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In the evening, I was with the pioneers. Music makers. And there were children as yet uncaring for the world’s approval. I was with uninhibited animals and big eyes. And there was music – noise and otherwise.
Then I played a game. I created a sense of purpose and argued for it. I was amused and animated. I made them believe that I had a point of view. Points of view are dangerous things. I mostly stay away from them. Yesterday, I was with some non-violent people and I decided to have fun.
I argued for two hours till my eyes ran away from their sockets due to the pressure from my hyperactive brain. But I smiled every time someone countered me. Hahaha! I was an evil con artist. I was a parasitic psychic vampire. I contradicted myself freely and dilly-dallied in pointlessness. I was sophistic and painful. Their retina reddened with rage. (Lol!)
My argument was said to be “Vulgar, discordant, unmusical and unartistic” and I had an enormous feeling of warmth crawl down my insides.
It was sad that they did not know I can be post-modernist when I want to be. I can also be biased, irrational and hedonistic.
It seems I subscribe to a number of borrowed philosophies and there is nothing original in me and I only speak language in a convincingly logical fashion. Unfortunately, they did not know that I do not stand for anything and therefore I am not afraid of anything collapsing. Despite the children around we were stupid.
Theism can collapse. I will not. Love, music, laughter, pain and memory can collapse. I will not. Because I am not.
You are afraid of defeat only when you fight for something. When all you want to do is have fun with concepts, everything is irrelevant. When all your props are gone, the very act of fighting for something becomes funny. You take sides with something not because you want to protect your sanity and retain your conviction but because you can take sides. You can take sides with anything and not get attached. It is fun to irritate the more serious ones.
He asked “Why should you argue so much about something that is irrelevant?”
Because “Irrelevance is the only relevant thing.”
Seriously! What gives!
She could not talk. That was her problem. And she could talk. That was also her problem.
Where the mindless noisemakers thronged in big cities wagging their tongues, she was silent. She did not laugh to their predictable jokes. She laughed at times. But she was laughing at them and not at their quips. She laughed at their absurdity. Where the power mongers debated on falsities, she did not talk. Where there were controversies on religion, politics and science, she looked at her toe nails and imagined other things. She did not listen and she did not talk. She switched herself off where the manipulators sprinkled cautious gossip around. She would dream of purple horses and non-existent ideals. They called her many names. She was the “dumb”, “lazy”, “psycho” who did not talk. Who did not know what to talk about. Or they imagined she was too haughty.
In private chambers where mind met mind, she poured her heart out. She laid her thoughts bare, teddy bears, crazy theories, songs, philosophy and giggles – merging into one another but undoubtedly ringing of truth. They laughed at her now. “What a simpleton!”, they thought. Why will she not talk about quantum theory and integral calculus? Why does she forever talk about people, animals, flowers, stars, poems, songs and love?
And then a glass bottle fell down and broke. They all ran around bustling and screaming. Somebody stepped on the glass and bled all over the floor. Someone else mopped the blood. Someone slipped on the wet floor and scraped their knees. Someone else boiled some water to cleanse the wound. Someone scalded their fingers with boiling water. Someone else went to get some ointment. Thus they leaped around with their complicated lives, brewing one problem after another. In the middle of all this she just sat. Like a stone frog.
How they hated her nonchalance! Why was she not anxious and panicking? Why is she not crying? Why is she not breaking down? Why? Why? Why?
I
A childhood it was between the first and the second
Each day ended like a spent taper
A mirror you were to me my friend
A diamond unique, refracting my beams
A multifoliate rose, multiplying my dreams
There would never be another.
II
You were my feather, the first and the only
A daily oracle descending from heaven
My sensitive wells of poetry and theory
With you they ended, my absent muse
You left me with nothing else to lose
Still less to be given.
III
If my sadness were rolled into a moon
You are the light in its deep dark core
All you gave me retracted too soon
No reason remains but there is rhyme
The distant, disturbing rusted time
And “Never more”.
IV
Inside a cocoon hibernates my soul
My secrets concealed in preconceived smiles
I live in parts as a shadow of my whole
Tears are too uninspired to be born
Words have left me longing forlorn
Across many miles.
V
I am an echo in the no man’s land
I never existed between then and now
The only blessing was a kiss to his hand
The semblance of life in a hollow body
Walks the streets like a tattered effigy
Futile love.
