Scribble doodle

When i am awake
(again)
there really is no one to stay awake for.
It's far too late in the night
Mamu snores between her asthmatic wheezing.
The night is still without rain
and therefore sound,
as though it's waiting with me
for another season.

And to put myself to sleep,
i try to think of a leaf i once drew at 6--
it's midrib as thick as an artery.
Then, drawings were a way of examining
your curiosity and fear on paper
So at 36, i take to them again

An imaginary dog by Tiku Gauchan

This one squirms
And squeezes through
The crinkled hedge
Of my dream.
Lays her head
At my feet,
Which are two tiny lakes,
Inside whose depths
Are fish
Whose flicking tails
Are the remnants
Of some childhood.
Hers. Mine. Guiltless.
Like that.

temptation

The night turns into a blanket
of longing
when you stand half a feet away
and suggest every possibility
of possibilities-- between
your feet and mine

siloloquy

there is always a time in life when you feel like everything is crumbling down
now is that time in mine
but
this too shall pass

fumes

and i heard they rose
from the rubble of an old house,
stacked somewhere in an alleyway
in old kathmandu.
and they were called dreams.

under the sky

all i want to do some nights is wrap myself up and think about wide wide green fields where there is nothing to worry about. not even houses.

can't write

Germie says she can't write. I can't, either. It's the only thing I'm incapable of doing. I can do everything else: sulk, yell at people, worry, weep, stay awake all night, thinking of impossibilities in life then wake up in the morning, wondering how I am to get out of bed.
I can do everything else.

my life is punctuated by dog menace

PMS

On days like these, my guts feel like they would burst for days until the rivulet starts flowing between my legs. And I'm sort of whole again, reminded of the possibility this body holds of creating and nurturing another such as me.

Life is elsewhere

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24PV7C0X4S

memory is always woven in tears

boil over

I'm a goosebump these days
taut with you
and ready to explode
at a touch of your memory

feeble possibilities

i wish you had the habit of lying next to me
with your nose buried in my clavicle,
long after love.

but i'm only a habit to you
-- here and absent

my head pools in the indigo you spilled

so, we both know the truth

i only became whole the time we orgasm-ed together

i only understood poetry the day you broke my heart

hope is a thing with feathers?

if you could remove the ache in this heart and plant it with hope, maybe you would.
but even that hope would be stilted by wait, like a bonsai that's lived for years without showing the signs of an aged suffering

the kind of void people leave behind

...even when they never belonged here

because fantasy is better than reality

on nights like this,

when you turn words like a dagger against my heart, i only want to lie down and fall into a deep sleep and never wake up again.

a moment for you

i'm thinking of the Pacific sun

that must warm your nape,

and inside my head

i take a small bite of that sunshine 

and spread it in nibbles 

over your left shoulder,

and down to your heart

so that it's always filled with the light 

of days

of nothingness

coffee talk

i remember how you sat here next to me
the first time we met again

you asked me if you could hold my hand
and i said nothing in response

your presence across the table
was brewing a storm in my gut

and i knew your return
was going to destroy us, all over again

sweet things

how it poured today, as we sat on that terrace, like we only got out of wombs to stare at the rain. it's our favourite thing, we chorused.
and later when we walked for some frozen yogurt, there were little puddles to navigate. we skipped, hop-skipped.
with you, i become a little girl again.

you're gone, but...

even this silence

is punctuated

with the wrangling

between you and i

-- inside my head

come back and interrupt this quiet for real.

i cannot live with you

and like our favourite poet put it,
"we must meet apart"
you here,
me there--
with just so much
in-between

http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/CMS/StaticContent/WhyThinkstockImages/Best_Images.jpg

in bed

i get terribly lonely in bed sometimes. and it isn't about sex. it's just about how i've spent year after year, not knowing how it feels to have to share my bed. summers are sticky. but maybe some days and some nights, there's comfort to be found in the feel of another warm body next to yours.

My gypsy love, like coffee...

bitter-sweet,
bitter-sweet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzsV4WMGmG4

where?

where will i find evidence
of the time
you've loved me too?

where is the air still damp
with our breathing,
alloyed only in want?

 by Joseph Pitcher

just

again, i've woken up from my own ashes
of intoxication--
of wanting to believe your can fall asleep like that
and tell the world
look, i have control over my own life, you don't

this is how i break free of you
drown myself every day
in vanity--
i will.
i am.

an attempt at it

Today...

feels like a long time ago. Driving through the rain with my eyes half-shut, knowing deep inside that it is that time of our life again when you're not mine.
Again, I'm at work early, drinking dark coffee from a borrowed mug, as the rain continues its pitter-patter outside. You're probably in bed, finally falling asleep after tearing us apart in your thoughts all night long. And here I am, hoping this will be over someday and that maybe, by a very slim chance, we'll at least be friends.

it still rains like this...

http://threeriversdeep.wordpress.com/tag/rain/

vignettes

1.

every day

i make new decisions

roll back old ones

sometimes

they become so entangled 

they become each other

2.

you're a bundle in my arms, my brother

so fragile against my heart
sometimes, i want to weep

3.

brother, 

you're still the baby who can stand before me

and point at the patch on your thigh

bitten by some bug

4.

love,

you're the man who stands in the rain

talking about poetry

while my eyes pool in darkness

because i'm about to cry

5.

you're the man who cannot see my tears

because you do not see my sadness

over the impossibility of you 

you are my seance

am always talking to you in my head

explore

every time i'm scared of the changes i'm about to embrace, i just have to think of the people who haven't been scared to take chances, even though it meant losing everything. because unless you take the path untrodden, how do you make discoveries?

I know

Baa, I'm sorry about your bike. I know it breaks down every day and I pretend I don't see the paint peeling off it when I walk past it into the house every evening, when I return from work. Mamu says you've had to get it fixed nearly every day. I know you haven't told me. But I know it's not easy for your old bones to drag them every couple of days to your destination. I'm sorry I don't have enough money to buy you a new one. I'm sorry I've failed as a daughter. There's nothing I wouldn't do to make sure you stopped drinking to kill your thoughts; to make sure you knew I care about your plans even if I don't listen to you half the time. But I'm growing old too, Baa. And I fear that I'll probably end up like you. Maybe that's the reason I avoid you so. I see my future in your every day. I see a woman who will have failed in every way and would have been forsaken by those she's loved the most. I know these are not things I should be thinking. But I also know I can't help us right now and I'm feeling like there's not point in anything..

As long as we're together, does it matter where we go?

Gabrielle Aplin's Home

what if you really did miss me?

 then maybe life would be a little different.
and there would be no turning-in of daggers in this heart

now i'm left with

 snatches of the night,
when i imagined you'd climbed into my bed several times,
every passing hour
and murmured, "because i missed you",
against my drowsy temples

it is still a very lonely time of the year...

i call these ma's flowers

they have a way of returning

once 

in every couple of years

they were there the year you left

and on their yellow petals

my desires slipped

until my syllables formed a lisp

to singe your synapses

they are here again

you're here

i'm here

and our phrases clash and crash

and an embattled youandi

gather each other

to prepare for another bout

PreBirthdayGifts

they arrive in beautiful packets like these from very far away...from angels whose life is a way of helping others live

Shel Silverstein's

sing me to sleep

 the sedative warms my blood and i fall asleep thinking:
i wish i never had to tell you that i miss you

banter

When i started this blog, it was meant to be a journal, where I could crib, ramble, rant. So it was called days and a diary. It has changed in many way now. Now, I hardly write. Most of the time, I'm writing in apprehension because I don't want a certain someone to whom all my poems are dedicated, to find this blog.

My days are so long and lazy when I'm not working. So, there's not much to say.

If I'm working, the day just passes me by and there isn't even enough time to eat.  And when I'm not-- like today-- I just sit here, watching Kanchu sleep, while the chopper flies above the house, maybe in an indication of what we should expect next-- air traffic congestion.

This is only today. Tomorrow, there might be another accident and then I'm back to reporting death again, like it were routine.

Sometimes, I wonder what good is a job like a reporters's. Why am I keeping count of the dead, when I hardly know what it is to be alive?

In Gyanu's words: it's crass.

i don't want to wake up...

i'm downing mugs and mugs of dark coffee without any sugar and still, i'm tumbling into sleep.

now that you're gone,

i remember how much i loved that smile on your face as a child. you had a way of pursing your lips and then laughing a little. the spiky gold earrings suspended on your earlobes always dangled when you nodded at things. and you nodded in agreement and disagreement. but most of all, i remember you were a brave woman always. and i remember you always loved my mother.
but i never had the chance to thank you. and now that you're gone, maybe you know, even if i never said it

The God of Small Things

it's time to read it again and wonder how it's possible for a writer to pick words like they were treats or maybe special pebbles strewn over a river bank, so they form a pattern. what does a reader or writer know about stylistics when dealing with words that are only treasures to the heart? let them form patterns in your mind and touch your heart over and over again like these flowers that bloom where is seems the most impossible to...

blessing in disguise

i went to the movies alone for the first time in my life.
the story is about a girl who runs away to Europe to hide from a heartbreak. And there, she makes new friends and rediscovers herself.
i did exactly that last year.
sometimes, we are thankful to those who break our hearts, because they help us find new meaning to life. their job in our life is to push us toward better things.
so, all of you who have broken this heart-- thank you!

the conjurer

the bed is the place where i die everyday now, giving shapes to dreams that never had a life

Cul-de-sac

http://www.modes4u.com/

1. I still crunch up my nose in memory of the boy who used to say he wanted to drink coffee out of my navel. Silly fantasy, Pete, I'd say, when he talked about things such as buying the town out so he could make love to me everywhere and anywhere we liked.

2. Thamel hasn't changed much since. The streets are always busy with strangers, who sometimes jostle past each other, as they walk in and out of stores and eateries that are multiplying in numbers by the day.

3. I want to go to that particular coffee shop located at the cul-de-sac today, where A and I spent all our time talking quietly, as though such a thing were only possible between her and me. There are tiny pretty things, arranged in neat rows in that coffee shop that brighten your day. Just like that.

4. I'm walking fast because it seems like the rain will catch my back before I get to the coffee place. And I absentmindedly walk at the edge of the street where the road meets the footpath-- a bad habit picked up from an old boyfriend.

5. There's got to be some sesame cookies and brownies to go with coffee. They always have fresh bakes. Kathmandu is becoming better at its baking skills. My flip-flops slap tiny grains of dust against my calves as I speed up my steps.

6. The cul-de-sac. WE ARE CLOSED ON SUNDAYS. SORRY FOR YOUR INCONVENIENCE.

if

if i could fly,
i would flap my wings hard
and go to a land
where there's no you
no me

knotted

you and i were only shadows last night, as the street lamps tried to peek at our faces. i concealed my smiles and tears with the blankness i wear for a mask sometimes. your smile seemed like it wanted to say things we have been trying not to hear. my heart is just a huge knot these days, i know you will never see.

when we excommunicate,

my fingers refuse to type.
 they knot against eachother,
touching the keyboard like our absences.

typing is so painful

if this rainbow were a crossover to you...

there are days you know how Bridget Jones must feel

Sealed

Next life,
I will be a Sarus crane.
And you,
my mate.

my own abyss

i hate you for the torment you are to me
i hate you for how you've left me sleepless for years
i hate you for how i cannot remove you from me even as i know i'm only waiting everyday for you to leave
i hate you just because its so easy to do that to someone you love too much

stealing your words

across the night, you said to me:

"i have been waiting
under the pipal tree
near kopan
since morning
for the girl whose lisp
i can hear even
through the crickets'
nightsongs"

and  i said,
i don't want a future with you,
but we can live today.

in the folds of bedclothes

last night
i thought about
how we surround
our boat with ripples
in the centre of the lake
splashing the oar

toward no direction

while i miss you

steam and water
turn to glitter
in sun beams
that slash my skin
as i stand under the shower
dreaming about your eyes

all i want to do today
is lie in bed
and look into your eyes
where our lives lay trapped in layers
carved by you repeatedly
during our absences

i will not complain about these mornings

that dampen my eyelids

with a swab of sleeplessness

borrowed from being a part of the world

where you are always in another realm

we are sin

we abstain

we thaw
in each other's eyes
as raindrops
form patterns
on windows
fogged-up by our breathing

ticking

what is this paralysis that gnaws at my nerves? is this what ms.Coutinho talked about when she said "nerves don't break down, people do"?
all day today, i haven't been able to step out of bed. there have been times i stayed in bed because it was what i needed to resuscitate myself. but now, am forcing myself in here because i feel like i can't do anything.
it's hard-- not having a place to go to. 

you ask me what an orgasm is

i say-
it's when i'm taking light steps up the hill,
going away with just your astonished face on my mind

and once am at the top, i suddenly drop
falling towards you, at the greatest speed 

How are you, dear Chiang Mai?

There isn't much to say about me, except that I recently lost an old relative who loved me and my mother very much. She fed my mom beaten rice and fish everyday when she was expecting me. And after I was born, Yaama (as I fondly called her) carried me around until my growing legs started slipping off her waist. 
Then I lost one of the dogs I loved. He died fighting his way back home after being attacked by all the dogs he met on the way back. 
There isn't much to say about me. Just that everyday, I fall a little more in love with my poet, whose suffering breaks my heart over and over again. 
I'll never be whole. Just like you. Because, I too always seek love where it eludes me the most.

Take care of yourself.

Love,
.