too not enough

i’m pulled in too many directions

i’m torn in too many ways

i drink too much in the nights

i sleep away too  many days

too many thoughts in my head to think straight

too many windows in the buildings to even begin to paint

too much movement and too many colours in all

the fluttering shadows of the trees on the white walls

too many shifts in the light in the hallowed halls

too many people saying too many things

much too loud until my ears ring

too many doubts

too many debts

too many deaths

too many marriages

too many loves

too many heartbreaks

too many negotiations

too many aches

too many contradictions

too many voices too many doctrines

too many opinions too many arguments

too many hints

too many …

and not enough of me

but that’s vanity

not enough sanity

but who wants that anyway?

too much anger

not enough sorrow

too much pain

not enough love

too much heartache

and yet not enough to write with

reading under the sea on a monsoon afternoon

i look up from the book and i’m in a sea

of viridian clarity that fills all the space around me

from the ground right up to the grey rolling clouds

a soft damp surface seen from beneath

i’m on a bund between a fish pond 
dried out for maintenance and a paddy field 
long ago harvested, with cows grazing 
in the dry standing hay at the bottom

and with his clothes swirling about him

the man who brought them

stands gazing away

the wind buffets me in waves

and the bamboo clump moves slow-mo

like kelp or seaweed

and the wind in its leaves

sounds like the sea

wondering about feet

we used to have nice feet once

both of us

soft and kissable

in fact i remember licking

the smooth sole of your foot and those

little grooves behind your toes

mine are all calloused now

with grimy knots of leathery, pained

skin, the toes all splintered at the edges

like hard wood with dirt ingrained

unimaginable now, how i ever made love to you

the gnarled old man that i have come to be

sitting in a dingy squalid room with the leaky

bathroom, the only rickety window

overlooking a garbage dump that

also doubles as a cycle and scooter stand

through which a sow and her litter blunders

i wonder how you’ve aged, and

what your feet look like

i wonder

there’s still hope

for there are yet

in places you don’t know

long trains of cycles that go

one behind the other at dawn and dusk

churning slush in the monsoon and

at other times raising dust

there is still hope for us

places where we can be free

there is still hope that

one of these days you will 
listen to your heart and 
come away with me

run. love. write

i run

knowing i’ll never win. i love

knowing you’ll never be mine. i write

knowing i’ll never be read

hope is a distant thing

i work with the certainty of defeat

and it gets worse every year

downward spiral, pause, drift, repeat

running is just an attempt of mine

of making peace with distance and time

those timeless enemies of love

the eternal bane of my life

my love is just a stupid mime

a vain lonely exercise

to keep myself distracted

and keep the poetry going

my poems are just serving time

with no life of their own outside

my fading notebooks, unread

stashed away beneath the bed

and yet

day after day

week after week

season after season

i continue to write

to run. to love

for no other reason

but that i must

run

away from things. love

away my loss. write

away my longing

i heard about your separation

it sinks in

like looking at the remains of a road accident

the mangled metal flung against the half-uprooted tree

all still. all quiet. all spent

all hurt left to the imagination

blood, caked. dried

dark red i guess

but then i’m colourblind

in thin streaks

down the cracked window shield

and a stain on the headrest

a puddle on the seat

tyre marks on the road

and blood. dried in streaks

cracked. cold

and i’m sick

the bodies have been long taken

the eyewitnesses tired of retelling their tale

always beginning with what they were doing

how they looked up, looked out

the rubber screeching

the wild swerving

the noise

the whirring

the shouting

the broken…

the mind fills in the rest taking cues

from the tranquil menacing silence

creating for itself the images of violence

the backdrop of hurt

gathered

from the normalcy of your gestures

- a poor disguise

from the abrupt pause

or the odd word dropped

as you talk on when

there is nothing to say

from the stillness in your eyes

that gives you away

evidently not

don’t you get tired of it all?

don’t you get

tired     

of it all?

of strange hands held

in the drunken anonymity of friends’ friends’ parties

if not in the alleys behind dingy bars

strange hands held and run away from?

of desperately seeking love

despite the evident dangers

again and again and again

and again, amongst strangers?

of missing being kissed

being held?

and yet not knowing whose hands they are that you miss

sitting alone on a dark windy porch unlit?

don’t you get tired of it?              

of it all?

of running and hiding and seeking repeatedly?

of lusting and being unable to love? unable to love, for fuck’ sake

of holding and in the same instant hoping to break free?

of these cycles of burning and yearning and the heartache?

don’t u?

get tired?

of it all?

don’t    

you get                

tired     

of it       

all?

do you remember the floor?

do you remember the floor

of the dining/sitting room in the old home?

we lived there for nearly ten years, remember?

until mum left ‘coz she could take it no more

you don’t, i bet

it had little chips set in dark translucent cement

polished. with little colourful stones. split

into squares by flat bars of ground glass 

i’d lie on that sofa on my stomach

and stare at it for hours                                                                                                         

my face a foot from it

looking for shapes in the stone chips

everytime they fought, or scolded you, or shouted at me

or weren’t talking to each other for they were too angry

i’d go slump onto the sofa and stare at that floor

that was my escape, what was yours?

sorry to disappoint

he would always say

how glad he was that we’d turned out to be

such independent, well-balanced adults, we three

and caring too

as if his reiterating it

would make it true

back in mandal

back in mandal where the humble

house sparrows chirp with lust and greed

and the bold luindas hop squirrel-like

over stone walls of the boulder-strewn fields

.......................................................................

luinda is the garhwali name for the streaked laughingthrush

just another evening

i, after my dinner alone

amongst the goodbyes cheery

as people leave to go home

begin my quest weary

for an empty taxi going my way

that’ll take me to my dingy room

where under the influence of alcohol will sway

the flaky-painted walls of gloom

where tormented by memories of you

and by mosquitoes kept awake

i’ll go to the window for a smoke or two

and in the yellow light of the houses nearby

set against a smoky violet sky

try and find the inspiration to paint

for we all have love stories

so what’s your story stranger?

what do you see before your eyes

as you gaze at the clouds gathering

over our bleak mountainside?

lush fields in the floodplains

or do you see faraway seas?

or is it the air of some distant

mountain that you breathe?

because, though foreign to my ear

it cannot be but that melancholy tune

takes you to a sweetheart faraway

whom you cannot meet too soon

each with reasons of their own

we lie alone, quietly thus

in the same room, all three of us

me on the bed with my face

to the wall, wondering if you’re asleep,

on the floor, and my cat beneath

the bed on my dusty cloth suitcase

all breathing shallow, quietly thus

in the same room, all three of us

all lying still for appearances’ sake

all three probably awake

takes one to know one/ being horrible

i don’t believe people like me

exist

i don’t believe people like me

unless they want to sleep with me

so who’s next?

my beautiful

i remember you

like those birds of the water

the graceful jacanas

the elegant cranes

i remember how the pattering

drops brought forth laughter

such ecstatic joy

whenever it rained

willing death

i sit by the roadside and watch the milling horde

i sit on a stone lower than the raised road

and everything is suddenly surreally true

against a clear winter sky bright blue

i’ve sat by the roadside at many a busy intersection

staring at a single pebble with the utmost concentration

willing it to ricochet from under a speeding car’s tyre

and instantly leave me ready for the pyre

the only slight cause for unease in the arrangements

is the thought of dying amongst complete strangers

the gaudy scene, i wonder why it bothers me

the way they’d stand apart and stare down at my body

a vain ode to loneliness

"an old man who couldn’t read, once devoutly

cared for a precious scroll in his possession

and died hoping for someone who’d know to come by and

– with just the smallest gesture – acknowledge his passion"

the end of the day

is when i’m loneliest, by far

just before i step into the shower

facing the mirror after a smoke

the bidi done - too quickly

the smoke gone and with it

the veneer of laughing dignity

i’m left standing alone

shorn of all devices and pretense

and a dreariness comes over me

- is that what you called weltschmerz?
maybe not, let me
claim this as a personal curse

selfishly -
soaking in like the cold

up from the floor

through the soles of my feet

my feet that you once found exquisite

(misshapen though they look)

they’re pretty good for running

a metatarsal hurts, but that’s only temporary

through my calves, that you once said you adored

nowadays i’m only aware of them when i run a lot

or when i’m frozen over the sink, my whole body taut

bent forward, head against the mirror

eyes shut tight, on tiptoe

the calves like knots on a thick rope

to the bony front of the pelvic girdle

where the thigh meets the torso

at the little vein that’d sometimes show

where you’d always linger

with a toe or a finger

and sometimes your lips

before leisurely moving on, to my ribs

and the intercostals,

until my limp

hands begin to ache

my veined hands, calloused, baked

you said they fascinated you - unless of lied -

because with equal ease they could

both sketch and climb

and the lean sloping shoulders that throw

the trapezius up, (which you’d liken to a nice hold)

stoop even further, leaving more

than ever pronounced

my wretched collar bones

i’m loneliest of all

at the end of the day

when my reflection stares at a body

that feels like a collage haphazard shoddy

of various people’s whims and desires

held together somehow

once cherished, probably

forgotten by now 

stupid fucking day

it started out bad, with a melancholic morning

drifting in on grey clouds

the dog wagged its tail at the passing women laconically

and they walked past the house

the reprints were late

really late

so i had to

go for a smoke to kill time. had to

and i messed up three games of sudoku

and you realize they’re messed up only right at the end

like love

and then they were messed up

the colours all wrong

the reprints

nobody would give

the little old guy with the twisted legs

and screwed up eyes

a lift

to just a little way down the road

did he have friends? family? there? a wife?

and when he finally did get the lift

you should’ve seen him struggling onto the back of that bike

the galleries obviously didn’t want them

they wouldn’t even if the colours weren’t so off

we’re not taking any new artists

was the politest response

no space

maybe later

put in a requisition

make a submission

the committee will decide

whatever

they were all nos

obviously

the woman unconsciously touched her lips in that gesture

when your foot touches someone

when she brushed past the sleeping dog

then the guy tried to stamp it away

some people just don’t get dogs

and he had only one good eye

the dog

forget the traffic

it was worse than usual

people overtaking me just to cut me off

or stop short

and then the chain came off

as i was racing past a bus

on a flyover

the only person dressed like me

all day

was the mad woman at the red light

and now the stupid fucking pomeranian

won’t shut up when it knows that it’s just tied up all day

and ignored

it won’t stop jumping in place

jingling it’s stupid fucking chain

while she talks to someone at the gate

sit still stupid dog

this world is just not for twisted-legged little old guys

struggling artists

and stupid fucking poms

christmas morning

i had another cigarette

while you had a bath

and then we had breakfast

of sausages in halves

amidst the to and fro

the whole world is moving

some into the mountains with rucksacks and tents and hiking boots

others into the wilderness of cities for money, tearing at their roots

if you’ve packed up and left once, what’s to stop you from doing it again?

when right there stands the bicycle, or there the bus, the daily train?

but aren’t you tired of it all?

irked now by this insatiable desire to be free?

for there’s nowhere you’re going, nowhere that you have to be

how long can you go on moving like that? go on running, how long

when there is nowhere, nowhere that you belong?