Vicarious Catharsis

Tears trace a lonely path down
The cold, misted glass.
Vetro dello spirito
 Their tracks mingling with each other,
Painting visions of surreal terror.
They stream down, and cast shadows
On the flickering gas light.

And still the rain falls down.

Drops drum a complex rhythm-beat,
Echo in my head.
Feel the chill of a storm brewing
Within, as without.
It’s raining outside, inside it’s raining.

Parchment and paper; ink and pens
Become witness to these outpourings
While outside, the wind lashes.
Screaming a tortured oath to its God.
Sublime in its suffering.
Ravages my windowpane.

And its pain, exorcises mine.

Imagination

I struggle for Beauty.
Ironic, perhaps,

For Beauty is supposed to be effortless.

Beauty burns.

Passionately undulating, freely flowing,

All consuming, and enchanting.

Like the silver dew drops in maiden’s eye,

As she perceives her lover pursue another.

Effortless…

As she learns of his scarlet death, 

Pursuing honor on the battlefield.

As she learns to desire another…

Burning…

… as she lies on her white satin bed sheets, 

under a guiltless white moon.

Her children next to her, adrift in innocent sleep

She hungers for a forbidden blood-love

Her eyes like twin feverish sapphires,

Her skin like blazing porcelain,

Her breaths short inhalations of madness,

Her dreams, humid visions of insatiable frenzy.

Passionately undulating…

Freely flowing…

Beauty.

Subtle, yet blinding in its intensity.

All consuming…

Moving in its reach and breadth

Enchanting.

…

Yet overcome by these grey, quotidian monoliths

Of boxed melancholy,

I learn to compromise.

And live a dusty, reined in Reality.

To awake, only when I sleep.

To live, only when I dream.

Gloriously Free.

My love,

Is difficult.

She buffets me, wrenches me from myself,

Gets me back,

Fills me, completes me,

Confuses me.

My love,

I want her happiness

But I bring her down,

By being me.

She’s a paradox.

A bittersweet frustration turns

Into an electric blue anger,

And finally, swirls into

A scarlet love.

Collapses into passion.

My love,

I will love her.

Kiss, and the world ceases to matter.

Our passion leaves us breathless.

Touch her, and I regain innocence.

We are bound, by our own yellow cords,

Of an irrational conscience.

Break them. Scandalous happiness.

My love,

Scares me.

With her visions of the future.

Of a time when she won’t belong to me,

And I to her.

Of a time when we won’t liberate,

And be liberated.

Of a time when I won’t make her happy.

Love is clichéd.

So this doesn’t have to be that.

It can be simpler, less ponderous, less heavy.

It can be like a free white breeze,

Blowing over the Pacific blue,

A balm to love-wracked mariners

And their aching hearts.

It can be like a wild mustang,

Gloriously free,

Galloping into a golden sunset.

It can be like a flight of mystery,

Of science,

Of pushing boundaries of what is known.

Of the thrill of knowing, and of the human spirit

Ever indomitable, behind it.

It could be like a walk in golden Prague.

Amongst a crowd of people who don’t know us.

Surrounded, yet alone together.

It could be like what I make you  feel, when I look into your eyes.

It could be like what you do to me, when you pant,

Breathless on love.

It can be like something I strum, and something you sing.

It could be all that. We could be all that.

Together, we could be one.

But lightly so.

Symbiote.

Love,

A gossamer blackness.

An all consuming mist of suspended lucidity.

Sucking me down.

Whorls of liquid longing.

Rip you out of my self,

And a part of me dies.

I cut myself off of this sweet misery

Pray for a suspension… of emotion

(But I know, my flight of freedom

Is just temporary relief for my self righteous ego).

Intellect is satisfied, the heart remains unresolved.

And I surrender, to mottled-grey confusion.

I love you.

I hate you.

Normalcy returns, and chugs on into the morrow.

…

One day

It’ll all be

Okay.

Rhymelets.

Happiness is being,

Suspending logic and seeing

Inside, for you’ll find

Purple and red strains, of an ice cream music.

Waltz in your train of hope, and wait for the stars,

For I’m there with you.

The impermanence of emotion,

Of love, of devotion,

Constricts by its very subtlety.

Like creeping death, envelops you,

Before you recognize the tell tale signs

Of emptiness.

Creeps over me, creeps over you.

The tears don’t fall. There are none.

Learning to Fly.

The plane lifts off, an explosion of defiance against the first man who denounced the concept of human flight. Who said, ‘It cannot be done’. A cheer goes up within the aircraft; a family (company granting confidence) yells with the same joy and in the same spirit that the first man who flew had, who thought: ‘It can be done’.

And we’re airborne.

The thrill of speed gives way to the sudden exhilaration of unrestricted movement. One that cannot be expressed in words, but still one tries, for the wonder is too great.

We’re Learning to Fly.

And we gaze out, unto the city.

Freedom.

All our troubles are relevant 37000 feet below, not here.

A child cries, not understanding.

The adults understand, and hence feel no reverence.

Shards of ice form on the window. You touch the window; it is unyielding.

And all the while, the aircraft climbs higher.

Floyd plays in the background.

The strength of human will and individuality echoes out a half read Rand novel.

We reach Kashmir.

We touch ground.

The roar of an approaching reality, and the speeding tarmac,

Hits us.

We’re in a spoiled paradise.

Idle Thoughts, Late One Night.

How blessed it is to be a Human Being,

To be granted the powers of Reason.

To be bestowed upon this Earth.

To see, to listen, to learn

And above all, to be able to comprehend a (albeit small) part of this ever reaching, Infinite Cosmos.

To find Beauty in Science, and Science in Beauty.

To love, and be loved,

And not be bound by loving.

Or, if bound, then

To desire, only such a binding.

To be able to Think, and Reason out the Truth for ourselves, and not

Indulge in idolizing, sycophantic worship

Of old books, and bygone people.

To have our bodies as our only temples, and

Our minds, as only objects worth of worship.

To know that our Dignity has not yet collapsed under the dark weight,

Of ugly cynicism.

And to know, that You and I can be One.

You, towards whom, I realize,

I have strived

In all my hours of worthy work.

You, whom I’ve tried to See,

But blinded by mundane, earthly bonds

Have seen but impenetrable mist.

Let us be one,

So that I may finally see the Truth, and lose

Myself in Your bliss.

That is all I ask.