Empty pictures

The mobile phone allows you to capture moods that perhaps a thousand words or four poems don't.
The view from my room that I wanted to preserve for my month long odyssey in the Indian city of hope, glory and all that jazz by the bay.
Though the trip itself has been not very bleak but at least the blog should remain consistently so. The world and I need to stay attached to our dark side.



I wanted to attach another pic. Not quite as dreamy but certainly as empty. The software however, resists. Placing it within the text where the flow of my wallowing gets affected. The first form of resistance to the public expression of this sort of depression. May be there is a fun-loving God after all. Or at least a digital daemon.
With such resistance and also with a regulated vent, I probably will run out of bleakness soon. But till then let's keep up the bleag.

A seasonal low

What inspires the worse feeling? Having nothing to do on a New Year's Eve? Or needing to stay at home at New Year's Eve because it's never quite lived up to all that you'd want from it. From chasing the parties, to driving in the fog, to being forced to spend the night with some seedies who're stuck with you, because you gambled this year to do just one party and not the usual tasteless hopping.

I think I'll return to poetry for the next post.

On emptiness

Yempty is not cool nor Yiddish. Just the available expression for why empty.
I'm going to celebrate the word - empty. Or at least my feeling of, living of, experience of and yes thinking of.
Don’t confuse this site with Buddhist philosophy. If it’s philosophy you crave then this blog is closer to Existentialism than Shunyavada or Yogacara Buddhism.
Alright that proves I’ve read a bit of philo. But that’s so long ago and so rusty that if it comes out philosophical I’d be surprised.

First thoughts.
Emptiness - is both a great symbol for hope and disappointment.
And both feelings dominate my adult life.

So here goes.
4 poems on emptiness


I’ve described it so often,
it should be enough
but I still feel I haven’t done
justice to the mood,
the spirit of it at least.
There is the pain of feeling nothing
because you do want to feel.
There is the absence of words, of thoughts
and that’s why the predominant sense
is of emptiness.
Of vacuum of the drying
of what is otherwise fertile.
But no words capture the living of it.
Because words alas are too objective,
too verbal, too cognitive
and though I want to share my
lack of life of love of God
I can’t, and that causes me not
pain nor frustration but disappointment.
And disappointment, regret and this
empty feeling are the same colour inside.
Where they’re mixed up and crystallized.

…………………….

There is hope
there’s always hope.
It’s hope that colours and hope that empties
and eventually hope that disappoints.
And while it refuses to die
which I’m told or asked to believe
is a good sign.
Perhaps it would be better to be just real.
Less damaging perhaps
more forgiving of oneself, of others even.
But hope is like this little child that
refuses to grow.
Refuses to be toilet-trained.
Refuses to accept the wisdom of the
much broken of the much lived.
I feel hope. I really do.
I can tell when I’m hopeful.
Hope always feels the same.
This raw, naïve, innocence
that makes me feel so weak.
If only hope would change
would accept me, my life, the world.
But she doesn’t die, she can’t be pinned
and she refuses to go away.
…………………………..

Books music and correction fluid
pile up on my desk in a mess
I pretend they’re symbolic of my life
rich but cluttered with things to do
dirt crusted corners, paperback wisdom
piling up high on a solid base.

I don’t just pretend I hope it’s true
that the desk speaks more about me
than my actions do.
So I buy and collect odd things, clever things
things that you should have.
And dump them together
hoping, praying that the symbol
becomes the symbolized.

If you’d look at my desk, you’d think there’s
more to this man
because that’s what I’d want you to think.
But you’d be half right
and I would have half succeeded
in convincing your pattern making mind.
I am the shell, the seen the curtain
there’s nothing more than you can see
and yet I desire, I hope, I pray
to be what I cannot be.

Some day you will tidy up this desk
and find my thoughts in blue ink
and you will hope as did I
that surely there was more to this life.

…………………….
Bitterness and overdone chai
linger long after
through the day, my dry tongue
reminds me of how bitter I should be.
I scratch at the scabs
I like the fester
I like the realization
I enjoy the bitterness that I’ve created
for myself today.

I saw it coming, I felt its wash
I let it pass trying to be cool and all
and now that it’s gone
undertow too
I teeter, I spit, I cough and cry
at the numbness, the bitterness
the black feeling inside.
...................................