Words.

Time Traveller
A matter of will and
I was back into
Childhood
playing, laughing, leaping, running.
A smile flashes across my face.
Grandfather was there
and we play chess;
I looked for moves and planned
strategies to prevent
the inevitable of the future
my current present from
happening.

A loosening of my mind
and I for my future
in an imagination
where the
Rules of the World
bound me not and I was free
with her even though
we belong in lands apart.
A joy arises in me.
I would devise plans
to out-fox the chains
of the present,
the two-month wait.  

It seems to me that I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt …

-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.

A Sunday Morning Mind
The stillness of the room
provided less distraction for
my mind to
wander
to receive its myriad
of impressions which affects
the beating of the heart
where
past present
imaginings of the future
converge and coalesce onto
one point
a focal point.

The city awakens around me.

The sun shines brightly.

To feel all those dreams
burning softly within me
a thousand of them
each wanting to
be realized.

I sit back in my chair.

Oraison du soir
Je vis assis, tel qu’un ange aux mains d’un barbier,
Empoignant une chope à fortes cannelures,
L’hypogastre et le col cambrés, une Gambier
Aux dents, sous l’air gonflé d’impalpables voilures.

Tels que les excréments chauds d’un vieux colombier,
Mille Rêves en moi font de douces brûlures :
Puis par instants mon cœur triste est comme un aubier
Qu’ensanglante l’or jeune et sombre des coulures.

Puis, quand j’ai ravalé mes rêves avec soin,
Je me tourne, ayant bu trente ou quarante chopes,
Et me recueille, pour lâcher l’âcre besoin :

Doux comme le Seigneur du cèdre et des hysopes,
Je pisse vers les cieux bruns, très haut et très loin,
Avec l’assentiment des grands héliotropes.

 -Arthur Rimbaud

Any colour, so long as it’s grey.

-Samuel Beckett.

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. 

-P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

-Henry David Thoreau.

He feels imprisoned on this earth, he feels confined … But if he is asked what he actually wants he cannot reply, for – this is one of the strongest arguments – he has no conception of freedom.

-Franz Kafka.

 The Homeless Man
He lay there in that crowded
train, strewn across a seat for
three, sleeping soundly amidst
the great roar of the tunnel.

No one said anything, nor
tried to get him to wake up.
We all left him alone there
lying in his condition.

His coverings were mismatched,
A tweed coat, pair of striped pants,
A black shirt, pair of old shoes.
And not only that: they stank.

He lay down on his side, his
right arm held between his thighs,
his left hand placed under his
bearded chin, his knees drawn up.

And there he lay in front of
us, sleeping soundly, the caves
placed aside for the time being,
the image of Modern Man.

 The Beggar
Old man, a balding head of pure white hair,
dressed in rags, sitting on the metro steps.
At least it was warm inside the station.
Propping himself up with his right elbow,
his right hand open, a single coin lay
nestled in his palm. I came from behind
him and added another coin into his
palm. He turned around to see who it was
from the crowd that brushed by him, his eyes wide
open, mouth gaping for a short instant,
before he managed to gather himself,
and said, “Merci! Merci Monsieur! Merci!” 

What can I decipher from a single look? What are possible number of meanings and reasons that could lie behind a single glance, either sidelong or straight on, or a stare, or even in a blank look? Perhaps of these three examples given, the most could be read from a stare. But it wasn’t exactly a stare that M. had received. It was more of a passing glance. No, he couldn’t be sure what it was. He couldn’t classify the look, but he knew that when that single stranger walked by him just yesterday along the crowded Parisian streets, he knew that something was wrong, and he set himself out to find out what that look meant.

M. looked into the mirror the first thing in the morning when he woke up. In fact, the whole issue about the look that was given him by this stranger, who happened to be a man, had been on his mind throughout the whole night, so much so that he could not fall asleep peacefully. Jumping out of bed, he ran straight to the toilet and looked himself straight on into the mirror. One couldn’t say that M. wasn’t bad looking after all. His hair was short and cropped, a reflection that he had once served in the army, a fact that he was quite proud of, for he served in a regiment that had a rich heritage, known for producing brave warriors. He never kept a beard or a moustache, for his own personal hygiene reasons, he believed that only beggars and the homeless kept facial hair only because they didn’t have enough money to maintain their bodies, let alone their faces. There were barely any lines or creases on his face, showing that he was still keeping his youthful skin, even though he was really advancing on to his thirties very soon.

And M. looked.

He tried to remember how the stranger looked like, but the streets were way too crowded, and he could not have stopped in the middle of the pavement to hold back that person. He would have been pushed forward by the crowd, for the Parisian mob is not to be trifled with. But the look! That accusing look! He knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, for if it did not matter to M., he would not have been so bothered by this person. There was certainly something that this person knew about M.

It’s fine if we can use words to cover ourselves from ourselves, but even better if we can adorn and drape ourselves with words until we have become the kind of person that in our hearts we wish to be.

-Franz Kafka.

Night Alone
The stillness falls, a methodical drip
from the kitchen sink. Night
descended without warning, no
warning.
                People trash about, walls
banging, they scream, thumping the
floor. I, alone, protected in
my room, a mighty wall I rent.

Scribbling pen I hear, whose?
Only mine. What inscribes itself
on my heart? Overwriting past
acts that sprung from my own
nature.

The disturbance bothers me not.
Other noises clamour within me.

Only on a night as lonely as this,
where the only indications of
my presence, are the lights
in this room, 
                       and a minor thought
cast at the back of my roommate’s
mind.

I see more when my eyes are closed
the darkness planning its show
a reel of the past
collages
replays
those thoughts re-lived over and over
an ecstacy overflowing
unreal questions demanding terrible answers
the pitfalls real
those inscriptions in my nature
with necessity for erasure.
Judgement calls.

They lay all strewn over my table:
A bible, a dictionary, a journal.
Mrs Dalloway.
As Clarissa passes her day
planning for her party,
I pass my night alone,
planning for my awakening.