(1)

I don’t know how these empty years have passed slowly, in evanescence.

I want to swim the deep waters of a shady past

Of my rainy day embraces, with you.

Here I spread out my arms and light the flame,

Look back at quick stings, ruckus and impending doom,

Screams and murmurs alive in a hazy sleep.

Fighting away the memories and pain to free myself,

Bound, tight in ropes, I surrendered to your flames.

One last time, I want to reach out to the trembling and beauty

Of long nights and the smell of youthful, candid smiles

Lighting up the smothering traffic,

Old stairs, shady buildings in twilight haze.

Smiles that ran into the tramways, the busy subways

Of uncertain miles, that brings me again, to nothingness

As I allow open wounds and scars of a castaway life

Whip me with a splash of colors.

My eyes walk across the Atlantic Ocean

As I sit at the edge of a slumber, whimpering and pining

Silly old tears of a forlorn city.

                              (2)

You knock me down each time with your quandaries.

You knock me down each time with sins and sighs

Crush my breath--as if the sky is torn off my life.

I keep coming to you barefoot, scattered in ashes and dust

Walk back to you over rocks and thorns,

Stark dead and grinning, every time you grind the pieces in me.

Together and apart, you watch me blown to death.

You cherish me, limp and crazy

The constant cold departures, the sinking away

While you know I would come back again

To your dingy streets, and undo’ ME’.

I am--bits, pieces and splinters of you

The frozen memories, the buried yesteryear sins.

The betrayals, the thwarted passion, the wilderness that bleed

Summer’s scarlet tears in your naked, primal chest

Bleed and ache, whisper and scream, within me.

Footnotes: In this poem in scattered fragments, I have attempted to pen down some of my recollections, conversations with and confessions to Calcutta, my second soul, the city that still runs deep down in my veins. I want to whisper in her ears how those silly, magical years spent with her still fill me with bewilderment and pain. I want to scream loud and long to her, and tell her how all these years I have loved and hated her memories, the life of glory and sin that had been shared with her, and how, every time I keep coming back to her, surrendering to old flames and impending doom.