There he
sleeps. Look at him. He hasn’t died. Zombies haven’t torn his head. He’s
sleeping. Faces become pure when people sleep. Tired tram takes him home.
Severed heads of days dance of waves. Headless bodies of days pile up on the
guts of tedium. It’s like a carnival. Night drips from copper-moon. Moon drips
from copper-night.
Like gold
laughter of river we flowed towards him. We moved through time and space. We
remember our sad scooter. The skies would be rainsong, sunset on eyes of faces.
We remember
looking for those 72 pages between two seasons of moonset and sunrise. We
leaned over the twisted, smooth contours - Sepia darkness - from balcony. Heads
pasted by windows. We should’ve trusted living more than these things and other
jewels.
What happened
to our timeless faces? Thus, we reached the house. He wasn’t there. Taxidermy
and mirrors. Soft, silent piano-reeds. Oval frames of smooth, sincere sex. Moonwater
blue of love, flesh, glasses. His ship had sunk. His face floats on canal
through town, carrying our collectives, carrying city and other shit, his cigar
stuck face, real face. We touch our faces mostly to feel our stubbles, that’s
the strongest attachment to it. Water moves up when it rains. Hence, when it
rained, water moved up.
We moved out,
walked through tough, dark alleys. Clans and cans cluttered, cats of
memorabilia moved. Our penitence moved our fingers, we repented, pendulum
moved.
Suddenness of
death, he noticed, can’t shock life. One death can’t eat more than one life.
Thus, life seemed stronger. In this way, he had established the vitality of
being alive. We woke up and shaved sometimes, but not every day and hardly once
a week. Razor-blades become the first victim of laze.
As we limped
past the rusty hinges, the corridors of dim-yellow, yolk-mornings with bazaars
being swept and washed, we picked up a crumpled piece of parchment, left alone,
on the streets, by our vaunted prophet who did not find us. Inscribed,
pall-mall:
Gentle Words of Advice
Look, your silence will
reveal you. You will be noticed if you ever succeed in going out without
deciding where to. And people who notice, like all people, are the sickening
scum who dotted the i-s, painted their and our boats, added garlic to ponds of
milk and love, added salt in lives, schemed their schemes, charted their maps
and fucked everything up with, umm, geometry, I guess. So, be all alone before
it’s too late.
We dressed
and decked ourselves up, one by one. We had to reach there so we reached our
soft field of dusk, red swirled, obedient poses of the gods and goddesses of
evening, death of moments, we had to be wary of the sudden attack. We had to be
ready. Hence, we drummed dignity upgrave through ages and tides. It’s like
shaking the last drop off your dick after peeing. Have you seen the magician and
his nightingales?
Then our
mirror of everything awakes and we hear silence screaming ‘smile for the
camera!’ Did we not obey? our ghastly moments which had piled up awoke like
sunk mountains, sunk ships, tearing through head and face of water, screaming for
life and love, for lacklife, lacklove, we would see our pursuit through nights
of ceaseless lightning, our experiences, our doleful reckoning of life and
death in cold hard duel against the canvas of being here and not being there,
one day and night of might and miracle, one life of relentless yearning, anger,
sorrow, one mountaintop of our piled up livings and dyings. Did we see that?
Look at him,
enchanted by the fact that he is alive. buzzards fly through the strange, stoic
darkness. His fingers reach for the roots of evening, even the ropes are torn.
Patterns coil out from dead piano. He doesn’t see death. We don’t see death or
dying. Now we enter the realm of fear. It started with chances. He may shave
his beard on a given day or may not. Calendar gave us day, clock gave us time.
Before that, we walked up from the sewer, crossed empty overhead wirings, moved
down to the sewer, at a different coordinate. We penetrated women to penetrate
fear. Then we worship the altars of love and flesh. We were scared because we
were alive, which implied we won’t remain alive. We tried to break the cages.
We seek immortality and perfect dominance. Look at him sleeping. He isn’t dead.
Kite sits high on abandoned terrace. Women told us they’ll be there when
they’re sad. We never knew. We bend. Our
stay bends.
Woke up
before dawn
Couldn’t hear
rain
Can’t hear
shit
Sun became
sunflower
Rain becomes
sadness
And he, will
be there. Semicolons wept. You wiped tears from his chin. He won’t know how
important living is till before he dies. He will know of the cruel length of
pines. He drowned in the last-nights. Wasn’t that your love, when our golden
bell arose from the sea and the pendulums stopped swinging and our children of
the world crowded the island of constant recollections? We have seen him
pushing out for love. We have noted his desperation down with our little
pencils. We have seen so many people on the shore that we like it in printed
words, like all the cowards, drunkards, existenwhateverists from everywhere.
Look at him. He isn’t dead. He sleeps. If he dies in sleep he won’t know how
important it is to live and see the constant sights and hear the ineffable
sounds of living. Shall we pity him? Are we wearing our sunglasses? Finger
touches three spots. He stares at his mirror and sees those treacherous
undercurrents beneath this flow. One day his head will wake up from water of
the world. Timeless nets will roll up from his galaxies and set him free. Only the
eyes stay, awake, across this silence. He isn’t our Phlebas. Let us not think
of him now. Let us inch closer to the frozen chromosomes – the listless dawn of
time, love and corpuscles.
When they
took it all
When they
snatched the halo
Where were
you, ballerina?
Reptiles shine
from our garden of agony
Ballerina,
ballerina,
Green sunshine
in your eyes.
We wade
through this damning chemical alteration of the soul. Damned stars twinkling on
damned fishes of damned ponds. Universe springs out from between fingers and
bones, between tailfins and pachyderm, beneath sleeping tractors and mammoths,
from all music that has never been played. We find it leaping straight at our
throats. We see it because we stay awake like the rock of Gibraltar. He sleeps
and hence he doesn’t. We think of Jupiter and Thetis, of automation and
automata, of dynamo and spring-coil continuum, of our city dying fast, our world
living fast, we ask dying people why they were born, we find starlight trapped
in frozen eyes of dead fishes. He sleeps
and hence he doesn’t.
We remember things jostling in that golden
cage and trying to break out. We remember being helpless. We thought we had the
keys but we were too scared to find it when we searched. We did not know what
will happen when they come out. We also remember having heard from reliable
sources that we need to give and take love, and of the fisherwoman who found
the golden carp. We walked along the empty shores of moonlight and wishing. Is
he dreaming our dreams? Now, suppose he is and he forgets them when he wakes up
– will that count? How will we know and, more importantly, how will he know?
Who keeps the count? That’s one thing that goes beyond every clock and tide,
beyond little people gathered around the great bell that arose in moonlight
from the island of foggy undreams and stayed silent because of and despite
everything, and we gathered to appreciate its great body shining in silver of
days and nights we did not live and then it moved up like a huge reef, our
unlived hours tearing through the water being a long-drowned ship of forgotten
sailors and it shot up to where lightning shoots down from and we could see the
peak of the dead everything in the strange light of ceaseless lightning and it was the strange screaming silence that
cut through it all, through the ropes, through sheep with golden teeth, through
symmetrical avenues of our empire , into the realm of everything that isn’t
here and wasn’t and won’t be there like recollection of all that didn’t happen
and contours and texts and events and the flow and yes we could see it and he
could have or couldn’t have seen it and everything had colours and shapes and forms
and we were there, pushing through the walls and charging at the gates in
endless files of sun moon and stars and galaxies and classic reptile from
purple rainy houses and peeping out from thirstscorched soil first flower met
first light. Wolves of waste we far away. We saw. We learned to see the great
body of the Universe. It was magic – like all dreams, remembered, and,
forgotten. Soft parrots flying to sundown wilderness of sky and city. All real fuck
stems from hatred against us.
Itinerary:
a)
Our
messiah will speak on masturbation.
b)
Antony
abandons the gods
c)
Revelation
and revelry
d)
Sad
old hookers singing sad old songs.
e)
Ugliness
and beauty
f)
Dance
of death
g)
Parables,
parabola, paradise, general patterns and patterns in general
Even then a
bit of sundown stuck to our fingers. Our hands got heavy and soon we couldn’t
feel them. Thus, we arrive at our third fear, viz., that of a part of us
departing.
He can’t see
the cold drops flying around between two seasons of separate emotions. He won’t
know this. He didn’t see Theseus following the string. He doesn’t remember the
book. We can recall a picture or two. We recall woman holding candle. Music
rolling up, bullhorn moon. That was the hand of woman. We had to shed tear and
blood of world for that, our first ruin; we were to flow through time and grab
all we could, to reach there. We recall honey and peacock of purple woman of
sundown. We recall smile, eyes, body and mind. He won’t know even when the
stars tremble. Has he been provided for? The whirlpool was all around us then. We had moved up the iron stairs and we were on
the streets and we weren’t amazed. People and cars of night glided past our
bored frames. We are not thinking of eclipses and epics. We are not thinking of pain from illustrated
short-stories. We wouldn’t know if he is in pain because that calls for inhuman
strength. Inhuman is what humans can’t do or hold, we wouldn’t be knowing much
about dogs, ghosts and aliens.
Observation #
73: On evenings following when pain starts tearing it all away it’s our body
that concerns us most.
Observation # 73¾: Our purpose of notice and
flow had arrived before the need to love did.
We slept in
womb-dark pulpit, we weren’t crazy or stoned, we weren’t scared or psyched, we
weren’t brave, we hadn’t won or lost. We did not care. Our legs were folded. We
won’t be knowing if our nostrils shook a bit. We were to beg forever. We were
to head for the point where all abstracts meet. Our preparations were either
extensive or not – there’s no other choice to make. We were not allowed two
buttons at once with the same purpose or otherwise, we learned that no process
can be performed more than once at the same time. That he is sleeping is true
or false, but it’s not the only or final truth or falsity. Our students shall
flock inside the strange classroom in a while. Our childhoods were green and
orange and maroon and yellow and colourless. We don’t know about his because he
is asleep. We will know that if he wakes up and tells us. Guards need not mind
their sticks and boots because sound from corridors won’t reach other galaxies.
Laughter of wisdom can wait. Laughter of wisdom can’t. Butterflies of love in
the garden of constant sunset.
First memory,
uptake of oblivion, memory-oblivion, between galleries and stages – that
fishhook through keen currents of midnight, timid flowers of twilight,
desertion of unknowns, and pangs, made us run, sharp, breaking through
monstrous waters, tearing soundless cords through void in fierce thrust, to
make us shoot to our Rubicons; unlike Theseus, we had no strings or threads. We
shift to the depths, we were not taught to wait for dead moments to storm the
fortress, we could barricade the temples; we have been going further down since
then. We are the drowning soldiers of the world. His ship sank long ago. His
head floats below arches that overlook the stream. We pull the down shutters of
our shops, our heads tilt from kind balconies to look at his head floating by.
Cigars stick out of our shutterdown faces. One day our bodies will have candles
in place of our heads and its flame will flicker at destiny, flow and waste. We
were in the hallway and we were told of the staircases and marble fairies.
Many pictures
see and remember more than we do. We have not seen their poison more than we
have seen broken mauve and crimson playing inside our aquarium-rooms of dulcet,
rainlove dawn. We can only guess his destiny from things that bend over
volcanoes. Only the eyes stay, afloat, when everything else sinks. We have
reached certain points through frames of experience and observation. We bend
with the big universe. Nothing happens and nothing changes until the marks
appear. Thick, tender shades of this road pull our senile roots. We enter the
dark gallery of nerves, we are the only audience, we did or did not keep track
of everything, including the sharp question marks that juts out of our skulls
and mocks at our knots till we are fatal and immobile, roots and branches go in
through our heads and push inside soft, wet folds soil and air. We can’t
scream. He is asleep. He won’t scream either.
Ocean –
retreats
Claws – hide
Demons –
retreat.
Gates opened
up and stunned ants of oblivion stared at us. There was blood in their faces.
There is blood in him and something might erupt, like a sleeping volcano,
between the resurrected seasons and pyramids, screaming, flowing, marking sands
and statues of death, carnivals rotting away. We waited, electric, for belief.
We were the retards and prophets of fuel; bodies cry, inhuman, from thought to
consciousness. Nothing new will ever
happen. Nothing is ever complete. Except when you sleep, dreamless. We don’t
know about his dreams. The bridges are on fire. Women live for our immortals.
Is he really there? Will he walk through our sleek avenues when he wakes up?
Gods and demons fought for thunder on the cliff, forests of wisdom descend like
abandoned spacecrafts. Our zebras and bed-sheets have been through this. There
were sounds of war and clapping. We have seen fire of perfect silver spreading
across the oceans. Crimson crimson harlots, princesses. We write to our bodies,
ask them how they are, how much have they wasted, we plead to them to feed us
and keep us well. When we die, our corpses will drag our bodies away. No one
will write to them anymore.
We saw
ourselves not seeing the midget. We see
the pinkest sky that never was at 4:44 am. Our clocks could never catch the history
of isolation. Our time machine was made of solid gold. Smokes come out of the
face. We have dug much of the tunnel by now. Stripped of love, we could feel
only our own pain. We want to build a bridge. We want to build a bridge. He doesn’t
want anything because he can’t. Moonlight falls on his face.
“Where will I keep my raised foot?”
Dusk falls on
big red flowers. Birds and parrots fly to strange dark outside. Vision
stretches till far away. Nothing is unexpected. Only the fingers tremble a bit.
For us, staying awake was essential. So we lit it all up, one by one, and all
of it was awake and all of us were awake. Thus, we see. Intent on living, we
search for medicines to keep us from fear and chances. Look at us placing
guards on our gates, bombarding other barricades, shooting through wounded
alleys, holding the plasma and the vectors, holding lamps, torches, senses,
dynamos and cannonballs, bleeding atonement on ledgers and cognates, our
looming specters hover over this, here. now. How much does it take for this? He
sacrifices all clocks and maps. We hang from blurred totems. We don’t see
death. There it burns. Like cinema. Look.
It’s almost as good as our bioscope show of masturbation and suicide.
Threesome is best in snow
You and I.
Then, let us go.
In this way,
Lacklove gave us a lot. Then one fine morning he woke up and did not hear
distinct roar. So he did not wake up and heard distinct roar. It’s true, the
only fault of those who are dying is that they were born. Pictures often see.
Do pictures forgive? Then sundown faces,
moonlit forests burnt, more fire, our lady of pure love burnt, tragedy of life
on fire, moving, patterned, glossy, listless – spear shot from star to star
through night of beauty and splendid women, pillars ejaculate sanctity and
illusion of sexless grandeur on living, look at him, he sleeps, his face is
amazed by the easy wonder of being alive.
This, and nomore. He isn’t sleeping now. We were not born for this,
easy, pitchforked damnation, labyrinths. We weren’t born for much. We aren’t
alive for much. Let’s die and drink tea from flask of life. Let’s flush our
shit of life from our shitpot of life. Hello.
