30 Minutes. Over the Phone.

Give me a drug.
Instead of the hug.
No, don't shrug.
Don't look smug.

Here I am.
In the traffic jam.
The eternal exam,
Of things I damn.

My heart beats,
My lung breathes;
My head seethes,
At mysterious myths.

The tug of war
With me, at par;
With things I bar,
With things too far.

The seasons change;
The entire range.
The moods, strange.
An exceptional exchange.

My point of view:
How nothing is true.
But when it comes to you,
Everything is new.

My helpless ear,
My infrequent fear;
That people near
Have to bear.

I would
If I could
But I should
Stop.

The Corner Seat.

[Recovered from my notes during the days of information-hunting for a stupid serial; September 2010.]

In the corner seat of the bus,
The last seat on the left;
Black tattered leathers,
Altogether unkempt.

The leaves outside are swaying;
Or is it just my vision?
For I am drenched in sweat,
Weather's own indetification.

The black ink draws patterns
With each mineral droplet
Even nonsense makes sense
It doesn't matter, yet.

The mind is an expert pendulum
Reels of memory and real
Oscillating in rough rounds
The loop like Devil's deal.

Sanity, aren't you insane?
Stability, you unstable?
When the daydream is replayed
As slumber's vivid fable?

Now the bus starts moving,
The engine engineers noise,
The rush of air beside,
Faking Nature wind-wise.

The driver honks the horn
In a relentless melody;
How easy it is to conjure
A rhythm in cacophony!

The window of the car beside
Betrays a boy of five
Sparkling eyes and sparkling teeth;
Is childhood really naive?

The head heavy with sleep
Weighs down on the eyes;
Magnified, and amplified,
The sound pays the price.

The cellphone vibrates against the thigh.
And I know who's calling up.
I close my eyes and still the world.
And let the voice fill up.

Thinking Aloud.

This is what follows, once I've started.

History repeats itself.

Not necessarily.

But the machine always flunks.

When it becomes necessary.

Rhymes, I'm bored of

Statistics, mundane

Truth, sans absolution

Makes things meaningless.

The adventure must go on.

Since that's the rule, they say

But rules, who is fond of?

Brains with no matter gray.

Design the divine

Praise the pristine

Define the line

But,

Keep track of time.

The days roll out

Drop by drop

And all we do is

Talk and talk.

The trouble with us, is

We think we are wise

And every mocking moment

Makes us pay the price.

Confidence? No complaints.

We were talking of paints

Or were we just pretending

To cover the time we're killing?

Oh, forgive my brain, my heart

It's burden plays no part

Gibberish is tax-free

Greatness, temporary.

Yet, I contradict

Evolve, a better word

Fickle, a worse one,

Where is the third?

Is that the waiting crowd?

Ask them to wait for me.

Till my conscience proud

Allows me to to be

What I do not want,

And what I claim to hate

Till I've set the records

"Normal" and "straight".

The Excuse of a Response

And as usual, I would not agree;
Point out, this is temporary,
Metals inside last lesser
Than the metals outside, ever.
Escapism, I'd endorse, if
I knew the why behind grief,
And as you say, yourself,
The trick is to delve.
Stop the music, if silence
Feels too silent hence.

Sounds and sights,
Wants and desires,
Code words and proverbs,
Things the mind loves.
But then, what do I say?
My own words sway,
Temporary, I repeat
And console every heart beat
That I always have a plan
That words cannot span
Stretching into infinity, and then,
Nothing-ness.
Nothing else.
Excuses, again.
I always need them.

Zzeet-Zzat-Bump.

Zzeet-zzaat-bump.

Brownian motion.

Incoherent collision.

Each with each other.

And the walls of the skull.

Zzeet-zzat-bump.

Echoing every touch.

The suffocation as such;

The din of distraction defeaning,

The brain bows in burden.

Zzeet-zzat-bump.

Blocking and unblocking.

The feeling of losing,

The track of all tracks.

Inter-over-lapping.

Zzeet-zzat-bump.

All day, all night,

Can I have a respite?

A little unlimited time,

Wrenched out of schedules?

Zzeet-zzat-bump.

Now, the sound hurts.

Now, the heart burns.

Now, this is my threshold

Now, there is no next.

Zzeet-zzat-bump.

Brownian motion.

Zzeet-zzat-bump.

Synchronisation.

Zzeet-Zzat-bump.

“Sound the bugle now”

Zzeet-zzat-bump.

Harmony has set in.

Lovely Twenty-Four.

Diwali eve. Saw this lady, not-so-well-to-do, if you know what I mean. Her entire head was bandaged. I imagine she has a family. A son, or two, and a husband. Will they burn crackers, I wonder.
A winter afternoon. A sun, blood red. No, it's not exactly a setting sun. It was glaring bright enough. But it was red. And I stared into it till it became blue, due to some-god-knows-what phenomenon that always happens when you stare into the sun. After a while, I look at the sun again, but this time, not exactly at it. I see it's reflection, doubled in size, on the glass panes of a huge building.
I didn't take it out. It was in my bag. The camera, I mean.
A morning, that starts with a hangover. And a confusion about what happened last. Amidst all the confusion, there is one thing constant. I'm looking for the cellphone.
A night, that follows a wish-this-lasted-forever-evening. Happily drunk. Top-of-the-world. Or no, wait, the world stopped existing. Careless behavior, as a result.
Thank you life, for all the variety.
Only if you could get my head rid of migraine, I could have worked tonight. And paid you back for the last twenty-four hours.

Someone said this to me and Sayak, today.
"Why are you both walking like old men? Slowly, pausing after every step, as if you're contemplating every step?"
I did not reply aloud.
I was not contemplating every step.