A Haiku

Words with rules
I write them because
of the sound

Numb Epiphany

Its a numbing feeling.

Something seems to be missing from your body. Maybe your lower jaw. You move it, its there. But when you stop moving it, the numb sensation takes hold of you again. It is, as if the feeling temporarily receded when you acted but then it came back, flooding in, taking hold of your face, your lower jaw to be precise.

The sensation is that of disorientation, of a feeling of dislocation as if your own self is displaced from the body. Its not completely within the body but its there near the body looking out at the outside world from a vision displaced from the actual position of your eyes.

But you are aware of the other parts of your body. Your stomach (rumbling with suggested hunger), your heavy legs and your cold feet. The self and the body are together below but its only in your head that they are displaced from each other.

But the head is the seat of your consciousness, so this disorientation extends itself to everything you do. You look yourself at the mirror and you see a stranger blink back at you. Then you can't look at the mirror any more. You stare at the screen as your hands move automatically over the keys of the keyboard and you feel as if somebody else is typing it in. You are just a mute spectator to a body that has its own intelligence and drives towards its own goal.

But the uncertainty resides in your head, at the center of the brain between your eyes. This is because you feel that inner most part of you (your soul?) moving and acting. Are you the body, the brain or the soul? Or are you tripartite split occluded by perception.

You feel no realizations, no light at the end of the tunnel, no bash of drums, clang of cymbals and divine revelations. There is only that numbing feeling.

Night

Darkness ...
Towards an idea of thought
Towards an idea of existence

Lights
Small bright spots of light
Lights that brings about
Shadows

Shapes
Moving, shifting, changing
Growing, flowing, devouring

Mind
That which cannot stay
That which cannot silence

Silence
In the end there will be


Silence

Boy, going

The road was his friend.

Sometimes he thought that the road was his only friend. Everyday after coming back from school and taking the late evening lunch, he would sit down to complete his school homework. After completing his school work he would take out his battered old bicycle and go out to the road. And then he would roam around, alone.

It was like a ritual, not the doing school homework part, he did that to appease his parents, but going out on his battered old bicycle on the same old roads in his same old locality. He felt a strange sense of freedom when he was on the road, a freedom from his house, his school, his parents and from his myriad of other responsibilities. There was he and there was the road and thats all that mattered. But even then he knew that he was never quite completely free. This was because more often than not he tried going around the houses of his friends hoping that somebody would stop him and call out his name. Then he would go into their houses and play. He never played in his own house, because there was nothing to play with. His house had books lots of books, and all the books he had read twice, thrice and sometimes the fourth time. Now the house only had ghosts, ghosts from whom he had to run away.

But he enjoyed that roaming around part the most. He knew that because sometimes even when somebody stopped him, somebody called out for him. He politely refused and kept on cycling ahead. At those times he did not understand why he did that. He knew that he wanted to play with those people, not because he particularly enjoyed their company, but because they had things he did not have. Things that he desired but perhaps was too proud or maybe too afraid to ask for.

But the road was not for asking, the road was for journeying on. And he liked that part of the day the best, the journey, his small journey away from the confines of his home, away from the ghosts that haunted his house to the big,wide,bad world where he could loose himself.

Often after he had come back, listened to the daily rants of his parents, watched some television and done some more school work (again to appease his parents and also because he was afraid of his school teachers) he would lie down in his bed and think about the road. He would dream of being small, small but indestructible. Perhaps he would be riding one of those miniature cars he had seen in somebody's house. He would become small and get into one of those cars. That car would have infinite fuel and very high speed (given that it was small) and he would ride the car out of his bedroom, leaving the ghosts behind, across the patio down through the frontyard and into the road again. He would drive on the road in his small car passing by giant houses and giant vehicles and nobody could see him. But he could see everybody. His car was indestructible, huge giant cars would go over him and their tires would roll over his car and go on but his car would unscathed. And he would keep on driving, on that long tireless road, forever.

Descriptions

I am sitting on a red-white patch work sheet. Its a picnic sheet, the one that mothers take to a picnic. It even has an old stain at the corner, a reminder of more boisterous times. She sits next to me. I close my eyes, I can smell that faint fragrance, her fragrance. I open my eyes, and turn round. Her profile is silhouetted against the sunlight, her deep black hair turns golden in that evening light. The sun rays to sculpt her face out of the darkness. I turn and face ahead. I smile again. I am happy.

The world changes

We are sitting on a table outside the restaurant. She is staring into the space, with that dreamy look in her eyes. I look at her eyes, the eyes that could hold the universe for me. She is thinking about something. Soon she will turn to me and start speaking. And that mellifluous voice will float though the air towards me. She will tell me about something funny that happened with her and then both will laugh. She will laugh that soft beautiful laughter and I will laugh with her. She is turning to me now. She starts to speak. I am happy.

The world changes

She lies in the bed, naked in my embrace. I feel her skin against mine, her soft breast on my chest. I close my eyes and try to stop all the senses except touch. I become aware of her body as it lies on mine. I close my eyes and block all my hearing. Now, I can only feel her body against mine, flesh against flesh, soul against soul. I float into a void,a void where there are two bodies, mine and hers and we are entwined into an eternal embrace. A void where all my senses are lost and my existence is derived from the touch of her skin and her existence is derived from mine. A void where we are together for eternity. I smile. I am happy.

The world changes

She lies in the bed, pale and wan. The fever has sucked most of her energy out and she is very weak. She is sleeping now. I sit next to her staring at that beautiful face. I stretch my hand forward and pass it through her hair. She is a hot. Perhaps I should bring a new cold compress. My hand moves down to her forehead and then to her cheek. She opens her eyes as her head turns sideways. My hand is now embraced in the warmth of her cheek and shoulder. She smiles weakly , I look into those eyes, those beautiful eyes that could hold the universe for me. She keeps on smiling. I am happy

The world stops

Her deep black hair, her silhouette, her eyes. They are all there. I see them there. But they are descriptions -words of form.

She doesn't have a face. She never has a face.

Words on a screen

Its easy to laugh

The mind is lies there, trapped
In the fantasy of those dreams
Where the universe stands still
For a single eye's glance

Its easy to cry

The road, its hard to walk on
The people, they are strangers
They pass by, in their own dreams
But the road still goes on

Unconnected phrases?

Is it the seed of unformed thought?
Raw, base, rough and shameless.
Or is it thought at its purest
Where words are the mere shell

Unwritten meanings?

Is the word that is written, the meaning?
Or is it the word not written down
But which exists, subtle graceful
Floating in the meanings implied

A judge?

There are no judges here
Only you, only me, only these words
You are the judge yet you are no worthy
But so am I

Little Bug

Little Bug, Little Bug
On this big huge Floor
Where do you run?

Little bugs, so many
Red, Green and Blue
White, Magenta and Mahogany

I walk down the floor
A big Huge Giant
On this big huge floor

Will I crush you?
O little Bug
Walking on this big huge floor

Road

Everyday I walk the same road. That road across my house down the elevator, out of the elevator on to the blue carpet across the glass door, across another glass door and on to the pavement. Sometimes I meet people on this way. Sometimes I smile at them sometimes I don't. Sometimes they smile back, sometimes they don't. I walk down to the pavement, sometimes I breath in the outside air, like some prisoner tasting the fresh smell of freedom. But I am no prisoner. Sometimes I stare out at the sky, a sunny sky, a gray sky, a blue sky, sometime its even a cheery sky. Then I look across the road. I see people in closed metal boxes being transported from one prison to another. But they are no prisoners. Then I look to my left and wait for the traffic to lessen or the lights to turn red. Then I cross the road. Sometimes I walk, sometimes I jog and maybe sometimes I run across the road. The road is my first crossing to the outside world.
Then I walk on the pavement of the triangle of grass that faces my apartment. Its almost a right triangle and I walk along one of the shorter sides. I often pass by people here. But I never greet any one of them, they never greet me either. Both of us are imprisoned in our thoughts and minds but we are no prisoners.
As I reach the end of the right triangle, I keep walking, sometimes there is traffic coming ahead of me, sometimes there is not. But I never stop walking, I cross the road as soon as there are no cars that are coming towards me. But I never stop walking. Theoretically, I could keep walking down the right triangle across the road to the next pavement (actually a grass divider) and keep walking till I reach the corner of the Museum and the College. Perhaps on that day there would be an unending stream of traffic coming down that road I cross everyday, perhaps it would be a funeral procession of some very rich, very beautiful lady and the procession would have those long black cars, a steady stream of long black cars, each belonging a admirer of that rich, beautiful but dead lady. There would be steady unending stream of those cars and I would not be able to cross the road, and I would have to keep walking on the grass divider. I would pass the hearse that holds the body of the rich, beautiful, dead lady and my distorted, shortened, fattened reflection would momentarily shine on the window of the long, black and sad hearse. And I would keep on walking on that grass divider, till I reached the corner between the museum and university.
But there's no such steady stream of cars, I always cross the road before I can step up to the grass divider, the traffic always stops, I always cross the road. Perhaps the cars are also prisoners. No, the cars cannot be prisoners

I cross the road and step up to another pavement. That pavement of concrete, blackened by years of smoke by cars and buses that imperiously speeded by this blackened concrete pavement. I walk down this blackened concrete pavement. Sometimes there are people here, people who are walking, sometimes faster than me, sometimes slower than me. There are people who jog by me there ears stuffed with thin carbon sheets that vibrate sharply to create pressure waves in the air. Perhaps they can't listen to the cacophony of this world and that is why they have those tiny sheets of carbon that vibrate to the electric signals creating pressure waves in the air. Sometimes, as they jog by, I hear a snatch of what they hear. Sometimes I don't. Perhaps the sound is their prison. No, sound cannot be a prison.

I walk on that blackened concrete pavement and I finally reach those glowing red/green lights on the corner of the Museum and the university. I stop here, most of the time. I watch the metal prisons whizz by, people lost on their dreams, people lost in their realities. People who will drive away never to be seen by me again, people who will never ever in my lifetime, see me again. I wonder when the light will turn red. Eventually it does and those metal boxes stop, purring and humming like some monsters, caged only by the foot of a prisoner. I cross the first road and then I wait.
The next road is tricky. Its tricky because it does not have glowing lights to tell the monsters when to stop. I have to wait for variable periods of times here. Sometimes, just when I have crossed the first road, the monsters are far off and I can safely cross this next, tricky road. But sometimes they are too near and I have to wait till that steady stream, that constant line of monsters has crossed that bend in the road and I can safely cross the road. But the crossing is not tricky because of this, its tricky because of the fact that it is a 'walking person' crossing i.e the metal monsters are supposed to give way to the walking people. So theoretically I should not stop walking and metal monsters should slow down to let me, the walking person, pass by. But I don't trust the metal monsters. I don't trust the people in the metal monsters, the people who are lost in their dreams, people who are lost in their realities. So I wait. I wait for that steady stream of metal monsters to cross over and then I cross the road. Sometimes, very once in a while, a metal monster slows down the person inside the monster waves at me. I cross the road, sometimes I wave back at them, sometimes I don't. I often wonder who slowed, who stopped the monster or the person.

I walk across the road on to the pavement to corner at Museum and the university. I start walking up facing a small hut. Its a small hut, a hut made of colors gray, white and blackened like the old broken blackened concrete path I have walked on. Sometimes I wonder who lives in that hut. I actually know what is supposed to happen in the hut. It says the name on the hut. But what if that is a lie, a clandestine cover up for something different. What if it is actually fast food place run by Martians and actually caters to the planetary migrants who have settled on Earth unknown to us. Perhaps they use holographic projector to cover the actual superstructure that serves as a makeshift motel and fast food place for those inter-planetary migrants. Perhaps all the people who go in there are actually aliens in disguise. Perhaps, its possible. Maybe I am prisoner of my own imagination. But isn't imagination supposed to set you free?

I pass by that hut, I never go in, I never feel like it. (Who knows, maybe the aliens have mental projection devices that make sure that no non-humans ever cross the door to inside the hut) I walk along that hut leaving all its mysteries behind me. I walk up on the path made of hardened tar and pitch riddled with broken glass. I often wonder whose broken glass it is? Which glass, broken by the child who was crying after being beaten by his mother because he wouldn't eat what he could get and he couldn't get anything more because he couldn't earn anything more. They are standing in some dark house facing each other, that scene frozen in time, the child's eye are red, large huge drops of tears are flowing down his cheek and yet he continues to stare defiantly at his father, those huge drops of tears flowing down ever so slowly at those eyes blinking slowly, that mouth pursed into a expression of determination, his face red, his cheeks burning by the slap his father gave him and he keeps on staring at his father who is is staring back at him, he doesn't know what to do, he stares back at his son and he remembers the instant, the instant before when he lost control and his hand, his foolish hand swept across the air and hit his son on the cheek, his hand is burning not because of the pain but because he hit his son and he doesn't know what to say and he stares back at his son, his son whose eyes are red and pouring down those huge drops of tears and the thousand broken glasses of the bowl that had the cereal from the supermarket. Each of those glasses reflect and distort that frozen scene into them and now when I cross that speckled path of pitch and tar, the scene flows out of them and into me and I am in that frozen scene. Perhaps each of those glass pieces are prisoners of their own stories. But stories are no prisons.

I keep moving walking on that speckled path of concrete, pitch and tar with glass pieces, each of which contain in it a frozen scene of humanity. I walk by that hut of alien dreams and I crossover to place surrounded by tall spiked iron bars. This is the place metal dreams, a place where imagination has shaped metal and thought has coursed into the grain of hard metal to shape it into figures of worship. Sharp shapes, glowing in the sunlight glint all around me as I look forward, they are different monsters. They do not run over people and then pass the blame to their prisoners. They are thought frozen in time, they are figures of dreams birthed into reality. They are unnatural progeny of the human mind, they are brooding sentinels of thought that course through our minds. To me there violence is massive, a huge lumbering behemoth of though stopped in time and painfully coursed into the sharp shapes of human dream.

I walk across that forest of frozen human thought and into the university. I always walk by two big green trash cans, the refuse of human refuse dumped into those tow big green trash cans. I wonder when they are emptied and where they go. But I do not stop, I go on.

Empty Happiness

My words? They come out only when I am sad
But I am happy today
Its an empty sort of happiness, an alyrical happiness
A feeling that won't let me get me my rhythm

But rather words that come out are
Like an expression of uncontrolled joy
Yet lacking expression
Till the habit of writing kicks in

Giving it that old rhythm
Of an old hand to its bonds
My bane, my curse
My very own words


Empty Happiness. That's all.

Vacation

Lenny looked out of his cubicle snap. They were playing "Happy Sea" again. The stock was probably not doing to well, so they wanted the workers to be more active, more productive and so more "happy". So he could see a gaily sea shore with people sun-bathing and children playing in the waves. Of course he knew there was no sea, there was no shore and definitely there were no children playing in the sand of some beach (how dangerous and more importantly how wasteful!) but well the human mind works in interesting ways. It had something to do environmental adaptation. People who saw happy things were generally happier, he remembered that from some old wave somewhere. Anyway it didn't matter now, this was his last cubicle day and soon he would be "free".

He looked over to his screen, the system seemed to be working correctly. All the system detail bars were at correct levels, no alert prediction required his direct intervention as of now. Habitually he ordered a system check, it was unnecessary and probably in some small way wasteful, but Lenny didn't care much, he was going away.
He had seen this system grow with him, he had grown older but more experienced committing less and less mistakes and the system had become better and better, going less and less out of the acceptable range of functioning. Sometimes Lenny felt that he knew the system and he could see the system think as the various control meter values change based on inputs. There were days on which the system was cranky and sluggish even to his inputs and there were days when Lenny didn't have to do a single thing. As Frank, his lunch-buddy, often said the technician and the system started different, became one. Lenny knew that Frank was right. He often browsed other system screens (it was required as social-consciousness measure - but it was just and excuse as the Corporation 3 gave extra credits for any technician who could give improvement suggestions i.e point out mistakes being committed by other systems and their technicians - "Divide and rule") and he could see that if Jane came in cranky today (maybe her pleasure-globe misfired!) that her system would get cranky pretty soon and if the system was cranky, needless to say, its technician wasn't going to have a good day.

But all this was going to be a matter of past. He was going to leave all of this behind - his last vacation. And Lenny was happy and sad. Sad because he was going to miss his system , he was going to miss the familiar patterns of growing and shrinking color bars and how he fantasized that he was actually talking with his system. Often he could swear that the system reacted properly even before he started punching in the commands into the console.
Lenny was happy too, because he was going to have his dream time, finally. All that he worked for and in return, the final return was the vacation time, the repayment of his whole life work. Lenny had no direct family. He had maintained relationships with some women but they had been strictly pleasure exchange agreements. He could never get himself to think that he could actually spend his whole life and raise a family. That was for farmers, he thought. But he had done his bit, he had given his sperm to the Corporation 3 bank. It would be used properly to produce the next generation offspring and he would have repaid (in part) his debt to the society. ad now it was time for his payment, his debt to be paid by the society.

He looked into his personal visi-screen. It showed a beautiful landscape - "The Venusian Beach" it said. The artist had rendered to perfection what the Venusian landscape looked like or actually should have looked like. Lenny had seen that actual visi-scapes of planets. They were no good - most of them as bad as Industrial Disaster Areas on Earth. But that did not stop from the vacation teams from dreaming up scapes of what could have been. And Lenny agreed to that, he wanted to live in dream, he had had enough of the reality.

No more daily hours of System screen (there was a pang of sorrow), no more ritual bar drinks with people he hated until he had drunk enough. No more of all that, only his dream, his undying dream.