since before i loved you,
i dreamt of your eyes:
two slices of blue gulf
stripped along the horizon,
glistening
with a million years of rain.
i wanted them before i knew you,
i’m sure.
only they can penetrate me
with the force of a thousand burning suns.
i can feel them on my lips
through the sound of your breathing.
i love therefore i am.
———————————
sometimes i find it tough to show you that you’re the only one that matters in this life. and here you are: here i am.
Posted in excerpts
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no response. my heart is the silence of the world sleeping.
i barely wrote about him: he never seemed to matter. you are my prince, patience incarnate. often all i need is that little piece of silent tenderness: i am simple but i change with the northerly wind.
all i seem to do is read and sleep: summer brings deep slumber to my senses and burning sun only makes itself felt on the nape of your neck. when my eyes see it, the gently tanned skin colour of sandalwood, an urge from deep within me wants to cradle it with the palms of my hands, feel its warmth as if through it i shall hold a ray of sunshine, all warm and sensual, taken from a book of mild erotica.
funny how when i felt it last, rejection felt like a consuming fire in every which one of my pores. now, it is a slight breeze tangling up my hair, soft sand in my eyes, thorny roses brushing against a scab: strangely seperate from me.
you think i can’t see the pain in your eyes. true, you hide it well, but i know you and i know that i told you that he mattered in more ways than one would care to. i’m sorry.
S is nothing; i am love.
it’s about aesthetics, feeling, about loving contour and form and not it straight lines … and i got too attached to you, S. funny that, i try to live without feeling.
no response. so we learn to fly.
Posted in chapters of my life
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yes, you are right, i should like to hide my head in the sand and pretend all that darkness is nothing but light shining through a filter tinted the colour of night. i should pretend last night never happened, i should pretend i am content here by your side in the leafy undergrowth of life where all i see are roots uprooted, dying in the sun. and would you blame me?
i could not sleep last night, thinking of the shining lights enveloping you, pillow over my head to drown out hurt. i wondered if i ought to watch a film, but that would be defeat. no, i would lay here and count your wrongs, my wrongs, the cracks in the ceiling of our hearts, thoughts, lives.
soon, soon, the artery would rupture and drown out the pain.
soon, soon.
i knew i couldn’t cut myself. what with? a knife? i could almost hear you saying don’t be silly in that tone of yours. and pills, what good would it do? only that i may die without salvation, without the knowledge of how to cling to love by the skin of your fingertips. or maybe i know that already.
and i can’t live with all that poison, not even just for tonight. i would fight but my limbs have gone to sleep and i am faced with a picture of you in the club, music pounding, drinks flowing, girls dancing.
and i realise i can’t say that there is anything missing. there is not.
Posted in chapters of my life
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through my paperround last year i met a wonderful man. he used to walk his dog as i’d deliver papers and we started talking around the time i started writing this blog. i think he’s 82: he must have mentioned it a while back. and i’m afraid there’s nothing literary about him: his existence is one of uncouth coutesy.
i quit the paperround a while back now but i still see him every sunday. nine o’clock in the morning, like church. he’s my little christian connection: even S is nowhere near taking his place. he gave me a bible with a picture of him in his youth stuck at the back, so that i remember him. secretly, i think, he believes that it will help me find him in heaven: he believes i will go there after all.
to my friends, this man is “the old man”. to me, he is much more than that. it may be true that i meet him every sunday partly because i feel like it’s my obligation, but also because somewhere beneath my skin there’s a tendon that connects me to him.
his wife died last night. or the night before that. and there’s no more words because i’m hurting for him. because how can one even begin to describe his pain?
i had made them a card only this march: they celebrated their 60th wedding annivesary.
sometimes he told me he wondered if she ever loved him but i know that was only because he loved her more than anything else. ever.
and it’s a little late for him to tell her, but i hope she knew. i think she knew.
Posted in chapters of my life
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you can have the whole of me in this field:
i pressed my soul into its loins
and beads of sweat still glisten
on the body learning to tango
in the outpour of rain.
i will surrender only here
so take care not to move even a strand of hair
from beneath the tree where i will lay through my whole life,
as if dying prematurely,
for this is home and i forbid you.
a day will come when spring will open me enough
for sun to shine
into the roots of the old cambridge tree
and open up
the rest of me.
—————————————————————-
i’ve been writing this poem for a while now and it feels forever unfinished. maybe that’s just me, always a word out, a syllable in. and then i give up and start something else. at the end of the day, however, i always come back to this. and the oldest tree in cambridge.
Posted in excerpts
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 