#6 Howl

I see the best minds of my generation destroyed by their apathy, pretending to be interested, crouching and cowering, and adjusting the brightness levels of machines to ease their eyes,

fooling themselves and nodding in indifferent agreement with the rabble babble of soulless networks stealing time precious irredeemable time under their noses,

who sit up smoking everything and drinking and more and sometimes less,

only waiting for the next time their bank accounts will be topped up again, and hoping,

knowing fully well it won’t, but hoping anyway,

that it’ll make a damned difference.

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# 5 Abstract Abandon

There is art here, all around,

framed and hung strategically

on the walls

because, you see, 
they must know we are cultured.

That we pause, sometimes,

as we hurry past,

and we deeply inhale

the soothing balm 

of vague abstractions
and obscure design.

They mustn’t think otherwise-

it must not be said that we don’t

look at the paintings,

that we do not have time,

and that the stark white light

reflects off the glass

and all you can see, if you were to look

away from the screen,

would be your own face,

haggard, dark-circled, defeated.

They mustn’t know that all the art is dead,

that it hangs in mocking derision.

They’d rather believe that

the colours, and patterns,

can revive us,

make this worthwhile.

There is art everywhere here,

beckoning to flights

of fantasy,

but nobody looks,

nobody lingers,
and nobody flies.

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#4 I need you to know

I want you to know,

that because

I don’t say the words,

doesn’t mean I don’t feel

those emotions- intense,

that ardor, overwhelming,

frightening, even.

I need you to know why

I won’t say those words-

so trite,

so common.

I want you to know,

that, I wonder,

what if,

the passion, the experience

those feelings,

are trivialized

in utterance.

I want you to know that

I could tell you over

and over again.

I could scream into caves,

and listen for the echos

of those words, that will

barely, hardly

so inadequately express

how deeply,

fiercely,

and consumingly,

I love you.

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So You Want to be a Writer

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.
don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.

                                                                                                           -- Charles Bukowski

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# 3 Write Love to Me

Write Love to Me

If you feel like writing about me,

of that fleeting moment when you slip inside,

of the flashing rapture of expectation.

and even though you're within-  you're also wrapped around,

and when I look up,

I see your eyes,

but you gently move inside, and

I turn blind

with a longing- so basal-

it’s shameful, at times.

If you feel like writing about me,

write about those fleeting, flashing moments when

your warm tongue prods and nudges, discovering

places I didn't know exist

and when you insist

on moving faster and harder and sooner

and I soar, we soar-

together, you and I.

Write about those fleeting, flashing moments,

as we summit those peaks,

and the sore slow descent,

back to our tangled heap of limbs and love,

write about the ache, barely there

that remains.

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#2 Kundalini

Thank those urges, I say,

for the “residual power of pure desire”

for lust, for passion-

for sheer physical being.

For the mental explosions

of that avid experience, in union.

Thank the fervent longing, I daresay,

for the slaves that we are.

uniting us,

in animal pursuits.

Elevating us,

reducing us-

and gently reminding us-

that evolution, notwithstanding,

progress, thought, philosophy –

and all else in between-

cannot free us from the captor

of desperate, decadent,

sometimes, even divine

Desire.

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# 1 Chase

It was, at first, a conquest-

a project, even,

the pursuit of the unlikely,

the thrill of the crazy chase,

and the vindication of my own charms.

It was, at first,

about only myself

and my obsession.

But now, by and by,

when I get better,

I also get worse -

only because

now I want more –

more than mere victory,

or reaching the finish line.

It is, now-

a dream, delirium;

a craving, even,

the pursuit of intimacy,

and the warmth of reassurance.

It is, now-

a gentler, stiller, trail

but harder,

so much harder.

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What'd I say?

I haven't been here in so long. It feels a little awkward, somewhat alien. I've been jotting down ideas as and when they occur to me, rarely as they do. 

The idea now, however, is to to let go. To stop trying to make every sentence perfect, have every little mark of punctuation add to the aesthetics and content of what I mean to say and eventually end up saying. To embrace, admittedly, verbal diarrhoea. It will probably not end well, I am sure of that. The point, though, is that it shall begin. And, to begin, we already know is the perpetual problem. To sit down, sober or not, and to write. Whatever, whenever. There's an anecdote about John Steinbeck - about how when he was a journalist, he would arrive at his office an hour or so early and  place a foolscap paper in front of him and then, he would write. As his colleagues poured in through the morning, he would keep writing; and when he was done, he would scrunch his papers up into a ball and throw it in the bin. When the reporter who sat next to him asked him why he would do such a thing, he only shrugged and called it practice. That's what I need. Practice. Ten thousand times. Till I achieve the kung fu.

I maybe setting myself too hard, though. I mean, come on. John Steinbeck? I'm not entirely that deluded. In the edition that I'd read of The Pearl - that lyrical, though provoking novella of Steinbeck's, I remember his wife had written the introduction. With some impressive talent of her own, she'd done a fine job of describing her husband's commitment to writing, to the creative process. I don't know if I remember this exactly, or if it is slightly exaggerated in my memory- but I remember her talking about a little wooden cabin Steinbeck had built himself in their garden. He would wake up early in the morning - once he'd become a full time writer, that is - and head to his circular ivy covered cabin with a big cup of coffee and write, and he wouldn't emerge for hours. I remember feeling especially inspired after reading this beautiful memory of her husband, but instantly putting off any creative output from the inspiration on the grounds that I neither had a circular ivy covered cabin nor the will power to wake up in the morning. 

I'm a little more grown up now, and a very uneasy feeling has been occurring to me. The unmistakable feeling of time creeping up on me, and maybe, even crawling past me. Now is the time to do this, now is most definitely the time to begin. This exercise is definitely not as grand as I make it appear, but for somebody whose default setting is ultra lazy, this does make for a refreshing change. Write everyday, perhaps? I definitely need a regimen, a system - I need accountability.

I don't need an audience, though. An audience, I would think, is a liability. I've known a few people who read this blog, before it became defunct; and I remember I always ended up writing to someone, or for someone. Not a particular someone, just a nameless, faceless reader who might read me and judge me. Since what I'm doing here will be practice, I don't need anybody watching. I'd like to write for myself - an exercise I haven't indulged in for a long time. I write memos for clients, notes and opinions for work, and mails for people. All my writing, as it happens today, is towards some end. 

Then again, I've never been really satisfied with the notion of writing for oneself.  To write is to communicate, and communication needs a sender and a receiver. It seems kind of pointless to me -  a little bit like the tree that fell in a forest with nobody around to hear it fall. I know for a fact that the enjoyment I derive from writing, enormous as it is, is far outrun by the immense pleasure of having people read me, and enjoy what they read. I'm not sure I need to break out of that habit, I'm not even sure I can. I do, in any case, need to break out of not writing for fear of people not enjoying what I write. Like I said, I need to sit down. And write.

P.S. As I completed writing this post and clicked on 'Publish Post', I realised something very very important -  I don't need to worry about how it ends before I begin. :) 

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