Jack and Jill

What would you like for your birthday?, asked he.
A divorce, 'joked' she.
He shoved her, 'playfully'.
She stumbled (upon reality?).

One was left with a broken heart.
And the other, a broken crown.

A Portrait of a daughter as the amateur Gardener

Are you one of those neo-impressionists,

Whose bold strokes and bright colours are

Defiantly applied on the mundane and intimate

with a dramatic air of personal tragedy?

Paint me the following room, with:

Blood thinners, IV, Dextrose, ICU bills, MRI reports,

Haemodialysis, O2 stat, drug resistance, sepsis,

respiratory arrest, Do Not Resuscitate (fashionably, DNR), cardio-respiratory failure.

Of course, it was only but natural for a part of me to become as irrecoverable (as you), (like the umbilical cord we shared), but,
There is another part that is
Hanging in a limbo, trapped in that inexplicable uncertainty of what-it-should-become but what-it-will-become, and what-it-could-have-been, in trying to cultivate your Garden,

That makes it difficult to accord a finality to the painting.

"He does not really teach one anything, but by being brought into his presence one becomes something." is what Wilde wrote about Christ as The Artist/a work of art.

And as with Christ, my life's events have also been recast in the light of before and after you.

M, I miss you. 
(Today is Mahalya)

"Post-"

blink and/or breathe
Complement with refreshing
bin-boxes  of stale e-mail
Because that is how we now, measure time
With narrowed views and broadened waistlines

She will bury brown coins with crowns
And wish corona crowns be coins
Instead,
They gave her a few Liberty
And some short lived sympathy.
Her eyes, too inflated for morning light
To ever wake up. Try as she might.
Too much make up, they sighed at the funeral
She lay dressed in a costume from some carnival
Wanting to die like an artist from brooklyn
Who could paint marvelous portraits of brick kiln
Lost in some warehouse in a bygone lane.
Where she claimed the world was too simple.
"Find another", said World, ever so humble.
And so from her sleep, she leaped
From the first, missing the second
And landing on the third, instead.
Repeat. In reverse order.
As the Planner patiently placed
circles in squares.

This is not on you,
Blame the System, that is who,
Said the erudite-looking Planner
"Oh, I'm the Executioner"
She explained.

I continue to be puzzled by what the prefix post- truly means. It remains one of those tools that can make any mediocre word sound insufferably abstruse. Oh well, I know What I know! This is one of my favourite songs from Paul Simon's Graceland Album. I don't think I can love that song enough. And I don't think I can love 2013 enough either. Thank you, amazing year.

The Bazaar

They sell shampoo bars
longer than relationships
You buy bargained promises
heavier than guilt
They sell knowledge
shallower than convexity
You buy enlightenment
darker than sunglasses
They sell conversations
warmer than hunger
You buy solitude
deeper than mines
They sell thoughts
emptier than brains
You buy airtickets
greener than inexperience

You sell mattresses
smaller than their dreams
They buy trends
hotter than red
You sell health
paler than porcelain
They buy bottled water
colder than your neighbours
You sell ideas
sharper than their tongues
They buy flattery
larger than your appetite
You sell expectations
taller than pint glasses (or shards)
They buy debts
deeper than sleep

What is the point, you ask
they say,
it is not a point
it is a black hole.

'Inspired' by e e cummings'  'may i feel said he', sort of. Listen to this.

When it is your turn

As clocks are wound and sundials are adjusted
As calendars are reviewed and days are crossed
As circles battle straight lines
I wish I am a boomerang
And not a satellite.
Happy to bounce back
Than be permanently set into orbit.

I have been away for months together and apologise to anyone who might, shockingly, still be keeping a tab on this space. I am done with a part of my life (I graduated, whoa!) that I shared with this blog. However, I shall try to keep alive this blog. I have also added hyperlinks to two wonderful songs, completely unrelated to the post but certainly worth a listen- Steven Strait's Boomerang and Guster's Satellite. Do listen to them!

Reverse Gear Speed Breaker

No matter what they say,
There is no 'back to square one',
There is no 'turning back the time machine'
Or stitches that don't show and
Scars that vanish (unless you use this*, I am told).
How else would one have
Created something called a
Jigsaw puzzle?

Here's to the New Year.

* Of course you are free to use an alternative.

Frost's Clarification

Of course it is wonderful to pick the road less travelled,
'Because it was grassy and wanted wear'

But where are your tickets?

So I try so hard to keep the rhythm of a train*

Location: outside Bellver Castell, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Dear Sprinter,

In your enthusiasm to not miss the train,
You didn't quite notice the things you trampled upon.

Yours truly,
A peeved tail

*From the Scrubs track, listen already! Jeremy Kay's 'Have It All'.

What Marla Daniels Said*

Location: The MRTS, Madras

Here, it never was about winning
As much as about survival, daily groceries and a bathroom.

Resurrecting the dead is still restrained to Hollywood.

The title is a reference to Season 1, Episode 2 of The Wire. In this Episode ('The Detail'), Lt. Cedric Daniels' wife Marla says- "You cannot lose if you do not play."

***

Mexico's updated drug-related death statistics is 34,612 in the last four years. In the Horn of Africa, "deaths are running at two per 10,000 adults or four per 10,000 children every day" as observed by The Economist. According to the Lancet Survey, there have been 601,027 violent deaths out of 654,965 excess deaths from March 2003 to June 2006 in Iraq. Hi Ho, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

Sophie's Choice

Berlin! as you can figure from the road signs

if doing this
were to translate as
not doing the other,
if it were as simple as that,
then my dear, i am afraid that
the human race would have been extinct,
out of boredom