i thought that we would never speak again

but i am the stanza on your tombstone

the stanza with purple must of a teenage jacaranda

muddy coats on pulse paramount

we will never kiss again this i know

but you have immortalised yourself beyond

any day i may have not lived

de-fictioning my miraculous fantasies

boy cycling around golden minarets

boy orbiting one sky after another to find golden minarets

boy sits at a circular gold slung bench

boy receives divine assent

boy goes back to classroom - gets his nicker pulled down by briscoe

boy goes home stands before a cross and remembers divine assent

boy goes back to classroom tomorrow briscoe does more

briscoe doesnt stop

boy is told he needs to deal with briscoe himself

boy goes home and livestreams a mass

sprinkles holy water and prays for briscoe to spare

miraculous punditry and the cry of crucification

boy goes back to classroom - another tomorrow

briscoe turns him red

briscoe does more than turning him red

boy walks home and locks himself in his room

eats pesticide and is taken to the emergency

boy recovers and goes to classroom

briscoe be it

boy walks home for the last time

sons lost to silence

daughters lost to silence

may you have survived

the punctured pulse of time replenishes thee

nothing but a burst balloon so many are

while i orbit around the longitudes and latitudes of he and she -

they whipped me well

i am so obsessed with 'they' compounded

that somewhere i lost i

walk i do

breathe i do

morbid existence type calls do exist

necessary pessimism is such a buzzkill

why don't you look at his stiff tail wagging

why dont you do something

why dont you laugh at his stiff tail wagging

smell spices from the broth

unteach and teach

you be better dear damned son

Chehrazade didn't really know what was happening.

While she sat on a white sofa stained with tea, orgasmic mist and ash, she devoured the white sofa with further ash. She puffed on hard red cigarettes. She got up, went till the kitchen with bare feet. Her feet had black charcoal type layers beneath them. Amazing how she would tell me about the cost of this white upholstery only to lie on it with dirty feet - dirtier after each round to the kitchen.

It was 10:00 am by now. While I was leaving for the courts, I sat before her to admire her. Her hazel eyes, light brown mane, tanned olive complexion, sleek nose, mole over her not so pouty lips made the charcoal layers under her feet irrelevant. Even after three years of marriage, I couldn't resist her and slowly sneaked my way to the white sofa trying not to meet her eyes. I kissed her lips soft enough that she again didn't know what was happening. Slowly, ebbing on the deceit that began with a kiss I roamed the periphery, the expanse of her chest. If her face was beautiful, then her boobs were better than all those silicon infested hollywood babes. My Chehrezade was like a vintage coupe. Button start but she showed the road its way. While I started with a kiss and my cavity infested teeth nibbled on her nipples, she showed me the way. Showed me the way to further orgasmic mist. It got so intense- (beep) - intense enough that the two cups of half drank tea on the table by the side spilled on her precious ispahani carpet beneath with little terminological splashes on the white sofa. Maybe it was never meant to be white.

I wore my shirt, tie, pants, socks, coat and left and she blew me a kiss while she surfed through netflix . I’m sure she must have watched horror after I left. While I was driving or arguing in court or working on my draft, my mind was fixated on her. How could this woman clip sunflowers, paint, read, fight to the extent of turning a city into a graveyard, how could this woman be beset by so much that it didn't just add up. How could this woman born into wealth in which nothing was impossible marry and leave everything for a struggling lawyer like me. Who was she? Whether someone who clipped sunflowers or someone with dusty feet or someone who clapped to exorcisms or someone who was a charade yet my charade. She was mine. This woman had packed her bags and left everything for me. She had left a life of luxury in northern europe for this fuckonza. But this is her summarised. This is not her lived. I often think about the disparity between us. About the disparity of us lived.

I just got back home. She is still fitted in that white sofa. Yet I don’t see any stains anymore. The carpet is apparently sponged. I can't see the sofa because she's clearly on the very expanse of it. She just opened her eyes and looked towards me,“How was your day Dave, how did the defamation case go”, I told her about that stupid prolonged case and the conversation just went about.Something was not right though. There was a certain stiffness to her this night. Usually when we make out our moods remain good but tonight she was cold, reserved and even less talkative than usual. She went to the kitchen barefeet, made me a sandwich and put the same before me like putting milk before a cat. I tried talking my way in -whatever that means- but it was resisted by an orchestrated silence. I kept badgering on - a few odd sentences here and there- usually it worked- tonight it didn't. A couple of hours later I heard her laughing to this youtuber nikki glaser. This was new. A woman who had placed bible on the top of the main door of this house was listening, laughing and smirking to a talk dedicated to the power of dildos. Maybe men were replaced by dildos or maybe this girl was just a bloody good comedian but be that as it may she was doing a better job at interacting with Cher than I was.

Night was transcending into its later layers- dawn still afar. She kept on laughing to Nikki. I kept on peeping out from our room to see her … at times she had shut her eyes. At times she was wide awake. She was to herself this night. I went to sleep thinking that she was also mine but she was also hers. Why was I emphasizing so much on who she was this night? Why wasn't I letting her be her? Rather than picking on a fight or punctuating her laughs with my opinion I decided to sleep. By the time I woke up she was asleep, I showered and went to the courts with all my individualism intact which I was so trying to deprive her of.

I couldn't focus at work. I couldn't focus while I gave dictation to the steno. I couldn't focus while I appeared before the judge. My mind was in absentia. I kept on thinking whether she would still be on the infamous white sofa or had she moved to our bedroom. If she was awake then whether she had eaten something. I was trying not to think of her but she was all I could think of. Maybe I had no one else. Maybe she had sheltered me to the extent that I had even lost the audacity to think about anyone or anything but her. This algerian-american girl in my office makes great tea. She just stepped in my chamber and held my hands to say, “ Sir, you are really quiet today, can i be of any help” - I don't really know what she meant by help here. It was almost a pass. Thank God Cher and I made out yesterday or else I would have taken this ones help here. This algerian american one- called tania- has been looking at me with a tenacity of want. I have to resist. I can even see through her white shirt, I guess she purposely wears tight clothes. Thank God she's on the clerical side of things. She has interesting racoon type green eyes. A black fringe almost straight out of porno. She distracts me- she just took me a leap away from Cher. But something, something termite like is also slowly eating Cher. I just entered home to find the white sofa empty.

splashes of magenta on pink fire

clueless butterfly splishing yellow dip

hansel and gretel lying low on green grass

rapunzel paddled in toorak

cobalt skies in yokohama

hazel eyes in the sahara

pedestrian finding shoes in a barren landscape

paws matter

feet matter

jackson boy finding black in white

white in black

indian girl called pinky smoking pot

bonanza be it

julia running and running on thick white ice

dust of nouakchott still on her mind

julia splashes thick white ice on her face

julia goes home to wear a deep red gown

julia marries latvian prince

hodgepodge type world it is

wisdom be meek

i shall only be in gratitude

we shall only balter to frescoes

mirages and miracles

she married herself

dressed up in white

stunning she looked

mirror reflected a thunderstorm

she had a ring on each palm

and then she adorned one on each hand

she read her vows

she kissed herself on the mirror

she undressed and made love to herself

she had a perfect life

she wanted tragedy

she wanted to be receiving a soldiers uniform when adorned in white or

walking over a sea of red

here nothing was tragic

every other day amidst thunder reflecting on that mirror

she prayed for tragedy

it didnt arrive

nor did she marry him

but she married her self

she is her own widow

she is her own wife

i am not her husband

i am in a village with some priests

there sits in between us a black dog with a pus filled lump

there is nothing in site but mounds of mud

all of a sudden the priests have begun to clap in unison

theyre thumping their feet

and his years old lump just burst

there is a shower of pus

amidst the spectacle of prayer

of miracle

this black dog puts his tongue in a water bowl

the priests bathe him with saffron

and he runs and curls in the vast vast mud

walking through a dark night

a dark cobbled street

not a single light visible

till

till i saw a dingy bulb through a presumably dampened cracked french window

hunger there was plenty

i elbowed through the glass and entered the room

empty it was

from there i entered another room

empty too

the only lit house was dampened with emptiness

as always

i had reached my conclusion just by the second room

the second page

so i decided to walk through the emptiness

walk through more rooms

that i did

room after room i found lit low watt bulbs but noone there

there were books with pages so damp that they were almost see-through

wooden sculptures with dust

but i kept thinking that someone must have switched on the bulbs

i reached the fusebox only to find that the bulbs were direct

yet they hadnt fused so someone must have lit them soon

finally i reached the only room at the first floor

it had a terrace but to a dark sky

that only room had a paper glued to the wall

the paper read

" so you like so many before you have reached here -

you will go from here too

this is not a haunted house

nor a cured curse

this is lit emptiness

and if ever in life you want to think of lit emptiness

of buffered mutiny

of rampant tyranny

of adjectivised mysery

of a pulse contingent life

and

and

of a lit emptiness

visit this house on the darkest street again

and maybe that time the street is lit

but this house is dark

that will still be lit emptiness"

spring green walls in my room

dark green leatherite sofas

dresser circa 1947

sofa circa 1970

strongbox circa 1880

stupid ply bent bookshelf circa 2017

whenever i stand before that mirror

dark dark circles under my eyes

hair puffed like burnt flour

skin tanned by an anti sunscreen sun

still very beautiful

imagine all those who must have stood before this mirror

stood dressed - then undressed

hands that must have touched this strongbox

its as if im paraded by history

paraded so much that im removed from the present

its as if the present is the past and the future but not the present

crowled or crawled by deep thoughts

pause right here you dumb fuck

deep thinkers are lying alone in distant distant graveyards

alone

alone with their thoughts as eaten as their bones

intellect sells

intellect without a heavy tag is really no intellect at all

be pseudo

wear a white tee

beige coat

show biceps

a brown rayban

a five o'clock shadow

khakis

boatshoes

a casual patek on your wrist

a hardtop convertible

and after u tick these boxes

talk pseudo

talk about thimpu and gandhara

even if you dont know jackshit

so save your intellect

bend your bookshelves no more

for the ants in the grave wont spare

frescos

worlds

beauty

i remember her driving a red ferrari

i remember her nerves done translucent by the sun

i remember the tik tik sound made by her heels

i remember her cartier shades

not fat

not skinny

olive skin and hazel eyes

spoke slowly, softly

with a voice punctuated by red marlboros

she spent a great deal of time with me

taught me life within the confines of locked doors and closed curtains

but

she would go back

go back to her two sons and husband

he was just a decoration piece

this robotic creature with muted lust fixed before the tele

sons were nice

but they despised me

its as if they knew the expanse of their mothers lessons on me

i was never confronted by them

but i was the stench in their lives

the boy outside whose house their friends would see the red ferrari

i exposed them to lockerroom rant

turned their parents into strangers

but what did i do

i was just a good host

a good student

or maybe i was just the quintessential definition of the 'other'

i revelled in being the other

besides the occasional bout of conscience

i just kept on covering every window

window after window i covered

more sheets and more cigarettes

different colored cigarette butts

one day i came across her husband at the drugstore

he looked at me

i looked at him

he smiled

said i think you know me

weird

weird construct of a sentence

we were again behind curtains that night

she said her eighteen year old had asked her that who was i

had further said he knew everything

and that dad was weak

i listened

poured us some neat

but sometimes pleasure and routine defeat self proclaimed consciousness

sometimes what is right is spun by what is necessary

sometimes being together

being together against all odds is necessary

18 x 2 =36

mathematics even doesnt add up

i went up

carried on up the khyber

and unlike those timestained last pages of a novel beset by tragedy

her life also went on

silence and routine were a refuge

and

and

refuge doesnt always need to be correct