Haven.

While you were gone
I just lay there staring at the walls and the ceiling
The void, the vacuum that was everything when you weren't in it

Feeling denied of the life force itself
Adrift on an empty ocean of nothing
While you were gone I recited songs of sorrow
Songs so painful they they never made sense

You didn't ask for much
You never expected anything
You liked me for all I was and you loved me more for my flaws
It doesn't seem like asking a lot from anyone
But that's where it is so deceptive
The seductive high to be loved like this, its addictive

While you were gone I realized
Life as I knew it
Existed because you made it possible
To take one day at a time and weather it
You created a haven, for a run away soul like mine

From a battle that went on too long
For wars that were never meant to be won
For nightmares that were more than real
While you were gone I wondered, if you would return at all
While you were gone I thanked you anyway for getting me this far

Highway through Nevada

Dry heat and scrubby fields. Silver stark naked sky, not a cloud in sight. And the moon hung there a burnished gold ball of need. The trees that silhouette in the moonlight look like deliberate cutouts, like apparitions of themselves thin, twiggy and ... desperate woman souls of ages past.

Driving to Vegas through this landscape feels like a journey through a tunnel of extremely painful pleasure. You open the window of your car and and you can smell it, the aroma of the desert. The description of a beautiful haunting desperation.

You can easily imagine a a tiny home somewhere there among the scrubby fields, a newly wed couple that live there and try hard to make ends meet. She is a raven beauty and he is an intense sort of a cowboy. Their home is a dilapidated little place with broken window panes and creaking doors. But each night in the gorgeous desert wind it transforms into a paradise. Then one day he comes home after a hard day's work and finds her gone...gone forever with someone else with more money in search of an easier life. He sits alone in the house with no lights on, only the moon light from the copper moon sweeping in through the open door and the windows.

The pain he feels is a sound of the coyote cries in the far away distance, the warm desert wind and the moonlit glow.

I am always on the look out for the cowboy time and time again when I travel through Nevada, I keep trying to spot him in the dark distances.

This is the way I feel all the way until the dark dark night is suddenly split to shreds by the blinding lights of Vegas, the territory of the raven beauty. This is where she lets it all down, her guard, her shame, her inhibitions. She reigns here in all her glory, writhing in eternal seduction, and wanting more and more and more ...

She is bejeweled and more glorious than the sun. He is lonely and aching and he is the desert himself.

Escape Artist

I am an escape artist

Just call me the Queen of 'De-Nile'

I slither through the reality like a wisp of smoke before the fire

Autumn days like now and here

Pressed tight to my being

Numerous rainy days persevered

Many years lived and learnt

Forgetting is an art

Remembering is a skill

I exist between both of those

Where fantasy unravels her wings

So here we go again, I remember a day a long long time ago. It was an evening and I was on the beach. Walking through tiny rivulets at the very edge where waves would just touch and go.

I was with a friend. Both of us teenaged girls full of dreams. We talked and talked about random things. Just imagining what the future would be like, being so scared of the unknown, but excited even more by it.

Do you remember dear friend the time we spent being crazy together. The way we rebelled and dared and defied boundaries together.

I still can remember the smell of the cigarettes you smoked, and I tried too but I never could. I never really swallowed the smoke and exhaled it too soon. I remember your false bravado. The desperation to finish the pack before you went home. You never became a smoker, so what the hell was that all about. I know it now, it was rebellion, to break free of the ties that hold a girl back from being a girl.

I remember being girls. How vulnerable we were. Do you sometimes look back and ache for what was, do you hold it in your memory like the inheritence of youth, the privelege we shared.

Do you remember getting drunk on gin and laughing till we thought our jaws would freeze that way. Where are you dear friend, I talk to your shell from time to time, but the pearl within is gone. Is this what grown up you is now?

So when do you laugh because it feels like it

When do you make up silly stories about things that might be.

You scare me now, I am starting to feel you never really existed, that I made you up..like everything else I did at the time.

Or is true and I can flatter myself, that I made you be like that because I reflected in you....whatever it is I miss you....girlfriend..

Mumbai Saga

I went to Mumbai after ages, may be I let too much time slip away, between then and
now. But I felt the disconnect very harshly. My mind and eyes kept searching for spaces that did not exist anymore. Every corner I took I expected to see something that wasnt there anymore. But then again whatever I was looking for was it ever there, or even back then it was just an 'impossible imagined'.

Where there was angry red

I saw incredible hues of copper

Where there were hard edges I saw shimmery crystalline lines

I saw beauty because I felt it

I was young, I was naive

But I still regret nothing

For then I was capable of imagining the impossible...

Now its a heap, a dusty heap of unwashed remains, of stories told over and over, of afternoons that scorch and nights not cool enough.

Over crowded than my most wildest imagination, there are no corners to hide in, no spaces to dissolve your thoughts into. Its walls upon walls of breathing human flesh, striving to survive.

Then again, places and faces change all the time, based on our own perceptions.

So when I walked those streets again I tried to be who I was..

A long ago girl with wide brown eyes

Wild crazy streak that frightened herself too

a song that went nowhere, nowhere near the truth

A long ago girl with syrupy dreams of dew

Hazy lonely afternoons and wasted summer nights

A long ago girl searching for divine
Walking on the streets and reaching for the stars

Her thoughts like tumbleweed made of leaves and grass and straw

A long ago girl, long since forgotten

Like the city that swallowed her whole

A long ago want, a long ago need, a long ago taste of the salty bitter sweet..

Spinner of golden silk yarns

Tell me a story in your honeyed voice
Let it wash over me, one word at a time.
In your rumbling tone.

Tell it like, you mean it.
Every emotion intact.
Make it flow into sentences that will wrap my being, around your little finger.

Make words out of feelings, make them golden with your voice
Tell me a story never ever told before.
When dawn of the world was crispy fresh, when you and I were never there
You heard it from a wise old man, a story that changed you forever since then

Describe her laughter, that girl you loved, tell me exactly how she looked at you when she hurt
Tell me then how you said goodbye to the best thing that had ever happened to you
Tell me then, give me the reason why you had to leave to conquer the world not the one out there but the one you hid within

Tell me a tale that doesnt even pretend to explain it all
Tell me the tale thats a journey in itself, where destination is a mirage to begin with, its the story thats important, it holds you, it moulds you its designs your faith

Tell me that story in your drunken barritone
make me shiver from the anticipation
Shatter every myth I ever held about love, life and beyond
tell me your story with your eyes half closed, your lips moving like an angels
Make me unlearn what I have learnt before this story you tell me now
It never really mattered the yesterdays before today that are long since gone

Tell it to me over and over, let it wash over me
like a high tide of sequences in other peoples lives
episodes of scenes palyed out like intricate filigree

I love your stories you story teller you
I love the decadence in your simple truths
all it takes to make me feel,
feel like a human thats lived for centuries atleast,
like a half burnt firewood waiting for rekindling
Its your story of infinite stories,braided together in your wistful gaze as if you see it happening all over again.

Journey

Its just you and me baby
And dont for even a moment you ever forget it
We have come a long way together
Its been hard sometimes, but even that was fun, come on admit it

We were so many different people all through the years
Right from the city called Mumbai to right now and right here
It was like reincarnation each time we moved along
Fighting and laughing and fighting some more
Like two wildly fluttering flags of freedom in high winds bound deeply together

We will still find ourselves there in the dark sweaty, crazy, starry, windy monsoons of Mumbai
Two clueless young people on edge of reality
Talking to be heard and screaming for understanding
Needing one another so much, it felt like insanity
You and me baby, two hard headed peas in a pod

Then on to new places in a wintery frigid, snowy, drafty, spectacular, Minesotta
Remember will you, the optical illusions
Of fighting for space and cuddling wasn't close enough
The summers, the springs, the rose gardens
And unfailingly returning winter, the wet shoes, the warm coats, hot chocolate

On and Ahead to the Granite State
The mountains, the valleys, the feathery, lacy snow
You and I fused together, no matter the words they werent needed anymore
The weekends in Maine, unspoilt secluded beaches
The walk in Portmouth, the coffehouse we would visit
You would drive for hours to get to these spots, cause they made me happy
How could I ever thank you for the wordless devotion you showered upon me

They all fuse together the other places we have been, be it Chicago or for a while in Big Apple
The Chicago windy gusts, us cowering on the north shore drive
walking like two crazy drunks to keep upright in the draft
Why did we do it, just because we could, deligently walking in a road made of snowy soup
The Manhattan crowds and gazing at famous buildings
Feeling so lost and yet secured with you beside me
Living in that place on Long Island, I waited all day long for you to return in the evening

So you see now its just you and me baby
Bound together soul to soul
We were so many different people in one life time alone
Now we are here on the far west coast
We walk in sunny, breezy, opulent San Francisco
You and I travellers of ages
Hand in Hand
Words dont need to make it to the lips
As long as we are together..

Life Just Is

Thats true, life just is. Philosophy and wishful coincidence and interpretations aside, it just is for the sake of it is.
I was watching this music video by Lady Hawke, song being Paris is Burning, and not because I'm so hip I'm in anyway in touch with current music trends and all that. I go to a gym and they have this one TV namely the BTV as in Bally's TV playing a set number of music videos over and over again day after day. When I'm on a cardiac machine, I'm directly facing the said TV, hence connecting the dots...Lady Hawke. I know nothing of the lyrics as I have my own i pod cranked up to high heaven loudness, its the video that "loopily" enough gets me to this sentiment of life just is.
She has this bland yet brazen expression on her face and all through the video she just keeps walking through some alley, staring deadpan in to the camera and spouting out the lyrics, whatever they might be, thats immaterial. As she walks she gets attacked by I assume a home less guy who hops on her back maybe trying to subdue her (just my take on the situation) she amazingly keeps walking with him on her back until he lets up and falls off at some point, then comes the rain of sparks of electricity and she unwaveringly keeps walking and talking brazen, bland expression intact.
I keep on watching this video over and over everyday during my cardiac session and it impresses me a little more each time. Her state of mind shows resignation and acceptance of the fact that life just is, so what? Do you want to stop each time circumstances or no good influences try to slow you down or turmoil wreaks havoc in your path? No I think not, plow on, don't give anybody the satisfaction of having affected you negatively, they are simply not worth it. You have to keep going, this alley may be dark I can only hope for a bright, sunny, open field at the other end and hope I will find it there. Interpretations of situations and speculations of outcomes mean nothing, I must keep walking and fast to reach there where I gotta be.
Ultimately life happens the way it does because life just is.