final leap

winsome willow

leaps in the air

an act of faith

overdue

since the seeds 

of its slow time

were swept into being.

a break in flight

it realises

the satisfaction

in a slow death.

the roots leave 

their shallow home:

sometimes life begins

with death.

Footnote #5

Sometimes too much of quantity is lost in search of quality.

It's that haunted feeling of anticipated loss:

Perfection is a terrible, and terrific, illusion.

Nevertheless, illusions keep the ego sated.

O Perfect Muse, come to me. Now.

Breathing Images

the mirror shivers

and kicks my dull reflection

into deep focus

All Dreams Finally Break

And so when I go to sleep tonight

I'll put my dreams on hold

and strip them bare.

I'll pull my blanket over my eyes

and hope they won't find me.

I hope they won't come 

and tear my blanket away

and leave me shivering in 

the music-less night.

I'll hope they won't take my belongings

and scream with their eyes.

I'll hope they won't give me the inevitable

blood-draining news:

That I'm just a ghost now

That my past is dead

That nothing belongs to me anymore

That I was living in falseness

That tomorrow I should take my wife 

and children and start living in parking lots.

That the millions I invested

have crumbled to dust. 

That my past was a lie

That my present and future

are incompatible.

That my family will have to 

beg to exist.

That we have nothing to 

call our own.

That our private lives have become

public objects.

That I won't be able to hug my children

in a few quiet moments of solitude.

That from now on, whenever I have to

make love, I'll have to remember that

strange eyes are always looking.

That this is the curse for daring to dream.

...I'm afraid of riches now

I'm afraid to live in 

palaces of ephemeral opulence.

I'm afraid of them.
I'm afraid of floating on clouds 

that crash into mountains.
I'm afraid of hope...

But it's all I have

So I'll hope that hope succeeds.

I'll hope that hopes succeeds

So tonight when I go to sleep

I'll hope that the screams inside 

my head finally stop.

When I go to sleep tonight

I'll put my dreams on hold

so that the dreams I've built my life on 

don't break so soon.

An Unseasonal Flood

And the tears came.

They ebbed and flowed like a seasonal flood.

But this wasn't a seasonal occurrence. He hadn't cried in ages. It seemed as if he was crying from memory.

Memories of a past he didn't want. Memories from a past that had broken him.

But he wept all the same, shedding all shame and fear. He wept like never before. And those painful, watery utterances kept flowing. Almost like a deep wound. Perhaps it was a wound.

But he didn't know. He couldn't think. He couldn't stop.

He cried silently in the deep night. He let the tears stain his face. He wanted them to stain his face. He wanted the tears to purge his unholiness.

And as suddenly as they had started, the tears stopped. They stopped with the speed of thought. But he wasn't thinking anymore.

And finally he came to his senses.

The paper he had been writing on was soaked. The ink had spread and smudged. Instead of coherent words, flimsy remnants of his thoughts remained. It's true, he thought. The flood's taken my life away. It can destroy all that I value. It's finally come for me. This must be the end.

With an insouciance that was insane and logical, he began hammering his forehead with his fists until his knuckles began to bleed. But he couldn't make out whether it was his forehead that was bleeding or his knuckles. The sight of blood pacified him. And he sat down with the weariness of youth.

But he was calm. He went and rinsed his hands in cold water. It seemed to cut through his hands. But he did not wince. Then he wiped his forehead clean and washed his face. The redness in his eyes was fading. He sat down and took a deep breath...

The next minute, he was back to his novel, etching his thoughts with a sanity few could have predicted.

Going Away

There were tears in her eyes. She held him tightly for the last time.
Pain closed in on them.
In the background someone was playing on a guitar with painful languor.
For once she brushed her tears back with the back of her hand. He let his tears trickle to the floor for the first time in ages...

Finally, as it always does, reality came thudding through their stairs of thought. And they laughed.
They laughed with a carefully cultivated falseness.
And the tears were gone. And they were sane again. Because sanity and insanity are measured by laughter: tears just don't count.

They parted with smiles they had constructed years ago.

Crying in the dark

Black tears trickle into

nothingness. I've nothing to

say. Let me be me.