Enfold me in a silver glow
A Villanelle

Enfold me in a silver glow

Tomorrow, yesterday and today

Hold me close when I am low.

Our time is short, don’t you know

We’ll fall like flowers on the way

Enfold me in a silver glow.

Tramp with me through ice and snow,

Or summery fields full of hay

Hold me close when I am low.

And, from the first cock crow

Drink from me, be blithe and gay

Enfold me in a silver glow.

Till cranky, withered and old we grow

And all we have is memories of May

Hold me close when I am low.

Shield me from life’s little blows

Today, tomorrow and yesterday

Enfold me in a silver glow

Hold me close when I am low.

AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP!!!

jagged, distorted images flash before the eye. sleep, visions, get thee gone.

the stripper, the ripper, the candlestick maker...

gangbanging on the narrowbarrel; off with you.

give me novocaine; get thee gone.

enduring love with justify

the alcopops that went over your tops.

screams of fruition.

that bind you and i.

flesh of my flesh and all that.

fizz and double sided knitting needles.

and dreams of sex in a field of violets.

it is a starry night but the bed is cold. three pillows crumpled under my head, the fourth crowning my tousled curls. soft white sheets under icy feet, releasing hidden vapours of tesco original washing powder.

this is it, i think. this is one of those making memories moments.

the laptop winks back confidentially at me. ym status is set to OI GOT A BLINKIN EDAIKE!!!

tumhe koi aur dekhe
to jalta he dil

unbidden his image comes to mind. i try to push the phantom out. no; you're not welcome right now; i need some sleep; i...i...

stop haunting me, dammit!

and i drift off into wonderland. tra la bloomin la.

chocolate kisses come to mind. the sandman and the mad man grapple.

they come to an impasse. i sleep; but i dream.

and wake. something digging into some part of my anatomy. sleep fugged brain refusing to respond. well the hallway's cold; the loo's gonna freeze yer arse; you best think dry and sleep.

push straps back onto shoulders.

was it a vision or a waking dream?
fled is that music
do i wake or sleep?

eyes shut. black inside and out.

and then skype rings.

oh for goodness sake, stop haunting me will ya!!!!!

badi mushkilo se fir
sambhalta he dil

no i can't let you off so easy.

remembering home...

walking down the road. Calcutta's roads. with a C A L and drop the friggin Ks. The Left front acting precursor to ekta bloody kapoor's k mania.

it rained last night; the potholes are filled; little grey puddles; a private swimming pool for every bloody crow the city breeds. splash, splish splosh, and someone rams their heavily shod foot through one; displacing the little corner of sky it had reflected.

exiting the train station. sol smiles and all the world is gay.

busy and bitter perhaps; not gay. not unless you count metsex man standing beside his boyfriend, pierced ears glinting silver. i count five studs. five studs, wasted on a man who aint never gonna sire anything.

bloody waste.

the heat, the heat. it slam dunks into my astonished face. i am not ready for this- i dont have my sunglasses on yet; no hanky at the ready, black office trousers letting sol's intrusive rays into my pale skin cells, sweat popping from every pore.

the earth sweats too. slowly releasing pheromone like vapours into the mucousy air.

her dampness reminds me of something.

i am suddenly reminded of my own femininity.

Every morning as I wake

And feel the swirling mists of morn

You are the first thing that I see.

And the last as well as I retire

And lay trembling in my rickety bed

Missing the velvet of your voice.

You are the stranger I fled from

Through all my childhood dreams

Creeping under the bed in fear.

United with me and my destiny

Tangled up in the skeins

Of my unromantic existence.

Perhaps you know me and mine

Quite as well as no one will

Sometimes that scares me too…

Deride me when I am drunk

Or eat a chocolate muffin too many

I might then agree that you are real.

Real. And not a djinn of the night

Haunting my consciousness

With your gleaming ebony skin.

Several ages of development have passed

And fairy stories are myths

And I am not a Cinderella.

But stewing softly in the hearth of my mind

With the ugly sisters of life about

Perhaps you may yet charm me…

But no, I will not idolize you

You have feet of clay as well

And I see you weeping in my dark…

And whispering memories of pain

That you and I would do well

To forget and efface.

Forget and efface. Can it be done?

But maybe we can stop looking back

And thumb Jim Porter in the eye.

tanhaiyaan aaj bhi hain aur kal bhi thi
fir aaj yeh akelapan kyun kaat raha he?

zindagi kal bhi yuhi chal rahi thi
fir aaj maut kyun haseen lagti he?

ye raat apni parchayi mere paas chod jaati he
subah ki dhoop bhi ise aag nahi laga pati

kagaz ki zindagi aur khoon ke phool
dhundhli si zindagi
aur...
aur kya?

grant me my frenzy.

"grant me an old man's frenzy
myself must i remake
till i am timon or lear
or that william blake
who beat upon the wall
till truth obeyed his call. "

frenzy to jump into the clear blue beyond...

"and singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest..."

to climb higher and higher, like a ball of fire.

i want it all. i will not be content with a mouthful of sky.

...

on the non impressionistic level- alan plater's play. only a matter of time.

hilarity combined with philosophy- history- a little bit of every -tory and -sophy.

the best laughter is the kind that provokes thought, like a springboard produces splashes and ripples.

i love the welsh!

dinner with david cobb and ken jones. THE haikuists and haibunists of britain.
i should have been overwhelmed- but i was not.
i should have been at my sparkling best- but i was not.

there is something about this country itself that overwhemls me. the people; the cultural contexts and the linguistic subtexts are alien to me; and conversatino with people i dont know scares the bloody hell out of me.

you feel judged. slid under a scanner and considered. like a piece of old haddock at the fishmarket. accepted- but nly just. not marginalised; but subtly patronised.

silence is the only defense.

this is not my land. these are not my people.

it is only living abroad that gives you this perspective. i was so bloody sure of myself back home; so damn secure in my place in the intelligentsia.

here i might as well be the ethiopian with little english and no grammar.

why; they ask; when i tell them that i hope to return home and work.

why not?

it is not a weakness; a refusal or an inability to adjust. coping and changing are different ball games altogether.

i can cope. i dont want to change.

even the rain is different. damn right.

its sucked all the creativity out of me. im too busy coping; adjusting to work; defeating the entire purpose of my being here.

work without hope draws nectar in a sieve.

but sieves by nature will sift it off. and all that will be left will be the dregs of my dreams; aspirations; hopes and all those other big and emotionally charged words.

life is not only about adjustment, change...surviving.

life is also meant for living, dammit.

fun in the sun and rain.

why cant you get that?

CAFFEINE ADDICT smiled and all the world was gay!

the vapours arose from the shiny cup
COFFEE! that makes the politician wise
and see through all things with half shut eyes...

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Sonnets from the Portuguese)

Happy, happy Valentine's Day S-.
With all my love.

Happy Valentine's, everyone.

recover post? i wish i could recover me.

why is it so hard to be your daughter? why the excesses of psychosis that damage all our lives?

its hard to let go of you; but its harder still to live here; alone; while you slowly kill yourself there- and trigger a chain reaction here.
you're killing me as well.

marriage. is it a joke to you? on and off...something to do for the lack of any other way to kill time?
i'm not ready to be manipulated like this- and yet...and yet..you manipulate me every damn second; every damn day of my life.

whats compassion and affection got to do with it?

you cant divorce emotion from action. you think you can right now.
i hope you cant do it.

it seeps through me slowly. whats your agenda anyhow?

i'm so tired of defending myself; my actions; my choices to you.

i'm tired of justifying his presence in my life..what do you want me to do- get rid of him?

i wish it were that easy.
i wish you were easier to manage.

what do i say to him anyhow...marry me or else?
else what, huh, dad?

you'll tie me down to someone else?
or throw me off the damn howrah bridge- i wudnt put it past you.

i give up.
you havent even left me achoice.

not you. not him.

no one.

very well then.

this I promise you

I will be there.

Always and forever.

I will be yours.

why are we all so angry?

you. me. the original rebel without a cause.

seems that anger at the unnatural order is the rule of the day.

and anger is so damn impotent.

God is born of an inherent necessity in the majority of the human race to believe that we are not mere accidents of evolution and that our being here has some purpose; most men need faith to ward off the fear that we are only another link in a mechanistic chain of evolution.

i guess we all wallow in shite. we love to immerse ourselves in it; we derive masochistic glee out of it; even in our misery we are supremely happy, because we know then for sure that we're alive and not yet part of the great ghostly chain of being in the beyond.

no, cheesecakes don't make you cry. but they don't hug you close and murmur be mine either.

raspberry flavoured gum doesnt blow you a bubble big enough to fly to the moon.

and bubblegum pink trainers cant make you achampion sprinter either.

i have now officially joined the ever swelling ranks of the girlie wurlies. with my colour coordinated pink shirt, socks, necklace & earrings, bag and trainers. all thats needed is hot pink knickers and ill be completely transformed into a big whorl of cotton candy.

you went xx at cell division time
and yet you pretend to be a man

no skirts for you;
i guess you 'wore the pants in your house'

high tops instead of heels.
er- balls of steel instead of breasts of silicone.

you wake. you work. you sit. you stare.
dark eyed with worry and an inherited insomnia.

you chopped up your tresses and all of your dresses
and give them to the altar of duty.

sitting in vinyl covered seats chewing pencil stubs
doing the algos; working out the math.
no phone- cause of his pacemaker
no noise because they sleep light.

no placements; because you're head nurse.
no life; just work and work.

happiness is a certain state of mind.
and you've said that time and time again.
are you? or aren't you then...

neutered on the edges of youth
vitality and virility
or is fecundity a better word?

every word you say slaps me in the face.
spit bullets of steel and bile.

the last time i saw you
that day i'll always remember
a muffled sigh as you
pluck

the hundreth grey hair off your dandruffed scalp.

slowly and silently the trees grow
watered and fed by the earth

a fragment.

i wish i was better.

at something.

sit by my fireside- dont mind the gas flames
let them flicker and lull you.
see my reality and hear my tale.

i'm not a writer- no, not me
i 'm too tiny to stand out in a crowd.

don't open my notebook, dont read that
poetry for now is dead.

i've filed away my confused ramblings
even archived, they hang heavy on my soul.

transpiration
like tears on my
window.

they failed, the haiku did
and something within me has died.

rejected and dejected
the I.

sporus, that thing of silk
that delicate white curd of asses milk?

flipped and flopped.

stonefaced and rigid
assembly line motions
humanoid faces covered with skin
wake up, for once, goddammit!

wake wake wake up mortal
dont break on the jagged cliffs of time
deep inhale- feel some air
for one sublime moment- live!

look at the sky above you mortal
and the flowers below

look at your palms, mortal
erase those goddamned lines
let all the poison flow free
unlock the pain inside
carve new lines out for yourself
gash them out with your teeth
for one glorious moment, FEEL
live like you've never dared

wake, wake, wake, mortal
dont break upon the cliffs of life.

spindrift on the sea
fish shine as if
freshly fried

the new year has seen a more somber, a more thoughtful me. a more, i would like to believe, at peace with myself me. oh no, that is not to say that i have turned into a zen zombie.

it is all a question of accepting oneself as one exists.

know thyself.

but knowing; accepting; understanding and embracing are different. each emotion has its own paradigm. and these keep shifting.

it took me forever to understand. and i am still working on - sorry to sound trite here- love.

sometimes i wish the voices in my head would just bloody shut up!

i do not know if my newly discovered affection for the haiku and haibun have anyhting to do with this- well- epiphany is too strong a word- but something near to it- or is it the reverse.

a quiet, more meditative outlook. i have never written so recklessly before- been so audacious, experimental. i have never been so in love with poetry.

funny that one leads to another- but then- everything in my life is a balance (of a sort) between contraries.

and as blake said, without contraries there is no progression.

i am the lamb, meditating in the bath.
i am the tiger, ripping open words and verse forms.
digging into the marrow of existence.

i am the babe; i the harlot.

the voice of innocence; the rasp of experience.

i am brilliant and jaded all at once.

i look. and look again.

know then thyself, presume not god to scan
the proper study of mankind is man...

oh no, again?

i have struggled all my writing life to avoid being put in a box
wrapped up neatly and packed off you might say
i rebelled against metre, i rebelled against rhyme
i even rebelled against writing in a line
but powers the great they have the final word
and a SONNET, good mama is what they decreed
that my mind should wrestle with
my brain turn to mush.
BUT audacious and wily as ever i was
i hem and i haw and i put in a clause
i'll write you a SONNET, good men, i say
but rhyme, no they won't, good men, no way
unmetered and rambly my lines will be
and then my SONNET will flow free.

there are cycles to life

bang on- there was the cliche.

look past the jaded ole surface. cycles and cycles within cycles. nested loops. A leads to B and C leads you right back to A. its all to do with coming full circle anyway.

sometimes i wonder if i was born with deja vu. or is it just the realisation that things have an inner movement- and will come right back gyral like to haunt you?

being accosted by whats past is ghostly, innit?

how much of your past can you hide-efface-forget then?

the lost time (and money) you invested on ships-that-pass-in-the-night relationships/flings/whatever...

the lost nights when you got home too drunk or stoned to remember who paid or who dropped you back or who sat on your lap? all your life you wonder whether eating chocolate out of someones mouth was an x rated dream or omifuckingawd did it actually happen?

pretend you werent awake when ma and pa went at it hammer and tongs and broke every glass bottle in the house?

pretend you didnt slice yourself open every first of january just to see the blood flow...denumb yourself...pretend you were alive and a real feeling human for once?

wish you could take back the several times you called god- or something like him an uncaring puppetmaster- and worse

wish you never had a crisis of faith

wish you could just fuckin believe!!! in something?

believe in forever?

believe that you'd be loved to madness---for what you were inside and not for your tits and arse?

or courted by people who wanted to pinch your notes?

past's well...past. and it all comes around. but it doesnt necessarily have to have to power to hurt you.

it wasnt all bad.

if you could raise the past..what would it be like

to relive falling in love all over again?

feel the first kiss of the first raindrop of my first year?

the first breath of spring air...the first step?

the wonder of learning to read- to sing- to write?

writing the first poem...the first jointed paragraph...learing to write in a 'joined hand'?

the wonder of smelling my first rose

eating my first chocolate

the first bubble bath

cooking my first meal

learning how to change my first nappy...the first time naman puked on my shoulder...the first time my baby sister was put in front of me...

worshipping my baby brother from afar

loving my parents so intensely that i thought i ould burst?

hating them intensely as well at times- sadly.

baking my first rabbit cookies...and marble cakes

that first date by the seaface

first illnesses. flushed face while i puked discreetly and he just held me as i shivered later.

initial thrill...and fear while applying for the MA

getting my first- and only- gold at college

wearing a sari- trying not to trip over my high heels---being hugged by the princiapl

gunjan..my first friend..the one that got away..and i never knew where.

we dont always have to look back in anger. the pictured of edwardian summer garden parties might have been posed for and rehearsed..and damn right, jim- it must have rained sometimes. but didnt the photographer capture a portion of ephemera...in that instant when there was just a hint of rain, and old auntie meg's wig blew away and landed on top of the cream cakes?

yes. life comes full circle.

dulci et amo...

well, what do i do, there's no accounting for tastes!

a lot of people i know were surprised when Sk and i got together. hang on, they said, we thought you needed a sensitive type? you know the sort of guy who dries tears, not causes them to flow as freely as the bloody danube?

sensitive, caring. a smorgasboard of qualities. he should be this and he should be that.
my ideal man?
my IDEAL.

you made one mistake in your brilliant analysis of my sometimes fucked and sometimes brilliant relationship.


ideals don't exist except in your head. they never have in mine.

ideals are yardsticks you will never measure up to. no i will not meet tall dark and handsome unless im blonde beautiful and busty.

ideals work both ways, luv.

breakfast in bed with red roses on the side?

how about semi burned eggs and toast eaten off the frying pan?

drinking champagne out of each other's glasses?

what and twist a tendon while twining arms? how aboutdrinking white straight from the bottle? a swig for me, and another for you.

romantic luncheon dates with lots of salad and finger food.

steak with all the trimmings, and guiness downed in a gulp.

long late night phone conversations.

they dont get longer or later, lah!

no, he isn't ideal but that doesnt stop him from being perfect. in just about every which way.

maybe he isnt as sensitive as you would have liked him to be, but...

what about the times he dried your tears?
when he kept awake till stupid o clock to psych you for your doctor appointments?
called you long distance just to say hi?
held you while you slept?
and while you wept?
kissed you good morning and good night?
kissed you for no reason at all?
said i love you and meant it?
what about the times you watched him sleep
and struggle to be what you wanted him to be?

i am your wonderwall you say to me, Shubhendu.

You are mine.

You're my redemption.

and i love you so....

why go dancing in the dark?
when feet turn to lead and the eyes begin to cringe
when four and four make two and the worlds all nonsense
dunk your head in a barrel then; why go dancing in the dark?
philosophy and ethics make sense now
and all the worlds a bloody stage
and you're the bemused audience
drink on, keeping on then
why go dancing in the dark?

the night is still young, she smiled. what do you want to do now?

my face fell. oh i dont know, S-, I mumbled. i have a curfew...i need to be home by ten.

S-s, smile wobbled. in her defence, it was a pretty good attempt to hide the laughter. it didnt last too long. i dont quite know how to describe how she laughs. part cynical snort, part disbelieving titer, part good old fashioned humour. S is my closest and oldest girl friend, but it is at times like this that i wish she weren't quite so...S like.

i downed my breezer (yeah yeah its the cheapest alcopop they have back home) and grabbed my glittery little bag. i have to go, i mumbled.

oh don't leave like that, she grinned. one last dance?

love to, babes- but me heels are fuckin killin me.

and i was gone.

....

this is the start of one of the most cynical short stories i'll have written so far- yes note the tense, it is unwritten so far. COPYRIGHT!!!

I have been tagged before; I haven't much liked it. I don't like to be very up close and personal. Anyway, let's get this over and done with (I'm sorry to sound ungracious, Anup, but his is how I am).

Sex of my perfect lover: Male ( I'm straight)

Qualities he should have ( alas, ideals don't exist)

8. Accept the fact that women are born nags. But we only do it because we love you so much. :)

7. At least pretend to be clean!

6. be committed; and honor that committment. On again off again things aren't for me.

5. Accept that while I'm a mind reader of sorts, I'm not the bloody Oracle. So don't sulk and pretend everything's okay when its not.

4. Don't pretend to be interested in things I like if you're not, dammit! And don't expect me to understand or like the Godfather.

3. I like romance sometimes. And compliments. But not fake or syrupy ones. And not red roses; they're so damn passe!

2. Understand that when I'm upset I retreat into my shell. Just hold me close and I'll be okay.

1. Love me like crazy...and no one else.

I'm demanding am I not? I'm not tagging another 8 odd people...this skein ends here.

Hang on- perfect lover? Tsk tsk tsk...I don't like to live in sin.