Dramatis Personae

Creature of Darkness

2008-01-19T19:52:00.000-08:00

There, that is my darkness

Solitude that I call my own
Yet so naively I gave it to her
Like an undaunted, discarded breath;
A fearless prayer.

In here I hide
In the sanctuary of the obscure
In my cocoon, I sense the impulsion.

No, there is no solace
No undoing that tears her open.
To have selfishly yearned,
To have abandoned myself to wanton lust ,
I feel the faithful sweetness of emancipation overflow my lungs

There, there in my darkness
Inside my bloodless dwelling
Are my own melancholy madness and unfounded sensations.

This is where I will rediscover her
Within her ancient eyes
This is where she will return when the twilight wanes
When her teardrops douse me in insatiable flames

This, here in my darkness….

Desire

2006-05-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

Last monsoon,
when the rain washed into my windows
and touched my fingertips....
I found you waiting in the yard,
You stood silent in the downpour,
rain-drenched ,
Your silhouette against the crimson of the horizon....
and your smile spread across the sky
over the clouds.

Rain drops trickled down your face
on your cheeks
down to your neck and lost themselves.....
As I sank helplessly
in the depths of your eyes
I heard you laugh...
and it rang through me
like the sound of ankle bells .
I watched you ....
I watched you from spaces apart
from the universe unbound...
and then you held my hand..
and kissed me .....

Dawn broke into my room
through the foliage of the trees
and lit up the dark corners
I wanted your company,
in the light and in the loneliness.....
That morning I learnt the meaning of desire
of madness , of selfish love
and you .....

I found you again
standing in the yard, silent,
your smile spread across the sky.....

Photograph by: Saurav Mitra
http://web.syr.edu/~samitra

Voices.......

2006-05-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

Have you heard the voices....?
the voices from the deep...
the voices that call my name .
They speak of unforgiven pasts,
of lights and of darknesses that I have lived in...
They come from millennia apart and spaces below....
Those voices haunt me
they spill out in the open like blood off a gaping wound...

On empty evenings when I sit in solitude
in the silences of the time
the voices disturb my peace
they scream like shattering glasses,
like murdered men....
The river bed is harsh and unfriendly
emotions sink in them....
in my lonely room , through the darkness
the distant voices come calling....

My melancholy rebels tonight
the voices ask me to break the chains....
they sing songs of faith and lust
In the morning when sun beams force though my windows
I hear the voices again
they never leave,
they never die,
they are eternal voices........

Me.....

2006-05-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

…….When I look into the mirror and aimlessly gaze at my reflection, I recognize the degree of change that I have been through. On the little table by the side of my bed stands a framed photograph of myself, smiling at everybody from beneath a dusty glass. Although it’s my photograph, the person in this photo and I have almost nothing in common.
But I do not regret the fact. Everything changes. Everything that was so solid and real yesterday is helplessly vaporized amidst more recent preoccupations today. That is the law.
While traveling by the subway, I see the monotony of the passengers seated like puppets on a shelf and I suddenly start craving for changes, for new experiences, for new incidents; for any sort of alteration of the familiar.
Sometimes while walking down the street I imagine myself as a tourist to my own city. I like discovering all the same things all over again. This helps to ease out the painful sameness of it all and also to savor the pleasures of discovery afresh.
I have been struggling throughout my school years to be what I wanted to be, got myself loads of certificates , prizes ,awards medals and thought I had almost made it to utopia ; but I was so wrong . They are better off stacked up in my closet than be a part of my life.
What I really need of life is still a brilliant void.
When she heard about my pointless affinity towards changes, my mother once said to me that I should keep a sign out side my room saying ‘Changes welcome’. Maybe she was right!
I am scared of being burnt out like an over-used choke coil by the time I am twenty. I want to carry on and never stop. The world is too much of a beautiful place to just give up and go gently into the night. My dad once told me that I must keep going even if everything goes wrong. So I decided to carry on no matter what.
Luckily other than a few blizzards there weren’t many rainy days in my life.
I guess I will always carry on. I want to develop myself , read all the best books , meet all the best people and learn from them the best ways of living which is why I want to learn more and more and make a man out of myself.
I have always accepted adversity and never repented for the predicament I found myself in. Because there’s no use .Instead it its better to plan a way out of it .Everything is a part of some bigger change and, as I said before, changes are always welcome.
I know that situations are not always conducive to your desires. But I have more than a wish—I have a will. I only need that big opportunity to prove my potential.
I guess one of the few things that I have in common with my photograph is the smile that looks so much better without the change……….

Meeting the Father....(experiment)

2006-05-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

Is there a light ?
A glimmer of hope ......there in the field
Its getting cold....
Do you see the light?

Asked the lost soldier to the man,
sitting on the thick root of the tree
Caped from the head he had a daunting presence ....
But the soldier had seen too much of death .....he didn't care

You are young and strong.....said the man,
like my son used to be
he left for the war and never returned
he has been gone for years ...maybe long dead....

I see no light and i know not what you see.....
To the west there is the bunker
and this road leads to the encampment....
And the rest of the roads lead nowhere

The soldier found a familiarity
in the broken voice of the man
by shocked was he by his nonchalance at his son's Death..
Can you spare me some water then , said the soldier

Of course i would ...........said the man
but i have none you see
my insides are dry like the parched lands of my village....
but the all water is now lost..
there was a stream to the west but......

No, don't....said the soldier
we poisoned the waters of that stream ....
to drive the enemy out of the woods
if you drink you only court death....

I know .....said the caped man
my younger son drank from there .....
he coughed and panted and called his mother before falling still..
I buried him in the yard a while ago...

The soldier stood silent at this
and hung his head in shame ...
as if he had been the murderer
of the child who had nothing to do with their war......

Tell me old man....said the soldier
after hours of silences
do you have food in your house
has your wife cooked supper

I wish I could....said the man
Give you some food
for feed the hungry we must
but alas! friend i have none that i might spare

For at dawn today
the soldiers came and burnt my village and fields
they ravaged my wife and killed her too
and took my daughter with them

I buried them all
This morning
and now my friend I am tired ....
of shovelling earth and digging graves
and so i recline here in the shadows.....

Saying this the caped man
looked at the soldier in his eye.....
said he........ sir...I remember not
but i have seen you somewhere

The soldier stood in his silence
and wiped off the camouflage
and underneath the colors of war
stood the man's son, long dead......

Necropolis Anthems : Songs of the Dead

2006-05-08T11:15:00.000-07:00

Song 1: Anti-thesis

OutCast am I
From the silence of the Night
The past comes calling with venomous might
Derelict abjection
tattered emotion
withering away
in a blasphemous direction

Are you with me?
as I torture your soul....
Are you with me?
Reach for the controversial goal....
Are you with me?
As we look through the bullethole
Are you with me?
Till Death do us apart.....

Sarcasm of the body ,
Mockery of the mind
Death to delusion
So hard to find?
Vitality seeping out of me
no one sings the songs of glee
electric conciousness
leaves you restless......

Are you with me?
as I torture your soul....
Are you with me?
Reach for the controversial goal....
Are you with me?
As we look through the bullethole
Are you with me?
Till Death do us apart.....

The fire rages on the shadowy shores
Civilization crawls on all fours.....
Chances lost , chances wasted
darkness is where they all had waited
Now it is to darkness that we all return....
The hour has come
for some devilish fun....

Are you with me?
as I torture your soul....
Are you with me?
Reach for the controversial goal....
Are you with me?
As we look through the bullethole
Are you with me?
Till Death do us apart.....

My surreal......

2006-05-08T01:29:00.000-07:00

Life and loneliness merges into a single strand of existence and accumulates beneath the sodium vapor street lights like rust on forgotten swords….
I wait in the shadows where the horizon has spilled onto the vast oceans of shelved feelings. At the corner of my room a bottle of thoughts rolls from side to side.
Outside, the sand storm rages still.....as it had been.....for five thousand years. What is it that separates life from death, joy from sorrow, the happy from the sad.....I keep asking myself. But the mountains don't echo the answer back at me. The river that used to flow down my bed has dried up long ago, the debris of the sunken beliefs lie there like ancient carcasses.The storm grows stronger…."Are you smiling at me?" I shout the question out to the silhouette under the street lamps.
She replies in a voice that sounds of a thousand ankle bells on my empty consciousness .“Your mind has ripped apart and your thoughts are all over the streets!" I hear the laughter again and it echoes down the empty hallway.
I try not to look into those ocean blue eyes as I pull myself back in place but the chains of her fragrance bind me to them. The storm rages on for two hundred more years as I stand there in the shadows watching her. She never ceases to smile......I do not even notice when the darkness gives way and my refuge reveals.....She stretches her hand through the mist and takes mine, mercilessly drowning me in the Deep Ocean of her eyes.

"Why..." I could only whisper....but her wings have stretched out in flight and I am left on the beaches of the earth where surges of intoxicating emotions wash on to my soul.

The Pyre of life........

2006-05-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

When you fight monsters , you must take care lest you become one
-anonymous

Deep in the vale of wasted dreams
a chasm of undaunted rebellions ran....
humming the saga in hindered refrains,
of one malicious decaying clan.

The silence of the night waited in the forest
where the unsightly bodies of obscure armies rest....

He who wastes in the rivers of fire,
he who knew , the consequences would be dire
shall forever in his vile heart repent
that he never , to the plea, his ears had lent.

The pleas of the mother echos through the dusk
and the necropolis awakes with a mammoth task

The smouldering pyres sang the ballad of the dead
and the memoirs of a battle , unforgiven, did fade.

The hearts of men are easily seduced
to dust their lives are easily reduced
Many had fallen before their fate
withering leaves for the winds to rake.

The demise of Humanity did prove the rest
When the soldiers of the wilderness stabbed the newborn's chest.........

Sire!

2006-05-06T07:07:00.000-07:00

My father and I have had a strange relationship.....At the beginning ,when I started discovering the world holding on to his thumb , he was this man from another world...the super human being who lead me into all challenges that the fresh world around me had to offer.
When he set off to work , I imagined he went on an adventure of sorts......

To a boy , his father is his gateway into manhood. A Razor wielding man with a strong voice ...that of command when chastising , of care when loving, of submission when listening to 'demands' for 'That red bicycle' or 'that action figure'.......the voice of a father.

But then everything changes......thats the law....the wind brushes your face and when you look back .....its a storm.

It soured....it all became an insipid mass of bundled emotions. Words that stopped at the mouth...never being able to say what we wanted to say....
Ice cold glances and greetings were all that we started living with.....
He was wholly uninterested in what I had to say and so was I......with what he had to say......I disappointed him, it seemed , with my very existence....

The finger that taught me to walk , today points at me....

If i could i would have said....
"o Sire , your lad is now a man...." ........if i could.........

Act I .....of darkness

2006-05-06T03:51:00.000-07:00

"Blogging is a good idea" that's what she said....the dusky lady at the back of the bus.

The thread-bare streets of Calcutta hung their faces in the frosted silence of the night. The pale yellow circles of sodium vapour street lamps lining the way for the emptiness to walk on...
It was 11:45 pm by my watch and the slumbering universe around me smelled of fatigue.
Another bright day dimmed out and slipped unnoticed into the obvilion.
The bus ambled along the empty streets and came to minor halts at pot-holes , street dogs drunkards and other creatures of darkness. The dusty bright lamps inside cut through the otherwise seamless darkness of its nether interiors.

Five pairs of lungs breathed the warm air part mixed with green house gases responsible for the destruction of the earth....The Driver, the half asleep ticket collecter , the old man with an obscure face , myself and the lady......yes! the dusky lady at the back of the bus......

I turned back from my seat sometimes to look at her face as it lit up and darkened time and again in the light of every passing street lamp....just like an insomniac switches his bed lamp on and off to hasten the passing of the night.
Her hair sparkled everytime the lights passed by....I wondered....what she might be looking at and looked out myself....all i could see was the semi-lit windows that opened to the void.....

Courage piling up until it was too heavy to carry.....i got up from my seat and walked towards her.
When you expect the cold glance , i guess a warm smile only makes you suspicious....yet i wasted no time in smiling back and sat down beside her.....her shampoo fragrance clutching onto each of my veins like an octopus on its prey...
the lock gates were opened ....we talked until the ice broke into water and the water simmered in the warmth.....
We talked and left the tick of the watches behind us......
And then like shattering glass against concrete wall , the collecter shouted out the name of my stop....

I got up and walked to the door....and left her smiling where i found her.......the dusky lady at the back of the Bus.