For The Dead

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the leftover
energy, water rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting there long after midnight.

– Adrienne Rich

Neurotics

People who know nothing about nature are of course neurotic, for they are not adapted to reality. They are too naive, like children, and it is necessary to tell them the facts of life, so to speak to make it plain to diem that they are human beings like all others. Not that such enlightenment will cure neurotics; they can only regain their health when they climb up out of the mud of the commonplace. But they are only too fond of lingering in what they have earlier repressed. How are they ever to emerge if analysis does not make them aware of something different and better, when even theory holds them fast in it and offers them nothing more than the rational or “reasonable” injunction to abandon such childishness? That is precisely what they cannot do, and how should they be able to if they do not discover something to stand on? One form of life cannot simply be abandoned unless it is exchanged for another. As for a totally rational approach to life, that is, as experience shows, impossible, especially when a person is by nature as unreasonable as a neurotic.

– Carl Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections)

A Description of Finnegans Wake

Salvatore spoke all languages, and no language. Or, rather, he had invented for himself a language which used the sinews of the languages to which he had been exposed—and once I thought that his was, not the Adamic language that a happy mankind had spoken, all united by a single tongue from the origin of the world to the Tower of Babel, or one of the languages that arose after the dire event of their division, but precisely the Babelish language of the first day after the divine chastisement, the language of primeval confusion. Nor, for that matter, could I call Salvatore’s speech a language, because in every human language there are rules and every term signifies ad placitum a thing, according to a law that does not change, for man cannot call the dog once dog and once cat, or utter sounds to which a consensus of people has not assigned a definite meaning, as would happen if someone said the word “blitiri” And yet, one way or another, I did understand what Salvatore meant, and so did the others. Proof that he spoke not one, but all languages, none correctly, taking words sometimes from one and sometimes from another. I also noticed afterward that he might refer to something first in Latin and later in Provençal, and I realized that he was not so much inventing his own sentences as using the disiecta membra of other sentences, heard some time in the past, according to the present situation and the things he wanted to say, as if he could speak of a food, for instance, only with the words of the people among whom he had eaten that food, and express his joy only with sentences that he had heard uttered by joyful people the day when he had similarly experienced joy.

-From The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

From “The Sea and the Mirror”

The nightingales are sobbing in
The orchards of our mothers,
And hearts that we broke long ago
Have long been breaking others;
Tears are round, the sea is deep:
Roll them overboard and sleep.

– W.H. Auden

The way to Glaxo Mall

you’re losing your grip on reality, smith!
turn around, look at me, tell me what you see, smith,
no, that’s not the way to glaxo mall, smith,
what are you saying, that’s the toilet, no!
there are no pretty girls there, smith,
remember, that’s how you find your way, smith,
turn back, come here, sit with me, smith,
yes, i’ll take you there tomorrow, smith,
tonight, it’s too late, smith, don’t you know the time, it is,
two in the morning, smith, we better go to sleep soon,
come here, let me change your clothes, you cannot go to sleep like this,
what’s the matter with you smith, you are in a strange mood tonight,
what happened? did you talk to that girl again?
i told you she’s not good for you, smith, come here,
please don’t cry, smith, it’s alright, we’ll go to glaxo mall tomorrow,
and you know how to find the way, don’t you? it’s full of beautiful girls, smith,
nothing like the toilet you are looking at, smith,
there are no pretty girls there.

-Kunal Goel

Family Problems

Mrs Galahad you don’t understand, you
cannot step inside this line,
there’s a raging fire inside, your husband
is saving young ladies from death.

-Kunal Goel

the green grapes plucked no walls for me

furious midnight uproar last night
flat 51 got blamed once more
their third warning and free beer
from friends

3 parakeets died in the commercial dryers
when nobody was washing their clothes
on sunday when it’s too crowded
to wash

and beer was drunk in glass bottles inspite
of warnings of expulsion
and wine in boxes to drink
disgusting

got locked out of my room and paid
no fees because the guard is my friend
and everyone elses otherwise
50 dollars would suck
and rain

– Kunal Goel

I have been faithful to thee

“Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae”

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

- By Ernest Dowson

Reasons

“I’d gladly take her back, sins and all, because she is my flesh and blood. It’s for Quentin’s sake…And yours,” she says. “I know how you feel toward her.”

“Let her come back,” I says, “far as I’m concerned.”

“No,” she says. “I owe that to your father’s memory.”

“When he was trying all the time to persuade you to let her come home when Herbert threw her out?” I says.

“You don’t understand,” she says. “I know you don’t intend to make it more difficult for me. But it’s my place to suffer for my children,” she says. “I can bear it.”

“Seems to me you go to a lot of unnecessary trouble doing it.”

By William Faulkner, From The Sound And The Fury

Make The Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

by George W. Bush

Drunk As Drunk

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it – our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky’s hot rim,
The day’s last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

- Pablo Neruda

Wish Everyone a very Happy New Year!

Spinning Tales

weaving dreams,
conjuring tales,
sprinkling magic,
and enchanting lives–
it’s all in a day’s work
of a magician,
or just a story-teller.

-Sarah Cheema

Because your voice was at my side

Because your voice was at my side
I gave him pain,
Because within my hand I held
Your hand again.

There is no word nor any sign
Can make amend –
He is a stranger to me now
Who was my friend.

-James Joyce

Haiku

First: Five syllables.
Second: Seven syllables.
Third: Five syllables.

– Ron Padgett

Aaj jo raat ka nasha hai

aaj jo raat ka nasha hai
woh kuch khaas hai
aahein bicha ke baithe hai hum
ke unke aane ki aas hai

lamha lamha beete hai taras kar
unke intezaar mein
agle deedar ke liye dhadke hai dil
sab kuch khaas hai mere yaar mein

jhalak dekhne ko uski
saikdo ka dil tarse hai
chuu lene ko uske husn ki khwaish se
baarish ki har boond barse hai

na jaane kya nasha hai uski nigaho mein
jo bin piye meri rooh tak behek jaati hai
aana uska jashn se kya kam hai
jo chuu le use, hawa tak mehak jaati hai

sau dafa hue hain khafa
sau dafa hue hain juda
dor aise hai ki khinche chale aate hain
rishta hai anmol, ke hairan hai khud khuda.

hai jo ummeed un se,
na jaane woh kab poori hogi,
beet gayi jo bina unke deedar ke,
toh kambakth poonam ki raat bhi adhoori hogi.

batlati hai yeh fizayein humse,
ki us husn pari ka ik alag hi jahaan hai
lekin jaane kya yeh nadaan hawaein,
ki is shama ka iklauta parwana yahan hai

-D’puk.