The Disposition Effect: A Secret Mythology of Common Men and Women in Endless Acts

Act 1 Scene 1

Bare stage. Almost. The backdrop and stage floor are constructed out of partially rusted metal sheets. Dim light, slight hue of blue, and a bit of amber. Y sits LSR on the stage-floor. He is whipping himself at a steady pace, letting out a yelp every now and then. X is standing slightly to the left of center-stage.

X: Why do you hit yourself?

Y: To stop thinking

X: Thinking about what?

Y: The shadows

X: The shadows?

Y: Yes. The shadows.

X: Well, it's a bit annoying.

Y: Yes, I know.

X: So will you stop it then?

Y: I'll stop when I stop thinking.

X: For god's sake...

Y: You are free to leave.

X: Am I? Seems unlikely.

[Y stops for a while, thinks, and begins the whipping again.]

X: Hey, hey, stop. STOP!

[Y stops]

Let's try and have a conversation. Since we are both here. And stuck. Apparently. Let's be fair. To both of us.

Y: Fine

Pause

Y: Well?

X: Hmm?

Y: What do you want to talk about?

X: I don't know. Ask me a question.

Pause

Y: What's your name?

X: [thinks for a while] That's odd. I can't seem to remember. My... [drifts]

Y: And he wants to have a conversation!

[resumes whipping]

X: Whoa! Wait, wait. STOP! [Y stops]

Y: What?

X: Can't you find something else to do? Less ...macabre?

Y: [looks about the stage and turns to face X] You want me to whip you?

X: [stepping back] NO!

Y: Well?

X: I don't know! Of all the people in the world I had to get stuck in this hell hole with you!

Y: It's not so bad.

X: You'd say. You are not the one being forced to bear witness to some deranged self-abuse!

Y: 'Is that a euphemism?' she used to say. Every now and then.

X: who did?

Y: And it is too. Masturbation.

X: Eh?

Y: [looking at X pointedly] Self Abuse. Euphemism. For masturbation.

X: Right.

Y: Mas-tur-ba-tion...

X: Who is she?

Y: Who?

X: The one who speaks in euphemisms. Every now and then.

Y: speaks of euphemisms

X: Sorry. Speaks of euphemisms.

Y: Used to.

X: I'm sorry. Is she dead?

Y: I don't know. Don't be sorry.

[long pause]

Y: She left without a trace. Without a trace. Evaporated. As if she was never there. Well, almost!

X: Almost? The shadows?

Y: [nods] on the walls. Like clouds. Flickering. Like love.

X: Love?

Y: Yes, you know, love?

X: Yes I think I know a few things about that. I'd say. I've had some women. I remember one particularly well. Every now and then. What a pussy!

Y: Pussy?

X: Juicy as hell. I get a hard on just thinking. Look!

Y: Strange what thinking can do, eh?

X: mmmm what a slut!

Y: [looking at X] And what of the eyes?

X The eyes?

Y: I remember her eyes. Her eyes like waves through the mist. At twilight.

[pause, X breaks silence suddenly with a grin]

X: The way she rode! My cock deep inside. All ten inches of it. Dripping.

Y: And her lips. Parted. Slightly. When asleep. She slept. In my arms. So beautifully. In my arms. Such peace! I'd stay awake all night just to watch her.

X: I'd come in her mouth. Her throat even. And she'd take it all in. Swallow it all. To the last drop. Suck me dry. [looks about] Excuse me... I must...

[He goes sits in a corner and begins to masturbate, progressively faster. Y resumes whipping himself, progressively harder. They both reach a climax. Y screams with a final, brutal shot, while X lets out a groan of satisfaction.]

X: Ah! Good even for a jerk. What a gal.

[He gets up and spots Y crouched over, his back bleeding. X rushes towards Y]

X: Holy fuck! You alright?

Y: I am fine! Don't touch me!

X: Jesus! You are a weird one, aren't you? No wonder she left! Where did you get that whip anyway?

Y: I don't know. Usually it's a belt. My belt.

X: Jesus! You are a weird one, aren't you? No wonder she left!

Y: You just that.

X Said what?

Y: Jesus! You are a weird one, aren't you? No wonder she left!

X: Oh, did I?

Y: Yes.

X: Well, you see it's been happening for a while now. It's the newspapers.

Y: The newspapers?

X: The faces, the black faces. In muck. In muck! You know what I mean?

Y: I haven't a clue.

X: Well, never mind then.

[pause]

Y: Where do you think we are?

X: In a dream.

Y: A dream?

X: Well alright, a nightmare if you will.

Y: But whose dream?

X: That's not important.

Y: [gets up, excited.] But it is important. Don't you see? That will decide which one of us is real!

X: Real?

Y: Yes. Real! [whips himself] Like I feel. See the blood? I am real.

X: And what does that make me?

Y: A character in my dream.

X: Or nightmare.

Y: Or nightmare.

[pause]

Y: Don't look so sad though. Whoever said bleeding was real? Perhaps we are all dreaming. Perhaps it's all just blackholes and revelations.

Blackout.

Obscura reunites in Bangalore

http://paxobscura.blogspot.com/

Soulmates

Far past the greymist walls of careless clouds cracking and peeling and fading into twilight

Far beyond the humming high rises rising high in hopeless yearning

Away from the solitary silences of eyes and eyes and eyes that have forgotten

How to move and be moved by a moment's fault in their reticent nights of breathing,

Who claw at your soul who clutch onto your heart your passing heart

Who collect the shadows of your fallen smiles and want to own them in fading frames of light,

I have waited a content eternity for your return to the birthplace of your song.

For an eternity I scattered my fields and hills with stories of our ancient love

For an eternity I have taught birds and forests the crooning and gentle whisperings

That you whispered in the redglow embrace in the deepest hours of our afterlove.

And in between I have cried I have cried but only in the happiness

Of the sunsets and seamist and stardust you left behind.

And in between I have cried I have cried also sometimes in the sadness

Of the sunsets and seamist and stardust, after all was all you left behind.

In between I have not kept my promises that promised your return

And in between I have lost the birthplace of my own song

For in between I have searched out other songs.

In between I wandered the memories of others

Have been their yearnings only to scrape the sky

In between I have been the hands of men

Who clawed and clutched at the shadow of your fallen smile.

Inbetween I have searched for your eyes

Among other silent solitary eyes.

And our stories turn to stone

Among the hills and fields

And the larks forget the song

The forest now stands still.

So come home starlight come be my tear

My saddest tear in this saddest night

* * *

You see I'm not from around here I was waiting for half an eternity and in a moment's fault in my reticence decided to take a silent stroll just to rest my lights for a while but I think I'm a bit lost not sure not hopeless except the surface of things that glisten in the last hours of the stars you see I was looking for the sea to become the sky again but all I found was the endless wailing of skyscrapers statues in a desert and sirens by a neon seacity and the falling sun in their eyes and eyes and eyes and other colours constantly fading like the last flicker of scented candles so pour me another drink I gotta be on my way soon on my way again must find the birthplace of my song before the last speck of red has disappeared beyond the sand duned horizon framed like a sloping shadow of a smile her smile before I am sucked into this labrynth of eyes and eyes and eyes that glisten in the last lights like when I was the king the young king of all that was beautiful of all that did not need a decree of forgiveness on account of imperfection on account of sadness on account of bank holidays and broken hearts on account of martyrdom on the verge of silent flameless combustion into a state of unmovable frame framing eyes and eyes and shadows of lips her lips like burning charcoal burning through underpaintings and masterstrokes into the heart of men in the heart of forests and larks who have forgotten the song who have lost the words and the stories that lie in ruins that are stones and hollows along the mountainside that waits still waiting for half an eternity now who cry by twilight for starlight hearts caved out by screaming stormwinds remember remember last time a long time ago but where has she drifted sliding like a shadow of clouds in this darkest night.

And the clouds they whisper and sigh

Look at the sky the stars they cry

For these words will turn to stone

Among the hills and fields

The larks forget the words

The forest now stands still.

* * *

I found her among the ruins of our lovetales.

I followed her through the ebb and pine of our stories turned to stone.

She held me in her arms and I gave her a sunset.

With the last speck of red remaining.

But she did not remember me.

For my loving has turned to stone.

Inspite of hills and fields.

And the larks they did not sing.

And the forest still stood still.

Heartless

My Heart,

All night I cried. 

I cried all night.

For you.

Heartless.

Sometimes the haunting

Can get too much to bear

Like the silent whisperings of your woodsmoke hair.

When a moment's memory of happiness

Slips through the gentle partings

Of curtains caught in a fleeting embrace of love

With the wind.

And I lie there

Still as the weeping of a dried summer leaf.

Heartless.

I am yours

I am yours to ravage and destroy

To cut to little pieces and destroy

Each piece with fingersnap precision

In between baking lovecakes

And scribbling lovesongs

And sipping red wine

In a quiet yellow kitchen

My blood gleaming and blotting

Along the weavings of your sunglow lace curtain.

I am yours to create and murder.

I am yours to embrace 

To love, to hate and forget

I am yours to find

When I am lost again.

For now, I am guilty

Of scribbling lovesongs.

And staining the lace curtain

With fingersnap precision.

As guilty as the nightflower

Of kissing the moon.

Heartless.

But how could I bear to see

The pain you bear

Afraid of tears 

You'd bear for me.

Even if I could bear to see

My own blood blotting and burning

The sunglow lace curtain

While I fade into infinity.

Heartless.

And so, my Heart,

All night I cried. 

I cried for you.

I cried for me.

Heartless.

After all forgetting is only as selfish as loving.

Truly, we are all heartless.

There are questions and more

Uncertainties and afterthoughts 

Scurrying across the forest floor.

Untraced voices in the hedges.

Blinking fireflies in the neon wild.

But perhaps in the twilight hours

In between the days of logic 

And nights of grand revolutions and wine

One needs mysteries and swansongs

And uncertainties, questions and afterthoughts

To be able to look up to  a starry nightsky

With  tearfilled eyes.

Heartless.

And perhaps a heartless world

Has need for blinking fireflies too - 

And faraway voices that sing softly

In its darkmist forests.

After all forgetting is only as selfish as loving.

After all we are all truly heartless.

Heartless.

Those who embrace love

And those who embrace without love.

Heartless.

The candlelit lips of a beautiful woman 

In a strange surreal city.

Heartless 

Thirsty eyes in the neon wilderness

Heartless

This reddest of my rushes

Heartless.

Old Paintings and dead poets 

Cremated bodies twisted and smoking from their eye sockets.

Heartless

A blue billion breathing hatred

In saffron, in green and in red.

Heartless 

The yawn of darkness 

Between an obscure railway station

And an obscure railway station.

Heartless the books and words and wisdom of ages.

Heartless sunsets and silhouetted backpages.

Heartless the vertigo to be heartless.

Heartless 

The withered faces 

That fade from black through the windscreen.

Never to be seen

Or heard from again.

(There shall be no lovescribbles 

Behind coffeestained paper napkins

To breathe life into their eyes

When they have faded into raindrops

In the rearview sky.)

So how could I bear to see

The pain you'd bear

Afraid of tears 

You'd bear for me.

Even if I could bear to see

The yawns of darkness 

And the withered faces

Between obscure railway stations

While I scribbled lovesongs on a tree.

Heartless.

I'd rather be the sky

And you the sea

Making love in the lucidity

Of silent abstraction.

Without helpless hopes and indecisions.

Alone. Together. Heartless.

And so, my Heart,

All night I cried. 

I cried all night.

For the sky and the sea

For the sunsets and backpages

For books and words of ages.

For the paintings and the poet

Sentenced to cremation by desire.

For darknesses and withered faces.

For hatred and for loving.

For creation and for murder.

For the helpless yearning

To be falling like a falling leaf

That fades into black through the windscreen

never to be seen

Or heard from again.

I want no lovescribbles 

Behind coffeestained paper napkins

To breathe life into my eyes

When I have faded into raindrops

In the rearview sky.

Origin

There is something about late July afternoons that makes me lie down thoughtless and watch shadows of clouds and spots of sunlight shimmering like stars on the concrete floor of my room.
That stone cold ethereal world of light and dark, a translucent festival of silence, bursts into the room through the window, daring the stained lace curtains. It rushes through their partings, more vivid with every passing second; stealing shapes and flinging them at walls in shades of soft grey and dark grey; placing distorted cats hanging by their whiskers from the ceiling and elongated branches with brilliant, shivering leaves along the floor and clawing at the walls.
At the far end of this large but almost empty room it all fades and blurs into a steadily growing darkness around my nest of blankets, cushions and unwashed clothes, with its rim of half finished paintings and empty green beer bottles. There are crumpled sheets of abandoned poetry peppered with cigarette butts.
A bunch of painted canvas, testimony to more productive streaks of nocturnal ramblings are placed against the wall. Halfway between the mattress and the bathroom door on the left wall, an easel holds up a large white canvas. There is a round table with three legs remaining, whose original white top is long lost under multicouloured paint splatters, brushes, charcoal sticks, a thousand and one paint tubes, bottles of varnish and turpentine, a much used palette, a burnt out candle, chocolate wrappers and an old record player, all under a thin coat of dust.
There are books scattered everywhere, or shadows of them at least. Dust rises like volcanic eruptions from their pages and covers swirling into cones of sunlight.
How long have I been here, unblinking, still?
This is the story of Sikan deRouge.
Sikan alive. Breathing stillness. Sikan is slow motion sinking into an ocean of evening stars, circled by mad comets whizzing past him from eternity to eternity as bubbles arise bursting and digging into crystallized memories of laughter that echo a thousandfold into infinty.
A screeching, soft but growing. It rushes, rushes, rushes and washes over him and into him, cold down his spine, steaming through his skull.
He explodes for five minutes and then everything is black and quiet like a white dwarf.

Traces

What keeps two people together? What makes one not leave? It is the fear of traces. Traces of happiness in these darkest of times, traces of love that haunt our lives and follow us like shadows. Memory that remains like an after taste, provoking afterthoughts.

What then is love? Is it simply the vertigo towards a life not lived? Of words unsaid? Is that why we 'fall' in love? But that is only a word that tries to grasp the whole universe of the unknown and fails so miserably, so so miserably. There is a world of difference between love and togetherness. Even between love and faithfulness.

"I shall never be able to stop loving you," said Sikan unblinking. "But I do not need you to be a part of my life for that. "

He pauses, but the sky cannot. It falls falls falls, with its clouds and colours and brightred sun, giving in to its vertigo to explode into night, helpless.

He blinks like a faraway explosion. Perhaps something dies. The sky turns a darker red.

"If you leave me, I will be afraid of the traces. I will lie awake at night and give in to waves of incessant tears bleeding your soft yellow into all that I see. Seconds will turn to hours and I will ebb and pine till I am a translucent blur. But I would be ready then, for my flame red hunt. Again."

Ah Sikan, Sikan, there in lies the human, the great tragedy of the weight of humanity trapped in the souls of freebirds. The endless circle of lightness and vertigo in those of us who choose the reddest of rushes in these darkest of times.

"If you must leave I will understand. At least leave without a trace. So I may love you and yet not need the warmth of your body to fall asleep."

And this child of the neon wild, will live to see another bright midnight.

Alone in Amsterdam

Today the sky was grey again. The incessant drizzle, all morning afternoon and evening, left trails of lazy droplets on the windows that now shimmer like stars in this neon wilderness. There are people everywhere, stoned and thoughtless, walking, strolling, running, cycling, shopping, shitting, fucking their way through these circles of hell.

Sikan has been feeling very quiet today. The city was still shaking off its sleep when he awoke: grey, cold and the mist rolling off its dark black canals silently. The naked trees still and haunting through the late winter haze.

There he was. The city forced its early morning emptiness deep into his heart and perhaps even his soul. But such emptiness, that softfeather sadness can be like music: beyond human judgments of good and bad. And it stayed with him, all day.

She was gone though, after a week of bright midnight strolls, her smiles and her eyes which were like the universe and so easily lit up this dark dark city. Gone were the conversations, the highs and the laughs and the long lovely silences that he knew would make him cry when he remembered them in the time to come.

Now he was awoken to anonymity; to that sad yet beautiful feeling of solitude in a big city.Alone in Amsterdam, in this labyrinth of dreams and nightmares hanging by a thread, shrouded in streamers of mists and highs, he walks along the arc of a surreal night.The wet wind caresses his face and flows through his hair. And he misses her, and the walks, the long walks, and feverish conversations about everything and nothing, and the deep, dark mist in her eyes, and the flickering golden candlelight on her arms and cheeks that sent his soul spiraling into sadness every now and then.

(“But why?” she would say. And then she would look into his eyes and smile softly. But before the balance could tip over, she would look away, picking up a coaster to tear up, or play with her handkerchief and murmur, “I don’t understand you.”)

But can we ever really understand the language of eyes and souls and the true ways of this universe? Every second sparks off a chain of stories short and long in every direction. And we spend our lives negotiating plots in a whirlwind of beginnings and ends, and long dramatic speeches that define our own little novels. God knows how hard we try to be the author of our own lives.But there is nobility and wisdom also in acceptance, in being the absurd hero, to be Sisyphus walking downhill, lost in thought. For what is more beautiful than watching and feeling the human experience unfold in front of us, and feeling the divinity of each fleeting moment, whatever the last chapter may present?

(“We don’t need to go home.”

pause

“It’s not home anyway. I really wish I had my home here right now. It’s because I’m tired and high I guess.”)

Pause

Islands

Slug in the keyhole
She poked it with her hairpin
But it was dead

* * *

After all we are islands sliding on a lake of ice
And the horizon is only an illusion
A razorblade of light
That promises countless universes
But dies with every moment of living

My loving moves along that straight line
Stretching across infinites
Only to find the eternal circle
And the persistence of time

A drop of water
Torn away from the roaring river
Rests on cold stone
Dying in the sun

(After all we are islands sliding on a lake of ice
And the horizon is only an illusion
A razorblade of light
That promises countless universes
But dies with every moment of living)

Inbetween

Lazy curls of cigarette smoke in conversation with pensive rainclouds.
I am here, unblinking, still, like this cool stone patio. My hair flowing orchid shiver silently in the wind; your windblown curling of the lips warming my center through archways of time.
(My heart splits into dustswirls in that light)

Look back.
Your sudden turning of the head
An act of eternity
The ends of your hair, flung out, measuring
The circumference of time and space

In here now
It all begins to crystallise
Leaving trails of desire
And fancy
Between clouds

* * *

I awake
To the deathly silence
Of blackbirds
On a raingrey sky

I watch
Listening to every colour, and the wind's cool caress between my fingers
I watch
The seacrows, black paintstabs on the pale blue seamist, and the dance of the black searocks with their moss green veils that hide cool jewels in their folds.
Till
Rain casts its net curtain over my eyes and the last grain of light disappears into the funnel of evening's purple.

Now
I am ready
To drink your silver wine.

Story

Revolution plaything of generations the full circle not to begin not end begin to end again at the very beginning also the end like ending crowded buses with fingersnap timing without separate faces to show but forever the sheep the sheep ever crumbling peripheries of unknown abyss loveless lickings of carnal skin foreskin deep drilling at a slight angle the single spurt of black blood bloodspit my whitedove plastic heaven heaving heavy hovercrafts hummers hamburgers haute couture halloween humbugs sky scraping ante chambers lemonspray mist then I must see your pink in between the long stocking hours if rain must come through and through forever into the single eternal arching of your spine scraping cloudheads.
Still black water
Here we float
In uniform and backs to the sky
Side by side

(You could be my lover, but you had a gun)

Rain

...And sheets of sky, grey and blue
Like a lover's veil
My lover's veil undone
And slipping flowing
Along the curves into the hollows
Gentle white
Clouds of night
Stuck to ceilings, tear out walls
Let them rain
Drop a sigh on me
And sheets of sky, black and red
Like a lover's veil
My lover's veil undone
I am water flowing
Along the curves, into the hollows
Stars among her midnight hair
It's been so long
Come lie with me
The sea around my seamist bed
Your hair undone
Your veil undone
It's been so long

Wing

Wing, Crystal Wing,
Where do you want to take me?
Into wild labyrinth palaces;
Into deathly volcanoes of lust.

Through many neon nights,
We have walked frosted fields;
Searched the seas for the golden fleece-
But our red haired goddess of love
Still lies in divine sadness,
Her hair as light as thunderclouds
That curl around the moon.

Wing, crystal wing
Let us drink tonight
The wine of murderous creation
Of birth and death
Of loving and forgetting

Tonight we shall
Touch and kiss
Caress and love
And fall asleep
Embracing her
Face between the breasts
Of the unknown.

The Midnight Hunt

Tonight the riot
Redrush wildfires
Amplified thunderpipes
Swivelling streams
Of hotsweat arms
Above our heads
This midnight throbbing
Trance of nerves
Above the clouds
And bloodrain trumpets
Flags and streamers
Tonight the awakening
And fountains of starburst
Of heartsplit anger.
Night is here a kiss
Of swirling lovesmoke
Of waves tangled
Armslipslegs
Children of the neon wild
Ebb and pine
Ebb and pine
Feel these tears
Rolling down
These fears
Crystal clear
In here there was always something
Spiraling into the blackred
Of your hair
Curling clouds
And whisp of jasmine
And gunpowder snaking
Cold around your neck
Young and white
Swim along the waves
The snake awakes
To the song of the temple flower
When death is served
On a silver platter
Let me in inside
Innermost deep
And echoing ancient
Cold caress
Love you to death
I love you to death
Spurt of blood the last frontier
Arching arching smoke ring arch
Around the thighs shivering white
Face in sand we ebb and pine

Morning in Blue minor

This morning is softyellowtouchingwhite
Like you and your fadedcandle light.
Like your teardrop on my cheek.
Like finger on lips.
Like curtainscushionscanvas.

Like waiting for your touch
After the midnight hunt.

The sea is a sleepy swirl
Around the blackspeck rocks.
The whitewings have dropped
And boats hang like fragile whitebrown leaves
From my cigarette smoke vine,
Then float as silently as an afterthought
Into the blackcoffee mug.

This morning
(With the clouds blurred and smudged into the sky)
We celebrate
The end of the flame-red hunt
The end of the blackred night
With emptiness.

Star Water

[Electronic heartbeat pulsating through the mind with voices laughs and screams bursting around like laser lit bubbles. Breathes heavily out of anticipation as the needle kisses the blood and sends flashes like comets to the head and floating down the spine. He begins to drown in a strange beautiful yellow smoke like heaven metal, an ocean of motion.]

“Hey, you ok? Don’t try to fight it. Relax. Just let it fade in.”

[It fades in, and begins to eat him and burn him, and he explodes for five minutes and then everything is black and quiet like a white dwarf.]

Blackred

Rien n'est demande,
Rien n'est dit,
Tout se situé dans le silence.

Create and Murder

La Femme De Mer

Spread yourself out like that.
Like only you can.
Again.

Again.
Like the twilight mist sprawled over a stilldark sea
That golden waves lick and smell, touch and kiss.
And your eyes want to reach for that hint of red that knocks at your horizon.

That's how, with your stormwind whispers, and redflash embrace, you killed me.
Remember me.

Not leaving

After many days of being alone,
Both in private and public,
Brought to tears by pretty strangers
Who wear their hair wild
And speak softly to the air
While tearing paper napkins;
(And when) one finds himself waking up
To the holy songs of deserts
Sung in a chorus to a black and grey city,
and the nights are sweetened by music,
Softened by a drink or two
Of your favourite black eyes,
Lost eyes in the crowd,
One begins to forget
Where he began
And what he meant to find
In the box that he held so close
While walking the dusty roads.

Stranger than

After all; after all of it, the yellow and purple rain of flowers and moments like pauses on cloudy days; after the unveiling of a white hot labyrinth and climbing ruins of lovetales lost over a million summer winds, he finds himself estranged once again, in the midst of a blue cave lit by dirty fluorescent lights that make faces look like photographs and the eyes unblink now and then.
The night crashes in, and the wheels harmonise with the wind. A thirsty girl in peach salwar glances, clutching on to her white salt scented handkerchief. Bagged eyes half close and then lips are licked or fingers twitch and the spell is broken by the cry of midnight babies whose mothers, clad in yellow and then black, are too tired to put them to sleep.
And tomorrow evening will be a dawn to a new beginning. Again.

Afterlove

Between the fading twilight and the smell of night
When the clouds, blushing red, sung to us of promised lands;
We dreamt in soft, timid whispers.

"Kiss me."

"Only if you let me kiss your hair first."

"You're mad!"

"No.The redness of my love has made me red."

And how I loved you.

But the songs of nightwind are easy to forget
When the sun begins to melt into the sky.
Unmasked then, moments die unfinished.

"You're too mad for me, and your hair too wild."

03:36

To look back daysweeksmonths later without a slight heartfelt pause to smell the brightred again and desperately clutch at the last remnants of the songsinthedistance and ending endlessly so not to lose sight of the horizon dreaming of rising above and into the bright midnight the soft spotlight and to exit after cryinginthehead and then backinthecity sufficiently but unwoken holding on to the lostness and sighs and shadows till dawn comes and then smiling for the sake of silence secretly swirling dustlike in the sunshine waiting for starlight to try again to rise above to be backinthecity sufficiently under the spotlight into the greatwide of the midnight of freelove voiceseyescomets to reach out and runrunrun into the distance beyond the songs and pauses and brightreds and endless ends till nothing can catchmeifitcan.

Still Life

For a moment the light returned though not quite the blindingwhite that it was you see but a soft illumination that came so slowly one could have mistaken it for darkness and he stared longinglybutnotgivingin although he felt his every element being sucked out by that momentary soft yellow yet refusing to be pathetic inspite of the stench and the wordslikecometsbutnotcloseenoughforwaking.

Park Street

Too full of memories not to drown.

Any Colour You Like

Grey and fading standing near doorway half lit by soft shaft of lamplight it came all at once rushing to the forefront like pink and purple and stars and clouds began to recede finally after six years and a month of overlap and a tip of the iceberg but that was all he got for all his sweating over dreams and schemes and blue blooded circuses and keeping the hair on and discoloured scented candles like the yellow of his beloved or the rainbow hair.
He cried,
for want of a smile.

Dead End

I looked out of the window:
The squared sky screen.
And you sitting next to me,
Dramatic pause overflowed;
We managed a smile
To prove a point.
But I had forgotten my lines
Or found them nauseating;
My mind shrunk from the trial,
In spite of the long wait.
Tongue-tied-twisted under the spotlight
We sit, waiting
For the spell to break,
Waiting to write our saddest lines.

Spartan

July 8, 1998 - October 21, 2006

Rainy Thursday

It's raining
Soft rain on yellow flowers
And I am swimming in the aroma
Of wet dust
And basmati rice

Fragile

Love in the afternoon;
Slow motion swirls
Like mid-day dust
In a patch of white sun.

Buildings arch backwards
And the steaming traffic
Silent, and daydreaming,
As I watch
Your hair shivering, your lips curled;
Sweat running down your naked back.

Swansong

Once upon a time
Many yellow sunsets ago
Two free birds were flying in the sky.
One free bird asked the other;
"Why don't you fly
Next to me a while,
And we'll be
Alone together
Till our freedom do us part?"

Monday morning

The crow stays home
As the morning rain
Paints the sky
In shades of grey.

Swansong

Spanish woman
You smiled for me.
A rush of red to the head
In that smoke filled wilderness.
A thousand wild eyes away
Your eyes shone for me.
Our love
Like swansong,
A flash of red,
Flamenco rain.
Spanish woman
What's your name?

Twilight

After the Sun's day
We stretch our naked souls
Across the stars
Smoke our minds
And intoxicated
By the smell of fresh dew
The artist begins
To paint
To write
To sing
To dance
To move;
The Sun smiles before she leaves.