And how many languages would you need after all

...if you haven't said everything that you wanted to say
for fear of being misunderstood?

With

I passed by the same places we drove past together,
The same song rising and welling up inside me,
The same tune that greeted me on the doorstep
of a lonely hart island hotel,
The same words that lifted me up
above the alpine air,
Now overwritten by memories gone sour -

an echo of something
that used to be divine:
a song that is ruined
for no reason or rhyme.

I like purple nailpolish on my toes

No Ser

No soy poeta.
Soy solo una viajera paseando
por sus pensamientos
en los barcos de estas paginas.



* for the "linguistically challenged" :)

Not To Be
"I am not a poet.
I'm only a traveller
passing by her thoughts
in boats made of these pages"

Moonflowers

Se Souvenir des Belles Choses

Feliz Año a Ti

Espero el fin de un año
como un cesto de doce uvas amargos
que no puedo tragar.

Quizas el proxímo
va a darme un poco del zumo
con todo su sabor.

Smoke

Thirteen times the dreams came to me like ghosts
Riding the waves of each episode,
Leaving ghoulish trails inside my head
until only sleep could relieve me of their stench,
of their ugly melancholic clouds:
clouds like bracken smoke,
like the heathen, putrid, gnawing smoke
That refuses to be shaken out of your coat
the day after you've returned from your night of drink
a night on some or the other cataclysmic brink.

That sinking feeling

As if it weren't already so damn tough
to keep these things together
in one place behind a straight face,
this space is losing trace
of any semblance of who I used to be
or the thoughts I used to see.

Poet-ing and Picture-ing

I use words to describe thoughts and things
instead of thoughts and things to describe the words I feel

If I could play with pictures to produce picturesque prose
I suppose I would make a little more sense

Silver Leaf Curtains 2

These silver leaf curtains
they hold a candle to my thoughts
fluttering in the rainy breeze
incandescent through the grainy trees...

Silver leaf curtains

Rendering...

That Fresh Feeling

" Birds singing a song
Old paint is peeling
This is that fresh
That fresh feeling

Words can't be that strong
My heart is reeling
This is that fresh
That fresh feeling" *

I been soooo distracted the last few days, but I woke up this morning and everything was clean and fresh and new and happy :)

Here's right back atcha Mr. E!!
















* Check out the full lyrics to this song by the Eels here

The Deam of the Rain Swept

The stupor of the wind swept
rain swept
eyes laced with lethargic gold
and silver drops in shining lights
suspended
in verdant window frames
bursting at the seams
with dreams
and a day's worth of cinematic haze:
the dregs of an imagination
put out to graze.

The day the sun stands still

The solstice orbs are hidden in the clouds somewhere.

This summer day looks still and rainy -
insubordinately grey -
as if to protest our forgetfulness:
trivial memories
that seem to have let slip past
the magnanimity of Osiris' magnificent sun
as it rises above the pyramids at dawn
flooding the Nile's banks,
drawing shadow snakes on antipodal stepping stones
and bringing fire to Midsummer lawns.


At Uttarayan we flew kites and ate jaggery above the streets of the city;

Today the sun is netherworld bound,
the nights will - instead - move on.


(*) to know more about the summer solstice follow this orbit

24 at 22

Four and twenty times today
I've counted seconds in the day
Four and twenty times these things, the thoughts
(the damned juggernauts)
stood up and then just dribbled off.

Two and twenty times I said
I'd wait for the tide to change,
but sixteen hours and twelve minutes later
everything that had come in through that window pane
had sighed and swung and left.

Dreaming of Dehra Dun

Back to simpler things

The Kiss

I wrote this on the steps of the Schloss Belvedere in Vienna after seeing The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. It's one of my favourite paintings.

...I think I just sat in front of the painting for about 30 mins in complete awe of it

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt
1907-08
Oil and gold on canvas 180 x 180 cm
Österreichische Galerie, Vienna

Conflict

A drawing of someone I saw on the Paris metro...this Arab looking man, carrying notebooks titled "Identity" wearing a map of the world on his red shirt and another file stickered "I Love Palestine"...the sight struck me

It shouldn't be odd, but it was. When you're assaulted by all the irony at one go, its difficult what to make of it right away

.

.

re-connaître: to know again

Sometimes it's important to go back to places to see either how much they've changed or how much you've changed since you were there last.


Panjim is one of those places that seems to stay the same no matter what happens to the rest of the world. Here's two pictures of one of my favourite spots in the world. I love the purple and chrome yellow of this building. It just looks so warm and sunny and well...nice


The first one is from Feb 2006 and the second just last week

Parting and all that...

I've heard it said that you never know how much you're loved until you're with the people who gather to say goodbye at your farewell...

Caught

If I could code these verses in my head
they'd speak of love
sing of hate
and regret the things I wish I hadn't done.
but the words have broken, crumbled
under the weight of a million thoughts ;
Tomorrow will be another day
in between these moments caught.

4 Fridays Ago

Cinnamon smells, my girls!

Cinnamon smells and catwalk twirls,
talk of dreams and dusty, foolish spells
We sit in earnest
conversing with our silly, honest selves
As if time hasn't passed us by,
As if these pitchers daren't leave us dry

I wandered lonely...

Floating people
living temporary lives,
in an imaginary sandcastle
the highest in the sky;
you wonder aloud
at the fate of the clouds
that wander in over the dunes
(the vales and the hills)
vapourise and vanish
in the dust of the crowds
gathering at shopping mall cash tills.

If this is a life
and these are the days
then I'm lost like rain in the sandtraps;
Tomorrow's arrived
and I aint gonna be here
so let's all wear our sun shades
and smile for it.


*I'm goin home for good!

Linger

I stay longer in the minutes of each day
than time will forgive me for.

These thoughts have lost their ways
in the indiscriminate brambles of my mind
and I linger here undecided.

Slowly


the springs unwind

après le soir/la soireé

Even at this hour
the world is incomplete

I've seen today,
and tomorrow:
neither resemble what could have been
or the hours you claim you've seen.

the pursuit of happiness

happiness is about the simple things

like silence,
or a conversation
a hug,
or a glass of magic

not that you would understand:

you think all of life should be compressed to your shades of black and white
on your terms
in your world.

blank sheets of paper scare me too
like blank soundscapes scare you sometimes
but
even crayons make their squeaky marks on empty moments.
ever try fulfilling them in between the lines before?

Mended Meanings

(and so we've defined our spaces:
you to yours,
each to each)

These moments are meaningless
for all the vacuums they deign to conceal:

you have your indecisions,
~ me ~
my indistinctions,

and between us,
this promise has broken the seal.

Contemplating

I left my watercolours in another land,
my senses when I lost the plans
today has come and gone again,
tomorrow might be a darker pane
in the window of all that's been
and all that could have kept me sane.

Long lost memories

"Viva forever, I'll be waiting
Everlasting, like the sun
Live forever,
For the moment
Ever searching for the one

Hasta Mañana."


* Old songs from younger days

Neruda on the mind

"El futuro es espacio,
espacio color de tierra,
color de nube,
color de agua, de aire,
espacio negro para muchos sueños
espacio blanco para toda la nieva,
para toda la musica."

- de La Memorial de Isla Negra, Pablo Neruda



*for a translation, you're gonna have to ask :)

Away

Always a better place to go away to:

Like home instead of here

Like the shelter of your arms
instead of the edge of this sofa

Like the crest of these waves
or the vibe of those beats

Like the slow tandem dance of strangers
and the cosy, knowing silences of friendly songsters.

Last Lines

Walk away now
before the call of the muezzin
leads you away
into the nostalgic depths
of time and tide:

floating
in the stagnant shade
of a sun-dappled stage:
home to the squirrels by day
and lost dreams by night.

Walk away now
before the brickwork crumbles
and lays bare the futility
of plan and method -

rejoicing instead,
in the abandon of the winds
that carry the call to prayer
unto distant lands
over the crests of these distant dreams.

Walk away now
from the malarial haze
and water gone stale;

Walk away now
from these insular clouds
of comfortable lazy days:
the luxury of irresponsible greys .



* These words were written in the NID Amphitheatre on the 15th of Sep, 2006.

The place always held a special significance for me: the shade of those trees was often my secret place when I needed to unravel. I've spent many winter afternoons sitting there after lunch with a piece of Bournville melting in my mouth but the two times I remember it most are on my first day in NID in 1st year and the first time I ever visited the campus in 2001 long before I joined it. It just became my own little sacred space after that.

The call to prayer however, was and still is a part of my daily routine: something that floats in and out of my subconscious when I least expect it to. The day I was leaving NID as a student soon after my final jury, I sat there for about half an hour when these thoughts came to me in the midst of one of these summons.

It was time then to move on to some else.

Here and now, I think - I hope - was that something.

Peek-a-Blue

The dome over the Persia Court at Ibn Batuttah Mall, Dubai.

(This mall is really somethin else!)

Republic Day Blues

Arial Underbellies

In every other place I come to,
I sit below the flight path of departing planes,
guessing games,
predicting names,

getting carried away

by the fantastical make-believe of
their contents' destinations,
travellers' tales
and the thought
of transit spaces miles above the earth.

And then I imagine myself inside these arial underbellies
wondering that
(beaming out of an airplane window)
the world always looks like a more tolerable place.


Entre deux endroits
it's easier to orient oneself to navigable maps,
avoid ideological mishaps
and leave behind the thinking hats
that come from knowing too much.

Rainy Tuesday, Another View

The building behind this mosque is the complex where I live. It is, in fact, built on top of the oldest mall in the entire Gulf region (some claim to fame that!) called Al Ghurair City. It is a city in many ways and there are entire weeks when Dad doesn't leave the complex. His office is in the next wing and we get everything we need and everything we want from the shops downstairs.

Talk about self sufficient!

The previous post (Another Blue) is a collage of the view from the window where I sit and work on my comp. There are many other blues too... you'll see them here soon.

Another Blue

Nightfall

In the urban sprawl
Of bling, glass and concrete
scintillating lights,
and floodlit superhighways,

The solemn call to prayer.

:the call of the muezzin
asking you to walk away from it all,

To walk away now
Before the glint off the shards
leads you away
from the sacred dunes of the desert -

the whistling dunes of sacred sands.

Maxims to live by

"Live long.
Love fast.
Drink slow."

You have it all figured out.

So how come I don't?

Desert Dunes

Landing at a new crossroads,
Over the desert dunes of empty roads
The last year has been lost in a flurry
of confusions,
apologies,
excesses,
resolutions for new beginnings,
hopes for happy endings.

Would you understand me
If I asked for a little space
- a little place
where I don't always need to explain myself
where I can forgive myself before I defy you again?

This is me too:
Floating above the desert.

Can you see the horizon melt into the sand?