Off Course

I.

Whispers have replaced

All shrieking attempts

At communication,

I wonder when

Silence will be

The only thing we’d use

To communicate

To be actually heard?

II.

I pretend that I

Know where I am

Even when all I do

Is dream about

Sleeping with a fan on

In December nights

Only to wake up

Feeling like I did

Last summer.

III.

I see your outline

And try not to

Fill it up with rainbows

For I am still

Quite bad at colouring

Inside the lines.

©Aaysid

“I’m still in bed writing this, lying on my back like an omelette in a pan.”

Alain Bremond

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Unuttered

Not all words

When they touch

The solid ground

Can bounce back up,

Some of them stay

Huddledtogether,

While only a few

Dare break away

To wait for the ones

Still.

©Aaysid

“The unspoken words trembled in the air.”
Iris Murdoch

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December Eyes

She sees you with December eyes,

The sleep-laden eyelids,

Frosted lenses and an inkling

Of fog all over the corneae,

That way she can only make out

The shape of your face

So if she’d ever have to conjure

Your image up from a memory,

She wouldn’t know where to begin,

But she wouldn’t make any mistake.

©Aaysid

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”
Alfred Tennyson

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Freezing Over

Somewhere a version of you

Is finally able to fix

A broken violin

As the night outside

Turns emerald green

And the fire grows cold

In the fireplace,

And you wonder

If throwing silent,

Winter nights into disarray

By sending out notes

Of a newly repaired

Time-worn violin

Will be a huge mistake?

For life may be full

Of trivial affairs,

But something colossal

Is always at stake.

©Aaysid

“and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks.”
Douglas Adams

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Tinted

The world is more pink

Than grey lately,

But those who never

View it without

Rose-coloured glasses

Can hardly appreciate

The salmon glow

Brought to it by

The sluggish demise

Of their very own

Cherry-red consciences!

©Aaysid

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Lost

She has lost

Her sense of direction,

Wherever she goes,

She is already there.

©Aaysid

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”

Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

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On Edge

Finding yourself rummaging

Through piles and piles

Of discarded memories,

Far removed from present,

Not wrapped in fancy boxes,

But oh so casually thrown

Into trash cans stuffed hastily

Into brown paper bags,

Seems like a dangerous

State of mind to be in,

But when they say,

“Isn’t it like one of those

Baffling things that happen

To you for no apparent reason?”

You cannot help but say,

“I have never heard of those.”

©Aaysid

“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

Delusional

Sometimes, love is found

In the weakest hellos

And indifferent goodbyes,

For anything that plunges

A heart into the depths

Of that abusrd a denial

Must be akin to affection.

Sometimes, all you need

Is a delusional mind.

©Aaysid

“Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.”

Tony Kushner

Hypothetical

If I were to see myself

In a light that wouldn’t flicker

Would I feel the air

To be unrealistically thicker

Will there be a heart

Aflutter, suddenly beating quicker

Would the nagging world

No longer be a cosmic trigger

Will I finally stay

Despite being a habitual quitter?

©Aaysid

“Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
Donald Miller

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Bitter

she became her own

personal shade of blue,

at war with the dusky,

almost-angry

glint of his

prussian blue iris,

and dreamt of a day

when she would

be immune

to that cataclysmic sky

in his eyes

which ends up

infecting her like a virus!

©Aaysid

“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

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Unfaltering?

Neither a ghost

Nor a memory,

But like a drop

Of blood

That is thick,

And pungent,

And repulsively red,

We are as unabating

As the thoughts

You keep crushing

In your head!

At least for now.

©Aaysid

“Out of my ignorance I called you a homeland, and I forgot that homelands are taken away.”

Mahmoud Darwish

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Mediocrity

We could have been putting

Our souls in a mesmeric trance

By dancing like whirling dervishes

In cold, November mornings

To let our thoughts somersault

Out of our heads to appear

As glistening beads of perspiration

To evaporate into nothingness,

But we are far removed from all that,

For mediocrity has slowly devoured

The fire that was supposed to

Burn within our hearts forever!

©Aaysid

“I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.”
Jalalu’l-din Rumi

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Cutting Corners

Three short poems:

I.

When we decided

Never to talk again

We did not know

What that entailed;

It has been three days

Since I have heard

From you but it feels

As if it has been forever-

Never’s not forever!

II.

As I

Fix a snack,

I let it vibrate,

You’re calling my phone,

Hoping that the pedometer app

Would count a few extra steps that way,

Everyday I cheat my way through exercise,

And wonder why my back refuses to have my back!

III.

The solitary chicken

Crosses the road

To run away from the coops,

Don’t you realise

That nothing brave

Can ever be done in groups?

©Aaysid

“One bulb at a time. There was no other way to do it.”

Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards, The Daffodill Principle

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Memories and November Nights

I wish that I didn’t remember

Every dying word,

Every sinister number

That seems to be etched

Into the walls of my heart’s

One flailing chamber,

And I don’t wish to be put into

An extended slumber

For my mind to dismember

Itself in order to sort through

Fragments of burnt thoughts

In search of a salvageable ember,

For I am too much in love

With this time of the year

To give it up like that,

But if that is what it takes

To forget what I

So painfully remember,

I begrudgingly surrender!

I’ll pretend that the sombre

Nights in December

Are as ineffable

As the ones in November!

©Aaysid

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
John Banville, The Sea

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Fading

It has been an hour

Since I have been

Mindlessly scrolling,

Hurriedly swiping away

One grey photo after another

When I am suddenly hit

With a realisation

That brings me to my knees-

There are only a few photos

In my phone’s camera roll

In which my own face

Can be fully seen,

They feel so out of place,

But I better not press delete,

For there are times when I

Forget that I am here

And I can use a proof

Of my existence-

Even a virtual one would do.

©Aaysid

“It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all.”
H.P. Lovecraft

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Deception

When the fall breeze

Brings along a few

Gratifying moments

The world feels

Less of a scam,

Just like a batter

For muffins

Without any butter,

And a marmalade

That tastes like a jam.

©Aaysid

“I’ve heard that sarcasm is no substitute for cleverness.”
Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You

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Free

We emptied

Our heads of

Memories, dreams,

And aspirations

To make room

For things

A bit more palpable,

And days went by

In long spells

With infrequent bursts

Of newness

As we blinked

The nights away

Wrapped in the very

Burden of being nothing

And everything

All at once.

©Aaysid

“I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”

Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

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A Blue Wind

We may have auburn skies

In Autumn,

And soft lilac ones

In Winter,

But the wind in both

The seasons

Is always a perfect shade

Of blue.

©Aaysid

“There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.”

Joe L. Wheeler

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Torpidity

Three short poems trying to explain the state of apathetic torpor I keep finding myself in these days. I blame the weather.

I.

I sometimes feel

Like leftovers

From a great feast;

Joyful enough

To last through

A couple of meals

The next day,

And that’s it.

II.

Is it cold enough

For impassiveness

To set in?

Everything seems

Like a chore lately-

I put “wake up”

As the first thing

On my to do list,

And it is usually

All downhill from there!

III.

I dread the post-lunch dip

For it arrives with all of its

Somnolent glory to put

The coffee-induced

Morning rush to early sleep.

©Aaysid

“Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

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Unwritten

I have sharpened a pencil

Within an inch of its life,

And I can no longer pretend

That the blank pages

Sprawled in front of me

Are a metaphor for

Some great new thing;

I am beginning to envy

The world outside

My solitary window

Reveling in its freedom,

And I wonder if tonight

I am destined to be

This gallingly unwritten?

©Aaysid

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

To Have a Heart

a forlorn face,

drunken gait,

glasses askew,

hair a perfect

place for sparrows

to rest,

mismatched slept-in

yesterday’s clothes,

but a heart

shining a little

too bright

to be bothered

by how grim

things look

from the outside

lets it slide

for a while

before it jumps in

to save a life!

©Aaysid

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus

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A Sweet Escape

I live for

that glorious moment

just before my eyes

begin to glaze over,

a blissful second

when a wave

of release

engulfs me entirely;

whenever I am trying

a little too hard

to engage

and it begins to take

everything out of me,

my mind sets about

to drift away—

some part of us

will always be brave.

©Aaysid

“You use up everything you’ve got trying to give everybody what they want.”
Nina Simone

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Broken

I tried my best to mute

every other conversation

the very moment

it’d become all about me,

but now I cannot recall

anything about myself

that is even half-true —

factory settings restored.

©Aaysid

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”
Marie Curie

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Blackout Poetry – V

titles

various texts

no theme

work in progress

passages

with tiny letters

perhaps never written

a non-book

deliberately abstracted

existential trouble

in the restless narrator

©Aaysid

Solitude

I wish I could return

To sweet oblivion,

To those sweet,

Quiet moments

In which everything

Mattered yet nothing

Quite did,

Where reality treated

You better than

Your recurrent dreams,

And the world

Stood still

Only for you;

Something tells me

I am already there,

Stuck in another

Version of unvarying time,

For no two moments

Of surreal solitude

Can ever be alike.

©Aaysid

“He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.”

Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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