Monday Morning #5: Bolt the Door

Its been a crazy Monday Morning and it promises to be a really really long day. What I really wanted to do today morning was sit back and finish A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. It is such a beautifully tense book. I had originally planned to quote an excerpt from the book for today's post but this quickie about escapism will have to do now. How I long to Bolt the Door on stupid world right now!! 

Image Source: https://www.facebook.com/

Monday Morning #4: An exercise in self-promotion.

I've been on the move for the majority of the past fortnight now. One of the reasons why it has been a roller coaster was mentioned in the last post. And since this is a Monday and we do poetry on Mondays, I'm going to offer up a poem I wrote some years ago.

Bitter brown espresso

Sweetened with the sweet satisfaction

Of a day spent in your company

Nothing significant   

But I kept telling myself:

Don’t you dare take this for granted -

For this too shall pass 

And pass it did

Into dreary days and watery sunshine

The stars in the night sky mocked me

They maybe be far away

But at least I could see them. 

I should’ve taken to the drink

Or work or men

Or smoking something silly

But I wanted to strike a healthy balance. 

“You’re not half a couple,

You’re a complete woman”

I kept repeating to myself

Over and over again like a talisman. 

But there are days when it doesn’t work

On these days I want to burn my ideals

And grovel and beg.

On these days I want to melt out of existence

Rather than stick around and watch

The multitude of infinite twittering birds

Going about their important days

In important ways 

On some mornings I wake up with Hip hop -

Or coitus songs in my head

On these mornings I look at the calendar and figure

I’m probably ovulating.

On these morning I smile and think

Someone will get lucky tonight

And maybe even make me happy for a while 

For a while I’ll forget

For a while I’ll believe

“This aint so bad, I could make this work”

But then again hope is a delusion you want to believe

Just like I want to believe

That I will one day

Tear two sachets of brown sugar

And stir my cup of sweetened brown espresso

Sitting across from you

And take it for granted. 

Image Source: http://www.murraymitchell.com/

I went through a very low phase when I was in Cal because I had just graduated and moved to a city where I barely had any friends and I was also beginning a long distance relationship. Some of that and how I tried to deal with it makes its way into this poem. I guess writing it down was also my way of dealing with it.

I seriously should get back to writing more poetry but I end up writing so much during the course of my work that I feel like the words have been squeezed out of me. But I promise I'll post something new soon.

On Old Cities and New

Going back to a city you've lived in is kind of like meeting parts of you that you've left behind. Same is true of meeting people who populated the streets of  your past. I'm going to Cal to meet someone very important after a quite sometime and I feel a mix of anticipation and dread at discovering how the city has changed, how my beloved has changed and how I have changed. I'll leave you with these thoughts from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

Image Source: http://www.amazon.co.uk/

“For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.” 

― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities