Terminal Moraine

metaphorical death

2008-08-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

Late summer and fall lie ahead, but will they be full of ghosts? That is the trouble with long summer evenings and the sparkling monsoon days, they are haunted. The question is, if worst comes to worst, what is the prospects of a new life in a new dead world, with this that or whoever. I struggle constantly with a rebellious spirit, my mind in a continuous state of disarray and brooding resentment, contemplating nothingness. Not for the pleasure of being alive and desiring, for life is all too often no pleasure whatsoever, but it makes you leap and rejoice for having had the opportunity once a while for existing at all.

It has finally come to only this, a tiny bubble of consciousness surrounded by thousands of sheets of virtual paper – these dozens of folders filled with disordered scribbling. The words come without warning and they chill my blood. Disheveled heaps of words, an incoherent jumble and snarl of truths, lies, memories, fantasies, adding up to nothing. They are said to me in my own voice, the sentences dripping into my ear like slow poison. To silence them I rouse myself into a fury, a literal blood-letting, making my whole body a visible and tangible shout. For as long as my shout reverberates in the air I do not hear them and I keep scribbling something. I take turns, exalted, depressed, terrified, lustful. A regular night of witches, devils, thorns in the flesh followed by contrition and clear sight. Followed, of course, by the old friend, morning terror. I can’t write.

And all at once, the terror has a habitation and name – I am having "mood swings" .. right that’s what they are .. Suddenly the morning sunlight becomes just what it is, the fresh lovely light of the morning. The terror is gone. Another week and lying in my bed, I become prescient and clairvoyant, orbiting the earth like an angel and inducing instant angelic hypotheses. I saved myself by naming this terror, knowing the worst of me, then naming it with ordinary names, English common nouns, smiling and moving on.

In times of ordeal one’s prayers become simple. I had prayed that I faint in a private place where no one would disturb me. I had closed my eyes and then there was a pleasant sense of being attended, strong hands laid on, of another’s clothes rustling nearby, albeit virtually. I wonder; did it break my heart when this latest illusion died? Yes. I constantly expected this death and yet did not anticipate it. There was even the knowledge and foreknowledge of it while it still lived, life still had its same peculiar tentativeness, living by the usual fits and starts, aiming and missing, while present time went humming and the foreknowledge that once the imminent collapse is accomplished, remorse would settle in and give past time its bitter specious wholeness. If only I hadn’t been defeated by humdrum humming present time and missed everything. I knew and still that time went humming. Then everything was over and here came the sweet remorse, like a blade between ribs.

I do not understand the principles of attack and siege, strategic retreat, counter-attack, and ambush. The sloping shadows, hibiscus blooms that had quailed and folded, it is all exactly as I had remembered and continues to exist. The delirium is over, I am still not in control of myself, marveling at and regretting the now dead excitement. There is also a compensation, a secret satisfaction to be taken in this death, a delectation of tragedy, a license for drink, few words for a new verse, a taste of everything for the taste’s sake.

What has been broken torn stained chipped smashed bent cracked pilfered what has to be repaired replaced repainted thrown out entirely; a total loss. I love nothing in the world so much as the sight of a perfect unsmudged carbon copy hence everything is repeated over and over again. Life seems larger at night, swollen with dark shadows and strange creeks that terrify me yet I can not help exploring it, wondering if there is anyone else like me, awake and catching glimpses of the unknown. Every morning there is this temptation to see signs of the end and that, even knowing this, there is nevertheless some reason, with the spirit of the new day being the spirit of watching and waiting, to believe that … what?

***
pS : to be continued.
for I am, presently bored of my poetrics.

floundering

2008-08-11T03:25:00.000-07:00

the night that followed
your arrival
I’d gone deeper
in embrace of death,
I was dying, or dead
with nothing left of me,
except a shadow cast
on the near wall

those words tumbling
like a death rattle, a last
prolonged exhalation
your visit sounded
a final knell, driving me
into purgatory, which
I neither had the courage
nor wisdom
to descry on my own

there is no forward
or back,
an ascent to heaven
or descent to hell
until I lose myself
and my thoughts
in vinaceous smell
stumbling backwards
in the flow of time.....

obscure longings...

2008-08-07T21:26:00.000-07:00

This is 51st post on Terminal Moraine.
I’ve been ‘blogging’ for over three years and this is the first time I completed 50 posts in one place! I had abandoned ‘my tryst with sins’ after 48 posts, which means that finally after three years of wallowing, I’m about to complete a fragmented century!! The quantity isn’t worth reveling and certainly not earth-shattering still .. its an event of sorts…
On that note, it’s kind of deplorable that most of my ‘old blogging pals’ got dispersed. Some are hitched or have lost interest or both. I do wish they come back .. but then as they say .. if wishes were blah …

I wanted to scribble something, a kind of dedication for my muse(s) .. who wangled me into being a poet(!) .. haah .. if at all I am one..
Perhaps it could have been better. I lost interest midway ergo I am posting it the way it is ..
This isn’t a poem . .just few lines for those beguiling stimulants.. who only complain ..
and so here is my quetch..

***

Comes again the longing -
all bacchanalian paraphernalia
plentiful, untouched, disorderly
the desire that has no name
it has to do with being
both seventeen and seventy

With winter sun striking down the backyard
or is it dusk in our garden, you beside me
in my arms a child to whom we would later,
by the crib, recite our poetry ..

Desire has a smell of
cantaloupes and honeydews
an attachment so rooted
it could not help branching
into affection both infernal and holy

****

Seduce, the resonance of this word
transpired on me
neither from pulp magazines or pornography
it befell through agonized readings
of your celestial poetry
it is facile to be intimate
hiding behind these words pounding
securing all our pores
the sun heating and drugging
our senses to cover monstrosity

in the shade and darkness
cool and clothed in our grounds
how do I voice a word
to lift that underside of love..
would you resolve in "three words"
this dilemma of insuperable integrity ?

commencement

2008-08-04T03:04:00.000-07:00

the wind that parted clouds
has opened the sky
melting in the sunlight
at this moment, all is change
transformation seems permanent

a promise of bridging dead chasm
between body and mind
then sundering the soul
eternal gain and irretrievable loss
to be parceled out equally

with simultaneous depression
and exaltation, languidly
for a moment or two
I've lost my ability to imagine
you reading these words

poetry therefore has briefly
come undone or has regressed
to a moan, and you turn into
half-forgotten incantatory chant
invoked to ward off my loneliness

Trance

2008-07-31T12:58:00.000-07:00

I share with you
prosaic summer evenings
cicadas in sycamores
a nostalgia for
the life never led
you, simply by the virtue of
continuing presence, enthrall me
as would any phantasm of life
enrapture a woman slumped
irrevocably into sleep

this may be purgatory
I take it as a long coveted
entirely unexpected reverie
the dream of a dream come true
and at the end of
this dream awaits
not an awakening, but …
an abysmal dream
or an elongated -
Silence, perhaps.

An Aimless Walk

2008-07-29T01:22:00.000-07:00

I'd sauntered these puddle-smeared pavements many times
Imprinting trails of treadmark, had long ceased to see them
Here is both cover and footing where I expect muck
My knees make musical rubs in the cool shearing dirt
Purple dust drifts and a sour raindrop splashes on my nose
The piles of brickbats scattered in the weeds are warm.
Overhead clouds wheel, uttering their musical burrs and rattle
Sunlight shatters like quicksilver against their orotund form
I could be broken, sundered, busted down the middle
Self-ripped from self, a woman pasted back together
Silence presses in and up, empty space on either side
Giving an echoing weighless feeling as if I lack ballast
A mystical element, which might any moment float upward
From the vaporous depths come floating great words,
Muffled sounds, wrapped in cotton, "I would save you
My embrace would settle this tangled contradictory mess
All you need is time and desire, a new day is dawning,"
Hush, for you have an infinite capacity to repeat dull truths
And old lies with all the insistence of self-discovery,
It isn’t the dawn that interests me; but the night…

snippings

2008-07-26T03:39:00.000-07:00

11 AM:

I’ve had my coffee plus bread plus vodka,
my pulse racing along at a merry clip, alert and shaky
despite all, love kindles, there were worse lives after all
it’s always possible, even in the ashes of our long-over lives
something stirs, a phoenix, bad as it is, lets get fried

I look at him, a preposterous fake house on a fake hill
dredged up from the swamp, the very preposterousness of life,
his callused fingers whispering in my palm, inflames love
we love each other for one night , singing songs
watching wheeling constellations, a perfect encounter,
not to be repeated, like the best last line of beloved hymn,
a graceful arc from the bright, or certain death
in the dark impenetrable mystery of forest.

11 PM :

My descent into sleep is contaminated
controlled by your words, my dreams shaped by them
the waking mind sculpted by artistry of your verses
in their convoluted metaphors and sublime parapets
moves love now, all day and night, tracking down its prey
suddenly leaping upon it with a brutal fury
rolling over, in soft rust-colored pine needles
burying its hungry mouth in the warm body

it requires no purpose or objective in this world
to be justified or desired, where we’ve fallen
amid groggy sated and confused, whispering lullaby words
let the soil below stink, turning into a scarlet muck
let us crawl through it until our mouths and nostrils replete
and we drown in it with our hands on each other’s throats
I no longer resist this love. I relish it.

ingeminating

2008-07-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

earmarked for death in this grotesque pandemonium
inept at descrying my way back to the surface
only light which exists here, is that of memory flaring up,
illuminating rough pictures and writings overhead
which you'd painted once, to invoke and placate me

I abide, gazing in wonder
turning first into warmth and recognition
then growing violent or somber, I stumble
scrambling my way along another shaft in this warren
until I see in its glow a mingling of shadow and light
it moves and dances

a miasma, gray and noxious
spreading into every corner of my consciousness
you are wordless, unnamed
when depleted, return
I would step out of these shadows
where in silence I labor my days away
and stand revealed

on sacrificial altar of memories, we’d lay together
fading as if we’d melt with the mist of the forgotten
reviving again with an intensity
my life like these words carry no meaning
whether I live or die, I’d remain
the emblem of your sins……

eyes...

2008-07-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Everything about me is a bit of lie
except these eyes, wherein past
and future blur, the knowledge of
an impending crisis remains
they have paid for vanity and ignorance
for contractions, those stinging looks
tender tears, spiritual aspirations
and the lewd desires

narrating their fidelity and misfortunes
would require deeper dredgings,
a darker sense of irony
or perhaps it requires neither gravity
nor complexity, but another person,
who would see in them
a simple four lettered comedy
which is all, it might have been.

******

spying out of fear and intimidation
a howling lunacy, or human perversity
passion spills in the miniature streams of
ever changing channels, inches deep,
rippled and plaited on gray images
refusing to answer any more of your questions
associations, past, present or life to come
they would not apologize or verify
penetrate their obfuscating rhetoric, they don’t rip
all they carry now is a stone look, and yet
they are two virulent strains of a virus
to which only a few men are immune….

kitsch II

2008-07-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

Debris of life
littered with memory
shadows retreating,
deathly calm
blue and green from
depraved thoughts
sinking in darkness,
keeping memoirs of
sunrise close

this is usually
how I write,
out of sudden
wonder or panic
or a fucking
aspect of past,
the world lost forever
and my life
ending sordidly

dedicating myself
into destroying
what’d destroyed me
while making love to
ravenous darkness
is remedial coitus,
a camouflaged
narcissism or
psychological
aberration

I haven’t
had enough,
the medicine
exacerbates,
this writing stinks
just jargon
and craps
the prospect of
an orgasm
remote.

conjuration

2008-07-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

I play with the images
you’d set floating in my mind,
every little illusion casting
an identical shadow as we race,
surrendering to the delirium
of which I’d remain in control
knowing it’d be over soon,
that the world would become
frozen again.

I don’t even know what to say
at such moments,
however, you know,
"I love you," you say.
If something has to be said,
what makes more sense?
we tell each other
we are lovers, in love
even while my conviction
that we are on divergent paths
is revived from one conversation
to the next.

I wonder at the letters
I begin to write,
left unfinished
phone calls I break off
dialing before the last digit,
if this isn’t me on the brink
after a brief intermission
as though nothing has changed
and if I am not back
where I’d began?

"take this yearning seriously
you want me," you say
and I rush to see you
in solitude I ask myself
if love is really in question
if it isn’t vulnerability
and embitterness
the neediness to which,
I am attracted?

Apathy

2008-06-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

The yellowing sheets are spattered
crisscrossed with fragmentary outlines
stirring around dispiriting accumulation of
disconnected beginnings middles and endings
as regular tortures seem on vacation
when I drove myself insane
tormenting an intractable self into confession
by and large the usual estranged stuff
cleaning up the mess
making sure that love was stale
and there was nothing nourishing in memories
exonerated from this bruising combat
without a score to settle
without reparations due
without hatred boiling in my heart
is there a way of existing
that will make all this nothingness
truly nothing?

Counterfeit

2008-06-24T07:15:00.000-07:00

Pain, its imitation, seems to be in nature of crown
a spire, a halo, here not simply to grace or embellish
but to express, to symbolize, only a measure of
how narrow and cloistered my life has become
a hackneyed conception of self and yet enthralling,
with whom I can share the failure of the moment
and in whose rejection, I annihilate my own…

de novo

2008-06-19T01:07:00.000-07:00

Images begin to contract and then blur, at the sight of
trivial remains that had marked the passage of seasons
torrential washed concrete walls are immaculate, gleaming
as much with malice as with remembrance, some nails
were driven through them, no picture had been hung
in the empty backrooms few scratches, black scuff marks
allude to games, too bare to be faced, that is all.

In the darkness striped with light that comes through gaps,
amidst the smell of stale smoke, dirt, and fragrance of soil
I feel repelled at certain somber reverberations
yes again, the scuttlings and squeaks of rain
a contemptuous-sound-tinged coquettish invitation
mingled with individual noises of horns, vehicles,
children’s cries, multiplying to a steady rhythmic throb,
soft beats, vintage, a creation of sun and heat, once
we were audience to its drama and ode-singing chorus .

Inside the room as the evening grows teary
no abyss opens beneath me at the sight of emptiness,
the rain outside rises in its raucous crescendo, unobstructed,
falling with unexpected passages of emphasis, altering pace
and without being wracked too much by memories of
the handsome rugs, tables, dishes and chairs
once jointly owned by you and me, now yours alone
I furnish a new place of my own.

alter ego

2008-06-15T03:59:00.000-07:00

We might have separated as easily
as we’d come together,
that relationship never going beyond
leaving faint impressions, and me
content to be
just another of her failures, catching glimpses of her
in other people, picking echoes and fragrance of
an aborted familiarity
the months go by,
we remain together, wondering if
a lover would somehow resolve this deadlock,
or another vocation,
psychotherapy for both of us.

whatsoever little spirit smolders on
in me is visible, only on her
it provides for us
to assault head-on
what we take to be
our demons,
I can never leave her, nor she me,
not that is until
an outright disaster makes it simply ludicrous
to go on waiting
for the miraculous conversion of
the other.

when I throw open
‘em benighted windows,
stand in the breeze
preferring to breathe
fumes from within, I know
I can outsmart her
with the aid of logic, analogy
and assorted techniques of
condescension.

I had lit her once
held her tightly within lips
and with a flick of finger
I’d thrown her out
she wavered awhile
then smoked fiercely, combusting into
an ashy cylinder
scoured by the wind
I believed all these reversals, recoveries,
all this movement of hers,
to be the evidence of a game,
a petite specter
audacious and determined
I liked that idea -
she burnt herself out
I haven’t really,
not quite yet.

pS : this is the first time, I’ve scribbled something without a single drag of her , not that I’m trying to quit or something, just that its been raining and I’m too lazy to go out …
I know she kills slowly but then as they say, who’s in hurry?

putrefaction

2008-06-06T04:01:00.000-07:00

This vertiginous mood, transcendent heat, a life reaching its climax and visions of decay heaped on decay. The placidity with which I’d waited on events fading away in the daylight. I lay mummified on bed for hours at a stretch. Parts of me are built to be awake and yearning to be both absolutely still and moving everywhere at once. The most ordinary sound outside seems oppressive as a bayonet rending my head. Even a beam of sunlight filtering through drawn curtains, intolerable.

I neither act nor withdraw, I simply wait. I do wait. There is the twist. As the tart taste of past prickles my mouth, I am beginning to recover just a little bit of optimism. Perhaps the experiment which never ended, is only beginning, it exceeds my understanding. My self-dramatizing mind had waited for more excruciation but something is different which forces me to recall those other startling and baffling metamorphoses I had witnessed. In another transition, I must have changed already in ways I dont yet know but I have with me my solitude. In the silence I can hear myself think. I’m making an effort to see and hear beyond the quicksilver talk of my mind. It is the surface, which leads to depth, lurching into blackness and vulgarity.

In this feeble yet euphoric state I’d envisioned only general scenes blended from million repetitions. The accusations, the stuttered insults, the invisible blows of abuse and torment that rose up to my tingling, jangling ear. The shrieking fight over the mildew somewhere, which was grey blue and deathly. Certain dreams, where people hadn’t named names, they had merely shown up with bruises, and informed that they were sorry, slouched and grimaced in such a way as to exude, I hoped, regret.

That is gone. What has taken over is daydreams, suddenly copious, reentering the life I had lost, not that long ago. And the the knowledge that it’s too late and so the distress, settled, bearable, sans pain. I remember me as a palate of conflicting colors, crimson in love with splotches of green, ultramarine in spirit or permanently mauve, with dark toppings and hazy strokes. I wasn’t seasoned; few more colors had to arrive, grays and purples. I was a mess. I know I am exacerbated, reduced to precisely what I’d been leery of at the outset. Now I am something faded but perfectly acceptable. I see no color outside, only glitter and I have long since reasoned, I would likely prefer authentic enthusiastic meanness.

I remain an amateur at life, smelling like a walking cigarette, flushed, perhaps alcohol induced, relying on my skills of misdirection, awaiting symptoms of infatuation, which sends me into paroxysm of exhilaration. Then I would throw my head in musical bliss, pounding fresh melodies. Presently everything around me is in its natural order; a life basking in artificially created atmosphere, undisturbed by the sunlight on panes, the same dusty lamp glowing on the table. I do write, it has no conclusion but just dribbles off in much the same way it begins. My imagination keeps on getting noisier and noisier as I get quieter and quieter.

germinating..

2008-05-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

feculent atmosphere -
writer concocts a plot
musician devises
thunder-haunted backdrop
painter envisions a mural
together they etch
deep dark pools
profound as sleep
night or death.

when splatter falls short
amidst eloquent labyrinths,
quails to taper off,
as if through sieve
straight and thin..
in cessation
dribbles vomit out
pelting the asphalt.

in this silvery twilight
a golden eye enkindles
a cosmic embryo
in process of formation
brimming and suspended
a child’s face -
barest impression of
the face and soul..

pS :- I don't generally do this.. but I was looking at this picture and few lines resulted ..

monomaniacal

2008-05-05T01:43:00.000-07:00

"Nostalgia, subjectivism, inwardness is in self-indulgent doghouse. You dare ask me since when? I want to sleep. And get that bloody light out of my eyes."

"I am catapulted through this static wall into a clustered vastness, the notional void of mind, the bright grid of life placing around, like an infinite cage. It isn’t an atmosphere in which an octogenarian (well mentally) feels sexy.. but I try"

"You don’t waste time of a dying soul with disclosures, confessions, repudiations…"

"You and I are creatures of subterranean dark, the mist and the cold. We are time-travelers and suddenly the past is alive, the dead start walking.. cracked walls gleam. Those unlived lives are just a keyboard away and we’re off to another search. You pluck a tread and it leads to.. everywhere...."

"Exulting in existing ..? still fairly fascinated by the drama of your own fucking self…?"

"Look, I too am partially obscured but I’ve arranged a little diversion. Nothing in the world is ever lost and everything is somehow connected. Plug it in, hit the key and thousands of others lost to us could pop up instantly."

"If you have worked in memory which is life itself there is no integration except in death."

petrified

2008-04-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

Today again I eavesdropped my pathetic life
I didn't think much about the way I failed you
about being such a mess,
instead just perched around, listening to my heartbeat
wondering if it might stop someday soon.

Now that it is all over, and
I rummage through yellowing memories,
fingers are always darting toward me, rolling noisily
I begin to count them
feeling dizzy and nauseated
I put them back for another day.

Brushing aside splinters, slivers, tears,
I watch the mindless machinery of
life orbiting in the day and night, and try
to envision myself performing
my trivial functions in it,
since you had gone away.

I am on track,
I never shattered in obvious way, or
exploded into pieces
I had come across traces of me here and there
I have a feeling that when
I finally reach the woman who dreamed
she might be dead.

jaded

2008-04-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

She recalled the tang in throat when her head bounced off. She was accustomed to familiar, secure. This moment appeared gluey, sluggish.

She tried capturing her face, retrieved chiseled lines that made her sad, so did her olive hands, ragged fingernails, crinkles on corners of eyes and news that life would go on and on.

'feel good' factor..

2008-04-23T02:40:00.000-07:00

Moments like these ... make blogging worthwhile.
I never knew my blog looks that pretty - the screenshot on her site definitely appears so. I have my doubts that I merit this generosity but it will keep me really happy for a long time ...

Thank you chewmouse - for this kind review of my humble blog on your beautiful page .. :)

Absolved

2008-04-19T02:43:00.000-07:00

The events I catalogued here are perhaps of
other people, I just hung around the fringes,
watching.

You could see the numbered pages leafing
inside my head, life is narrowing down.
I could predict.

It's a continual shoring up against one thing
or another, splintered parts, eroding and
crumbling away.

I’d come a long way from somewhere, untying
myriad caged wings, with me anything is possible,
even vitue.

--

There’s nothing else that I want tonight, except
a cold ivory touch in an ill-lit
corner, where

no game or ambush awaits me, as I sear
forgetting the sensations, flames against
pliant skin

tapping wet windy messages in numb eyes,
at once, brilliant and shadowy, drenched in
amplified smell.

off I'd go into the wild blue yonder, climbing
high into sky, down I’d dive, spouting a flame
from under.

then walk in the dark on dust and ashes, harking
for a name, my own, even here no identity shall
claim me.

Duality

2008-04-08T03:10:00.001-07:00

The party was nifty. Derelict humanity trampled his success, leaving him at twilight, in condition resembling prison riot. He felt torn between social discourses, grotesque impatience to ostracize.

"You planning litigation?"
He turned, readying a polite quip.
He was thinking absently, employment, freedom, hemlines and how she’d managed to find a lipstick that was hypnotic.

flimflam

2008-04-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

A cursory glance confirms; love couldn’t destory her. It's avuncular sort, the kind retired cricketers possess for bats. She resolves to dream of him, he is impishly defiantly absent.

She distrusts new feelings, like tickets to a circus. Amorphous shakes would tumble the detritus of a poet. She desires a ruse, are you her muse?

Rephrase

2008-03-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

Lets bury present in
malodorous muck -
that steaming bog of
vile licentiousness,
rest tongues in sheath
and use the pen -
to slash and parry.

Once we get started
these things are addictive -
we’ll sit in dark
everything out of focus
squatting in middle
playing with history.

All that vexes -
uneasy wheeling sky,
unsettling flecks of
three quarter moon
cresting the horizon -
resolving temporarily
as we turn scraps of
papers into stories.

My life that’d slid off
somewhere in the past
yours that’d kept
delaying its arrival -
in an empty space
they’d both converge
clinging transiently.

Aah the curse of
co-incidences –
surge the blood-lust
lure me again
on tricky streets,
point me out
and whittle me down
into kindling –

Then read and grieve.