Shower

 

reVerse

 

Sometimes 

I wish I wasn’t this inclined to write

Or express elaborately in wordage!

Sometimes 

I wish I didn’t need screens and keyboards 

They seem more like barricades than bridges 

Sometimes 

I wish I just thought about you

And you knew..

And wish we had a silent conversation 

Abstract, nothing close to being real

But more like Magic

More like Being!

Sometimes I wish I said nothing 

But you get me like I hid nothing!

And we merged in the vacuum

Shunning all conventions

Leaving communication to muggles.

Photo by Tatiana Syrikova from Pexels

Exotic

Once I dreamt of petting 

An albino alligator- or may be two.

I hoped to foster them, or may be adopt!

“They are obnoxious”

“A Faux paus”-

I was offered opinions!

Opinions are like Onions

Said no one. I thought this up on the fly..

They smell, they are pungent and they make us cry.

So any which way- I listen and let be..I don’t cut them open

To have to dab my eyes..

So the alligators in question made a beeline to my door

And then to my feet..casing them, paired with a linen A-line 

Summery, breezy dress.

Then I strode, on the sidewalk like it were a Chanel ramp..

A few questioning gazes grazed my paws, cased by the albino alligators.

It would have been a sight, a sighting.

A woman and a half sporting them could be funny, could be exciting.

By the way, when the opinions are our own and we keep them to ourselves 

They bloom like roses, adorn our beings like jewels..

Much like these albino alligators-

Squishy like the freshly licked sand on the beach..

Crisp white like the clouds grazing on the sky

Oh and these beasts boast a gentle tread

No animals were harmed or shred!

Life is too short, to be even little 

So

Bring them on, the albino alligators.

They’ll walk with you like trusted BFFs.

 

 

adVerse

 

There’s a world between you and me

Stair cases, errands, rat races, daily grinds

A word between you and me

It could have been ‘Us’ - But it lingers in the confined independence of you and me

Like a lion in a sanctuary?

There’s a tether between you and me

Interdependence..it could have been a bond

It could have been beyond…

But it hovers around the promise, like it defines it premise.

There’s a sentence between you and me..

Not a quote, nor a charm - not even a worded punctuated form.

Life sentence perhaps? Like a term that needs to be served.

I try to rise beyond this in between..

But you my mind - cannot be minded. 

So I gauge the depth between you and me..

The one that nothing can fill.

Or ‘No Thing’ can fill.

It’s silly how there’s nothing between you and me

So should’d we merge into one?

Ah there..now there’s a myth between you and me..

A real one - this myth. That’s the irony!

 Photo by Wendelin Jacober from Pexels

reVerse

 Another day melts into the dusk

On an unknown countdown

I look through the curtains of my cozy bedroom 

Through the layers of the goose down comforter 

That I am Tucked under

The room lights up in tender warmth from the lamp on the night stand

The body slipping into the lap of comfort 

But there’s this soul that fidgets

Unable to settle in this scenario 

It peeks into the dark

A dark that only souls can penetrate wearing the correcting lenses of intuition.

The life yearns and how -

Beyond the warmth of this worldly setting,

Beyond 1000 count sheets and satin pajamas

It craves, this silly soul , to venture into the openness 

Over the earth, under the sky

Wrapped in the unevenness of the grass pricking my back

The chill of the summer breeze grazing my body

Numberless stars gently spreading their glimmer

That catches the moisture of skin

Making it shimmer like silk.

It craves perhaps for something that transcends the shallows of the world

Something that speaks to me in fluent caring 

Making me say I am in Love

Like it is a place to be, a pretty peaceful place

Making me swoon in that place- feeling a Bliss that my cozy bedroom eludes.

Verse

 

Do you ever try,

To capture the deeps

The rhythms of the heart, the rhymes of the soul

Armed with the paraphernalia.,.donning the explorer hat.

I have a feeling that this’ll be a treasure hunt.

A camera dangles from the neck, eagerly waiting to arrest that moment

When what you mean seems to present itself a visual

You are a page in this spirit book, wait may be a chapter..

Or perhaps you are the whole entire book case with a sliding ladder..

Tucked into you, my many emotions, in illustrations, 

You seem to expand into the neighborhood, the hometown 

The country, the continent…

Then I see you as a globe, spinning on the axis of my love

Spreading into a luminous light…white! Iridescent..

I sit and jot down an entire word pile

Rested on one single sentiment- the expression of the unspoken 

But the smile I let out when you top it and topple it..

This massive word heap, with your silence, your presence, your essence 

I sprinkle these lines at you, like confetti

Conceding defeat at your feet!

reVerse

 Fabrics can be friends

The ones sewn into flattering forms

Wrapping my flesh in a cuddle, puddles of frills warming my skin

That Tee for example - I swear what I say is true

Conforms to my heart dousing those flutters and jitters in a secure swaddle 

Almost making me feel like a newborn receiving skin to skin from the mother.

The color it bled takes an ombré effect, adding to its coze

Much like a parent’s warm smile.

The weft and warp softened to accommodate my rough edges

Sanding them.

I feel polished  like a pebble in the way of a stream, in the garb of that Tee - like a bestie’s assuring smile, accompanied by a tight hug.

Sometimes the seams of that fabric blur and I see your skin

Where the Tee had been.

And you swaddle, cuddle and secure me in that embrace.

You could be my old, comfy tee - my old comfy tee could be you.

What amalgam of being loved!

Ooem

 

Then I write, when I write

I feel a lack of words like a lack of breath!

Panting, I ponder 

I call a Verse, 'Reverse'.

I call a Poem an Ooem - Lisping my way through names.

When I watch through the looking glass

Of this perspective window

I capture things so minute, miniscule, invisible

That spotting them morphs me into thin air

And I become a ghost of the Ooem - I mean the Poem.

"The Visible is a hoax" - wisdom from the Ghost I had become

Whispers in my ears.

"It is" I tend to agree. 

And bend to see the hoaxes through the perceptive.

I touch the non palpable

It feels like a simulation

Like an emotional masturbation.

There's a fulfillment that flows in my being

Beyond the blood and flesh

And I drown in that bliss.

I experience that which cannot be

Captured by the eye, the taste, the sniff, the ear, the epidermis

Oh that's because I become a Ghost.

I do not know if it is the damned one or Holier than thou.

I don't seem to care to sort it into this or that.

I emote, in the abstract

Vacuum flowing through the keypad.

Next time around I might call it a Syric instead of a Lyric.

Does it matter what I call it?

Or even how I shape it?

It is a void for Heaven's sake - or for the sake of Timbuktu.

It cannot confirm to the container

Or a spelling rule.

It is there but it isn't.

So what's in a name.

An Ooem it is, not a Poem. Spilling through the abyss.

subVerse

 This thing about this thing

Called life and living

How strange its ways

Do we know the count 

Of the left over days?

Blurred in the daily grind

Obscured in the mind rewind

Living a day back or a year ahead

In this trope of a silly head!

This thing about this thing

Called being in the moment

What simple instruct

Lost in the brain construct.

The next stop, the last - who knows?

Perhaps curtain down on the Shows

Of Illusions, delusions

Of elaborate plans ahead of present.

This thing about this thing

Called in between two points

One life, one death

Several plots and joints

What plain little truth

Wrapped in a silly little scam

That our time is unlimited

Waiting to live sometime else

This thing won't wait!

So

Don't let it slip in the mind maze.

Be. Just Be!

Ponder

If you were one of the unfortunate few who had a conversation with me in the last year, you probably remember how the theme of my conversation was my Kindergartner's virtual school. You probably got bored over how I complained about the five apps they had to submit their 'asynchronous' work on while quipping about how they could have called it plain old homework and ranting about the American obsession of sounding profound in its nomenclature. I know, it's a bit of an irony coming from the wordy me - this disdaining of using fancy, frilly words in lieu of easy, simple ones. But the point is, I made it loud and clear that I was waiting for this 'virtual' year to end. 

Till I discovered otherwise. 

It was the last day. And it was finally here. I was doing a "Yippie" inside my head and capturing some memories on my phone while my little tot logged into the final session of her Kindergarten year. Every one of the twenty three tots were ecstatic, screaming in joy about the summer break, about popsicles, visits to cousins and late night movies. Or so I thought. Suddenly I saw little Emma on the screen. Her breaking voice drowned in a bedlam of joy from the other participants. Kind Mrs. K, the class teacher, hushed the rest of them to let Emma speak. "I am going to miss the class, this is the last day and I can never log into this session again" she said, her blue eyes wide open without a blink, trying her best to hide a whimper. Kind Mrs. K said a few words of comfort. They probably helped Emma handle her emotions, they probably didn't. From that point on, I was too soaked up in Emma's emotion to identify my own, So I didn't know. 

There's this quirk about me - all this deep seated ponders emerge from a place or space I do not know exists. On a normal day, I am like an actor playing the role - very well aware of the 'playing' part - in simple words, emotions elude me. I know, most people that know me might laugh when I say this but this is the utter truth. But of course, I am a master of soaking up second hand emotions. Like I soaked up Emma's. Some probably call it empathy.

I call it confusing.

So the confused me welled up along side. I suddenly started feeling low. Like I didn't want this kindergarten class to end. Like doing all the 'asynchronous' work was the best part of my day. I probably grabbed a tissue, dabbed my eyes and blew my nose and walked around morphed into Little Emma - carrying the weight of her emotion on my overweight shoulders. I wish and hope that Emma had gotten over it sooner than I did as the residue of that emotion still lingers around here, close to a week after it occurred. I had a hard time taking down the arts and crafts I pinned to the 'work wall' of my second born, and discarding paper work was a torture on its own. Matters didn't help when the second born wanted to hold on to the last scrap of the papers she scribbled and colored on. "Is this the only way you would remember your KG?" I would ask her again and again, making her let go of a stack of papers into the recycling pile. All of this, while I was in a state of denial myself and did all of this letting go with a reluctance I had never known I had.

Then I thought of the Friend we lost last month - and the grief amplified. I let it flow, without dams to control it. I fit myself into all the shoes I could think of fitting myself into, and let the pain cleanse my insides. I know some call it empathy. 

I call it Amusing.

Now, Only, If my feeling those alien emotions helps the owners of those emotion with some respite. In my silly way, I think it does. We cannot probably take away another's sorrow. But we can feel it, share it, experience it like our own.

I don't know how to feel about all this soaking up. 

I'll let it be.

I call it Loving.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

reVerse

Through the looking glass,

Through the image if an I,

The illusion 

I see more of them, those delusions 

Filtered in sunshine

Feigning more facades.

I kick up my feet, giving them a respite

From treading through thorny pavers

Uncased in flesh strolling in a maze, 

Encased in spirit, trying to unravel the tangles.

Through the crystal ball, I see

Seeking answers to rhetorics.

Does true love exist, beyond allegories 

That adorn the walls…some above and some below

Some woven to represent a heart 

Some framed in the voids of the walls

Urging the illusion I

To seek! 

What does the I see?

What does the I listen in those silent speech bubbles

Violently adamant!

Nothing but the rhetoric echoing

Making the I speechless at its own irony!