To Friends and Lovers Lost

How are you doing with your adult scene?

I’m flunking out: I’m in my hot study with no AC on

Because I’ve run out of batteries for the remote

And I must sleep soon but I was sorting

My cupboards with a new friend in tow

Because I’ve misplaced something precious

And I’m still on the side of hope about finding it.

 

And I’m still writing poems that don’t rhyme

Thinking that maybe it reads like Bukowski

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t

But I don’t care because this is one

That needs to be written

And since I’ve flunked out the other stuff

I better do this one before I call it a day today.

It’s not a haiku‏

A cloud moved across
The moon's face:
You might not love me.

I figured it out. Well, some of it!

I figured it out today
Somewhere between
an unanswered call
(my brother)
And one that was
(a best friend)

And getting dressed
(for summer)
and dashing off
(first to the pharmacy)
I figured it out
(but did not get cat food today!)

 

 

I figured out
that messed up feeling
That feeling of
being fucked up
It’s the loss of hope
That we will ever be able to
crawl out of the hole
We have dug ourselves into

Or one that we fell into
Because of fate
Because of Karma
Because of genetics
Because of our unruly hearts
Because of a past life never remembered
Because God wants it so
Because it is a lesson
Because it is a penance
Because the fucking wound is the gift.

Brothers in Arms

Cat put on so much weight and so gradually that it dawned on me slowly and with a gentle horror: the poor guy had become downright obese. It could be the surgery. The vet confirmed that happened sometimes. Or it could just be reaction to stress and he is a rather sensitive guy. Our little universe had turned upside down and it takes time to recover from devastation. Both Cat and I had been scared in different ways and both of us put on weight. Another layer of fat, for protection, to hide in.

Srimati, the daily lady, had taken to calling him Motta (Fat). And then recently I noticed that he was slimming down and had become a tad more approachable. What had changed? For one, we were starting to get used to a home without Titu and with two new housemates: Zooey and Moti. Our little nuclear set up had settled down to a new configuration and we had both started to heal.

My Unlikely Knight

 

It was so unexpected

I didn’t understand

That you had offered to slay

A dragon or two for me

If I ever needed it.

Aqua

One day you will fade

Into a sea of blues

and whites and grays

But not today. Today,

I know you wore aqua.

Sons, Husbands, and Lovers

My two male cats are the closest I have come to being mother of sons. One of them is still in his boyhood and the other one is well into his manhood. It was when I was cuddling the little one, inhaling his sweet kitten smell, that I though: The only time we can love males in all their innocence and with their open vulnerability is when they are still our young sons. After that they are lost to us. After that, so many of them are just lost.

I usually worry about the fate of our daughters on this planet. Some countries are very liberal towards their women and some countries are on the other end of the spectrum and very harsh and repressive. (As if the right to freedom is a dispensation that should ever be governed by others). But the safety of women is at risk everywhere. All this and contending with air-brushed faces in magazines and the modern urge to be slim, slim, slim…

But this article is primarily about men. I see what life does to our men and it’s equally a cause for concern. How does the little boy who sleeps in his mother’s protective embrace, who follows her around the house, who begs to be allowed to make a roti become a man who won’t connect with women, who will see them as a score on his bedpost, who will in so many ways brutalize them?

Books, The Invitation and Life

It occurred to me that I could have titled this post “My Love Affair with Books.” But an “affair” implies something temporary (and hopefully reciprocally intense). One could say “marriage” but that doesn’t sound right, either.

I’ve wanted to read ever since I can remember. It was comics when I was a child, because I was given comics or got them from my cousins. Then we moved countries and there was a drought where things to read were concerned. But there were cartoons and TV shows and I watched a lot of Tom & Jerry. Those days, I would read anything, even shampoo bottles. (Sometimes I still do. Read shampoo bottles that is. About books or internet reading, I have developed strong preferences and there are writers I cannot have invade my mind. So I don’t read those.)

Then we moved countries again and slowly books started pouring into my life. I sought them, too. It’s been years now since I read the way I used to read when I was younger. But I am reading again now and again the feeling of glad-to-be-alive is seeping back. Of course if I am intent on a subject, I am insufferable when it comes to conversation because I’ll want to share what I read, what I think, what I want to find out and I’ll want to know what you think about it.

It’s why I’ve started writing again publicly. You write, you put it out there and people are given a choice. Perhaps they will read it right away, or maybe glance through it later, or ignore it if it doesn’t call out to them, but there will be a soul or two who will resonate with what you have written and they will, in that moment, feel a bond with you. And in that moment, the sense of separation disappears. Whether you are kin to me or not, know me or not, are in my country or live on the other side of the planet, in that bond of resonance, we are one; and the edge of existential loneliness is blunted.

I used to read late into the night or well into dawn when I was a teenager and in my twenties. And now when I am on a holiday, I still do that. I automatically slip into that being-alive-at-night-and-asleep-in-the-day routine. Being awake nights is less lonely because the world around you is asleep and it feels normal to be alone. You feel you are the only person alive in the universe and there is the cool night breeze and bats and the rustling of leaves. You’re alive and your mind is lit up with feelings and thoughts evoked by a fine piece of writing. It’s wonderful. You feel like you are in the heart of life or God.

This post was really to talk about the book I’m currently trying to read. Some books are hard to read. Like The Fifty Shades of Gray because it’s really just a terrible book. Jung can be very hard to read because you need to give him your all when you are at your peak. Liz Greene can be like that, too. You can’t read them after a full day’s work. So now I sneak a little before I go to work and then carry over the momentum into the weekend.

But this book: The Invitation by Oriah I find hard to read because I’m afraid of reading it. She has a beautiful style, simple and yet it touches your heart. Deeply. I think that’s why I am afraid of reading it. I don’t think I can bear to have my heart touched so deeply anymore. I know that the tears are there, the longings and so much pain. Just the normal pain you collect in your heart if you’ve lived a few decades: when you’ve seen loss, yours and others; shattered dreams and lives, yours and others; some doors closed forever and the unkindness of so much that touches us in big or small ways.

Shadow Living

So much lives in shadows
Some of our most important feelings
The hate the shame the taboo love

So much is revealed in nuances
Or in unguarded glances
In the subtext of what we say or in our silences. 

Let’s Talk about Death

I always want to break taboos in conversations. Not just for the sake breaking them. Not because I want to make people uncomfortable. And certainly not because I’m rebellious. But because that’s where all the juicy stuff is. All the things that really matter and we never talk about them.

There are a bunch of subjects that are taboo. But I’ll focus on just one today. Death became so real after my husband passed away. I still find it hard to say after he “died.” I couldn’t at all after it happened. I would say, “After he left.” I spoke to someone today who lost a loved one suddenly; and she spoke of the sense of unreality. I read an interview of a famous Indian movie star talking about the how she never before got “the permanency of death.” I would have dismissed her as an idiot before my husband died but I know what she meant. Never again to see that person. Never again to share a thought or a story or laughter or a flight. It’s a staggering sense of loss and it takes a lot of time to sink in. I don’t think it ever quite sinks in. Or if does, for some fleeting moments, it leaves you keening.