[BOX] - [BOX]ED – [BOXED]

The doors slide to close

She, a nubile woman, smiles

I smile, too. The civilised smile

Vilifying each other; a gesture

full of lies. This slice of time

Neither’s sly mind will remember

The wires stall, the box opens

She walks out, wires dangling from her ears

Wires everywhere, plugged, unplugged

And where there are no wires

they call it wireless

Wired world, wired life, how weird!

I don’t know my neighbour

He doesn’t, she doesn’t, know me

They have hundred friends online

I have a hundred; we sign in, we sign out

We remain, in perpetual anonymity

Mutually anonymous

I pull the curtains

The day pulls out, there is just

a lull of darkness in the skies

This light is on, there are more lights

Quite a few, five rooms full

To see the night through

Every thing is at its place

I just need to spot and pick

There’s no spot where

there’s no thing; no thing

is not at its place

There are spots even for nothings

The romance of the unknown

shall remain unknown, unpursued

Everything must be known

The known unknowns, the unknown knowns

Every damn known known

Must be known more

Why do you digress, I ask

I’m obsessively digressive, I say

One as two, two-in-one, I talk to self

Aggressively regress the digression

I suppress my I; who shall egress

I ask. I repressed, I fuck off

On some night, tonight or later

As I contemplate something trite

That no writer would write

Or write some writer might

For lack of anything more right

or bright, or both bright and right

When they wrap you full, in whites

Put you in a box and walk, in fours, past me

and bury you in ground deep, I will

know about it from some box: inbox,

mail box or text box, when all the while

You lived in the box next to mine!

----------------------------------------------------------------

Beer on Bubba’s Table

On the table

that always bathed

in naked sunshine

and desert sand

he, with stubborn hope,

put two glasses

and one bottle of beer

Just so, on some chance day

I turn to drink

and unmindful of the dust

on the walls

and on our faces,

poke him to uncork

for a drunken, starry night

But we never drank.

And last week

he, my friend Bubba,

died. Undrunk.

Hurriedly, just as he wished

we packed him in a casket –

its door creaked –

and threw him out

as a discard.

Just as he wished

The sand shall pull him in

deep into its womb;

None of those slithering snakes

would smell death

“Just like a bottle of beer

packed, untouched,

falls off from a shelf,

slips into the sands

and for ages, breathes in the heat

only for its beer to –

on a stark morning –

trickle, drop by drop,

and quench its own thirst”, Bubba said.

And more: “I like to rest there

breathless. Then on a starry night,

to the smell of slumbering sands,

trickle, slowly,

out of that box.

To be reborn”

As I walk out sullen

of the empty house

I let the bottle be there

so that, on the night

when he walks by

and silently puts his ear

to the door

he shall hear the clang

of the two empty glasses

------------------------------------------------------------------

Walls of Melancholy

For a moment, brief as lightning

Her fingertips feel mine

and her glance rests on my face

Quietly, without a word

I take the cup of coffee

from her hands, slender and deft

She is, perhaps, hopeful as a match

which, with one strike,

can kindle a lasting flame.

But I am a wick that wouldn’t burn

I hear the call, I feel the heat

of a spark from the past

But it fleets, it eludes

It hastens, it smothers, it disappears

Before it could turn into

a flame of remembrance.

Like a cube of ice, cold

melts into nothing, when you hold

And I see only a stranger

In her face, lined with wrinkles

She knows me, she knows me well;

So I must, I reason, know her, too

“Who are you?” I ask

“Whoever you think I am”, she quips

I can’t crack the riddle

Does each wrinkle of hers, I wonder,

treasure a story of our love?

If only she held my hands

and walked me back in time

to that crossroads where we had met!

What you lose on the decline of time

is lost for good

Who has lost what, though?

Has she lost the art of forgetting

Seeing in me, then, a familiar man -

decades ago she fell in love with -

doesn’t fall in love anymore;

Or have I lost the art of remembering

And so, seeing in her a stranger,

fall in love every morning

When you pack your life

into a box of memories

and you lose that box

What of you, withered soul, remains!

Where do I run to

Where will I find them

In which concealed corner of the world

Will I collect my memories

Where did I drop them,

In what moment of forgetfulness!

Every moment stares at me

with the innocence of a newborn

All I do is blink

and it dies, turns a stillborn.

As the relentless waves of the sea

that chase and kiss your feet

and as swiftly run away

Her glances, her laughter

remind me of a face intimate

that I just cannot recollect

I steal a glance and look

in her eyes, to find myself

But I find not, and her words fade!

How will I live

with the man I have become

Who, his mind turned barren,

stares into nothingness

And all that he remembers

is the agonising memory

of the desire to remember!

--------------------------------------------------------------

Listless

Its tip, in fine metal

Falls on the record -

No it doesn’t fall

It rather just rests

To caress the grooves

One round after another

The nimble, playful fingers

of my pretty masseur

Slide on my spine

on this listless evening

Luring me into half-state

Neither asleep nor awake

Just as the clumsy drag

of my pointless days

Dawn to dusk; dusk to dawn

The spiral appears to spin

With no trace of tedium

and no eye for time

She reads me a book

Made of sea-soaked sand

When she closes it

All the words collapse

into a heap; And she picks one

Just one – ’effervescence’

The note of the piano

in C minor, or some minor else

Rings in my ears two

The untasted wine, freezing

in the shapeless glass

Turns soothing blue

All the fleeting moments

Real, unreal and surreal

Merge into her dark eyes

What does this word mean?

She asks, laughing

and hurls it into the sea

On which sleepless night

did a Mozart write this piece

To strip me this evening

of all trappings of time

And weave, like a spider,

A web of insobriety around me

She ruffles my hair

I hear the rush of waves

It’s time for adieu

but she doesn’t say

Pouting her tasteless lips

She indulges a kiss, lustless

The needle comes off

The pianist returns to his grave

I am now, on the quiet vinyl,

but a languid shadow

Which, when light goes off

Will vanish as if it never was

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Clipped Wings

of the shade burlesque

awake in mute gray

the walls won’t talk

and she can’t hear

ripped from time

he lay still, cold

as a buried dream

unmoved by her tears

she caresses his toes

they tickle no more

a silence so haunting

fate’s cruel laughter!

"dad, where have you gone?"

she whispers, almost

but then, life is so

a vile trick of time

when she was born

his life became fuller

and in his death

her life now, lighter

"what is this, dad"?

she asked, in a moment past

pointing at the title

of a book he loved

without his saying a word

she now understands

what it means:

"the unbearable lightness of being"