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?