You Don’t Know What Love Is

You Don't Know What Love Is
but you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to
wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.
How to start clean. This love even sits up
and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.
Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want
to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive
to some cinderblock shithole in the desert
where she can drink and get sick and then
dance in nothing but her underwear. You know
where she's headed, you know she'll wake up
with an ache she can't locate and no money
and a terrible thirst. So to hell
with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt
and your tongue down my throat
like an oxygen tube. Cover me
in black plastic. Let the mourners through.

-Kim Addonizio

The Venal Muse

by Charles Baudelaire

Muse of my heart, lover of grand chateaux,
When January unleashes storm and sleet,
Through the black dreary evenings when it snows,
Will you have coals to warm your violet feet ?

With gleaming starlight that has pierced the blinds
Will you reanimate your shoulder's cold Marble?
Your palate dry, your purse unlined,
From vaults of azure will you harvest gold !

To earn your evening bread you'll have to swing
The censer like a choirboy, and sing
Te Deums of which you don't believe a word,

Or, starving clown, show off your charms, your smile
Wet with tears that none see, to beguile
And cheer the sick spleen of the vulgar herd.

I have decided. My aim in life is to be a basketball.

You oscillate from one extreme to another. The high of scoring a basket to the crippling agony of being banged on the ground too many times. They call it dribbling by the way.

And,Life dribbles you. Constantly.

So, why not be a basketball,if only to bounce back?

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned - Buddha

Redemption

It happens so many times. You go to a party. You are having a fabulous time only to be cruelly disrupted out of your temporary bliss by the arrival of people you seriously, irrevocably and of course, very understandably detest.

From the clenched cheeked smiles to the very discreet but obvious inspection of your outfit, your looks and your date-These are the type one of the Complete Moronic Types who feel the need to compete with everything on two, three or four legs that gets more attention than them.

The stories I could tell you..

Once, to my complete and utter delight I had the honour of being the subject of unfathomable envy to the power of infinity. Logic said that since I was thought to be somewhat fashionable, this complete jackass (a prime example of what I was earlier talking about) copied my exact wardrobe down to the silly kind of cheap hair clips I wore. Now with all my adolescent glory, I spent many an evening outwardly scowling but secretly enjoying the company of her very embarrassing faux pas’. I later gifted my pair of old shoes to her after much polishing and repairing just for the satisfaction of sniggering behind her back. Such is the devious mind of a modern female teenager.

I still have some vestiges of the above qualities left, but it had scaled impressive heights at a certain point of time. Not to sound very self obsessive, but I find myself as the best example of how misanthropists rock the world. From arm-twisting self important people (figuratively) to quietly enjoying vicarious rewards, I won every bet against society. No matter if the worlds of various detestable men and women came crashing around them. I was a master at manipulation and my sympathies were for no one.

Spending a lot of time watching American movies, reading psychoanalysis journals and with people whom I secretly believed were dropped around a lot as babies, what I ultimately decided to do was only natural.

Again, it was a party. A very memorable party. I am sure you would remember it too if you were privy to the time and place of the event.

A trusting, affectionate and credulous friend of mine had put yours truly in charge of arranging food and drink. It was the graduation party. Actually, a couple of smiles and the usual social coquetries got me the job really. After that it was only the simple affair of sprinkling a bit of tartar emetic into the food and drinks. It looks like your ordinary table salt. Very digestible and non-traceable apparently. Of course the credulous concerned friend was to be compulsorily served. I had no intention of this grand finale back firing.

Anyway, the timing or the situation couldn’t have been more perfect. Once I arrived at the venue I only had to charm my way through the elite hierarchy of lambs to reach the beverage source. I was very sad to poison all of them. But I literally had no choice. You see, I had already spent a lot of money at the chemist’s.

It made some 20 congested lines in the 3rd page of the local newspaper with the headline claiming “30 dead after excessive partying”. The article blamed everything beginning from drugs to indiscipline lifestyles.

Morons, right?

Today I am in another time and another dimension, enjoying the hard earned fruits of my labour peacefully without the interfering presence of my friend.

It was almost obscenely easy to get away with it. Just keep quiet and nobody will notice.

Life and its difficult choices…

 

And if that wasn’t enough in itself, a righteous upbringing makes the weigh-in between right, wrong and the grey very compulsory.Inconvenient and unnecessarily so. New crossroads at  every turn, I doubt if I’ll ever get accustomed to its confusing challenges. I’ve hated making so many choices in my life. Most of the times I did it with my back against the wall. But never have I hated it as much as this one.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost

A Year


While writing about my experiences last time I had no idea it would be another long year before I would visit my dashboard again.
Its been a tumultuous journey. Several heartbreaks, a few breakthroughs and the regular ounce of wisdom that only a year's worth of growing up brings. I went to several places . Too many really, for a laidback traveller's comfort. But I am at a stage where professional responsibilities always come first, in the hope that someday responsibility to myself will take the coveted place.

Anyway, one and a half month of nothing to do will hopefully block my writer's block to come up with more interesting articles like those of my yester-years -> this , this and this.

Stay tuned. I'll be coming back soon.