Last Friday evening

Last Friday evening, I saw a mother and her son dancing outside the concert hall. It was Grieg and grief and norweigian skies, softly bleeding through the little crevices between the doors and the floor. They didn't do anything too complicated: two pairs of feet, one large and one small, stepping and turning. The eyes, though, played to an entirely different routine. The boy would occasionally throw a brave glance at me, his pupils shining with a bratty fervour that refused to budge no matter how much I tried to out-stare him. But as soon as I looked away, his gaze would fall back into his mother's eyes, and upon their lips they danced. The trumpets called and the violins screeched and I tripped as they were graceful.

You

It's love and romance and a thousand sunsets with clasped hands and two people, who drown in their own little world of safety and certainty; against the loud lights of the city, against the sounds of the buses and the cars and the crowds. But the one moment we kiss wine-wild abandonment - you'd imagine it as a sudden hush. The roads are empty, the streets are drunk, and all you hear is the ocean breathing with the sand.

Portrait

In his subsequent sojourns abroad, he came across a great many things that teased his unobstrusive taste for unobstrusive passions: the colourful umbrellas that ubiquitously dotted the streets of Calcutta; the deep blue Mediteranean sky on wanton afternoons in Rome; the grungy shophouses that festooned the loud nights of Bangkok. These passions of his often mystified his friends - "Why travel to busy places? Don't you tire of them?" Love lives only in people, he replied.

He'd take photographs of children with carefully-arranged heaps of vegetables on varying corners of their dinner plates. Maybe write about little old ladies who haggle (with a vengeance) about the price of chicken, and then about the equally vengeful butchers who slam down their cleavers really hard, secretly hoping that their chickens were little old ladies. He'd sit at the beach, and marvel not at the sunset, but at the dozens of other people who do - young couples, old couples; families, friends, lone persons. Every individual sat upon a world of unimaginable wonder, he said to me one morning, as we were rowing out to sea. Love speaks of fraility in the face of courage, and courage in the eye of fraility. The soft light danced upon the sea, the spray wrinkled his nose. He sneezed, and then laughed.

last night i dreamt i was flying

he sits in the car, watching the rain fall.

it isn't as if he hasn't anything to do. he is supposed to be at the office, checking on the supplies for next month. he is supposed to fetch his daughter from school, supposed to wash the dishes and clean the floor.

the raindrops caress the windows, tracing sensual patterns across the glass. but he never bothers about such things, not anymore.

he opens the door, steps out into the rain. and takes a long, deep breath.

leaning against the lamp-post, he watches the rain fall.

angel

sometimes the world gets too heavy

and grey and he'll just live in

his garden of willow trees and off-

white primroses, where the birds

never sing, and the grass never grows.

he would lick the dewdrops that dawn

deserted last night, swallowing each mouthful

carefully; then nuzzling into his own breast he would

anxiously kiss himself,

kiss himself so tenderly.

the sun could only smile slightly, as people

outside they murmured: what of love and passion?

what of death and loss? for no garden bloomed

for them; no garden would

kiss themselves so tenderly.

love's on the floor

if love lay in puddles of cherry-blossom petals, i'd gladly tango with me, under the dying trees. the accordions shall sing and dance, while the violins will weep for joy - and as much as we spin and twirl, leap and fall, the setting sun's beauty never fails to kiss our lips: one last time, every time.

people and places

it's good to be superficial, we say. if you think about it enough: the world isn't round, the clouds aren't solid and people aren't alive; africa is hungry and china is greedy and america is talking. we eat, we drink and we live - too much to take in because it's all mind-warbling and value-warping (valuewrap is a brand of plastic-wrap). that my mom says should be used on leftover food before placing it in the fridge.

in conclusion, we say: jyjy glgl hfhf.