Saturday, December 26, 2015

Dreaming is forgetting and it slows my heart down some each time 

But this morning, my dream stayed with me through my waking 

And in the silver fish of my loosely stranded memories, loose curls 

float about the eyes that stare at me from it's darkening edges 

the sandmen and fishermen swirling their fishnets around that horizon 

and the moon casting it's sequins in the forgotten corners of the room 

I remember like yesterday, when I left my old life behind 

in a loosely wrapped year chosen at random from a dozen 

that had gone similar ways, and ended up in different places 

I'd been dying for so long that nothing looked like itself 

Not the days that melted the moments long long gazes 

not the nights that warped the darkness into kaleidoscopic sights 

And so come this time of the year it's time for one more toast again 

the one where you raise your wine glasses to the darkening rain 

to toast not just the passing of the year, but to end it's possible refrain 

because death in it's own way is the cleanest of all possible endings 

and how being alive and being able to dream is the creation of all things 

So dream a new year, dream a new life, begin the ending of the old 

says an old man to the young man he leaves behind each time he dreams

posted by Subash 11:00 AM

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Postcards

Tonight like every night before.
from the clatter and yellow streets
the outlines of what's gone remain
in the silhouettes past the window.

Yesterday like every day past
is the ghost that won't let go
despite the cars I hear rushing
past the midnight vigils of regret

Lulled into the twilight of early morn
Wafts of pastry and coffee tiptoeing in
Before the winds have settled. Breathing
but time itself, as always a betrayal of all

In seasons back home, it'd be snowing
My neighbors they'd have gone skiing
My old landlord gone to other edens
away from the old country,he so loved

Across the road the lights glow dim
The rest of the street just a museum.
And my wife, she talks in her dream
I hear her, like she is near me again

Whoever else was here once before
did they too measure their regrets?
Watching the sand mark the hours
that will quietly flow back to dawn

Leaving behind all of the questions
I am afraid to ask of the future now

-sr

posted by Subash 3:04 PM

Friday, July 26, 2013

And sleep flees, and dawn breaks,
as I go through all of the reasons
to end a vigil that makes no sense
stop writing this litany of a future
that got stuck somewhere in the past

as I map the terrains of pain and hurt
staring at the phone that never rang, 
in the sunlight that never shone
In the garden that never flowered

Last night I tiptoed up into my memories
Hearing her say good night, good night
sleepily, as I counted the stars for her
to make sure they were the same number

She had counted when we put them there
On the ceiling for her, to keep her company
As we too wished her good night, good night
and rocked her with lullabies back to her dreams

I peek into my closed hands, trembling with prayers
That she would find her heart, and her own song
Even though I'd still be exiled from her young days
And find that mine continues to beat in the same ways

posted by Subash 7:08 PM

Friday, June 07, 2013

Discovering your center of gravity
becomes the first truth of fatherhood
Your daughter's voice and laughter
the eternal reason for soul dreaming

And now the days weave on by
tramping their tired listless heels
on prayers to gods that won't hear
how the year has been like murder

On memories, with a life that whirls
you apart, into a future without history
Where the world once renewed you daily
You watch it come to it's end, numbly

posted by Subash 11:21 AM

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Some days the mirror reflects you kindly, and other days darkly
Some times  whether tis better to feel nothing at all or everything
And whether you need to be hurt, to feel the kindness of strangers
Or walk away from friends who hurt you, because they are in pain

Big questions often times keep me busy with many different answers ...
One thing never changes. The biggest lies are the one we tell ourselves
When we know the answers. And wished we hadn't asked those questions
And this poem will remind me again tomorrow that yesterday is behind me.

Always!

posted by Subash 1:43 AM

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

When your heart's humming a tune, it hasn't heard in years
a loud clock tick tocks the moments, the soul's secret syllables
And somewhere a stranger yawns, and elsewhere dawn breaks
As I pack my bags, carefully folding up the memories and gifts
That I gather as close as my friends, for the days that divide us

posted by Subash 4:13 PM

Thursday, September 04, 2003

Colder this night and the wind fretting treetops restlessly
From the sky the occasional keening of geese going south
The few stars and the surrounding silence suddenly sharp
as a reality that's shaken itself awake in your consciousness
As you surrender to the uneasy calm of the season leaving.

Watching the sky's fading glimmer running after the stream
and feeling unseen forces rustling through the marshy rushes
I can feel my thoughts slow to the pace of a life lived here
and I think once again of the animal that I could have been
Here in the frozen presence of the fallen leaves of autumn.

posted by Subash 3:00 AM

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

And again ...

And in the inky black darkness,
black like the hangman's hood
I screamed, but nobody heard
And I fell back into nightmare
again

And I fell, fell back into nightmare
dreaming once again of belladonna
eyes dilated, staring widely awake
in front of a horizon, disappearing
again

And the rain, the rain kept time
like a metronome pacing the storm
And I could see precisely my death
as it happens, like a blade inside me
again

And like a confession, heard and forgotten
you remember your life, all over and again
This deja vu feeling, like time is on the run
again?


posted by Subash 10:30 PM

Saturday, June 28, 2003

Dedicated to: Ajay, born 1963, died 1983

Without faith, I now pronounce the words
That will reach out and touch the dead
Cold March morning, my sole witness
to memories that serve as the last rites

The old moss ringed well looming stark
on the day, we took you back home
Sirens wailing to announce the end
As the hot day cooled down to sunset
Vermillion tingeing the somber clouds
slowly creeping over the fading yellow
of an evening tolled by the temple bell
Nothing stirred, in the calm hushed intervals

Why etched that night all over a crimson sky
But I won't weep for you, my once loved friend
You had your reasons. All I have left is regret
For not hearing your cry that one and only time
You used the violin to wail your heart's lament

Today, now it seems like no one ever cared
busy with chatter that drowned your mute cry
Oh what if someone, somebody could have read
the word help scrawled in the lines of your face
As you flickered into life, from an inner darkness
that never left any trace of it's bitter passages
in the bright shining windows of your eyes
Goodbye my friend, across the years left behind
posted by Subash 12:57 PM

Sunday, March 02, 2003

A distance to cross

I've reached the city where there is no sound
Nobody is out walking, no leaves rustle
The trees aren't green, nor is the moon visible
The old stones are still, and cast no shadows
At midnight, even the silence goes to sleep
It is a place no one remembers to talk about
Here time is not yet the tyrant we all know
So goodbye night, goodbye cuckoo clock
Life is no longer a distance to be crossed
If only I could stay and not have to wake up
posted by Subash 9:54 PM

Thursday, December 05, 2002

Remember
It is necessary to be here
As you read this to yourself.
Notice
How lonely is this place now
Peaceful as any old cemetry.
Here and now
has become a forgotten place
for most of us these days isn't it?

---

Waiting

Before this season slips away
day by day fading into memory
stop a while, paint this picture

Paint a street, silver with rain
puddling warm muddy brown
between traffic that never slows

Paint the gabled roof and chimney
rising stark against the steaming night
each window hushed with expectancy

Paint the hearth, glowing warm orange
lit by the wavering flicker and shadows
of mesquite logs licked by dancing flames

Paint our dead, smiling as only they can
at ease here, free from the tyranny of time
waiting for something just about to happen

-sr
posted by Subash 1:46 AM

Sunday, August 11, 2002

Exit past to the present

We were both pioneers those days
going past horizon after horizon

in search of a place to settle
build memories to call our own

It's not like there were maps
or scouts to give us warnings

Those storms we both weathered
the hungers we learned to share

The trail we made took us far
Yet our pace slowed day by day

Together we watch this sunset
letting the yellowing light drift

Like treacle slow and yet sweet
over these fresh mown memories

Where were you on that one day
that everyone remembers clearly

I too was on a train called oblivion
and I counted many an empty seat

What lies waiting at the destination
just ahead of the dream we ended?

-sr

posted by Subash 10:38 PM

A certain answer

The way life flows from birth
to death, but never backwards

And time itself. Always on the run

Is there a wise man who knows
how far it can carry troubled words?

And what if he were to answer

That 'tis darkness that flickers
around the candle that burns

and words that so quickly kill
the real feelings it expresses

Would this answer the question?

-sr
posted by Subash 10:37 PM

Thursday, May 30, 2002

A matter of taste

Don't worry about the season
Chop up the shallots really fine

Trim all the stems and leaves
from some tender celery stalks

Brown a few pieces of chicken
in oil and worcestershire sauce

Add the celeries and shallots
and baby carrots and ginger

Cut a few tomatoes and leeks
Cook them in hot chicken broth

Pound cilantro, chilli and garlic
with a little vinegar and warm oil

Stir this paste later into the stock
Pour the mixture over the chicken

Stir the pot up, reduce the heat
Let it all simmer for a little while

When the smell fills up the room
Ladle this into a bowl or over rice

This poem may not suit all tastes
but this stew can warm old bones

-sr
posted by Subash 11:39 PM

Monday, April 29, 2002

Raft of the medusa

As the sirens sang, I drank from saltwater lies
walked the winding road between lust and guilt
In stark delirium I ravished the darkness at noon
and let chain lightning slip into cracks in the night

In the midst of the rain gone mad in brooding skies
I could discern the muffled knell of thunder claps

Rolling pitched echoes into staccato rhythms
Like a drum roll for old shipwrecked mariners
Like a roll call for those gone hard of hearing
Summoning up dirty deeds, down dark deeps

-sr


posted by Subash 6:58 PM

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Raison D'etre?

Shine crazy sun, blow cruel wind
regret has flown long before this
Yesterday, today is everywhere
It's tomorrow I want to forget
There's no treason like this love
Your face, like rain without end

-sr
posted by Subash 10:31 PM

Thursday, April 04, 2002

Back

The stake was still standing between the smouldering ashes
Long after the witch had been burned screaming to her death
It was just a poem, but there were times when this was real
Not long ago people believed that witches needed to be killed
Today we fire people, to show that we no longer need them
It's that easy to erase them from being part of our existence
where it really matters, inside their hearts as they too accept
this life, this way of making a living, is not for them anymore
I wonder what I would have been thinking if I was back there
watching woman after woman being led to their last moments

Some of them screaming till they suffocated from the smoke
And that stench of burnt flesh hanging in the air for days...
And the one time the woman kept staring at her daughter
looking back at her, held by the man who had lit the fire
with his hand inside her dress, fondling her breast lazily

It's the daughter I feel inside my head now, watching these
people pack up their little pictures, into brown box cartons
Walking out with their eyes empty, after twenty years of
having lived in an existence that cut them off from reality

-sr
posted by Subash 5:46 PM

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

Reading sign

It's a quiet evening. Snow began as a gray skyline
and fell relentlessly through the day. All the roads
leading to nowhere in particular clogged with people
who wont' stay where they were earlier, all honking
like geese who have lost their way in this cold terrain.

This hasn't happened before: days of spring followed
by cold blizzards, with the wind cruel and thick with
snow, falling heavy and icing over every bud turning
green, and sagging down the cobwebs made from
the mist by spiders that had crawled back to earth
It's a timetable that no longer works according to the
signs, and the webs sag and break, over dirty mush

My friend Avron argues against the elements, made
bold by his impatience to tug his boat out of the ice
in the creek that wants to argue with the great lake
lying in wait, for summer barbeques, and warm nights
of love under the stars, caressed by smooth winds,
rocked to sleep by the lazy churn of restless waves.

I only want to see the fields reappear, and the trees
come back to life, in a world that's becoming more
and more scarier to live in, and not just because
of the news that's on TV these days. If some, nay
so many people have turned suicidal for their causes
I have to wonder what will make it worth it for them
to come back to live in a world that we all made real.
Even if it has now become a place to kill ourselves.
A distant place, that pushes us over the very edge
of what seems like yawning depths between us all.

Just like the birds, and trees I too feel lost when
I see all these wrong signals and watch leaders
bring people back to the living, only to see them
all die, in the midst of their celebrations. All that
remains is wet with blood confetti, like cobwebs
drowning in the midst of snow and fallen petals

When did things stop making any sense to me?
Who will not feel lost, in this loneliest of places?

-sr
posted by Subash 7:01 PM

Monday, March 25, 2002

From the balcony I look down over the high
steppes, shadowing the deep moonlit gorges
And the mist gathering solemnly, takes over
the night until everything blurs into mystery

The music at first slow and heavy, later like
old wine, deepening into a cadenced rhythm
as it swirled into our midst, creating emotions
disturbingly new, yet withal strangely familiar

I could almost feel the insane rush of melting
snow cut it's way through old prospero's cave
as it made it's way deep into the unlit grottoes
at the heart of the stillness of these mountains

Now the music begins to soar and reverbrate
all through the vast spaces of this dance hall
Reflections of polished shoes chase dancers
as they whirl and pirouette faster and faster

Each intense change in tune subtly accentuated
by the midnight dark gowns in stark contrast
to the ghostly white shirts of their other half
floating over the pool of the shellacked floor

And all of this softened by the flickering glow
and shadow of old Austrian bronze lanterns
As rhythm and blues quickened and whirled
to timeless pulsing rhythms of life and death

As the music lost itself in it's own inner mystery
with all the pent up passion of the final gamble
The dancers and partners fused into one expression
each move just one misstep away from disaster

The end when it came, so achingly close to perfection
The memory of the night, like cold treacle melting
As dancer and partner take to their separate ways
No longer in tune, yet unable to dance with anybody else

-sr
posted by Subash 8:18 PM

Friday, March 01, 2002

It's time to hang up

the phone again ...

And read the poem, this poem all over again.

The poem I couldn't read, it was so full of pain.

It did not drop it's eyes or go to pieces

Even in the midst of all these strangers

These words feel tired, tired of being words

that just sit around on this page, pretending

that all that was said, was what had to be said

hurting, cos they wanted to say much more

The light shines on this page and the poem

turns into questions, that turn into enemies

And answers take flight into clouds and fear

There are words between the white spaces

that no one will see or hear but the poet

Words that fall like raindrops, like snow

loud and soft, like winter's hail and sunshine

What can anybody do when it's time to return

What can I do, if this poem has no restraint

And doesn't hesitate to say that sunset is here?

I hang up the phone. It's time to knock on the door

-sr

posted by Subash 10:58 PM

Let's begin again, later

At the center of this person, is this place I've never told you about. I hope you won't be frightened because I'd like to escort you into this unlocked chamber that's been kept so secret. To your right is a dream, yes and this here to the left is a mirage. And between floating free is hope, and tethered to the corner there is despair. Have you ever found yourself right in the middle of a riddle? And felt like you had a question you couldn't find no matter where you looked? That is the feeling we haven't yet named, that is why this chamber was reserved for that union of regret and anger. That thing you just stumbled on, that is loss of faith, heavy and lying in wait to block the light from coming in here through the only door there is. And there are names over there, in that shelf for which the key has been thrown away. Inside each name, memories have been carefully packed, never to be dusted and looked at, like old albums that slowly turn into brittle dust. Now that you've been here, why are you scared to go back? I know reality can seem far away, once you're in this antechamber. So leave now, for time is a distance that you must never forget.
-sr

posted by Subash 10:53 PM

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

Bad news

I want to write a song, tuned to her emotions

As she talks about life and it's topsy turvy turns

But instead I'd rather light up another cigarette

And listen to her on the phone, gesture and fire

punctuating her every turn and shift in mood.

Her words mad with haste, slip sliding ... slowing

Her laughter loud as staccato rain pounding down

and then soft as whispered secrets sighed aloud,

Loud and soft, soft and loud like snow and hailstones

Glinting on the road, where the night had cast them

That was her story, about cold fire and a cutting edge

That had no value for those who wanted easy warmth

This diamond that can now be only fire and ice

Even if somebody can learn to see past the rough

Maybe one day this story will no longer disturb the wind

That day her silence will speak to us as eloquently

As the water spilling drunkenly from the broken glass

Thrown against the wall, to make sure, really sure

That nobody would ever drink from it ever again

The good news? There is no more bad news

-sr
posted by Subash 9:25 AM

Thursday, February 21, 2002

To forget, to remember

The self-exiled wander down these paths
and end up here in this dead man's cove
Lit day and night by the blackness of a sun
in a scorched sky that burns and burns
over this land made perilous by oblivion
Here, no one will come back to haunt you
from the land of the living you left behind
The copses here are filled with bitter fruits
that taste of madness and sick revenge
watered by the river of poisoned thoughts
Stay here awhile, rest your deeds and wiles
And ponder the ocean churned white by hate
else journey upstream to forgotten memories
Pardon me if I won't tarry. I have to go now.

-sr
posted by Subash 8:07 AM

It's about time

I have seen those that weep
when jesters say the truth
I know dancers who stumble
When the music fails them
But if time will say nothing
then who has been betrayed?

It's not the fortunetellers
that I first learned to hate
It's the beggars that wanted
what I didn't who hated me
and taught me that if life
wants us to learn something
It will not stop at illusions

Maybe the sky wants to be blue
even when night has come to stay
Yes there must be reasons for
trees to die and the dead to decay
I learned to not wait for the answers
Since tomorrow is on it's way here

I want to sleep now, and you
can begin to laugh at this joke
For I've always loved to dance
When the music knows it's place
And you will learn that time alone
can be counted on when all else fails

-sr
posted by Subash 8:02 AM

Saturday, February 16, 2002

Make a reservation

We take the 401 all the way through to Markham
It's not the jungles of Africa, nor is it Siberia
but there are animals here, tigers and lions
lounging across the grass from camels and gazelles
In their own not so private world over from our cities

Where's the frolic, the spinetingling danger
The coiled menace, the spring to movement,
The circle of life meaning to their existence
I hate the way these animals continue to doze
unmindful of the wilderness throb in distant jungles
sated, drugged by their own private despair
in the unchanging vistas of these bounded acres

What thoughts make them growl in their dreams?
As night falls, what old longings conquer them
Do they remember the miles of hot running
The taste of bloodlust, that first bite of the hunt
The smell of deers must drive these tigers crazy
And the way the deers loll, they've forgotten
what it must feel like to run for their very lives

We encroach the earth with dead buildings
paving over what could have lived otherwise
We can only ever be this hopelessly human,
even if we'll work hard on our cultivated airs
I guess nobody even remembers reservations
where we slowly destroyed once proud tribes
Cos they saw no way to coexist with civilization
Today, we have come a long way from eden
posted by Subash 2:27 PM

Thursday, February 14, 2002

Even as we rust

Do you remember that first dark and how
we cupped the citylights in your palms?

We made plans that we didn't know would
later steer our destinies to different shores

Was that when we first woke up to what
was it yesterday that we called the future?

We were all young then, on highwires
doing a balancing act on wind and light

at an hour when you couldn't tell doves
from gulls surfing the edges of night

It would be years before breathless we'd
stop to catch our breaths and recover

And it would come time to look back on
how far we've come from where we were

Don't search for me under yesterday's rain
Cos I can no longer harvest that far sky

Oh, the young ones we were, those days
and the boats we took from one day to
the next ...

-sr
posted by Subash 12:23 AM

Saturday, February 02, 2002

Night out

No lineups or dizzy looking gigglers
Just loom tall bouncers in tuxedos
A handshake, a nod of recognition
a door, a corner negotiated inside
and we're in the club, pressing on
amidst the smoke shrouded bodies
lights yellow, red and white strobe
picking out one bod after the other
holding for a flash their gyrations
and then we do the requisite circuit
around the club, one face to the next
marking who's who and what's up here
until we come back to the limbo spot
where sit those waiting on sidelines
watching, all the movers and shakers
The beat and the song changes anon
and the room starts that all familiar
sense of heaving, when those inside
become part and parcel of it's motion
All too suddenly a red lipsticked pout
You too are now part of the action
Dancing like there will be no tomorrow
Moving like the floor was electrified
Mood and motion tuned to your partner
Everything else shut out in the intimate
space that now pools around both of you
Until the DJ announces the last number
And suddenly the smoke and sound
makes you dizzy and suddenly sober
The road ahead is a ribbon in the night
This evening is officially a closed chapter
posted by Subash 5:02 PM

Colored memories

At the end of a gaze, the window is an anchor
It's a time for goodbye, and a time to think
And drink in the green almost negligent vista
on the edge of another still and heavy day
This is what the mind will magnify later, the
colors and the somnolent hush of reds and browns
that underscore the absence of breeze at dusk
as the wind stops to catch it's breath, tired from
all the ceaseless bustling amongst mangroves
and coconut trees and palms fronds and banyans
from all that rustling and melded fronds creating a
kaleidoscope painted with the colors it finds around
the green and yellow of papayas and cashews, red
blossoms of bouiganvillae and the dark bottle green
of thottavadi povu, green patches of grass mottled
with the browns and blacks of mynas and crows
all hung over with the golden purple majesty of
the inevitable sunset

And the dusk, gathering all available light
into that one ripe avalanche of glinting flight
that races into memory to unlock all that has
come and gone, to reweave the day into another
tapestry of color and smells, chembarathis and
mullapoovu and the erinjipoovu on ambalakaavus
building to a heady heady fragrance fused into
a redolent identity that cannot be separated
from this land, that we lay claim to in our mind

If we could go back? — if we could go back into
the monsoons, the sundrenched summers,
the lazy hemlock of backwater rivers,
hills red-shawled along green fringed
rivers ... these greens shading into blue in
the slow falling of the sultry evening

the rippling waters spinning, spinning through us
so that what we've not known we knew we can now
carry with us back to where life will abandon us
in our causeless existence, oh to go back to the
way life carried us in it's torrents back then
when long days of short lived lives were tasted
and savored, each and every complex thread woven
carefully into day and night to create memories
moments that are no longer possible, the price
we have now paid for the next round of progress
posted by Subash 11:49 AM

Saturday, January 05, 2002

Diamonds are forever?
I want to talk about my first love
Not just talk, but remember her
The way she didn't just turn
people's heads, but twirled them
like weathervanes mad in the wind.

It's that kind of day today. The
beginning of possibilities, where
the past intersects the future
It was summer when we met
I think it was summer, but then
spotlights always turns everything
inside our eyes into sunlit days.

That was a time of hunger. When I
wanted to become the lion roaring
for his prey. Yes, I wanted to make
love more than I wanted to romance
And she, she wanted me more than
anything else

We set fire to our comingled passions.
We learned to discover that love was
much much more than we'd imagined.
In our most intense moments together.

As she slipped of her undergarments
and her proud mysteries took shape,
and grabbed me by the eyes to lead me
prisoner to her very own molten core
That first touch when all lust melted
into this strange act of consecration
a sacred yearning for this moment
to somehow last forever in our hearts.
Yet nothing was quite the same afterwards.
posted by Subash 4:18 AM

subash@hotmail.com