The Other Voice

Pump the reds of blood through lungs

And soak it dry,

Breathe through the saps of air

And tease for the flightless fly

Painted skies, amid a winter,  vast.

Such majesty still in supply

Although a thousand years had passed–

You drank the rich and sunlit sky

As the stars seep through the veils of

Mellow Night

Of street lights, wine and morose constellations

faded,

Proofs of sordid yellow

That you were there, yesterday and before

Although a thousand years had passed–

You drank the rich and sunlit sky

As it grows dark,

You pick your coat for a walk through the snows

Marking your memories

In the foot print

Or wispy cold air exhale

Although a thousand years had passed–

You drank the rich and sunlit sky

Each time you sigh, the memories shift

In your head

Like a photograph undeveloped

But vivid in its life

Pinned on the walls

Of your solitary heart

Seeking for the friends forgotten

Or leaves unturned in springs

Of Fountains and clouds

Unrelenting and punishing

And the walks you take

Or the marks you miss

Makes you blind

Overturned by the winds and cold

Vowing for never again

Drinking the sunshines’ between your

Bed folds.

Friends, Readers, fellow Bloggers:

Rarely have I used this blog for promotions or advertising but this is something that is worth this space. We all listen to Radios and use Apple technologies- iPhone/iPod etc and most of us, like me listen to Radio on Apple iphone/ipods. With so many Radio apps out there, it is good to find something that claims you can “Rule the Radio”. That sounds too good to be true but this is what the App does. It gives you 8 channel (upto 10 if you go Pro, no Ads version) on your home screen and each channel lists the song that is currently being aired. So now you can switch to a channel immediately that is playing your prefered song.  You can choose over 100 channels that is provided in the Application and select them for playing on Home screen. I personally love this application as it outdoes most of the other radio App where I don’t know which channel to play next and if I am gonna like the song that would be getting aired on that channel!

What’s more, the App is available in 8 genres: Pop, Rock, Jazz, Metal, Hindi, Electronic, Country and Classical. To know more go to http://whazzonradio.com/blog/.You can download it for free on iTunes.

And, finally we have a radio that plays only our next favorite song.

I sit by the corner of the street, the silence in the hustle-bustle screeches through the vacuity of a tired soul. The men hurrying through the signals, women worrying about their chores, with the baggage of their responsibilities and sensibilities torn apart. The children, all shapes and sizes, toddlers to the kite runners; clamped to the mothers’ embrace, fighting for a let-loose ; some carrying the burdens of their school on their backs, sagging shoulders with its weight… The old and the lively, the young and the despirited, the men by the grocery shop, the men by the petrol bunk. the women in the temples, the women in the brothels. The women worshipped, the women abused.
I live by the corner of the street, watching people’s lives through the racing fleet.
Nothing to break the pattern, the same ticks-tocks, the same taps of the shoes, the same fleeting bodies with the souls void.. The trickle of the sweat comes from the money not earned well or from the fret for the money spent little too much. The little babies wailing for tenderness lost in the mechanical to-dos of life, mothers clamping forward for the daily rotes of an entrepreneurial jobs ; a look -undeserved fallen but taken away from me.. The alms were little too much to be spared away but I was not stuck there for any pennies. It was just a refusal to be carried away,torn in the storms of life. It was a halt to be free from the body and the Soul, to gather a better reckoning of the world around from the spot fixed. To wait for the eventual strike of the dagger or for the want of euthanasia for I lack the audacity myself. To feel the wind in my hair and the breath in my lungs.

Till its all taken by the tempest, the mighty and the Potent.

Shut the lights of the amber, for the shadows loom darker in the moon light
Eyes clenched sleepless with a moment of raging silence
pierced through the hollows of the room.
The hallway smirked in its agony
in the aftermath of a battle spelled in its walls
…Stained in its own mahogany of a one side war!

You would not fall for the warmth of my hands
There was no reason for this change
For the rebel clenched your body,  set torn in its own duality

I did not touch your skin;
it was reeling in forever loops of eternity-
Tense and alien, tears sealing my faith or
Breaking our promises of betrayal
The way we were lost-
forever

I would hold you, when the moment relaxed
When your body would give in and the eyes would move freely
And the demons would set you free.
I would know that moment,
From the freedom that would spill from your eyes and
The warmth in the pillow from your release of let-go,
When the struggling would cease and you would nod
To let me know that you are free for the night.

The impish metal smiles, awkward and cracking

The creased notes passed between the wooden school desks,

Fiercely guarded and embraced with a mischievous touch

No more lost sleep to late night calls or worries  unrequited

The disillusion of forever painted names on the last furnitures

Or all those candyed heartaches….

So tell me again, why the heart races

In the palpitation under the goose bumped skin folds

Why I devour every word you say Or

Keep it with in the blues of your eyes

Tell me if I am too old for this

Or

Say I ‘m not.

Send me the star that you dream on,
The pillow that carries your tear stained mahogany,
The bloodshot eyes that
The pitiful picture of the heart lay on its whites.
Send me the credence of your world,
That made you bow with its every pretense,
The desert heat in your heart and the stillness of it all.

Send me the weight of your heart, that took every blow as its last,
With its romancing liars and dancers under the moonless stars.
I would set it all ablaze,
And carry it to the waves and
Watch it go down………………

He wanted to paint the colors of the sunset in the dancing rivers. With his father beside him, he felt like a superhero though he could not walk much with a virus in his legs. And his hands made up for that, for the fingers danced in the canvas when he was happy, stroked higher when he wanted to run or just laid still when he was tired.

He and Tom, his father, used to sit by the lake every evening or most of his days, otherwise marked by the stillness in his legs. He never had felt the earth on his toes, they said he was one of the lucky few who had to rest well for they have to make long journeys.

They used to sit by the dock down the lake. They counted the stars as they slowly emerged from the blankets of grey, orange, and purples. He wanted to capture each of that hue on his canvas, and take that moment with him forever. He would not have minded if the universe could have ended just then, for there is no where else he wanted to be and that was not a moment when he felt like a cripple. He would trail his numbed toes through the waters and watch the reflection of a dreamy sky in its ripples. He felt alive in his legs then and accepted and celebrated them in all its glory.

Tom used to get some tea and sometimes played his tune on the strings, making the evening more beautiful than ever. He used to think his father as a genius with nothing impossible for him. In his jacket, that Tom wore everyday for this occasion, he looked peaceful and content. The jacket belonged to his mother, Tom’s wife, who gave it to him before she slipped from this world. And with the jacket snugged on to Tom’s shoulders, it reminded him of the way she used to stand beside him with her soft tiny hands, as a blanket of comfort that he missed now so dearly.

Tom loved her much, guess, too much.. and no matter what he did to fix it, his eyes could never hid it and no matter how many times Tom and his son spent in the evening together, or how many sunsets came and went, his soul had left with hers and only a tiny piece remained, that piece belonged to his son and always would. Tom’s heart was in nothing that he did, except those evenings when he used to play his music by the ripples in the lake. That’s why he longed for them so, just to know Tom was at peace in this world, if only for a time. Tom had tried, he knew, to sort through the thoughts he had, but there was something changed in his mind, something had just died in him.

Tom’s gone now, and left him and everything and everyone behind, to be with his mother – the only place he truly belonged . He misses him, his songs, his jacket.The lake seems so lonely now, but every evening he still pulls through in his wheel chair down to dock, slips his socks off and soaks his toes in the lake. He trails his feet through the water lightly and pretends that he can see the reflection of Tom’ smiling face amidst that of the sunset’s.

He smiles as the wind blows gently across his cheek and he knows, by the way it picks the fallen leaves up and tosses them into the sky, that Tom is truly happy now.

They rested, celebrated, found each other all over again in a cheap motel room that seemed as surprised in the hues of pink and magenta of their shadows.

She leaned closer to the side of the bed, lazy with the darkness looming in the curtains of the room. He was spinning verbal menageries like the spider on the corner with its cobwebs of reason and imaginations. The words swirled with their cigarette smoke, dissolving in the rings of air, humidity and underlying innuendos, dancing across the hazy air like a perched dancer on an invisible boulevard.

He had been away all weekend and most of the time that spanned through it; she felt like she would burst in her own bubble of solitude and loneliness of chaos in her head. And now she sat here watching his theatrical montage of words and smoke mixing together.

He speaks in turquoise, cerulean, yellows… whiskey amber, and delectable embellishment, each breath laced with nicotine and lucid dreams. Every day is a void canvas and a new paint-brush of dynamite; somehow the paint always drips, and he lights the fire in her head, each day every day.

For him, it was not a matter of a ploy, or for his own catharsis. He was his own character, poised, comic, tragic and poignant, all at the same time… he is words with wonder coated in a fabulous thin candy shell.

And he has this lousy habit of making people fall in love with him.

He didn’t know about the weekend she’d had. He did not know that she had just lost her Enzo, her dog , her companion and the car was a reckless thing on that lousy Sunday Morning. Enzo was a hyperactive silly dog running across the streets, chasing squirrels dropping from the fall trees .All it took was a screech to bring her perfect world to an end.

He didn’t know how she thought she might be going crazy. How she had read that dogs are the best friends and people mourn their dog’s death more than the death of their peers or folks. How she had not eaten well ever since and was clinging on to her shards of reasoning, failed and discarded.

There was a quiet moment. Not an awkward silence – with him, these did not exist. The fan was louder than it seemed with chaos in her head. He stared quietly into the distance like he was tapping onto his thoughts from a distance, like he was thinking about something way smarter than anything she could ever understand. It was nice, this silence. And then he turned to her, out of nowhere, and said

“Look at you. You’re writhing in the crushing grip of reason.”

And he was right.

She hadn’t told him a damn thing, and he was right. He had a way of saying it that made it sound bigger than everything else in the room. He had an understanding that dissolved in the smoke of his cigarette, like he was not one of those making a mockery of their own words, like he understood that Enzo was gone and she never would play with him again. Like he was joking but he was not.

“So how do you suppose that it was so?”

She continued chasing the smoke clouds in her head and squirmed. There was no need to say anything further. He knew already.

He knew how scared she was.

What good is a conversation when the words have already been spoken in your minds?

It’s a huge waste of space. That’s what it is.