4 August, 2014: Sit with me

Will you hear

what I ask of you?

Just sit with me

at the edge of this road

and watch all these people

 - the heartbreakers and the heartbroken -

let's watch them pass by. 

Love is a Laserquest: To You

Do you still feel younger than you thought you would be by now

    Or darling have you started feeling old yet?

When was it, that you figured you had to be this great, this tired, this ornery?

When was it that you decided that being lonely would give your ambition a jet-pack,

And how did you think, love, that no one would see through that carefully cultivated image?

     Do you look in the mirror to remind yourself your there
Or has somebody's goodnight kisses got that covered? 

Was it when you decided to save others, that you decided you didn't need any saving yourself?

Did you get jaded with all your great loves chipping away  pieces of you?

All of them, constantly asking for so much, that you forgot what receiving your share tasted like.

I can't think of anything to dream about

I can't find anywhere to hide

When did people start treating you with no heat, no care, no mind?

Did you feel entitled to it? Or did your cowardice creep in, unbeknownst to you?

For you had to be the champion of cowards to let this life decay you so. 

When I am pipe and slippers and rocking chair

Singing dreadful songs about summer

How could you have given yourself away to grief, to pity, to hopelessness so easily?

So much so, that you feel that blinking your eyes to softly lie would change my mind -

About revering you, about saving you, about loving you.

I'll never pretend that you were just some lover

To My Broken, Drunk Heart

My scruffy radio played Bach

(Misery, after all, needs a background score)

He had always been great at sales talk,

Isn't the customer responsible for the blood and gore?

I wish I could say that he had - eyes like sin,

The Physique of a rugged warrior and the words of Yeats.

He didn't. He wrote love notes to Java, had an affair with the Recycle bin

And - Those were pretty much all of his feats.

And yet the heart craved. And yet, the heart broke.

You can hear the green monster, as he picks up his hammer to bash.

Do you want to see the pieces of me in a Baroque?

Care for a kaleidoscope, to see my system crash?

Oh, let me be dramatic. Let me cry and have the booze.

Rejection has never been an associate, let me be rude.

For I fell for the boring, the beautiful and the damned flooze,

And he left me, so let my broken heart brood.

17 July, 2014

I hope you've had the summer all to yourself

Have the arid winds dried all your tears?

For here comes the moribund Monsoon,

Whispering you needn't hide them any more.

Us

You 
And I
I and you
And this swirling vortex of 

Stay, Please?

Uncertain love and Unkempt lust,
Will consume everything,
Anything -

Including us

I'll Miss You: 23 June, 2014

I am going to miss this. And that.
Passionate, esoteric arguments on Mangoes.
Speaking in Hindi. Bollywood songs. Shah Rukh Khan.
Complaining about the heat, the cold, the rain, the government.
The empowering Delhi Metro. The hateful, hopeless autowallas.
Silly radio shows. Irrational and argumentative family.
Asking Dad for money. Charming Ma into buying me new shoes.
UPSE toppers. The forty minute bus ride to school.
Books that were loved and tended. Pages that call out to be touched.
Dirt-Cheap Manipedi. 100 meter Vault jumps with a safety net.
Knowing the best places to hide.
Knowing that someone will always find you.
Home, sweet home.

She Will Be Loved

I drove for miles and miles and wound up at your door

Something needs to be said about familiarity. The necessary, decadent evil of change.
And longing. For home - the one we leave and the one we seek
For love - fathomless and unpredictable.
And their troubled love child, Doubt.
Persistent, Nagging, Hopeless doubts.

I've had you so many times but somehow I want more

The thing is, you can escape home. Make excuses to distance yourself.
Call them valiant choices, if you will.
Love, too, can be ignored. And if you really put your heart to it,
You can ignore its reverberations.
And you'll be impermeable, indestructible, infallible. Almost.

Tap on my window, Knock on my door

That's the thing about doubts. You can't run from them.
They don't look for your convenience.
They creep in, stealthily breaking your fortress.
Exploiting every vulnerability and poking holes
In places you thought were perfectly safe.

Look for the girl with the broken smile

So you can hide from them. The futility of it will amuse you.
Or you can bring them in for a buffet, let them devour your kingdom.
While you guiltily look at the remnants of yourself in a broken mirror.
Believe me when I say that we all pay our debts. Wouldn't you rather
stab Doubt in the belly? And stop this endless running. This endless trembling.

Do you want to stay a while?