End of the eclipse

Perhaps I was born at the end of an eclipse
right as the moon turned to pictures and
dissolved away in the eyes of progress

I used to walk these shores
endlessly lost, with hours to kill
collecting sea shells and dreams

She smiled at me, nude in my dreams
pure as the ocean and clear as a shard of broken glass

I had nothing to do
but remember the world
dressed in bright metaphors

My eyes turned feverish red
she was drunk on satisfaction
and the stars really spoke in poetry

Right then, at the end of the eclipse
when the moon dissolved
in a bright beaker of progress

Science came about
in a prism lens
and burned my dreams

A speeding automobile
hit my knees
and now I walk with a cane

Far away in a distant land
she sleeps, clothed and silent
almost as if she is absent

These days when dreams arrive
I chase them off my sleep
with scientific equations

And pretend to find
precise directions
on colorful maps



“Silence is the absence of words. I feel that words have failed me because I am being filled up by them. I silently walk the narrow streets of the old town, leaving words behind as if they were falling from a long evening dress that I might have worn and never did.”

A City Emptied

Cambridge
Is like a monster with a thousand faces
And a pointy tail
Without lights and sounds
The city empties in my dreams
Like a slept-in bed
With rumpled yellowing sheets
And lost strands of hair

Every puddle marks a death trap
Stepping into their unattractive depth
I could get lost
And pass into the nether-regions
Of the planet’s magmatic interior

Chaucer comes alive in the ironies of my wanton imagination

I smell phosphorus
When I walk these lanes
Burning incandescently
Through my nostrils
All the pains and ailments
Of my old age
And hurts and tears of the middle years
Are seeping through my pockets
Into the thighs like acid

Akhmatova adds intensity to my pathetic self-interest

Cigarette smoke
Paces heartily up and down through the holes
In my lungs
Somewhere along the distance
Trampling through the insides of
A sleeping home
Berlioz makes a racket
I can’t listen
To the empty protestations
Against the sweet nature of life
When love decomposes in my hands
Like a banana past its date of decent storage

I scream
As far and loud as I could
Before the noise from the traffic
Drowns my lungs


On the floor I see remnants of dog food
Torn pieces of New York Times
A dime forgotten in the crevice between
The floor and the kitchen island
Behind me I hear
A rumbling noise like a personal
Nightmare, a helicopter crashing
Into a lost valley of dreams

I want to be naked
And run through the mall
At Copley
And vanish into thin air!

Poof!

My insomnia and depression
Are
deep
deep
deep
like a valley of flesh
Between gargantuan breasts
Where, suffocated in its Pernicious aroma,
I read a love poem

Mayakoswky has nothing on my despair

I walk with my eyes down on the floor
Tracing stains of origins unknown
Trying to craft stories and messages
And hidden opportunities
Until I come squarely to the end of the path
And find that the way up is
Also the way out

Insomnia

It is 2:30 AM and I am wide awake. It has been a long time since I wrote. A lot of life happened since then.

Am I going to catch up? May be. No promises.

I am very upset about the Bombay train terrorist attacks. I don't know whom to blame. It doesn't even matter. I learned about it the day it happened, while reading the internet. I just really wanted to go somewhere there were many Indians. So I walked over to Royal India at the Paquis and watched BBC.

Sometimes you just have to be upset.

I walk to work in the morning, I see all these people crowding by the lake, running, walking and cycling. There are these giant poster boards with the articles from the UN Human Rights charter by the lake. In the morning, giant sprinklers come up and water all this meticulously maintained laws by the lake. Sometimes, I see Arab men of means sitting on lawn chairs brought in from Inside their cars sit under the shade watching the water with their flunkies standing about deferentially. It is a serene sight, life by this lake.

If you go upto Vevey, the lake changes. Summer is nice here. I can't wait to see Winter.

I feel perpetually jet-lagged. Alternating one week here by the lake and one week thousands miles away there is taking a toll on me. Now you know why I don't write.

May be tomorrow I will write more if the plane has a hotspot.