It might be so

One joint down, when that old familiar disapproval mixed with tamed disgust kicks in at not being stoned yet, and you reach into your desk drawer for another from your store for the night, a sudden idea might just land on your head from the thousands of ideas floating about on the invisible brainwaves that surround us and tumble into a red-earth runway in your mind, maybe by a Mexican farmland or a hillside meadow and look about in wonder and comfort; the dogs barking outside might catch your attention then, like a drowning man to a straw, before you are already at your easel, and the paints are out, and your brush-strokes scratch an order-less beat to contrast your fan’s steady creaks as they mix with the dogs infrequent barks and form a symphony of sorts that sets in like a fog around you, though outside you as the idea keeps your attention entirely to itself. As the second joint ends, you might realize that familiar buzzing, like a storm approaching that approach the lonely innards of your brain, and you might reach for a third, light, and look at the canvas askance, maybe smile, and sit down with the lights out to look outside; the night outside too may just be a rainy one, and the sound of the rain on a neighboring wet tin roof might draw you from your desktop screen to the window to smell the wet air and squint at a sodden cat searching for a spot that the rain missed. You might forget all about what you were doing, pack the remaining joints, cigarettes, a lighter, a bottle of water and your iPod, and head up to your terrace to sit in the dry patch that your water tanks snatch from the pouring rain and sit snugly cross-legged against the wall. You might, or might not, but most probably will reach for a joint, plug your iPod earphones squeakily into your ears and light the carefully twisted end of this joint, Maryanne you’d named her, and gaze into the sky searching for the moon that sometimes lit up the billow of smoke that you so loved to blow into a night sky, meeting nothing but an expanse of fluorescent red clouds that painted the entire sky till where the suburban rooftops and the occasional swaying palm tree made up the round horizon.

It might just happen then, if you’re lucky and if you’re in love, that Leonard Cohen’s springing guitar enters your brain as if you’re ears didn’t exist and is joined by a voice that assumes immediate control of your brain as the words “like a bird on a wire” make parts of you marvel and parts of you sigh and parts of you fume that he stole those words from you before you were born; straying drops of rain boosted by the mystic wind splatter onto your forearm almost to soothe your pained soul with their wet coldness, keeping curiously accurate time to that guitar as they form little rivers down to your knees. It might equally so happen instead, if you’re just as lucky and some unknown god decides to embrace you, that an array of sounds which only could come as Manzarek’s creations lifts you like the cloud of smoke that rises from your mouth and the unknown god reveals himself as a lizard in Jim’s voice as you look to search for them around you on the treetops, and find them nowhere, those Riders; the sound of the rain batters on the surface of the lake, demanding entry into the underwater treasure-chests and turning the placid mirror into a frothy orgasm of sheer chaos, and the water on your forearms enter the song as if the song was meant to be never played without a storm around it. Your idea might peek then back into your enthralled mind to find a wonderland where it can grow and can play and can bloom and can stay, and might swirl the colors around into a dream that with the rain’s lullaby might kiss you and close your eyes and slacken you into a happy heap safe in that dry patch; the rain will lick you into a deeper sleep as the green mother nature in your blood fuels your mind and comforts your sleeping soul to make you smile in your slumber, and maybe drool.

But who knows? That floating little idea that landed in your head might find upon landing that it is in the New York airport, and walk out to find buildings that tower and shine with perfection, men who function in gear and happiness draining out of a curb-side gutter along with the blood of a dead dog run over in the morning traffic, and women in tights turn away feeling comforted that it was just another stray. I believe the thought might just flee from panic and desert you, leaving you looking half-confused at a spot on the wall, before you return to maybe your homework, or maybe the twitter dialog box, or maybe the sites that you still couldn’t openly declare to your parents of having visited.

Who knows? All I know is if indeed the idea left your brain, I’d be much happier to see those joints leave piggyback on the idea to be presented to the next home the idea finds.

The skeptic and the dreamer.

There was a boy who had loved.

He was the son of Neptune.

His eyes had seen and had moved

Many maidens’ good fortune.

His teacher gave him his love,

His mistress walked him home,

The creature that ruled above

His mind set his feet to roam.

He roamed and roamed till Eden,

And seeing Eve and Adam,

He taught him how to breathe in

Her lust and call her Madam.

Seeing that dear God came down.

He flicked his hair and pointed

A finger atop his crown

And bid him be arointed.

He took his bag, went along,

Turned back to them three standing,

Played his tune and sang a song,

And stepped down to the landing.

Now, ten years hence, he’s returned

To boil the world with his glare,

And this time his wheels are turned

By the glint in David’s stare.

Would he walk on? Would he try?

Would his marble eyes still cry?

Would he jump to touch the sky,

Or would he choose instead to die?

RhymePlay

I’m doin’ a seven-eight-six hullabaloo of a rhyme!

Let’s see if I can explain that. In each six-line unit, there is alternate rhyming, while each discrete three-unit follows the syllabic pattern of seven syllables, eight syllables, and six syllables. I have tried to keep it iambic, and I hope there is a name for the meter. Without further ado, here is it:

Stoned I sit, in blended bliss,

To rise to my sweet maiden sky

And offer her a kiss.

Worn and weary passers-by,

With eyes that wish to make a swish,

Pass quietly, as I sigh.

Lonely wit wants tenderness

And hearts need starts and ends again

While love do make its mess.

Tones of silver manly pain

Meanwhile does dress a board of chess,

Deep hidden, in the vein.

Keep me low for earthly woe,

And winds that scar the sky’s visage

To offer me a blow.

I pray to thy womb’s flotage:

It kept me going through the show,

Without a stumble large.

OKAY! Pre-script!: This was written literally along the lines of Dylan's Tambourine. So the likenesses are supposed to be there and strike out at the reader's mind. Please. And it shows how I would, someday, appeal to what I believe is a miracle of nature, that should be experienced only after a certain ripeness.



Hey Miss Marijuana, make a bong for me,
I’m not sleepy, but there’s a trip I want to go into
Hey Miss Marijuana, roll a joint for me,
Because this ancient nose of mine here starts a-followin’ you.

Oh I’ve been to life’s dustbins, searching for romance,
Slipping in my stance,
Kept on guiding both my hands to eyes a-weepin’,
My civil-ness amazes me; I’m stranded on a street,
Where only darkness greets,
Any restless stoner’s sweet-less hollow dreaming.

Hey Miss Marijuana, make a bong for me,
I’m not sleepy, but there’s a trip I want to go into
Hey Miss Marijuana, roll a joint for me,
Because this ancient nose of mine here starts a-followin’ you.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship,
Where senses once were stripped, and hands once felt no grip,
Until an airway strip
Was built upon our dreams to stop them wandering,
I’m ready to smoke anything, I’m ready for that state,
Like a drawing on a slate, or a dream upon a plate,
Come love me like you wanted it.

Hey Miss Marijuana, make a bong for me,
I’m not sleepy, but there’s a trip I want to go into
Hey Miss Marijuana, roll a joint for me,
Because this ancient nose of mine here starts a-followin’ you.

I just want to laugh and spin and swing up madly to the sun,
Till I’m thrown back by a gun, that’s been escaping everyone,
And been shooting at the stars and been erasing,
And if you could just grace me, for you I love divine,
Mary Jane I’ll make you mine, it’s just a silly trick of time,
And people call each other blind,
It’s just a looting of the scars that came while racing.

Hey Miss Marijuana, make a bong for me,
I’m not sleepy, but there’s a trip I want to go into
Hey Miss Marijuana, roll a joint for me,
Because this ancient nose of mine here starts a-followin’ you.

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the groggy runes inside, a wasted poet’s mind,
The heartaches that he’d feel, when life went out of reach,
And thrust him into power’s heartless hollows.
Take me riding on a carpet high, until I reach the sea,
Where the sky did birth the breeze, and the sun danced with the trees,
With all harmony that rose from beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today, until tomorrow.

Hey Miss Marijuana, make a bong for me,
I’m not sleepy, but there’s a trip I want to go into
Hey Miss Marijuana, roll a joint for me,
Because this ancient nose of mine here starts a-followin’ you.

Another drawing.

I think I've written for too long and too much. I can't write anymore for the time being! SO instead, I picked up my MSPaintbrush and painted this -

Like?

Waking up from visual hibernation.

A story of the phoenix who's ashes didn't bear another.

I

A lovely night had come to pass,
Some twenty years ago,
A lovely night without a past.
She'd given me a purple rose;
I'd let it fall under a stampede.
I’d let them stamp out its seed

And crush it beyond reparation,

Alone in my empty railway station,

Keeping clean from devastation

On a forgotten, defeated nation.

That night I lied to she who didn’t,

And tied myself to this precedent

Of an ultimate ruin in the end,

Where I drive off the cliff at the crooked bend.

That night I’d cried to myself alone

In my bed before I slept, and gone

Through many painful phantasms

With cages carrying imprisoned orgasms.

That night dragged on like a plow

Edged with razors on my skin

Until my blood had ceased to flow,

Far outdone by its sin.

II

Empty footsteps in buried alleys,
Orange sunsets spent alone,
Putrid rivers in barren valleys
Reminded this young man of home,

Once he woke from his night of sorrow

To a tempestuous dawn aglow

On the east end of the purple sky,

Where the sun did burn the darkness dry.

He dressed himself in canvas clothing

And shaved and combed his hair with oil,

Useless attempts to hide the loathing

He had for life, that in his eyes did boil.

He walked out of his wooden cave,

Cold with night’s chilly breath,

For never did he firewood save

To burn on days of nearing death.

He walked across the burning moorlands

That bore the signs of that stampede

Where, in some long lost grain of sand,

He’d lost the purple rose’s seed.

He walked on through across the grass,

And came across an aged home to pass
The old man in his porch sweeping the brown dust,
As his lonely young wife lay burning in her lust.

He walked into her room and stroked

Her hands, looked out at the trees

Swaying in the arid morning breeze,

And lit her on fire with embers stoked

With newfound passion and fleeting

Fancies, that satisfied, will run away

In an instant, leaving old dismay

To Walk back through the door in somber greeting.

III

What if you hide your love away and forget where you've hidden it?
What if you've tried too hard to be the Back-door Man and are left locked outside?
What if you saved up to your last penny and discovered they’d given it?
What if you see a mother in agony searching for her son and you figure he's long dead since the time you poisoned him with your words?
What if you dream that she makes love just like a woman, and you're still a little boy?

What if you’ve told her not to cry coz you still love her, being the little boy, unawares that it’s your maimed love that makes her cry?

What if you disfigure your being and risk everything on a coin toss, but the postman forgets your address?

What if you follow her casket praying to lord, just to find her alive and yourself dead?

As the slaves of despair make you their playground,

And forget that they were here to play,

The sun bids goodbye to the trees around

The grazed field in which you lay

Pondering on whether you were betrayed

Or just another scared failure,

And you starting wishing that she’d stayed

On a bit longer, till you were sure.

Suddenly, just a bit ahead of the woods’ end,

You see her calling, hands in air,

You run towards her healing scent

And long to brush against her hair

When earthly sorrow stops you still

And slowly drags home its kill.

Amar Shohor.

My name may not be Johnny, but I’m one heck of a walker. And I also happen to have grown up in Calcutta. South Calcutta. Since upper kindergarten I was out on the streets alone, in a sense, when I was allowed to walk to my school, directly across the street, on my own. My two strong feet have been softened to the fields of plain city grass or playing field mud from the paras of Jadavpur; hardened to sun-burnt concrete streets or roughly paved sidewalks in the hidden little boulevards in Golf Green or Jodhpur Park, and shaped upon the very contours of the empty blazing afternoon roads. And slowly as my being grew and began to discover newer and newer things and emotions, to hope for love, to bid for goals, to form opinions and nutritious bonds, I ventured alone, or was led by strangers, to discover new niches and mysterious alleyways and other creations of fantasy rendered manifest only to you by some special places you’ll remember.

I found challenge in cricket fields, scored centuries and smoked biris as reward, and roamed free and rampant over territorial land, hand in hand with childhood friends all integrated into one pulsating living ‘gang’.

I found heartwarming crushes that made me smile and feel happy for enormous stretches of time, and began to roam to Jodhpur Park, a serene and yet earthly environment for a young aroused soul. I sat there for hours and days and years, changing places and intentions for visit – from football to adda to smoking to flirting to seeking refuge from earthly fetters – but remaining ever faithful to the place.

Meanwhile as I grew, my prowling region expanded, and I discovered that dreamy wonderland – the Lakes. I went in there at first like a child discovering a new storeroom, venturing widely and forming maps. I discovered old memories of learning to swim in the Andersons’ club, and new places of captivating fancy among trees in bloom to hidden bushes or lakeside benches where the cool breeze blows. I discovered Central Calcutta, through my admission into the basketball School Team, with weekend-ly trips to WBBA’s courts to practice or play tournaments. Wandering through Maidan listlessly and exhausted, saved by the random fruit vendor who rescues you with ripe papaya, I started feeling at home in the City’s then so myriad faces. Then as I grew, and leapt into realms of internal turmoil and battle, I discovered the Ganga, with the waves like a flowing transparent sleeves on her bare white arm. I discovered the feeling, so deep rooted in every Bengali’s soul, of the rural calling, when lying in a wooden boat with a sing-along boatman. The gentle rocking of the Ganga, like your village mother would rock you to sleep in your little clay hut with thatched hay roof, and the sound of her violently feminine presence around you, send your mind into introspective quests as you battle yourself, cocooned from the world by her engulfing embrace.

As age drew on, I turned reclusive, and discovered a new religion. The temples of prayer were slowly discovered courtesy friends, strangers and sheer courage. I sat back down, happily home, with a heart more stable and a soul more calm. The lakes drew me to them, as I found my nest of solace and beauty in nooks and crannies and iron cannons. In pursuit of happiness, through the new religion, I began to become a hermit for short stretches of time and merge as one with the monsoon soaked Lakes or the sun baked Lakes.

Then with newfound inclination towards the truly technical sciences and humanities, I found myself frequently in College street, passing hours and hours in the burning sun looking for this one promised book that is oh-so-rare. I discovered coffee house, where one could sit and have coffee, while breezing through his old memory albums, to young days with cousins in Central Park or family zoo visits, or Science City or Nicco Park treats from relatives on single digit birthdays, to old English houses abandoned by all but a group of white pigeons and mice and lichen to spare.

You gaze over the books you found and weren’t strong enough to not buy, and order another coffee, as you start to feel, quite strongly, that no matter how affected any future blunder could leave you, this home of yours, your city, Calcutta, shall always hold you to her breast and calm you with her loving heartbeats and make you rise and turn to smile, as yet another day passes by.

A letter to Death.

Death almighty,

Loner's deity,

Show me pity,

Seek this city,

Find my home,

And like an ugly gnome,

Ascend the stairway into my room

Where I lay sleeping in my bed's womb,

To wake me up and call my name

From a list you carry like your money or fame.

Keep one eye on the bedside table,

Where lay that deadly juice of Sable,

Both sweet and bitter, and bittersweet,

A carrier to worlds with silver streets

And golden footpaths. Please take my hands

And make them empty in into my glands.

As body dances with passionate stranger,

O Death, please lead me towards a danger.

The subtle sultry seductress - Sable,

Like a half remembered childhood fable,

Shall lull me into a trusting state

And you can guide me by my hand to a Golden gate,

And stop as I drop into an unseen cavity,

My death, pushed by you, and pulled by gravity.

Janie's Blue Rock

Janie kept a blue rock beside her bed,

Coz her mamma had warned her

Of red snakes that may visit at night.

Janie wore a red bandana on her head

Coz her daddy always told her

How wonderful she looked with it shining bright.

Janie met a junkie in a cheap theater

And they hit it off and stood one night

In a cheap motel, on a creaky li’l bed.

Janie wed a rich man in a deep blue sweater

A man with power and money and might,

Who outwards was charming and inwards was dead.

Janie on her death-bed, on a Christmas night,

Was touring her memories inside her head

Till the weather turned stormy and wetter.

Janie had stumbled, maybe through a wrong right,

Into the time in her childhood. She was on her bed

When the snake did visit and start to wet her,

Janie, with his hypnotizing gaze. He bred

A charming dread that did get her

To forget the blue stone that she’d kept for the fight.

Janie lay and wondered, on her death-bed,

Maybe life would be better,

If she’d not killed it that night.

P.S.: Just wanted to sort of point out that the rhyming pattern goes a full circle in cyclic shifts: ABC-ABC, BCA-BCA, CAB-CAB, and ABC-ABC.

My first song! Song-ette more like.

Renaissance’s Golden Light

All you people heading to the centre

Have you ever really roamed the sides?

All you people taking sides with the winners

Have you ever really joined a fight?

All you people taking quick decisions

Have you ever really looked around?

All you people with your big processions,

Have you ever really heard how you sound?

If everyone took a step down, and then one more,

Every person in the world we live in.

I can bet you my life that the Earth will shine

With renaissance’s golden light.

Everybody who’s been thinking ‘bout the future,

Do you really care for any but yours?

Everybody who’s been thinking ‘bout God,

Do you really need to go down on fours?

Everybody who’s been thinking ‘bout profit,

Does it really even make you glad?

Everybody who’s been thinking ‘bout the taboo,

If you’re honest, is it really that bad?

If everyone took look around, and then one more,

Every person in the world we live in.

I can bet you my life that the Earth will shine

With renaissance’s golden light.

The premature elegy of the wind-bent reed.

I was born a white diamond in the world all around me.

I was a bright little kid with dirt on his trousers.

I was curious, and an asker of fundamental questions.

I was a hero, genius, and parents’ true fancy.

I was a lover of reason and player of challenge.

I was one thousand reasons that point to the best life.

I had fallen in love; I had shot deep inside me.

I had doubts and rejections, with things in myself.

I did see the beauty, rewarded for courage.

I did see the heights that a human could go to.

I did dream of me, as Leonardo da Vinci.

I uttered a cry when a nightmare awoke me.

I forgot its lesson, when failure did shake me.

I was tricked into failing by politicians around me.

I was broken inside by love that had failed me.

I was torn by the waves of sadness and sorrow.

I was held by strong hands, whose trust I had broken.

I kept strong and fell weak, as the days dragged me over.

I made a woman cry, a woman who loved me.

I died the death of a Romeo, who couldn’t satisfy his Juliet.

I lived the life of a warrior returning defeated.

I met strangers who shocked me, and looked at a mirror.

I gave room in my heart, to good hope and sunshine.

I’m going to jump, to dive into dirt now.

I’m going to look the real world in the eye.

I’m going to shake off all heart-warming fancy.

I’m taking the remote into my hands now.

I’ve waited enough for eagles to guide me.

I’ve waited in vain for beauty to find me.

I’ll die the death of a martyr unneeded.

I’ll be buried in a heath, burnt and unvisited.

Remembered by none, and loved by some.

The failure's farewell.

If the boy who wanted to cross the street

Was not run over, and

If the rose that was left on my table

Was not wilted, and

If the man who wanted to embrace the world

Was not buried, and

If the milk on the breast for the newborn baby

Was not bitter,

Then this world of mine would be for me to live in.

But alas, the boy is dead, run over,

And the wilted rose turned black overnight,

And the man held the baby as he went underground.

So today it is decided, as the day of love draws close,

That the boy shall look to newer streets

That lead to fields of roses

Where love and beauty embraces souls,

Or deadly doses of poisoned venom

That killed before contact.

The boy once played in his backyard,

With friends and fancies juvenile,

But too many creeping thoughts have haunted him,

And too many sleeping joys have denied him,

And too many of his expectant hopes have been doused;

He looks now through eyes that have forgotten

To see such things.

As he'd grown up, many a rose had landed

On his doorsteps in his dreams,

But he spent his time until full-grown

Without any in his woken hands.

The man he became didn't forget the child

And reared up with his stock of fuel,

To tell the world what he believed,

And give to it something to be cherished,

Alas again, the man was buried,

Under the rocks of power, in a circus

Where the ringmasters didn't like him.

And while dying he had remembered,

How once as a baby he had held

His mother's breast against his mouth

As his hungry heart led him to that

One pure source of eternal manna,

But discovered that the milk that came out

Was brown and bitter, and caustic to his gums.