untitled (verity)

Untitled (Public Opinion) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres

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where do truths come from and where do they go to die?

in this dreary consolation of time, I can see the whirl
of their wheels, and banished desires living on scraps.

if you’d told me of this night two nights back, I’d have believed
but never more.
who’s to say when the flowers droop and colors fall off of the sky?

it’s an inlaid embroidery; intricacy paves the way for simplicity –
I see babies cooing to each other, and people fucking their lives up
in search of one consoling hand. I see men showing junk, and women
trying to hide their breasts, both from an obsolete sense of loss.

where do lives begin and where do they fall over?

in this nest of living and unliving, dying and undying,
I carve lines into the air, of desire, of an unintended mirth
and we laugh. We laugh, we weep, but we just can’t hold each other.

we just can’t hold each other up anymore.

things fall apart.
my lips bleed, my body’s sore and the sour taste lingers in my mouth.
things fall apart.

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For “A Skyflower Friday” writing prompt at With Real Toads.

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the thing with the stories

to be sewn shut in the drape of time,
I find my parched skin crawled by stories,
lived, unraveling now, to yet be seen:

there was a maid at my kindergarten,
who brightened up when I offered her
a sweet at the year end, in shadow of
my mum beaming at me for who I was.

there were these ladies yesterday, who
asked a kid in rags what he wanted to
eat, asked him at the sweet shop, made
me smile through, crinkling at the eyes.

the story unfolds, the steps are falling
down, I am sucking a candy, a worm
sits atop my molars, as normalcy fails,
welcome me, I am back to the void.

how perturbing the silence feels, it rings
in the air, the Beatles are painted,
in the dark on my wall, a snake of a
head phone coiled on my leg of lone.

further days further, my eyes zoom
to take a shot of a chirping boy, his
hands adjoined, being in a prayer
at peace of mind his hunched self.

I see a death bed, years to be gone,
(or may be not), a quill stands right
spewing ink of words, there’ll be no tear,
just an accompanying draft of air.

the threads are broken, no longer sewn,
my skin shivers in the cold of the stories,
lived, unraveling now, to yet be seen.

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*Linking it up with Bjorn’s Time-travel prompt at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and Poetry Pantry at Poets United.

Image credits: Past-Present-Future by Norbert Papp

a Meaning behind a Meaning

to derive a meaning behind a meaning,

I try to realize, so to make a paper boat

of an understanding, and float it in flood

by the descent to that river down the hill,

against which I lean, plunging the edges

of a parchment on the lips, on the limbs

splintering every callow cell, tissue, organ

to create lesions of meaning I look for,

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to see the meaning behind a meaning

that he tries to grasp by bathing in vinegar

thoughts, shunning away the common pain

of looking through the window at the abyss-

pitilessly waving at him with a coarse fabric

of his skin, of parched lips, and broken limbs,

as he mumbles a minutiae of a prayer, phonetic

words while beading the rosary of meaning,

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we: he and I, merge at a destined landscape,

we grapple taking reins over each other,

finding in no way an end to achieve, but we

have the means to continue search for meaning

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20th May lies ahead. It is much like an abyss which would embrace me even with a minute’s notice. I was a curious child and yes, I used to wait for that special day of the year. But the maturity that envelops you as your limbs are stretched, your cheeks are hollowed, and bones jut out of your neck, you begin to question: what does such a date mean to you?

When we are kids, we all want to grow up and do what the elders do but as we begin that “descent” from childhood to teenage and beyond, it becomes concrete that life, as we envisaged it earlier, is not as much fun.

There is a story behind every person, behind the growth of every person. I have narrated mine a number of times in the past and at its best, it is vivid but marked by morbidity of thoughts, of days, of life.

But this growth has inculcated in me a desire, to find a meaning behind every meaning fed to me. I see no end, but I have the means to make this search my end, my aim. I get frustrated as I try to analyze different facets of life and the complexities of a relationship that you have with yourself and thus, I begin to strive for an understanding. I look for meanings. I ask myself because the way to cure my inquisitiveness lies within me.

I tend to take myself very seriously sometimes and that is not required of me. I am an inconsequential being, with an affinity to use I’s, because I take myself seriously and that is not required of me.

20th May lies ahead. In my time zone, I have but a quarter of a day left before the three sticks merge for a second at 12 in the night. It is not a life changing point but it is marked as one and thus, I try to realize meanings, changes and the meanings behind them. After breathing so many breaths, surviving these many years, I can not touch upon a word to describe it all. And thus, I continue to look for a description, for a meaning.

And before you get tired(or are you already?) of my words, let me tell you what 20th May means to me. At the dawn of this day some many years back, I(I do tend to use I’s and I’s, but what other word would attribute to the seriousness I attach with myself?) was born. That is all.

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*For Wordle #9 at MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie. Also linking it up with Open Link Monday at With Real Toads.

**And the depiction of 20th May is to fuel my desire for the meaning, and to keep on looking.

Image source

Open: A Short Story

“I am never going to be someone I am not. I don’t mind being open but I am more of a genteel person by nature,” I say mumbling.

He doesn’t reply. He has directed his entire focus towards the steering wheel, as if trying to solve the riddle that I am, in the slight hand movements he make, while coursing through this coarse traffic. I, on the other hand, have my eyes set on his lips, awaiting them to open and grant me some wisdom.

They do open but just for him to release the breath he has been holding. I am eager. He doesn’t oblige.

As my end stop does come, I slowly open the door and look at him one last time. His eyes are now determined to see through the dashboard to the mysteries of what this machine is made of.

I ponder at the colours of the car in the moon shine as he backs and takes my last view away from me.

“It was not worth talking to him.” The words reach me before the source. She comes and sits atop my shoulder, as she always does. “You can open your heart to me.” She gives me a choice. It is enticing but I would better not. And she knows that. Vanishing in smoke, she leaves me alone.

I have nowhere to go. I settle down on the rotten grass, acting as a cushion for me, from the cold gravel below. I kiss my hands, rubbing the heat of my breaths, soothing them this warm night when I am cold.

No one comes. No one ever comes on this path. And the driver would not return now. I have no strength to pick up on those tiny lights within my heart for him to feed on. But she would return. “I should give up to her. Why wait any longer?”

But she is not going to arrive just like that. I wait. She never comes. I freeze in the boiling sun the next day and the day after next, I am blown away. I have opened up my molecules and now, they return back to where they came from. I am no longer one, as I never was. I am bound. I am open.

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Image source

Present

The present moment is something one must not forget. But one does, because one is in the habit of not fretting over things which seem unimportant but it is not so. A moment is everything, a moment is a a part of oblivion, a moment can save lives, a moment can bring about the very end.

Now when I think of it, the present doesn’t make any sense to me but for the reason that I experience it because I am conscious. The present moment is present for me because I can feel it. I can feel the second ticking in the flow of my blood. I can feel the whirl of the needle like the pounding of my heart.

But what if I was not conscious? What if I did not have knowledge about what all exists before me and around me? Would this present be of the same significance then?

Present is present because we are present. Time is time only when we can realize it.

If I die this very moment, it all would lose significance. It holds importance because we are alive, making it alive.

Such notions seem absurd sometimes but they are not so because these aspects of the universe help us in knowing, in understanding the significance of us, as well as the nothingness that we represent in the greater of things that are alive this moment.

This moment, I can feel it.. I am alive and so is this moment for me.

Present

* For Five Minute Friday.