Be here

Tell me what's happening in the world,
Tell me what's happening to the world,
Tell me I am still a part of it,
A despicable part of it.
Tell me I am not mad yet,
Tell me it's okay to be mad,
Mad at yourself.
Tell me it's alright to let your mind wander,
And do crazy things to yourself,
To the world.
Tell me I am a bundle of contradictions,
Tell me because nobody else could,
You being one yourself.
Tell me this is how the world works,
This is how it sucks,
Tell me it was always so,
That it might be so for eternity.
Tell me what I like to hear,
Tell me all that is repulsive,
But be here,
As my hope,
As my despair.

Mirrored

I caught one of those thoughts,
Evading my meditation,
And sneakily making its way,
Into the heap of forgotten ones.

The thought that could ruffle my feathers,
That could agitate our calm waters,
The calmness so scrupulously conserved.

The thought that expounded your responses,
That explored that unusual tone.
It's that thought that spoke of your anger,
Anger that you were oblivious to,
Anger that could not be identified,
Unless it was reflected,
By a mirror tailored for you,
A human mirror.
What you will never know,
Is that your anger,
Erodes the mirror's silver.
The more it's eroded,
The more it's yours.

It changed

Your cognisance of my love,
The stripping of your mask of incognisance,
Hasn't abated my joy or misery,
Of being in love.
The uncertainty reigns,
As it always has.
The doubts stay put,
The qualms linger,
Your fears are exposed,
Worsening mine.
What I've earned,
Is freedom,
The freedom to dream,
To dream unbridled.

Mitigator

You lied,
To delight me,
To entertain me,
To liquefy my trepidation,
To settle my doubts,
That stemmed from my inadvertent knowledge,
Of those antecedent lies,
Or so I believed.

You could have lied,
Through your teeth,
Unrepentantly,
Because lying is your forte,
Because lying treats your senses,
Because lying has become your wont.

 Lies never dampened,
Anything they ought to have,
Your lies showed more of you,
Whom I couldn't help relishing more.

I lied,
Not out of mockery,
Not out of spite.
But to lighten yours,
To mitigate those pangs yours deliver.

Words

We subsisted on them,
Feeding our minds with them,
Molding our emotions with them,
Discovering each other in them,
Indulging in an orgy of them,
One of 'words'.

What are you but words,
What am I but words,
What are memories but words.

When emotions dissociate from words,
What are words but graves.
Graves of the moments,
Moments that we devoured together.

Diffusion

    When you were really young there was always somebody to look after you; somebody to watch you cry, watch you fall as you tried to walk, watch you poop and to watch you cry after you pooped. That could probably be why I cried less much when compared to the other kids. I was content with being watched.

   And soon you had playmates. The world seemed to be composed of umpteen little games, when life seemed to be all about winning or losing them and there was no middle-ground, no delay and no unforeseen complications. Though it's not 'life' which you were worried about back then you had begun to think about that word. Whether you played 'The police and the thief' or seven-stones or Scotland Yard or an indianised version of some game originally designed for the western kids(You've been misinformed about the way things work in India through these indianised versions), they were playmates around you.

   Then there were books into which you buried your head. You were gladly allowed to do that, without questions, without restraints because people considered it healthy and commendable to do so and weren't aware of its pathological limits. Never-mind, there were books for company.

  There were friends who introspected with you, who rejoiced with you, who mourned with you, who appeased your senses with sense, who found sense in your rant; some stayed, some walked in, some walked out -often unannounced, complying with the vagaries of distance, vocation and 'life'.

    They were boyfriends/girlfriends - whom you never tried to reason with, never tried to unravel.

       

   To me the entire 'life'(I wish there was an alternative word for that), seems like a battle against loneliness. Whether I am at the winning or losing end, I've never been able to say.

          

Metamorphosis

I was this person sculpted,
Not by your words,
Not by your deeds,
None of these was I sure of.
I was sculpted,
By your expectations,
Never pronounced,
Always perceived;
By your love,
Never perceived,
Always imagined.

I was this person,
Whom you wanted me to be;
The rest of me,
Decimated in your presence.

As you were unveiled,
I was recast.
The person I knew as you,
Was on the verge,
Of being replaced,
Of being buried,
By the person you are.
The unrest,
The doubts,
The worries,
The qualms,
Dissolved as I heard your voice,
The voice of the renewed 'you',
The voice that shall renew me.