Flames, Pauses, Despair and Truffles
I don’t know why I am doing this again
Perhaps to relieve a bit of my pain
Perhaps to replace the fact that you won’t call me tonight
Perhaps to give myself some company in this lonely night
When all that shares my solitude is the music
And the peering light of the lamp which
Gives a halo over the keys on the board
You won’t ever read this poem I know,
How I dream of adding a ‘perhaps’ here too,
But this one I want to keep to myself
My love, today I want to confess to you, and so
If there is any pretence, even an iota of falsity,
Rise up and bury me in your fury,
I will love the warmth the flames as they rage in their act of decimation.
We are now into almost the tenth month of knowing each other
Last December, when you were in the city
Would you not have wished that life take a better turn?
You getting a good partner for life, one who loves and cares,
Not too much perhaps like the one love you lost,
But surely as much to keep the strands of living flowing
Another year has gone by
Nothing has changed, life remains at those same origins,
I am sure when I have not been at your side,
You would have shed your tears, silently,
The ones which are the remnants of the floods
That used to usher through maybe some years back.
Life has taught you enough, hasn’t it?
How you wish you hadn’t been this eager a learner,
Picking up the shreds and yet marching through
With smiles and gallops that are so much a part of you
I don’t know why I am doing this again
Perhaps to relieve a bit of my pain
Perhaps to replace the fact that you won’t call me tonight
Perhaps to give myself some company in this lonely night
If there is any pretence, even an iota of falsity,
Rise up and bury me in your fury,
I will love the decimation in the warmth of your flames.
Where do I start this writing, I even don’t know how to end it,
If there is an end, that is written for us,
And for once I don’t want to construe up a story here
Not this time even if it means that the written word shall remain incomplete,
For your face’s sake, that face, which the last time I saw,
In the station waiting for me, trying to hide
The likeability that ushered in on seeing me,
With a surface dislike as if it was ‘me’
Who made you wait for the next train!
That is the face I will dedicate this piece to,
Lips clenched with teeth, eyes glittering
Just the slightest bit despite the sadness,
Occasional strands of hair flowing through,
And you in crumpled cloth, that’s the face that I will dedicate my flames to.
Perhaps to relieve a bit of my pain
Perhaps to replace the fact that you won’t call me tonight
Perhaps to give myself some company in this lonely night
If there is any pretence, even an iota of falsity,
Rise up and bury me in your fury,
I will love the warmth of your flames of decimation
I don’t know why I am doing this again
Well, whoever has met you has found in you nothing
That might be a good enough reason for me being shaken so much,
Either eyes they lacked or you my hideous lady, Kept it only for me to see,
Why did you open your curtains in front of me?
Yes now I don’t have any sentences to write,
But perhaps desperate tears, an ululation,
To give you back, right now. Are you listening?
My lady of yellow polka, muslin hair, and cotton touch?
Why did you take the onus on yourself?
To turn this boy into a man, Or is that you think your mission on earth,
To cuddle up to boys, with the small girl in you
And then give them ‘mother’s love’ and finally like the true mother
desert them for the world to grope with the man that
Came out of your womb, but I can’t forget the darkness there
Your neck which opened up to my first kiss
Comes back to me, your wide back
Draped with cloth that offered itself
To my tentative palms and five fingers of both hands,
My tired shoulders on the beach getting your soft massage,
I miss it all, my lady.
It is so difficult not to force myself,
Not to intrude and offer you my hand,
To accept that for this young boy all those pauses were just despairs!
If there is any pretence, even an iota of falsity,
Rise up and bury me in your fury,
I will love the warmth of your flames of decimation.
I don’t know why I am doing this again
Perhaps to relieve a bit of my pain
Perhaps to replace the fact that you won’t call me tonight
Perhaps to give myself some company in this lonely night
Truffles of hope, that’s all I have with me these days
That without me ever being able to get across to you,
You will come back to me
I never can be your first love, nor your last,
But I would be really glad with the in-between space
That your soul would surely have saved for me.
And you, the woman, as much an elder sister which I have none,
It’s been so many years now since I left mom and sis at home,
Searching for you, the woman of my life,
My little sis, my elder sis, my mother all in one,
And to add to that my woman of dreams
Do I call you my love, which sounds so trivial today?
But if there was a meaning to that word,
Perhaps it is you, for me it is you, you are you
Just once, once, dear come cry on my shoulders,
I will just run my fingers through your hair,
You can lie down and sleep, or keep crying the whole night,
I will stay with you I pledge,
Without you, ahead of you, beyond you
Life will not be so very difficult to live,
Yet such a different dimension to digest
That for now I will douse my flames,
My pauses of vacant despairs,
With hopes that comes to me in small truffles
Perhaps to relieve a bit of my pain
Perhaps to replace the fact that you won’t call me tonight
Perhaps to give myself some company in this lonely night
If there is any pretence, even an iota of falsity,
Rise up and bury me in your fury,
I will love the warmth of your flames
Despite they spelling my decimation
As they come from your darkness that was only for me to see.
-chirantan chatterjee (chiruchat[at]yahoo[dot]com)
