City of Joy

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city of joy

Longing is the absent chatting with the absent. the distant turning toward the distant. longing allows distance to recede, as if looking forward, although it may be called hope. longing is the sound of the wind. I have been to Kolkata couple times; for works, for exhibitions, for pleasures, for medical treatments and mostly hiding myself from our magical necropolis.

This year, I went to Kolkata again for work and treatment purposes. I was overwhelmed by the sheer stress of dealing with clients, doctors, nurses and so on...I didn’t know what was wrong so each night I prayed to God, but God just gave me tomorrow. Eventually, I stopped praying because I realized that God and I did not speak the same language.

I'm bored of being a person.

Not just exhausted from being the person I was, yet weary of being anything at all. I enjoy watching people but dislike talking to, dealing with, satisfying, or insulting them. I'm tired.

I have the blood of a nomad. I have that and always will. I see, in the middle of savage things (that you like), the gentleness of your heart, that is so full of pain and light. The journey must go on.

I am devoured with restlessness and fever. I cannot be quiet.

I am wildly dreaming of escape, voyages, love, wildly craving love.

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

When I saw you for the last time at the cafe, time stood still, and the stinging rain turned into a gentle drizzle as if waiting for us to accept that this was how we'd feel for the rest of our lives. There were words we had both been chewing on to spit at each other for so long but none of us had the courage to do so, so the two of us had to swallow them processing the extent we had gone to intentionally hurt the other. As we said our goodbyes, there was nothing to do but smile because we both knew if we ever did come across each other again in years to come, both would pretend to not recognize the other out of spite and that would be our final act of love.

You lie asleep beside me,
one hand on the pillow and cupped
at your mouth, as if to tell a secret.

As if you might say in your sleep
what you could never find
words for awake.

We are together but also very separate. Our love is poetry. Open poems, our bodies.

If you fall in love you leave and do not return.

Or you arrive and you look at everything as a foreigner.

These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.

This dream isn't feeling sweet, we're reeling through the midnight streets and

I've never felt more alone. It feels so scary...

I felt very sad. I felt like there should be two of us standing here.

Words don’t speak to me these days
I strain to hear what they may say
Close up all the windows right
Shut the curtains, dim the lights
Quiet, quieting my mind
Beneath the darkest blue sky
Enveloped in a fiery tempest
Forgetting all the things I've wished
Waiting, waiting, waiting still
Tell me whatever you will
But no one ever says a thing
Words don’t speak until they sing.

Thank you for teaching me lessons. one shouldn't have to earn, beg for, or perform for love. I want to be loved as a choice and on purpose. Not as a reward. and when your fairy tale is through, and you’re looking for someone new, you can always find me where the skies are blue.

I said, 'I want you.'

Her expression changed. It deepened with decision. Her mouth slipped into a slight smile that looked almost self-mocking.

'Do you?'

'Yes.'

'Ash, I can’t be good to you.'

'Then be bad.'

Poetry survives because it haunts and it haunts because it is simultaneously utterly clear and deeply mysterious, because it cannot be entirely accounted for, it cannot be exhausted.

Safety-first love, like everything governed by the norm of safety, implies the absence of risks for people who have a good insurance policy, a good army, a good police force, a good psychological take on personal hedonism, and all risks for those on the opposite side. You must have noticed how we are always being told that things are being dealt with 'for your comfort and safety', from potholes in pavements to police patrols in the metro. Love confronts two enemies, essentially: safety guaranteed by an insurance policy and the comfort zone limited by regulated pleasures.

We are hungry for tenderness in a world where everything abounds.

Sometimes it's not about meeting the love of your life. It's about meeting someone who teaches you how to love. So that you can be truly loved by someone too.

I hope there are days when your coffee tastes like magic, your playlist makes you dance, strangers make you smile, and the night sky touches your soul. I hope you will trust in love again.