

Complained the one in the bedroom.

No, it is red,

Cried the kitchen wall.

Oh, our sympathies with you!

All the walls agreed.

[neenzeitgeist]

Do you hear that?

That lone mynah at the backyard.

Every morning while I make tea,

Sings a note off her guard.

Captures my mind webbed with debris.

Somewhere hidden among the leaves,

Those ruminations only I hear.

[neenzeitgeist]

It’s A Shame

It’s a shame to

let go of your fears,

and embrace the wildness in you. 

It’s a shame to 

question the rules, and

walk that extra mile. 

It’s a shame to

express your views, and

give no fuck about what people think. 

It’s a shame to

not conform to the standards, 

and pave your own path. 

Can’t help, but ask, 

Now, am I your shame?

[neenzeitgeist]

The unwritten poem

is like a love never expressed.

[neenzeitgeist]

[proseriot]

A Tryst with my Made-up Stories

The clouds were welling up, and the evening could not have been more spectacular with everything around coated in lead. I could stand there all my life, if only the clouds stayed there, blessing me with the same view for eternity. But the whole town was hurriedly rushing to their homes not waiting for the heaven’s blessings to pour upon them. My classes got over a little early today, and there was another half an hour for my bus to reach the stop.

I stood there calculating how to kill my time as I was suddenly reminded of putting my people watching skills to good use. Yes, everybody has a story. My task today was to look around at random people and guess their life stories. Where are they from? Where is she going to? Why does he look sad? Why does he look so grumpy? They don’t look like a happy couple, Is he going to file a divorce?

I waited patiently – for the tiny droplets to hit the ground, the never-on-time bus to reach the stop, and for a perfect victim to fathom out a story. I looked around. The zappy boy garbed in a printed tee and a faded ankle length jeans at the other end of the road was lost in his own world of hip-hop music tuned into his eardrums. A woman, probably in her forties, frantically trying to get an auto, so that she could reach home on time. Worry was etched on her face, eyebrows scrunched up, constantly shifting from one leg to the other, checking the gold plated watch on her left wrist, probably hurling abuses at the auto driver who drove past her as he did not seem interested in the place she wanted to go; she seemed a mess. What could be her story? Is she trying desperately to reach back home before her teenage daughter got back? Or is it because of her husband … I could not put a full stop to my ruminations when someone rushed into the bus stop grazing past my right arm. I hated being disturbed while I was crafting a story to my forty-year-old woman across the street, but turned back to see a much more interesting story who found herself a spot on one corner, squatting on the floor, gently swaying to and fro, and muttering something incoherently. She must be a woman in her sixties, maybe, I thought. She clad herself in a disheveled off-white saree and blouse, scruffy hair with more grey and a few occasional black strands, bare feet covered with dirt, and the only embellishment on her face was a few drops of tears in her eyes ready to race out before the clouds above us did. “Found it!” I yelled in my head. Now, what could be her story?

Mother could not hold those tears back. It was the third time this week that her son threatened to take her to the old age home. That single bedroom apartment in the heart of the city where her son, daughter-in-law and their two children lived surely did not have space to house a sixty-year-old. Though her son made an excuse of the space constraints to his colleagues, she knew that neither the house nor its inhabitants’ hearts had any place for her. But today, things went a bit out of hand when the daughter-in-law yelled at her and commented how she was a pain in the neck for everyone.

Oh No! Wait! Now… isn’t this the same rubbish that my mother so reverently watches every weekday from dusk till midnight? I always knew that the idiot box blaring on the other end of the wall would soon take a toll on my thought process. And that day was today.

A car screeched to a halt in front of the bus stop while I was trying to scheme out a way and put an end to the evening doses of daily drama aired through the innumerable dish-top caparisons on the terraces of every house in the neighbourhood. A girl of my age scurried to the bus stop and kneeled down near the old woman. “Ma… please come home. I was so worried… I looked for you everywhere… Please come with me.” Her voice cracked as she was trying to hold her mother’s hands. The old woman stared at the girl for a few seconds before asking “Who are you?”

As the girl tried to convince her that she was her own daughter, a score of onlookers gathered around them out of mere curiosity and wonderment. I walked over to the other end of the bus stop reminding myself that no matter how hard I try or how shrewd I am with my people-watching skill, never will I be able to guess a human being’s real plight.

My bus finally reached the stop. I got in, found myself a window seat, and as I turned to the left aisle there was a young girl with her face covered skilfully with a cashmere shawl, leaning on the shoulder of a boy seated on her left, and on her lap was a brown duffle bag, and another grey one tugged under their seat. “Woah! She looks like a school girl! Is she running away with him? Why else would she need those bags? And why cover her face?” … my thought process ran again like a wild horse. Some people never learn! 

[neenzeitgeist]

A Tryst with my Made-up Stories

The clouds were welling up, and the evening could not have been more spectacular with everything around coated in lead. I could stand there all my life, if only the clouds stayed there, blessing me with the same view for eternity. But the whole town was hurriedly rushing to their homes not waiting for the heaven's blessings to pour upon them. My classes got over a little early today, and there was another half an hour for my bus to reach the stop.

I stood there calculating how to kill my time as I was suddenly reminded of putting my people watching skills to good use. Yes, everybody has a story. My task today was to look around at random people and guess their life stories. Where are they from? Where is she going to? Why does he look sad? Why does he look so grumpy? They don't look like a happy couple, Is he going to file a divorce?

I waited patiently – for the tiny droplets to hit the ground, the never-on-time bus to reach the stop, and for a perfect victim to fathom out a story.  I looked around. The zappy boy garbed in a printed tee and a faded ankle length jeans at the other end of the road was lost in his own world of hip-hop music tuned into his eardrums. A woman, probably in her forties, frantically trying to get an auto, so that she could reach home on time. Worry was etched on her face, eyebrows scrunched up, constantly shifting from one leg to the other, checking the gold plated watch on her left wrist, probably hurling abuses at the auto driver who drove past her as he did not seem interested in the place she wanted to go; she seemed a mess. What could be her story? Is she trying desperately to reach back home before her teenage daughter got back? Or is it because of her husband ... I could not put a full stop to my ruminations when someone rushed into the bus stop grazing past my right arm. I hated being disturbed while I was crafting a story to my forty-year-old woman across the street, but turned back to see a much more interesting story who found herself a spot on one corner, squatting on the floor, gently swaying to and fro, and muttering something incoherently. She must be a woman in her sixties, maybe, I thought. She clad herself in a disheveled off-white saree and blouse, scruffy hair with more grey and a few occasional black strands, bare feet covered with dirt, and the only embellishment on her face was a few drops of tears in her eyes ready to race out before the clouds above us did. "Found it!" I yelled in my head. Now, what could be her story?

Mother could not hold those tears back. It was the third time this week that her son threatened to take her to the old age home. That single bedroom apartment in the heart of the city where her son, daughter-in-law and their two children lived surely did not have space to house a sixty-year-old. Though her son made an excuse of the space constraints to his colleagues, she knew that neither the house nor its inhabitants' hearts had any place for her. But today, things went a bit out of hand when the daughter-in-law yelled at her and commented how she was a pain in the neck for everyone.

Oh No! Wait! Now... isn't this the same rubbish that my mother so reverently watches every weekday from dusk till midnight? I always knew that the idiot box blaring on the other end of the wall would soon take a toll on my thought process. And that day was today.

A car screeched to a halt in front of the bus stop while I was trying to scheme out a way and put an end to the evening doses of daily drama aired through the innumerable dish-top caparisons on the terraces of every house in the neighbourhood. A girl of my age scurried to the bus stop and kneeled down near the old woman. "Ma... please come home. I was so worried... I looked for you everywhere... Please come with me." Her voice cracked as she was trying to hold her mother's hands.  The old woman stared at the girl for a few seconds before asking "Who are you?"

As the girl tried to convince her that she was her own daughter, a score of onlookers gathered around them out of mere curiosity and wonderment. I walked over to the other end of the bus stop reminding myself that no matter how hard I try or how shrewd I am with my people-watching skill, never will I be able to guess a human being's real plight.

My bus finally reached the stop. I got in, found myself a window seat, and as I turned to the left aisle there was a young girl with her face covered skilfully with a cashmere shawl, leaning on the shoulder of a boy seated on her left, and on her lap was a brown duffle bag, and another grey one tugged under their seat. "Woah! She looks like a school girl! Is she running away with him? Why else would she need those bags? And why cover her face?" ... my thought process ran again like a wild horse. Some people never learn!