I feel inadequate.

Words have left me I think.

Long, long ago, quietly, secretly, slowly, 

leaving word shaped holes in my vocabulary.

I only have silences in my blood now, 

and some empty aches inside my throat.

And you know poetry cannot be written with

silences in blood and empty 

aches in throats.

Poetry needs words, thoughts, passion,

music, patience, blood, sweat, love.

And, of course, every time,
a little bit of the soul..

Little black curly haired kid
How crazy are you?
Look, I worry about you.

Haven't seen your dimpled smile in a while
Does your smile stay in your eyes still?
Long after it left your tender lips?

Do you talk funnily still?
Are you lonely? Are you sad?
I am so sorry.

All I can say is I am so far away.
I can hope you are okay.
The only gift I want.

I have traveled but of course I donot know how much I have moved forward. Spring is near. I wish I could sit for a while with some peace of mind, looking at moths and butterflies with wonder. Last time spring had come and left. There was snow everywhere when I rolled up the Venetian blinds.
Everybody vanished into their small cupboards and locked themselves up. Everybody vanish into their small cupboards and lock themselves up. Everybody will vanish into their small cupboards and lock themselves up. How do people live alone like that? Don't they feel empty?
Sometimes I got lucky enough to peer into their little worlds. Some played reggae, some grew marijuana, some read Bukoswki, some drew trees. If you take them out of their cupboards they could die in less than a day - none of them knew any other way to live. And such was this obsession for space, no matter how small but space - entirely one's own.
So I got myself one. Stuffed it up with books, poetry, paintings, knitted scarves. Jars full of Christmas cookies. Painted it mossy. Perfumed it musty. I still felt lonely for a long, long while. There wasn't any telephone that I could call someone. Even if there were, I didn't know how to explain the silence in my blood. Nothing felt original. Nothing felt uniquely mine. Every bit of everything had been written down before, had been felt before, had been talked about before, had been solved before, had been gotten over with before. I immediately wanted someone in. To sit with me in my terrifying silence. It was too dark and mossy and smelt of rain and smelt of my college-going days. How long could I pretend to be independent? How long could I pretend to have found myself? Maybe there is nothing to find. So bored was I of myself, that, when I was let in, in some other cupboard, I promptly climbed in. I climbed in with my imagination of the bliss of shared sleep. I climbed in because it had the familiar smell of yellowing books, like home. I climbed in and sat in shared silence and it felt less terrifying.

But then, there are love rules that have been laid down about who should be loved and how, and how much.

Looking back, I have learnt One Important Thing. Everybody should have a cupboard where none else is allowed and you better feel home at that one. I shall return there and pull down its blinds, and hit the sack now.

This time I hope it will last.

It gets worse and worse and worse. Life is a fucking struggle.

My biggest fear is if they kick me out because I am incompetent, I might have to return to India and have to marry and have sex with a stranger, finally push babies out of me -and I don't think I will feel any better than an incubator. It is the scariest thing I can imagine happening to me or anybody.


Sadly, this can't be the motivation to perform better. Doesn't work like that, although I wish.

Mind this is a grad-school post.

It feels I have been away for quite a bit from writing.

Everything feels so daunting. I feel like I am hanging somewhere in lithosphere, totally lost. I can't feel a ground under my feet. And I have seen things getting worse. Worse and worse things have happened to people around me, and things can not only get better sometimes, but worse. Worse things can keep happening. Things get worse. Worse things have happened. Moment when you feel worse things can happen - that's worse than the worse thing actually happening.

Like when you turn twenty-eight. Worse than turning thirty.

I had a nightmare. When I talked about it, it somehow didn't seem so bad to people. But I guess it's all subjective. If you were in my shoes and were a nervous wreck like me,  couldn't fill a glass of water from the tap without spilling it, and felt bad about it, terribly sloppy about yourself, to the point that it really affected you, to the point that it made you deduce terrible things about why things never worked in your life, and about why things rather worked in other people's lives, maybe you would understand what I mean when I say I had a terrible, terrible nightmare.