He thought about martyrs who met their fate with blessed ignorance.
He read Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ (a la the Roman poet Horace, meaning ‘It is sweet and #becoming to die for one’s country’).
He decided not to tell her, "I love you."
#vss365
“You cause a hard on and blue balls. Let me lick you to heaven and back.
THAT is NOT a love letter, bro!
Try:
On this torturous rack
With sweet passion and pain tortuous,
Only #reward I lack,
It's to worship you, Blue Goddess!”
#vss365
Was it on that stormy day with an extended power outage? They feigned fright. His hands strayed on her body. A calculated risk or an assured #reward ? She responded with equal fervor. Is that when he realized he loves her? Was it a result of passion or a prolonged need?
#vss365
"The #bundle of books on one's table reveals one's state."
"What's mine?"
"3 Lonely Planets at the bottom...you haven't been travelling..."
"Genius."
"Intelligent Investor, In Praise of Older Women, Rankin, Oxford, Roget's, Einstein, Schrodinger. Too much of the past..."
#vss365
Fewer birds
Wake me up;
The lone tree
And me wait;
Hour-glass crack'd,
Countdown done,
#Bundled time
A mirage;
That's not new!
Our brief love
Guides new years
From nothing
To something;
A new love,
Maybe not;
New idea,
Possible.
#vss365
I remember the winter
I locked myself in
For a week writing
A story called '4% Deal'.
I ventured out
Onto the balcony
For a smoke,
To watch ice melt.
I remember that winter
I wrote about a man
Remembering a love,
Losing yet another.
That winter in Berlin-
The last time I cried,
Reading Emily Bronte's
Remembrance, giving up.
1. Free yourself of emotions.
2. Be dispassionate about results.
3. Cast your spell without #motive.
4. Be ready for it to boomerang.
-from 'Black Magic for Dummies'
#vss365
I did not deny my part in the deed. I did not tell them why I had to kill her. Had to? I am not sure if I really had to, but...
She left me dead long before I killed her.
Reasons, #motive, method...that will remain our secret...
#vss365
1998. Got my best (last) #birthday gift.
We were in two places, with no internet connection, no mobiles. Waited by the phone, early morn. Did you forget?
You were panting, after searching for a working phone-booth.
Those few minutes with you. Felt your tender touch.
#vss365
Love is fiction. Period.
But, I also trouble you with my many #flashbacks of love. Is that fiction too?
I who loved exists
No more.
Can I forget
Nearly all:
Money, religion, caste, family, society, etc. etc. etc.?
Can I?
That I who loved is now
Fiction.
#vss365
It's scary when fiction/poetry is easier to write rather than one's opinion on a current topic.
It's scary not just because of one's confusion about one's own thoughts.
It's scary because one's thoughts could actually be that of another.
Come election season (it's always that season here, isn't it?) and we have multiple groups wooing us with their perverse thoughts.
There are the obvious hate-mongers.
Then, there are those who seem sensible but are helping the hate-mongers by giving them more publicity.
Some of those 'sensible' ones are toxic.
Then, there are those who remain silent.
The silence could be toxic too.
To speak or not to speak
That is the question.
I remember the day when I met you:
At Cargèse, when we claimed to be married,
At Goa, when we were actually so,
At hospital, when I wanted to kill your husband,
At home, every day now, alone, with you.
#FromOneLine 139
"Where's your class prefect's #badge?"
"Teacher, my father has taken it."
"Why?"
"He's going to wear it in office."
"Why?"
"To remind his manager of the symbol."
"Ah yes! That of leadership and honour!"
"No, that of an idiot chosen by an idiotic system, he says."
#vss365
We wore #disguise only once.
She in her finest;
It isn't her, I said
To myself, to no one.
What did I wear?
No one saw us,
No one we were.
One cremated, other buried alive;
Houdini can't escape that trap,
Holmes can't better that guise.
We were separated only once.
#vss365
Some people want love letters
And here I am wondering
If I should visit public places,
Change the name on the wall
And claim to be The Lucky One.
There are calculated #risks & there are suicidal ones.
I took photos of the sand-mining mafia. Stood where I once swam, near the steps in the once shallow sandy river, now an excavated grave.
Half a dozen came, then the blows. I recognized a relative in that bunch.
#vss365
Which angel scattered diamonds upon this field –
O wicked one! Why do you #charm me so?
Life seems so light with its wish to join you,
But the gentle air alone caresses and beckons.
Regal trees in slow waltz to Nature’s measures,
Gilded crowns...
#vss365
-from 'The Last Time I Wrote About Love'
https://newnonentities.blogspot.com/2010/07/last-time-i-wrote-about-love.html
I have felt at home
In bars and casinos.
People like me, bare,
Not having to pretend.
No idiot talks of love
And freedom and glory.
We waste the minutes, we
Admit how wasted we are.
Existential ejaculation
Or a car crash paused,
The bluddy fcuking virus
Is the only one laughing.
Oh I am going crazy
Without carefree life,
The bluddy fcuking virus
Is into bdsm w/o safe words.
(Yes, I am half-crazy now. But, I think this should be the global anthem against Covid. :-) )
"The shadow seeped over the wall,"
The scared couple said to the police.
Was it Grim Reaper,
Warning love with cold cruel touch?
Was it playful Cupid,
Grinning at their coitus interruptus?
The Shadow Seeps Again, the rags say.
Whose wall will it be next?
#FromOneLine 135
Biodata:
A profiteer till ten,
Toothless smile got all.
Right-wing teens,
Thought my god's on my side.
Twenties, anarchist vagabond,
Burned myself at the stake.
Thirties, sold my soul,
A gigolo a-#float for money.
Stopped counting after that,
Toothless scowl for all.
#vss365
If I rise before the sorrow
Can escape from its restraints;
If I can live till tomorrow;
If I can bear the day's pains;
Bloody ifs to avoid absence
Of the reason to continue;
I thought a blindfold can block sense
Of that without you, when in you.
#FromOneLine 134
Went to the store.
Bought a small cabbage.
Realized the cost later.
I can't type
The #string of abuse
I let loose.
This is what you get
When people vote for idiots
Who promise better days
Who promise everything
Will be fine.
Fined, indeed!
#vss365
A man called I
woke up
surrounded
by
empty speech bubbles.
"What is this?" I tried to say.
That too was silenced.
I was scared.
"Which is mine?" I tried to think.
That too was erased.
-an idea borrowed from my short story 'Thoughts of a man called I'
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2013/02/thoughts-of-man-called-i_23.html
True love remains great
When there's a #pause in cash flow:
Strange fact or fiction?
#haiku ?
#vss365
"Honest opinion? You sure?"
"Yes, my love."
"Flowery words. Great vocabulary. With little else. Nothing new. Always the same for the same. Waste of time. You seem #starved for attention."
"You waited for this! Honesty, my foot!"
"Come on...love you, dear."
"I hate you."
#vss365
I never lived.
With an attractive one,
Thought of her in dotage,
And now there,
I don't have her;
At a grand feast,
The days I would #starve
Crept up on me,
Now, can't even eat;
It's a penance
After those days
When we stopped
Time in its tracks.
You never got to live.
#vss365
I thought of the days when the twins asked, "Whajjat?"
#Constellation or arts & craft or..., "I don't know."
It's my daughter's wedding.
"Appa, will I be like Amma and leave everyone?"
"No."
"And, him?"
"Him...I don't know."
They seem happy with that old comfort.
#vss365
"I know you are catfishing. But, I am in love with you."
"I love you too," she-he-it replied.
"Falling in love is like climbing a #steep cliff."
"Are you angry?"
"Never."
"What do you think of me?"
"Which battery do you have? Solar?"
"Are you...digital? How dare you!"
#vss365
An owl eyed child
With no shadow,
Unseen cherub
Unsmiling god,
Fingers strumming
Super-quiet-strings,
Blinks and remains
Supreme voyeur.
There's change in ways
Of #gravity,
Restful light worlds-
Puppets dancing-
The Nature spoil'd,
Vanish o'ernight.
#FromOneLine 132
#vss365
#Shift ain't good for poetry.
Hell no! Ain't good at all.
Now, if it's a short story,
It would be of much use.
"Shift to my side, my love."
"Shift your butt, woman!"
God, I need a story to describe
All I would do to you, for you.
No poem can fit in all that, hell no!
#vss365
A visitor spoiled my poem.
I was spoiled for choice,
My spirits so high,
Rhythm and meter right.
Then, that cursed doorbell.
A cursed friend of the past,
Grey, frayed, gloom-mantled,
He came to say goodbye.
For that, I lost lines of love.
He lost his job a few years back,
Tried farming, sold his wife's gold,
Now, ready to board a flight to nowhere.
As if I have not heard that before.
Hope to drive a truck there, I heard him say,
For my wife and kids, to live somehow.
I wish him luck (damn him!), race him out.
That damned poem gone for a guy called I.
If on a winter's night a traveller
Were to share our bread and wine,
What a tale he would take home!
With my love's hand in mine, her whisper sweet,
We will spin a fine yarn to tuck in our young-
With love, grit, respect, beauty and life!
Later, with the traveller well and gone,
And we, in our bedroom, together alone apart,
Lies in between, we will think of our past.
In another land, bartering dignity for abuse,
Future hanging from the noose, tired and angry,
We did not even plan to pass on the mantle.
I loved the movies with The Man with No Name.
Till she said, "They don't even mention your name."
The invisible, even the homeless, aren't so. I was at the end of the spectrum of nothingness.
I digress.
"Then, why do you love me?" I asked succumbing to love's #rival.
#vss365
I hate a beautiful morn.
Give me its #rival,
Overcast sky, muddy ground,
Birds hiding, dreadful.
It was a beautiful morn
When the doc told me
"She is brain-dead.
You should..."
On that beautiful morn
She looked peaceful
When I said I love you
And pulled the plug.
#vss365
Wrote about misunderstanding.
That too was misunderstood.
Didn't need an #oracle for that.
The future is easy to predict.
If those two are understood,
The beguiling past and present.
#vss365
"Met 2 of your schoolmates. Did you steal the #ribbon of every girl?"
"In kindergarten!"
"Other called you mansplaining sealioning sexting simp."
"I don't sext!"
"Didn't tell them you're my hubby. Good fun it was. Why are you wearing that #ribbon with that dress?"
#vss365
