Narcissism.

There is a narcissism that I have learnt to internalize of late, to demonize to the extent that I've suppressed it. It used to be the fuel for my existence and for it I felt a deep guilt embellished by remorse. The dramatisation of my day-to-existence had become redundant, or so I sought to believe. I seek to believe too much. I compete with myself to attain the most perfect image of the idea I have most recently come to be enchanted by. It is wearing a different dress everyday and changing the facets of my personality to match it. It is the process of deliberate moulding to fit an intellect that I am so taken by.  I have been told that I am far too conscious of myself, that it is a simpler to shake a leaf by breathing upon it than to somehow slip into the cracks of my mind an insecurity. Perhaps I exhibit symptoms of only the human condition, particularly generic and classifiable. Again I speak from under the vistas of a persona I aim to please, one where madness is a glamour every pedestrian wishes to achieve. Yet the one constant is a bitter struggle to constantly change myself, to deter my existence from just being and navigate it to some semblance of greatness. A fleeting semblance at best, it is a short-term achievement that soothes my soul. Of late I have become concerned that my wrote is less romantic and technical, yet foundationally derivative. It is another persona that has sprung in me, an inclination to imitate, to imbibe without realizing that the inspiration I have thus extracted borders on plagiarism. I have discussed this fear, though not openly, for fear of being branded a fake (the personas I wear often co-exist and intermingle). I was handed with the realisation that perhaps all art is plagiarised and that all creation is preceded by some genetic mother and father. Does that in itself dismiss the notion of some seminal pioneer, the first of its breed? To me, therein lies the pursuit for the unique; therein lies the heart of greatness. My narcissism is situated upon an ego, much larger than is visible yet peeking out constantly from under the covers of my skin. It does not satisfy me to simply create, I must create so as to in-still wonder and amazement. Perhaps not the purest motive for creation I admit, and I concede that it is not the sole purpose, but it is an honest purpose if honesty is to be trusted and for that I am grateful. 

I have learned that passion alone can awaken you, but passion alone will not keep you awake. I have learned that there is a discipline to creation, lest your fire burn out and you are lulled back to sleep. Where creation is concerned, a corporal discipline is neither sufficient nor necessary but that your soul must become a vessel to creation. It must be malleable enough to receive it yet be conditioned with a steely resolve to contain it, to channel it. It almost seems as if I have stumbled onto the Buddhist truth of things and now all I must do now is to proceed to create. I wish it were that mechanical, so that I might be spared the mental agony of scrutiny and analysis and of the deficiencies thereby laid bare. Yet it is part of the process, or so urges my new-found sense of maturity. All my creation is a function of my existence and to extricate myself of it is the goal it seems. In this I find a dichotomy that has become the undercurrent of my listlessness, how do I proceed to create objectively when the source my source of creation is subjective? How do I create until I am actively incited, until my spirit is so vibrant that it can do nought but speak? My body is human, and prone to distractions and to the waxing and the waning of inspiration. I find no guarantee in methods nor lifestyles that ensure that my self-expression is both a function of me and yet a standard of greatness. With no formula available, my life has become a series of permutations and combinations and my actions perpetrators of trials and errors. 

This lends justification to my iridescent narcissism perhaps, to the extent that I will justify all forms I take because I am convinced that rationality lends substance to my beliefs. It is in this thunderstorm of calm atmosphere that I watch myself sleeping. I would be a great sight to behold to myself, were I not wrought with infractions that vitiate my existence.

"Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody."

"Every time I sit in a daydream, I'm not actually imagining a future;
I'm reconstructing the past to leads me to a different present."


"Isn't that just futile though dear? Like attempting to wake a dead person."

"Perhaps, but its the only way I know how to dream."

Need

I am but a broken boy, so will you lay here,

A few minutes longer, a few days, the summer,

You can leave my side eventually, as all things,

Eventually must recede into the nothing like death.

I’ll think nothing of it, I’ll just stay here staring,

At the bronze ceiling, in sorrowful yellow light,

You can be on your way through the traffic then,

With only your body painted on the sheets I soak in.

If I am fragile, like a twig made of glass,

Why not, then just twist me, smash me,

Into the ground and then laugh cruelly;

Because it is my fate to be broken eventually.

Then I shall tell my heart, be still, be cool,

It is not in your interest to make of me demands,

For promises I cannot keep, yet you know if I do,

I am only deceiving you, but ask me yet somehow.

The last three sultry hours of the afternoon spent,

Were least of all animate for my eyes,  being staid

They were dead set on that bronze, looking at all

The little pieces of nothing that fell into focus.

Despite the heat, within and without there was,

A particular sort of longing, a pining from my gut,

Insulated by this flesh, yearned to reach out, to pull

You out of your own;  to desecrate it and wear it proud.

Numb afterwards, floating in the stench of many cigarettes,

My chest would finally stop fuming and heaving ; grow cold

And suddenly be tired and small, only asking for the wanton

Consummation of binary touch turned golden, turned soft.

Passively I would expect to be wrapped up, enveloped solid

Into a fluid embrace layered with the sorrowful sunlight with

The din of the traffic, the atmosphere of breath and tobacco,

Its core a throbbing mass of detached affection sniffling incessantly.

Then you would turn and you would leave, dragging it all with you

Withdrawing pulled back by invisible strings of realization concomitant

Of lust, receding further and further so that with each step my longing grows

Until your body is now downstairs pulling into a cab, dragging my heart behind it.

The Sun and the Moon

Sometimes I believe that the moon shines brighter than the sun

So what if the glow is softer?

I too am like the moon,

I borrow your illumination and shine

Does that worry you?

I like to cover things in a silver blanket, I'm a mother

I save my children from your harshness.

The moon  comes full a fortnight,

You come alive everyday in a burst of flame

Nay, you are the day.

The sun breathes life into everything it touches, it inspires

But you bring them your ire, your vigour too.

I breathes stilness into life, I cradle and I adorn the silence

I soothe their hearts and lull them to sleep

So they can be rested for the labour you give them again tomorrow.

The sun and the moon are two halves of all existence,

You and Me are two halves of one,

One roaring to the calmness of the other,

The calm singing the roar to sleep.

Dirty Window

I was being driven back home tonight, amidst the dirt, heat, humidity and an array of fast moving lights. I like staring out of windows when I’m in a car. Just staring outside at everything that flashes by and fiddling with any thought that comes from it. I see giant neon signs on office buildings and it makes me think of the government, and my father and the general personality of men who work in administration. A new hair salon! Makes me think of my rural cousins and how to them this city must seem filled with glitz and glamour far beyond their understanding. Perhaps they are less in awe and more reproachful of this lifestyle that we lead. Unnecessarily excessive, lugubrious even; who would pay 250 Rupees for a measly burger, fries and a milkshake when you could have a delicious idli with masala filled chutney and crunchy wadas drowning in sambar. I turn ahead and for a moment am jolted, the driver almost drove over some vague brown thing lingering in the middle of the street. It is dark and the headlights of the car don’t do a good job of lighting up the brown fuzz. Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just a stain on the windshield that I mistook to be something on the outside. This makes me think of the way I see things.

Perhaps, everything we look at is through a dirty window. Each stain and smudge on the pane is something I mistake to exist on the outside of the glass, and it eventually changes the way I see what the outside really is. Each brown spot represents some misunderstanding or profanely absurd assumption I continue to labour under until one day with a jolt I realise that is nothing but a stain and proceed to wipe it out with my thumb. That’s much better, now I can see clearly. It was like when I realised recently that growing up one is accustomed to a certain pattern of relationships and the functioning of those relationships may grow, but essentially remain the same forever. I feel quite disillusioned with the notion of a dramatic moment where I would suddenly break free from these mundane bonds and fly away much like an un-caged bird. Yes, I feel quite content with revelation and quite proud actually, of having solved a minor equation in the math textbook that is life. Now this is funny to me because almost 30 seconds later( because off late with the influx of information and the exposure to inordinate amounts of intoxicants, my brain has been processing things quite inconclusively). My brains decides that is does not make sense. My mind is almost sceptical of anything that comes it way and it puts on its glasses and eyes it head to toe, scrunching up his nose and observing the matter suspiciously before letting it through, but never really trusting this new information completely. So of course, it does a double take and says, but wait, my hands are nearly always dirty. When I wiped off that smidge off the screen, did I perchance leave behind another glossy blur? So once again, the genius begins re-assessing the consistency of this revelation and concludes  that I’m still not really looking clearly at what is outside, but only a slightly less skewed version of the same. This really me annoys me to the point that I almost  abandon this reverie and just continue staring at the pretty lights, the gnawing problem this poses however, does not allow me to. As I think about it, perhaps thinking about it in terms of concrete truths and lies is not the ideal thing to do. The motive is to see clearly, which I believe here would mean to be able to think clearly ergo make decisions without conflict of thought or emotion.  My hands aren’t as dirty as my brain makes them out to be, and I can essentially see the previously blotched out part of the view outside much more lucidly. Isn’t that enough? This settles down the aggravated part of my brain that is more or less ready to sacrifice my sleep for the night to maintain that basically, all conclusions are inconclusive. The question however, remains as to whether this dirty window is really an analogy to an outlook on life, or that I should just pick up a wet rag and clean the bird shit off the windshield.

Smallness.

She is so tiny, in the room corner,
Sizing up the dark from her spotlight.
She has tiny feet and tiny wavy hair,
She has a tiny little heart under a puny chest.

We are ever so small, in the most brilliant of ways;
Men turn themselves to boys for love and turn lovers,
Into tiny creatures that cup in the palm of their hands,
And stroke to sleep and wakefulness at their disposal.

She is ever so minute, and breathing so fast,
She recedes back further willing the wall to take her in.
This room is her body; it is empty, and her soul small,
She views the world outside from this spacious cage.

We are ever shrinking when we wake up in the morning,
We slowly cripple into toward ourselves through the day.
As we crawl into bed as almost a small ball of viscous nothing.
Our limbs will grow back with the dawn, our spirits ever minuscule.

What is she to do as a little doll, with wavy hair,
She floats around but is afraid of the black expanse.
Every time she shivers, outside her body convulses,
Every time her body is touched, inside she grows.

Is this smallness we wonder, safer than a giant silhouette?
It is easier to tuck away in diminution: egos, and demands,
To pull back into yourself ever increasing in tense density,
Like the smallest of particles that houses an entire universe.

She adjusts to the shrinkage, couples it with timidity to suit,
She turns into not just a miniature of herself, but to a child.
She turns her head sideways and provokes a sincere naivety,
That this will perhaps minimize the gaping hole, the room itself.

But how infinitesimally minute can we attempt to be,
When nothing goes nowhere, the matter lost: nought.
Then we are slowly threatening ourselves to explode,
Till the fear and the sadness and the anger subside.

She fears the floodgates, yet she chooses withdrawal,
She clings to herself and sobs into her tiny little dress,
She pulls her body into a foetus, becoming smaller still,
She hopes to explode into nothing, and be part of the dark.

I Give Up.

Of all the things in life, faith is the hardest to keep.
When I don't have faith, I have nothing but empty sleep.

The day is done.

I've wasted the morning light again.

Picking at scabs and inflicting new wounds.

A dark cycle, set itself on repeat, a clip of defeat.

They play it over and over, again and again inside my head.

If I can't be living, then why can't I be dead?



I lay on the floor again today.

And stared up at the celing.

Willing it to come crashing down on my head.

If I can't be living, then why can't I be dead?

You Do Not See Me.

You don’t really love me. The truth is, you don’t even miss me very much. How can you, when you hardly know who I am? You carry a faint fondness for some idea of me in your head, like an image you wish to shock to life when you say three nice things to me. You sound tired, you sound exasperated. I realise now that that has little to do with me, and even less to do with our construct of love. It has to do with who you are as a person, what the things in life represent themselves as to  you, in your frame of mind, from your personality. I have spent months chasing after your heart, I would spend a million more, were it not made clear to me that it is fruitless. The truth is, the hard cold truth is, that I do not miss you anymore. I do not miss you anymore than I miss a friend whose name I can no longer recall. When you say you miss me over the phone, the words ring hollow. They lost their meaning when no sounds came to respond to it, from my own mouth, of my own volition.

I tried to warn you about this day. I cried, and I fought and I manipulated your fragile ego in an attempt to say it to you, without crudely using the actual words. I played rotten games with your good nature in order to get you to understand to not take my affections lightly, that my hurt is real, and that I really do need you right now. You always gave me what I desired, when I asked for it. It satisfied you, and I always felt you breathe a sigh of relief afterward as if you had accomplished some tedious chore. I never felt greatly about it. It never occurred to you to discover my soul, my spirit. My flesh and the actions wrought from it were only of substance. If nothing was spoken, what can you be expected to hear? I detested that I prostrated my pride before your feet in a feeble aim at gaining your compassion. I got nothing but silly rebukes and after a point, even the jokes were not funny. My quarrel isn’t with your business, or your career. It isn’t with the fact that I do not understand and no longer respect the degree to which you prioritise what you prioritise. I adore passion, in all its forms; it was part of the magnetism that led me to you in the first place. This is no longer true. I cannot force you to feel things, and I cannot instruct you on the appropriate behaviour for a lover. I can beseech you to miss me, plead with you to think of me in your spare time. I’m not more narcissistic than any average individual, or so I like to believe, but I’d like to know that I am worth spending a few moments wasting thoughts over. I have no qualms with your late hours or how they ship you around like they own you (Even soldiers going to war are given time to say goodbye). All I ever wanted was that with all the holes in your life, I could fill up a tiny one. Knowing that you needed me would have been enough for me to stay nestled in that corner of your chest forever. I would have shut out everybody who told me to leave you, I would have said, no, I am needed and that is enough. But you do not need me, or my attentions. You need someone pretty and slender, who will warm your bed once every six months, who will carry own with their own life in spite of yours and never have you know what’s behind their eyes.

You hardly remember the expressions of my face, let alone the depth of my soul. If I waited long enough, you would even forget my last name. Yet you would claim that you cared, yet you would insist that you miss me. What is that you miss? Surely not my body, you never liked it. Then is it my personality? But you hardly knew that I played the Piano until last month, when I deliberately played it while on the phone with the pathetic hope that you might enquire about it. Maybe it’s my youthful innocence, the way you get to chide me, patronize me and get away with it every single time. My innocence will fade, perhaps it has already faded with the writing of this letter. It must be my smile then. You have often remarked that you miss that silly grin on my face. It has to be my smile. What of it though? I cannot smile simply and forever for your sake. I cannot simply be happy and pose for you. There is a person behind this expression; there is a person who you failed to notice this whole time.

You can’t buy my smile with 3 words, and an emoticon. You can longer elicit it from sharing tidbits and pictures of your material world. They don’t wow me anymore, they don’t make me gaze in wonder and suddenly want to be by your side.

I realise that this is unfortunate timing. Your grandmother just passed; you say you were quite close. When you talk about her, I feel for a fleeting second that I speak to a real person. Then you shrug and say, that’s life, we’ve got to move on, don’t we? And you disappear again behind a screen of practical decisions. I lose you again and again. And then I think that maybe I never had you. We discussed this once, on some sunny afternoon. You told me you’d only ever loved someone truly and deeply once, you doubted you’d ever love again. It would take you time. You always say you need time, that you aren’t able to express your emotions, that you aren’t too vocal about your feelings. It was your stoic nature that drew me you, I admit; your strength to persevere any storm. But you lay next to me, naked, and told me that you could not love. Yet you had loved. That pointed to some deficiency in me, did it not? Maybe it did not, maybe it is really a problem for you. What hurt is that you never tried, you said you did, but you didn’t.

I waited six weekends to see if you would call without me asking you to. You failed me each time. I don’t want you to call so I can be doted over. I wanted us to know each other as two souls that want to come together. You won’t let me however, and you refuse to try. Eventually, your replies didn’t bother me too much, and I stopped being mad. Eventually, the sound of your voice didn’t drag me to full attention, your words no longer held significance. Eventually I stopped hovering at your door, and listening for my name to come up in your conversations.   

I once jokingly told you, though you thought I was being serious, that I was in love with someone else. You replied intermittently to those string of messages, clearly it was not of urgency to you to know the answers. When you did ask for them, you simply asked for a solution. I did not take the charade further, as the response baffled me beyond all comprehension. I wished to turn around and ask of you what solution you saw fit to my attentions being fixated elsewhere.  Whether you wished for some kind of explanation, or simply wish me good luck for the future and part ways.

You know that I have withdrawn, and yet you do nothing of it. You do not fight me and you do not demand that I speak to you as I did before. It only confirms my suspicions that you do not want me, but are too scared to admit it, lest you tarnish your good nature. Even as you read this letter, you’ll sigh and you’ll agree. You’ll shrug and say that you respect my decision but that you really do care. Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. What matters is that I can no longer spoon feed you love and myself misery with the same hands.  You force me to make you mean less and less every day, maybe it is not your fault, it is simply your way.

Do not ask me what I want from you,

It’s not something you could purposely do.

I used to want to make you mine,

But now I have better things in mind.

It's Art, It's Art, It's Art.

It's art, it's art, it's art.
And it'll split the artist apart.
Daddy doesn't love you to his own despair,
Can't mend your heart with your mind repaired.

It's all, it's all, it's fall.
Madness in my shawl.
For the good of the soul, extricate me now.
Let the earth strike open, replicate somehow.

Mirrors, mirrors, shards.
Kings of Queens of Cards.
Double vision, the cerebellum is torn.
From the fire of passion, the devil is borne.

Tear, tear, and bear.
My body is now but air.
My skin is the latex of a bursting balloon.
They took away the pain far too soon.

They'll call, they'll call, they'll call.
Write books and poetisize my fall.
Sign sonnets, and put their heads into fire.
Drive nail into skin for lack of own desires.

For peace, for piece, for piece.
Wreck the curtains in my grief.
Gnawing at my insides like a carcass within,
I'm part of the problem, I'm part of my sin.

Daddy, daddy, please leave.
If you don't, then who will grieve?
I'm faithless on a hillock, burning stalk after stalk.
Letting ashes fill the silence, talk after empty talk.

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring. Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors. I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them-- Thoughts gone dim. It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

-Sylvia Plath

If You're Not Pretty, You're Nothing, Darling.

If the starlight doesn’t dazzle your suitors,

You’ve got no suitors left to dazzle.

If the sun doesn’t shine on your slender face,

They’ll be no sunshine in your brown eyes.

If you don’t carry the grace of those before you,

Then you needn’t worry about these attentions,

If burden is too heavy, lay it down here on the floor,

If your spirit is dying of inattention, nobody cares.

Men won’t sympathise with ugly women,

You need aesthetics to deliver the human connection.

Women feel naught but pity for an ugly man,

Humorous, but far-reaching ; a joke upon himself.

You needn’t be pretty, then you needn’t be lustful,

You needn’t carry nor hopes nor dreams,

Those are meant for the camera friendly faces,

This is the only way to ignore an entire population.

It is not that it is bitter, to be treated as misfitting,

It is only a matter of preference, of subconscious choice.

How biology has made us to prefer that which we need,

However manipulated that thought; synthetic evolution.

Don’t be absurd, the case isn’t that you’re devoid of skill,

It’s just that someone else can execute it with more appeal,

Why bother with the unpleasant notion of unpleasantry,

When you can cool your eyes with beauty so innate?

If you’re not pretty, you’re nothing darling.

You’re but coal in the dirt, among diamonds & dust.

And burn as you might, bright as you could,

The diamond will only shine brighter by your light.

The Pretense of Being Who You Ought to Be.

The distance between my mind and these rhymes,
Is the distance between my eyes and my sight.
Is fades with the fading of my  dimming vision,
It burns with all the majesty of free thought.

Oceans and continents, don't plague in miles,
They plague me in latent the souls they inhabit,
They house the nations of worthy, unworthy and naught;
They carry a verisimilitude of the human kaleidoscope.

How do I live up to the standards of fantasy,
How do I be beautiful, in the way that I ought?
How do I begin to throw my passion to hearth,
And burn in the flames I need to keep me warm?

An embarrassed shuffle not be accused of pretension,
To enthrall the peers, and impress the majestic,
To prove to some diffident stranger of perseverance,
That ought not to be on the pallet of the canvas of life.

Reality does not evade me, nor I flee from it,
I only seek refuge like insomniacs seek sleep.
So keen on finding that shade that is salvation,
That the water in my body has run to drought.

To hold up to the light a shiny fragment of your soul,
To hold up to the world yourself, as transparent as glass.