Before It’s Too Late

The street lights
Skid on the windshield
Of your beat up car
Norah Jones and her slide guitar
Glide with us
You are driving me to your place
For the first time
But it feels like
We have known each other
Since we were feathers
In our mothers’ bellies
Five thousand miles apart.

It’s not like me
it’s not like you
Nothing is clear
But I wish to whisper
All the things
I can tell you now
Before its too late
Before things fall apart
So hear me up, buttercup
You make me want to love again
And I hope tonight
You’re fine with that.

Featured Artwork: LES AMANTS, 1928 by Rene Magritte

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Hey, How Are You?

Hey, how are you?
How am I?
Why do you want to know?
Or is it the empty question you throw
To bypass an awkward moment of
Accidental encounters like these?
Anyway, I am fine, I suppose…
Still the same old lunatic
Caught in the hangover
Of the romantic movement —
Each moment disintegrating like the
Melting cheese in your ramen bowl…
Still believe that death is a human construct
And when the magpie steals the moonlight
You shine brighter than the constellation of Orion.

Hey, how are you?
I am fine, really.
The quiver in my voice
Says that I am lying
And your eyebrows remind me
That I have never heard
More apathy in a question.
A planetful of people united
By a universal feeling of loneliness
Like islands
Separated by a quiet, waveless ocean
Of mutual apathy.
The rat race is not the worst.
We are raising rats.
That’s depressing.

Featured Artwork: ROOM IN NEW YORK, 1932 by Edward Hopper

Drops Of Vltava

Another day, another night I wait for the storm.
So far it has eluded me. The heat rises with each moon.
Blood, sweat and tears, I wait like a Jacobin cuckoo,
For the rain, for the rain, to wash away my pain.

Times like these bring back memories; unkind and kind alike.
Memories of blue meadows and snow covered hills,
Salted kisses and smell of mushrooms, the warmth of honey.
Times when we were heroes, when we were renegades.

The stench of this rotten town has hovered over for ages;
It has been dead for decades, carrying the carrion of souls unholy.
Once in a while the storm brings a fugacious relief
From the putrid smell and the baroque nothingness.

But the storm is coming as certain as an eclipse.
It’s written on the sky, on the sultry humid air;
My wait shall be over as I’ll quench my thirst
On the rain it will bring. The Bohemian rain. Drops of Vltava.
A rain named Tereza.

Note: This poem is a rework of a Bengali poem by the 20th century poet Jibonanondo Das from Kolkata, India.

Featured Artwork: CHARLES BRIDGE by Maciej Froncisz

Mistress Of Malachite

Behind the passing clouds
A low hanging moon appears
Like an apparition of an ancient ghost
A barn owl flutters in her nest
To shake the dew that have settled in her feather
And the sickness that has gathered in her heart
The world is rested and the lovers are busy
Whipping up unrest on curdled beds
Its the saddest hour of the night
When the wolves howl and the dolphins cry.

I spin a web of factless memoirs
In the gloom and the moonshine
And the mistress of malachite weeps with me
Her tears smell of caviar and bath salt
She breathes sadness like
The familiar stains of old paperbacks
And she tells me “Truth is porous and
Misery is better than indifference…
And what am I to you darling,
But a crawling misery under your skin.”

Featured Artwork: MISTRESS OF COPPER MOUNTAIN (artist unknown)

Remains Of A Romance

The world is a badland
Desolate and dry
Where women love and leave
Where men wander and die
Where kisses are toxic
Where promises are lies
Where every night ends
In hushed lonely cries

The remains of a romance
The remnants of hurt
The poems unspoken
The farewells unheard
Yet love is enduring
In this silly heart
Breathtakingly, painstakingly
Tearing it apart

No signs of rainfall
The wind smells of grief
The meadows are grey with
Dead grass and dry leaves
And as the world turns
To a pitch black murk
I brave the darkness
With you in my heart

Featured Artwork: Sorgen (The Woe) by Theodore Kittlesen c.1894-95

Echo

In the dismal quietus
Of the primal dawn
Rising from slumber
I tumble from a dream

Jumbled images dance
On the edges of memory
Vague contours mumble
Sonic motifs in my mind

In the cold light of the dawn
My hand fumbles out
Only to find
A crispy cool sheet

No voice that I long to hear
No morning kisses
No warm hugs
Only a crumbling echo of your smile

Featured Photograph by Richard Tushcman

Magic Lives Within You

Unfettered by the universe
That keeps growing bigger each moment,
Pushing me afar from you…
I lunge at your dark solstice
Like a moth into the fire
To be united in death
Under a crimson moon

You were born in a whirlwind
With sprinkles of fairy-dust
And droplets of moon
Magic lives within you…
I follow your shadow
With weary boots and weathered heart
In search of that magic

Featured Artwork: MYSTERIOUS GIRL by Vasyl Kolodiy
Sourced from: saatchiart