Smoky Room, Yellow Light, Persistent Desires

This one. Ash on my fingertips, dribble of scotch from the corner of my lips. My sin, my soul. Sole. One step ahead of the fall. Him, honey? Tip of the tongue, flick of desire, taste of sugar traced behind the pucker of your lips. A world of delight inside your mouth. This, baby, baby? A tiptoe, a tuck of the  nose under your chin. You, upright, top of your head seven inches away. Me, at dawn, in the crevice of your arms, we lie down, nose to nose. At sunrise, asleep, the length of a sigh separates our cheeks.  A nest of limbs, the length of our reach stretch on to trap the other.  This one, a name known only from backlit screens. This one, under the sheets a body I can own. Mine. What I can reach for. Exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged imagined. Look, this one: entangled, torn.

**Referencing Nabokov’s Lolita for my own delusions. 

A Roadblock of Sorts

The poems, they come and go.

Or they stay just an inch away from the gutter waiting to be picked up. One poses beneath the broken streetlight. Another melts inside an unplugged fridge. One more gathers molds among a row of old shoes. The other hides under a blanket of fallen leaves.

Poke at it till your pen bleeds. It pokes you back so you can’t sleep.

The Things That The City Tells Us

Inside the train, the bodies are still. Everyone is rushing home, hoping to catch what everybody else will be watching on TV. Strangers avoid each other’s stares, thinking the same thoughts. Outside the tinted windows, large squares of imposed ideals are lit brightly. The same brand of age-defying cream sits inside an old woman’s plastic bag. The girl beside her wears the very pair of shoes that overlook the highway. She is thinking of the man in the picture. He smiles at her through the camera lens and poses for the rest of the world.

The train speeds past. Nobody takes note yet they all remember. The brand names go on the shopping lists, usually never tried nor tested. They believe the ladies that smile and the hunks that stare. They hold the truths, the ones who can afford the size and height over everyone else. These are the things that the city tells us, we take it all in and believe.

In a moment, everyone is exactly where they should be, thinking exactly what they should, knowing just about enough of the rest of the world. Their thoughts are to themselves, like everybody else. The doors slide open to give way for people to move in and out. The train moves through the city. One path, back and forth, never-changing. The same view blurs past empty stares. Inside, everyone is still. 

i am not inspired. i am just going to force myself to churn out some words so as not to waste some empty minutes online.

 

apparently moments like this really exist. there is nothing that needs to be expressed yet you want so badly to make up something just to feel that you’re in touch with the craft. even my journal entries these past few days have become empty chronological accounts of daily activities. i make the pen meet the paper out of habit. nothing else. there is a bland air to the self these days. almost a kind of numbing. it is just that i am so afraid of losing the habit of writing again. although i shouldn’t be afraid because i should not lose that habit. but i guess it is a good thing to be afraid at times. shakes up the balance. keeps things in check. kinda drives you nuts too. makes you ask questions. makes you wanna read books. makes you wanna engage in conversations. never mind that most of the sane world would remark that these are things you need not say, need not ask, need not think, need not feel. but screw the rest of the planet. the need-nots need not be entertained.

i am not inspired. but the wonderful discovery here is that you can imagine being inspired. and then you will be.

 

lovely.

 

a few times before, i have stood over the edge of a building’s rooftop and stared at the ground several floors away from me. i would imagine myself taking one more step towards that fall. in a breath i would turn my back to the street and face the sky. i would be smiling, i’m sure, guessing at what precise moment my body would hit the pavement. the clouds would stare back at me and shift shapes. the light would be blinding, perhaps. i would be falling to make my way to that sky. and when my body shatters on hard earth, that’s when true flight begins. i imagine it now, it makes my insides turn and my hairs stand on end. the rush of the air is real.

there is no particular reason for this. no, i have no broken heart nor a stagnant career. i have quite a fulfilling life, i would say. it is not the end result that is death that i seek. it would be counter-productive. it is just the rush, the jump, the turn, the drop. it is  just utter curiosity for what it feels like to step over the edge and fall with utmost uncertainty. and fall without knowing when it will actually end. it must be quite a thrill. surely quite a thrill.

 

 

Emphasis on Recurrence

One right through the target. Bang.

Matchbox Maladies

the grayness of the morning and the cool drizzle conjures in me an excruciating desire to reach for that patch of your back hidden beneath your hair and run my fingers down to trace the line of your spine and find that crevice of your waist where my palm will rest and wait for your fingers to come and converge with mine

but you do not rest under these sheets with me

i have to be the one to go to you and place myself precisely at the curve of embrace your body opens for me on your bed

inside where you are, we exist to each other like comforts we cannot let go of, in this distance we are waiting for the other to express their longing hoping that one is not rejected, hoping for another night we chase to the break of dawn

we wake up in a…

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It Only Takes That One Precise Second You’ve Already Seen Before

I was watching a video about New York and on the 18th second I felt that inexplicable pang of a moment’s recurrence, so precise it hits you right at the center of your gut. The other day, the same blow struck me while our car turned from a church’s parking lot onto a street where the double-parked cars are covered with dust and fallen leaves. Shortly before the car made that turn, there was an encounter that I’ve been trying to wrap my head on. The universe plays funny games. The universe often changes the rules of the game just when you’ve wrapped your head around it.

There is no music to accompany this entry because my sister is asleep at the foot of my bed. No sentiment of an empty Saturday morning because it is a Tuesday and it will not be quite as empty as I hope the day would be since we are supposed to celebrate freedom of national proportions, no matter how fallacious it actually is. They say moments that recur, AKA de ja vu, are memories of a future one has already witnessed. Again, fallacious because how can one have memories of a future? Imagined futures, maybe. But then those shouldn’t be called memories, they are like streaks of clairvoyance. Some people believe that experiencing deja vu means that one is on the right track in life. One gets a glimpse of the future precisely because it is the path one must tread. I think there is no one right track. Moreover, I think one can actually define and make a track right if desired. Isn’t it strange how human beings associate the accuracy of a life’s course with a splitsecond of certainty yet the circumstances around it without due clarity? Uncanny, Freud would label it.

I mull over this because it has obstructed my original intention for blogging which is to talk about excruciating longing. Because now I am fixated with the idea that I may be experiencing the right kind of desire because the recent experience of a recurring moment is supposed to justify the predicament I find myself in. When the car turned from the church gates to the street, certainty hits me like an arrow to a bullseye. And yet, in as quick as the moment hits me, uncertainty washes over me like an Indian monsoon. Whatever. I’ll leave it to the wind and the drizzle of this gray morning. I’ll keep to my sheets and clench my fist under the pillow. Because when I turn to my side you will not be there. In another morning, maybe, you will be. But until then, I have nothing but arrows from the universe, hitting me in precise target points I never knew existed.

a friend was telling me this morning that the sense of longing is often brought about by  change in a routine that the person follows — weekend picnics, phone calls in the evening, waking up to a person holding your hand, a constant comfort throughout the day. so, to prevent one’s self from being thrown into a pit of nauseating longing, one must steer clear of routines that the self can grow too familiar with. do not slink into the safety of seemingly secure habits. find comfort in the uncertain.