Sometimes I forget
that poetry exists.
It takes a few
moments before I am reminded of that;
but by then I would have missed my chance
to whimper like a little girl
at the loss of her flower casket.
When I wake up to poetry
and its inebriated ways
I see whatever I have missed
as far receding islands.
Leaning from the stern
I crave to be there,
feel their white sands
and climb their marble mountains.
But nothing,
not even poetry takes me there.
They say, we are what we are
and our life is what it is.
No.
We are what we are not too.
We are that man too,
whom we envied
for his golden watch,
for his motor bike,
for his better English,
for his leather shoes -
and whom we stabbed in the nape.
There is unborn poetry
in our shallow minds too;
though we will never be poets
even while dying of reality.
Our life is that which it is not too.
Our bones are that father’s too
who never fathered us
and our flesh that mother’s too
who never carried us.
Our world is that city too where
we haven’t ever killed in street fights
but where still echoes pistol shots
in pallid, windless evenings.
Our time is that too which
never ticks for us
but still drag us along
to tomorrows that we don’t own.
We will never be those men,
live those lives,
walk those worlds
and see those times.
But they lurk somewhere -
perhaps in the backlands of our souls -
luring us like a dryad
all the while evading us forever.
The old house lay new, as new as any spinster.
There was no dust on the marbled floor
and it vainly tried to mirror the ceiling.
The faded, cracked pages of hardbound books
stacked in wooden bookshelves
told new stories - they talked about these days.
Faces that looked out from daguerreotypes
on the walls were not of dead people
but of those just being born, once again seeking death.
I expected coarse dust from bygone years
I wanted the books to have just memories in them
and I had dreamt of finding dead people here.
