paint poetry and wine

Fight

2009-09-06T03:35:00.000-07:00

Fight I
Oasis of dreams frozen, divided into small pieces
The pitcher of thoughts full to the brim
I walk back to my home with these prized possessions
Making the conspiracy of silence squirm and scream

A flight of words swish by - taking me by surprise
My hands shake, spilling the pitcher of thoughts all around
The frozen pieces of my dreams fall on you
Soon you will be swimming with or against the currents of my mind

Fight II
When words rule
You and I look at them perform
I wish verses could come and save us from it all
Like pasture desires drops of dew
I long for the rhythm of troubadour songs to defeat the words rolled into hard balls

I think of all those little pieces of our personal life
That decorated cafes, pubs and distant beaches of the town, once upon a time
I hear that some of them have been taken down and strewn around
And some are melting away in the heat of time

When words rule and you and I look at them perform
I lose the sense of love; I lose the sense of time

Time Machine

2009-09-06T03:09:00.001-07:00

Before we met, I showed you my diary

And the verses we wrote together then urged us to meet

It was another time and space

I long to repeat those verses in real time this time yet again

Those were the days when verses ruled and urged us to perform

Now words rule and you and I look at them perform

Breaking Away

2006-02-09T02:45:00.000-08:00

Washing pretensions in a washing machine
I learnt how difficult it was to maintain the sheen
Pretensions bled and coloured each other
A riot broke between treachery, excuse, shame and other such brothers

Pockets made up of guilt tore open
Buttons tangled with each other and created a din
Even as I held my ears you shot at me a volley of questions
Why couldn’t I stay pretty clad in those pretensions?

Vultures of thoughts pecked on my heart
The mere touch of their beaks tore my skin
I lay opened but refused your cloak of pretensions
In their pecking routine I find soothing music of reason

Untitled

2006-02-07T22:40:00.000-08:00

On the ladder of silence
Pauses sleep
Wrapped in your and my dreams
Sometimes shaken by the whiff of screams

Over some sugarless coffee
We try to eavesdrop on what pauses speak
We try and embed words
But our tongues slip on the ladder of silence

Reality trapped in unrealistic walls

2006-02-03T10:50:00.000-08:00

Thoughts simmered on the kitchen stove
Silence slept in my bed
Smiles sparkled on the black sky
On the waves of words I surfed

My world was a set of walls
Some made of pure paint, some a collage of words
Then someone told me colours could fade, words could smell bad
I lived nevertheless freed within the same walls
Dreams will carve out and fend for themselves when the bubble will burst

Nostalgic Odor

2005-12-25T01:55:00.000-08:00

Stones in my hand
Transparent and coloured
Some merge into the lines carved on the hand
Some induce a nostalgic odor

I see my childhood in one
My adolescence in another
While treading through the halls of future
I face those memories without a shudder

Its only pleasantness I want to remember
As though coloured memories roll on only one part of my tongue
Stinging my one half with sheer sweetness
Leaving the other with an emotion unsung

Untitled

2005-12-23T05:35:00.000-08:00

Away from the quagmire of conventions
We held hands and sketched on each others soul a delicate rhapsody
We conceived some desires
I call them ‘bohemian dreams’

No black, no white please
A mix of both though is a welcome retreat
Drenched in gleaming gray, our dreams can laugh and weep
If they cry too much, we will wrap them in cellophane paper and put them to sleep

Untitled

2005-12-22T21:55:00.000-08:00

In the cauldron of desires
We poured our dreams together
Stitching patches of promises on our future
A kind of mental foreplay

Like bleach stains, mistakes stay
They are hard to dye, they are hard to erase
Nit picked from the nest of thorns
To write an old story with new words, dreams flourish again

Untitled

2005-12-01T04:18:00.000-08:00

Blobs of paint quench my tongue’s thirst for vibrancy
And yet I am thirsty from within
Craving for the smell of the paint, scent of flavoured dreams
I saw sorrow trapped in a bubble
I felt happiness as if wrapped in a scream
The day I will feel them rubbing against my skin
The day the colour from my veins will stream
I wait for the day when with drops of colour my canvas will beam

Dry

2005-11-24T21:05:00.000-08:00

From my fingers, colours refuse to flow
Images form in my eyes
And stay in the crevices as frozen beads
Like shining wefts protected by my brow

I wait for dreams to melt and grow
I wait to reap my own inherent desires

Untitled

2005-11-17T09:10:00.000-08:00

White crows
Black butterflies
Let us start afresh
Let us repaint life

Why do we write black thoughts in white
Why do we depict loss figures through vertical stripes
Let us start afresh
Let us rewrite life

Black stars
White skies
Let us start afresh
Let us repaint life

Untitled

2005-11-16T05:01:00.000-08:00

What are our dreams
If not our personal constructs
Mistaken as fantasized realities
One for me and another for you

What is your black and my white
If not a palette for a common mid-way gleaming gray…
An abode for cathartic smiles
Born of your lack of sorrow and my intense joy

Those sacred vows
Those creased thoughts that you slip hurriedly in the side pockets of my jeans
Languishing on the periphery of our perceptions
Make me long for your caressing gaze

Our dreams form
My dreams are fed

Untitled

2005-11-15T03:26:00.000-08:00

A tornado of hyperbole
Paper shells ply
My assets are only pages
Pages flutter and fly

Words are scattered all over
But one word sticks by
Love- one word that fits all
It kills, resurrects, bleeds and echoes cries

I pick up one word and imprint it on a page
A popular one-word-fits-all
In deliberate happiness, I whirl
Imbibing within my being
Earth, fire, air, water and sky

Record

2005-11-15T03:25:00.000-08:00

Hieroglyphics on the pages of my life
He scribbles both fun and strife
Sometimes he covers squares of my ego with love stripes
Sometimes he unknowingly fills my eyes with a storm
Suspending me at the edge of a leaf
And I hang there like a dewdrop refusing to leave

untitled

2005-11-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

In somnambulism or drunk on dreams
I walked towards the moon, away from you
To gather the glowing moon in my hands
To pluck it from the expansive blue
Lost in the murkiness of my beautiful dreams
I still long for you

Sometimes I think…

2005-11-04T00:04:00.000-08:00

It’s strange
To let light paint on your soul
A painting that it desires

It’s strange
To become a canvas for someone
And to let them hang you on the wall

untitled

2005-11-03T22:52:00.000-08:00

Asleep in a blossoming bottle
Not a cell
I dream dreams that are fragile yet fluid
In a state of dormancy I define my inner self

Untitled

2005-10-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

Like a blind reading Braille to perfection
You read the unwritten from my eyes
Dreams in transition
You hold each damp one
And hang them to dry

Gossip

2005-10-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

Shower of shrieks and silence
A handful of trust and strife
Sprinkled with smiles and frowns
We traverse through our blossoming and wilting lives

We are two souls gossiping in silence
Reading the unwritten from each other’s eyes
Dizzy on the outer vortex
We witness our desires take flight

Beyond Reason

2005-09-22T06:15:00.000-07:00

Like a fish frightened of the chaos
I vanished from my ornate land
I swim in the austere recesses of his mind
Kissing hyacinths of some kind

Etched on my being are numerous silent smiles
From his shaded cajoling whispers
To troubadour’s songs sung six centuries ago
Everything in my being slowly trickles and unwinds

Reason has boundaries
So he sketches my fate outside those rigid lines
As I bask in my mythic world
He stitches laces of dreams on my eyes

Untitled

2005-09-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

Dreams leave my eyes
To become pixels on a tinted sheet
Negligible yet prominent
They appear as colourful beads

Like a tuneless melody
Like an odorless smell
Like beads without shapes
Dreams sit on cosmic shelves

Lost fragments

2005-09-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

I dream
Often
Of those little fragments
Separated from my being
Lying in different pockets of various cities
Waiting for me

Waiting for me
To come back and collect them
And caress them in my hands

Fragments baked
Under the sun of different cities
Washed by waves
Varying in salt intensities

I long to whisper in their ears too
The sweet truths of life
And tales untold by time…
I long to relish the fermented desires
That lie beneath their baked attires

untitled

2005-09-13T04:37:00.000-07:00

Two pinches of silence mounted
Two hundred words spoken between two vague lips
Two hours of mind gazing and alcohol
Two lifetimes overstepping lifelines

Shrieks of emotions not formed
Embedded in the clouds of silence
Embroyo of impulsive desires
Planted in my womb ready to pour out their essence

As banks of luminescent eyes
We met, wavered and vanished
To become a palette of smudged colour
And a river of sweetened wine

We are two nomadic minds
Who impulsively unpacked bits of our lives
Two hours of mind gazing and alcohol
Two lifetimes overstepping lifelines

Drunk

2005-09-12T06:14:00.000-07:00

I poured reason in two wineglasses
And raised one above my head
One is for you to drink
And on the contents of the other I am drunk

Sketching

2005-09-08T03:40:00.000-07:00

Feelings nibbling on feelings
Thoughts playing tug of war
Whispers frothing in my head
Blur the lines etched on my palms

I tread, sketching my fate
Walking slow, living fast
Usurping dreams, vanquishing fear
Leaving footprints on the land spread vast

Dreams and Desires

2005-09-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

Worms of thoughts
Lotuses of desires
Both sting the mind
And sometimes inspire
To yield the brush of dreams
To dream a few more desires

Screaming Verses

2005-08-28T22:24:00.000-07:00

Blue Verse

I loved
and then branched my love
into two screaming solitudes
and lived both
with differing latitudes

Red Verse 1

Some day red drained blue
And took over the reigning solitude

Flowers of hope blossomed
Winning over the feeble shades of blue

Red verse 2

Red lulled my entire being
Becoming alternatively
A smile, a embrace, a dream
It became a white lullaby
Sung by two pasted red solitudes

Red Verse 3

Formed by a fat brushstroke
Red no longer screams
Solitude has become togetherness
Result of merging passion and screams

Your Hungry Eyes

2005-06-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Your Hungry Eyes

Your hungry eyes
Probe my soul
Trying to evoke truths of existence
That I choose to ignore

Beliefs I have many
Disbelief’s’ are more
In my mesh of thoughts
You may feel abandoned
Alone, betrayed and torn

For your hungry eyes
I have nothing to offer
Only my whimsical soul
Come, savor and stay if you please
My soul summons your hungry soul

RED

2005-05-13T21:56:00.000-07:00

Red

Sometimes red takes over
Formed by a fat brushstroke
Result of distorted desires
Creation of merged passion and screams

Sometimes it lulls my entire being
Becoming alternatively
A smile, a embrace, a dream
Sometimes it’s a hollow lullaby…

untitled

2005-04-23T00:04:00.000-07:00

I loved
and then branched my love
into two solitudes
and lived both
with differing latitudes

Reincarnate

2005-04-20T23:05:00.000-07:00

I want to open my heart
Dishevel
And clean its insides of boredom

I want to infuse colour
In every fragment that makes me
I want to colour my whole existence

Delirium or frenzy
I want to be rid of all feelings
Stitch or paste
I want to close all wounds

Untitled

2005-04-17T23:54:00.000-07:00

I wiped away love
Like dust settled on the surface
But some of it seeped in
Settling in deep crevices

Years will pass
And those particles of love will become dormant
Odorless yet inseparable
Invisible to others

And then I will celebrate its maturity
The mark of its reaching puberty

Uncertain

2005-04-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

Uncertainty is difficult to wipe
It certainly isn’t naïve
It creeps in everywhere
Even in your eyes and mine

Purdah

2005-04-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

A route to a different world
A wall laid on a body alive

Punishment of being a woman
A veil to cover unreasonable shame…

Or like they say
The earth piled on coffins
Holding bodies forced to die

Untitled

2005-04-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

I learnt from the ghosts of the city
The dance that they danced in the middle of the night
Then I murdered my dancing masters
And swayed on the star lit center stage
Waiting again for the hours of light

dreams in the city of dreams

2005-04-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

Vacant looks
Crowded portfolio case
Life
An eclectic race

Dreams are stashed
In beautiful colored glass jars here
That looks ravishing
But are trapped nevertheless

untitled

2005-04-04T21:58:00.000-07:00

Reasoning with reason
Battling with logic
I float on the waves of euphoria

The pestilential little animals
Exhaust my paltry store of felicity

I grovel in the dust of million years
As my comfortably numb mind
Asks the sky, the golden question-
Why?

Two eluding hands transport me –
The untamed child of the mother earth
To a faraway forbidden land
But even here I can sense your smell

for future use

2005-04-03T20:57:00.000-07:00

I have bottled my emotions
And kept them in the sun
To ferment

About ten years from now
They will smell delicious
And taste amazing

illusory fragments of one dream

2005-04-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

We are illusory fragments of one dream

Our separateness- a great illusion
Creates fear and pain

I long for you
Clinging on the vapors of clear lies and unclear truths…
Lost in the murkiness of my beautiful dreams

I could sell concern and buy laughter
I could trade sorrow for feelings a tone softer…
And yet on the fair ground of emotions
I waft around like a smell…
Hammering the silence within me
To derive sense…

My urges circulate on the fair ground
Looking for a façade of crystal truths
My body walks out on the shadow
To sell its own identity

Dreams are not water
Then why did they flow out of my hands
Leaving a stale feeling of wetness…
Dreams are priceless
And yet
You and I are here to shop for them

Night bent down and wallowed
Tears of glass streamed down my face
Our separateness- a great illusion
Creates fear and pain

kohl clad eyes

2005-04-01T22:46:00.000-08:00

Traces of kajal beautifully marked the eyes
No she wasn’t dead
She was still alive.

Alive to haunt
Those who knew her
With her eyes.

She had everything
She had life.
Then why did she?
Whether trouble or strife…

Those who don’t…
Pray for it
To stay.
She had everything…
She had life.

Beautiful green spread outside
I don’t want to leave it
I don’t want to die
The blue of the fleecy clouds
I like it
But I don’t want to go there
To reside

No, I am not allowed to shop for life
No, I am not allowed to ask for its price
No, I am not allowed to slice it alive
She broke the rules…
Strange rules of life.

She had everything…
She had life.

She had beautiful kohl clad eyes.

Blue

2005-03-31T22:42:00.000-08:00

Blue is the colour
Of strangulated bodies

Blue bird
Blue glue
Blue vein

Blue is the colour
Of desires

Blue skin
Blue bruise
Blue flame

Blue is the color you are
When you become history

Blinding blue
Soothing blue
Blue frame

Blue is the colour of silence
That records every moment
Spent sane or insane

untitled

2005-03-30T20:39:00.000-08:00

Spurious is a stage of mind
Dawn is when your eyes can look into mine
And read
Those lines against the linear
Abstractions and notions
Twisted myths floating
Eager to take shape
May be even in a bottle
Where once matured wine

Delusion outlined…

Others say
Dawn is a stage of mind too

A mesh of identities

2005-03-29T12:31:00.000-08:00

I gaze at the fields
As my both arms spread out
Willingly embrace life

Wreathes of ache and laughter break out
And now i look at the sky
As my both arms spread out
Willingly embrace life

I look at him and i look at her
I look at the vast expanse of sky
I have embibed many identities
Maybe its a part of being a scarecrow...

Untitled

2005-03-28T23:29:00.000-08:00

yesterday
someone plucked the moon
And placed it
In the bird's nest
As a gift
For the new born baby birds.

For the new born baby birds
It was nothing
More than a bright toy
But the stars had
Lost their leader.

Changing Seasons

2005-03-27T23:16:00.000-08:00

Like spring enters a jungle and whispers its presence
Your faded memory came to me and whispered its existence
Earlier it engulfed me like a wild forest fire
Now it just slowly crawls into my being
And trickles down like tears refusing to leave

Deluded

2005-03-26T23:06:00.000-08:00

Black cups of coffee
A cane lamp creating a mesh of patterns on the wall
Pillows thrown around
An aura of approaching dawn

Hours passed by
And sleep deluded me all through
Like Vermeer’s paintings
Life created valid illusions

It’s strange sometimes
To let light paint on your soul
A painting that it desires

It’s strange sometimes
To become a canvas for someone
And to let them hang you on the wall
After the painting is done

Potters Wheel

2005-03-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

I want a potter’s wheel
On which I will shape my being
My dreams will be moulded with my own hands
My desires will be embedded in my dreams
I want a potter’s wheel
On which I will shape my being

I will spin his name on the wheel
And I will spin hers too
I will spin earth and sky together
And merge them into one
I want a potter’s wheel
On which I will shape my being

untitled

2005-03-24T22:04:00.000-08:00

It’s a cynical constellation
Where I belong
Living orally
Living long…

Singing aloud
Crying aloud
Laughing in isolation
Trotting along

And sometimes I wonder
The voice that escaped my throat
Is it mine?

Dream Wheel

2005-03-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

Dream wheel rotates
I am tied to it
So I whir with it
And taste the earth

I also get to savour the sky
But silent stares tear me apart
I am tied to the wheel
I get wet and I dry

Dream wheel rotates
I rotate with it and witness life

Behind the Doors

2005-03-22T23:57:00.000-08:00

And just when I thought
The lane was colourless
And beyond life
She opened up the sea of shades

It was a colourful world
Behind her doddering wooden door
Even her simple stainless steel utensils
Reflected life on the floor

Was it echolocation
Or simple violation of concealment
That revealed a whole swirl of life
Spilling enigma in my core

every happiness has a life

2005-03-21T04:53:00.000-08:00

every happiness has a life... white noise (a movie by vinta nanda) begins with this line. made me feel that we dont live the happiness enough while it exists, thinking it will last forever... and of course it doesnt. we keep looking for some other happiness while this one lives its life and slips through our fingers leaving a wet feeling... A feeling that reminds us constantly of its 'once upon a time' existence, till the wet fingers dry.

drubken haze

2005-03-20T03:00:00.000-08:00

I know you have a pair of flying shoes
You let your desires wear them often
Depriving your torn feet
Some times…

I know sun is hiding
Rain has extinguished its fire
I tramp on the damp sun
Trying to rekindle its pyre
My feet are numb
May be I could borrow you shoes
They would compliment my attire

I just realized
You stole my lighter from the car
To light the world with more desire

City of joy

2005-03-17T21:51:00.000-08:00

Shared room, shared feelings, solo dreams
Shared plate, shared bed, solo screams
Life brushed with joy and smiles
Fake and rare, genuine or creamed

Pages are my only asset
Only assets that are mine
I spill black ink on them often
Hiding behind bolted doors
Sitting besides the inspiring maroon carpet
Later getting summoned by the guilt of it all

Blue Slaughter

2005-03-17T01:40:00.000-08:00

Countless blue tongues wag in the air
Testing and tasting the atmosphere
And I create
A hungry blue stroke
Plunging into the sea of black
Waiting to devour darkness galore

berry berry addictive

2005-03-16T21:22:00.000-08:00

leh berry juice rocks. got a pack and tried blending it with my favourite alcoholic fluids. here is a cocktail that worked on me...
pour in a goblet 30 ml of white rum, 30 ml of vodka, two caps of port wine and a swig of tequila (if you really want to feel the high from the first drink onwards). Top it with leh berry juice. its tangy taste mixed with the blissful booze gets you going man...
cheers!

colours of nostalgia

2005-03-15T22:43:00.000-08:00

Ages ago
I had seen a dead rainbow
It was a puddle reflecting life
A result of a stormy night
That shone with oily colors
Swirls of red, yellow, green and white

I gathered it in my hands
And smudged some of it on my face
The remaining I poured on a silver platter
Little by little, feeling its dead plight

It fell with a bounce
Forming tiny globules of memories
That still roll on the platter of my mind

lost fragments

2005-03-15T22:39:00.000-08:00

I sleep and I dream
Of those little fragments
That were separated from my being
And lie in different pockets of various cities
Waiting for me
To come back and collect them
Waiting for me to come…
Caress them in my hands
Whisper in their ears too
The sweet nothings of life
And tales untold by time

For those who love coffee and booze

2005-03-15T03:00:00.000-08:00

coffee shot

60 ml of white rum
60 ml of black coffee
2 teaspoons of brown sugar
a swig of Gordons dry gin

Prepare strong black coffee. Add crystalised brown sugar. Cool. Pour in the Bacardi rum slowly, stirring gently. Add gin. Pour into a goblet. Top with whipped cream and raise a toast to addiction. Cheers!

Smell Of The Past

2005-03-15T02:23:00.000-08:00

The touch of my mother
Has now turned into water
That runs in my body
And feeds the brain fodder
It dilutes my blood maybe

The soft edge of the earth
Reminds me of the end of her sari
She made the bells hung in the balcony tinkle
When she hung the clothes on the clothesline to dry

I called the child next door to drop by
I offered dreams on a tray shaped oval
And said visit me anytime
I am always in even if the space looks not occupied

The bells tinkled long after they stopped
I swayed in the house with the tray loaded with dreams
looking for the soft edge of the earth
Walking on the polished granite tiles

Untitled

2005-03-14T23:51:00.000-08:00

Enigma or delirium
Passion or pain
Distinction is transparent
When feelings drip in vain

Each block of dream
Melts in the cauldron of desires
To give birth to souls
Souls without stains

Delusion or betrayal
Hope or blame
Distinction is transparent
When feelings drip in vain

Dreams have melted and desires are lame
Look at our beings gone insane
In the cauldron of desires, we emerge as blue
The colour of passion and love untamed

Force Within

2005-03-14T23:23:00.000-08:00

I think
Dreams are delicately and passionately inflated desires
that encourage us to float in space and find our own way

In Small Pieces

2005-03-14T23:19:00.000-08:00

My gaze bolts out like Arjuns arrow
Only to return cloaked with black
It is a strange destination
Where consumption and consumed
Sleep in the same crack

Life asks for an entire record of my age
But what do I say when my age seems trapped
I lie in a crack
Broken in small pieces
Sprawled somewhere on the track

Bracketed dreams
Pain me sometimes
Realized dreams tempt me
His power vanquishes me sometime
My weakness, another feeble dream

Is this making me one with the black
Where consumption and consumed
Sleep in the same crack?

Murky Dreams

2005-03-14T23:16:00.000-08:00

Past swarms my head
Future intoxicates
I will meet you yet again
in the corridors of fate

We will be together
In some intangible way
Maybe I will grow
As a figment of your imagination

Maybe I will spread my being
On your blank canvas
Becoming a mysterious line
Guiding your gaze

Past swarms my head
Future intoxicates
I will meet you yet again
in the corridors of fate

Elimination
Separation
Digressions
Expectations…
I breathe in a fragrant maze

Dark nights urge me
To become a block of color
And I lie on the terrace
Letting the night rob me of my blaze

Past swarms my head
Future intoxicates
I will meet you yet again
in the corridors of fate

Symphony of love, death and life

2005-03-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

Murky dreams
Dark smiles
Lusty walks
Intense miles
Fishing for happiness somewhere
We got drowned in lies

Contemplation
Anticipation
Making love
Digressing lines
On a café table we have laid them all tonight
And with our hands locked
We gaze intensely
At these pawns of our lives

Take flight
I urge my feelings to take flight
Scribble love on the walls
But do not etch it in my life
I urge all the pawns
To move out of my life

Mirage
Or shadows of light
Dance on the pores of my body…
I race them away
Haunting them with the picture of dying

Scribbled walls
Echo of mystical tales
Pawns move on their own on the table
Weaving a mesh
Locking our lives

© Juhi Dua 2004