neither

(written 1 december 2019, 3:30 am)

i'm crushed i'm alive
you see neither

Dancing on My Own

(Written 10 Sep 2019, 3:22 am IST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31tGyBJhRY)

so it's you,
it's your sound,
that brings me marginally alive,
that re-inters me, meaningfully, in that merciless ground.

"i'm in the corner, watching you kiss her",
he whispered in my ear,
and i looked on, statue in my birth,
lost infernally between there and here.

"i'm right over here, why can't you see me",
he stared into my fidgety eyes,
recession into unattractive self,
all your decisive truths are heartbreaking lies.

"i'm giving it my all, but i'm not the guy you're taking home,
i keep dancing on my own",
and you'll continue to wonder
if i'll ever get grown.

"stilettos on broken bottles",
feminine images on the aftermath,
but i slouch, you bemoan,
and you find breath, and i wrath.

"but you don't see me standing here",
and we never left square one,
while you dance by yourself,
i danced, ended and was undone.

Pain

(Written 24 May 2019, 3:20 AM IST.)

There's something about pain
That most people
Don't understand.

It is usually one side of a coin
Called life,
The other side of which is
Pleasure.

(In case you're wondering,
The rolling edge of the coin is depression.)

There was a boy I loved
When I was sixteen.
He thought it was crazy
That I thought
That pain was beautiful.
I thought it was crazy
That he was pain, pleasure and beauty,
And that he couldn't see it!

Pain is the loss (real or feared)
Of pleasure once felt, or
Of pleasure imagined.
If you focus hard enough,
It will always make you
Smile.
(Perhaps wistfully.)

It is sitting alone with whiskey,
Missing a love that once was.
It is sitting across from a love now,
Misunderstanding, or misunderstood.
It is a single shared glance
With a love unexplored, a longing, with nowhere to go.

Look,
I am quite frequently on the rolling edge.
I find it hard to settle on a side
Because of how much it hurts
To flip to the other.

And well, I loved, and I love.
But you came, for not quite long enough,
And I don't know about you,
But I wanted more time.
That is pain,
And that makes me smile,
And that is pleasure.

There is something about this
That most people
Don't understand.

But screw 'em.

(In the fourth dimension, if I
Look left, the sixteen
Year-old me still loves the boy,
And if I look right, I see
Not quite anything, really, but
I feel the gaze of some older me
Smiling in pain.)

Rain (3)

(Written sometime in 2015 or 2016.)

you have forgotten what the rain feels like on your face
you have forgotten how to smile
you have forgotten how the angry, persistent droplets of water hit your chest
and drench you and soak you

the thoughts about the emotions stemming from the perceptions of a false reality
are obliterated
and all there is
is you in the rain

can you breathe?
can you remember how to breathe without pain?

can you feel your fingers move
without deliberate effort and aching will?

that, that, that is the you
that you lost without the rain.
that is the you in my brain's refrain.

War

(Written 4 July 2017, at 2:45 am.)

I don't know how to start.
I don't know how to start
Because words and I have been apart
For longer than I care to admit.

And the truth is the pain
Remains.

It cuts and fades
And serenades
The lost feelings and buried thoughts,
Admitting which would be welcome not.

The violence in my head
Is neverending, and I've lost track
Of the two sides of the war.
I see them emerge blurrily sometimes,
Weights of grey,
Only to recede into the fray,
With what I could swear was a knowing, impish grin of a master prankster.

I am being played.

But you don't know.
And how would you?
Unless you're in on it, too.

Sounds

(Written 20 August 2016, at 2:00 am.)

the sounds you make, the sounds you hear
are sounds of arrogance and sounds of fear
you perceive the rattles of a funeral pyre
you make excuses for unapologetic gunfire

the sounds i make, the sounds i hear
are sounds of oppression, loud and clear
i silence the vibrations of the world around
and blame it on the sound of sound.

a scrape, a tear, an unintelligible moan
are all it takes for a stone
to come to life and fight for life
while you and i sit idly by.

your oblivion, my consumption, are at par
in all that matters, and all we are
as we continue to strip imaginary layers
of meaning and unmeaning in worldly prayers.

alas, it is you, alas, it is me,
upon whom falls this moment of "poetry",
that knows no better but to pretend
like it must matter in the end.

but you know naught, and i know less,
that all of this auditory duress,
is for no reason good, and no reason bad
but a simple state of affairs,
exceedingly sad.

Could You

(Written 18 June 2016, at 1:48 am.)

could you, would you, ever have known
the lengths to which i would have flown
to look in your eyes and hold your hand?

could you, would you, ever have guessed
just how i believed myself blessed
to build castles with you in the sand?

and now, here (or there?) we are
forever forgotten in time's bar
sipping naught but a whiskey grand.