'Elliott'

This one is kind of a follow up to the poem I wrote about Elliott Smith. Since it's his birthday I figured I probably should write something about it and I wrote this piece a while back. It just really kicked me in the heart when I stumbled upon his music and then found out almost immediately that there wasn't gonna be any more of it. I refer to him on first name basis because he feels like one of us in a very warm way and is relatable. His songs really are an addiction, it can go out of hand. But I'll always love his music and his words will always be there through my worst times. Here's to Elliott Smith, a friend from beyond the grave.  
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I remember the first time I heard Elliott’s voice. It was in a movie. The Royal Tenenbaums. The song: Needle in the Hay. Up until then I hadn't heard a song which showed pure beauty in melancholy and misery like it did. The song was originally about addiction but it made me believe it was for every other sorrow I held. It haunted me to the point where I couldn't listen to it again for weeks. It held a mirror. It showed me the part of me that adored misery. It took me back to a dark past.

It’s hard enough to accept that you’re different from others in not the most acceptable way. It’s harder to accept that you absolutely don’t know your way around it. It’s amazing how society changes you to the point that you can’t come back. It’s a strange sort of irony that it changes you enough to alienate yourself from it.

Elliott wrote for us ‘strange kids’. He was one himself. For he came from shyness and social awkwardness like we did. He knew how we hide our sorrows behind smiles. He knew our endless secret heartbreaks. He understood what we went through. Actually, we understood what he went through. We could relate to the ache in his words.

They called him 'Mr. Misery'. They called him the ‘most depressing singer ever’. They never knew sorrow like he did. They never understood him. They never understood us, who did understand him.

They blamed it on his heroin. They never took the blame. They called him names. They called him different. We called him one of us.

His songs promised us he’d keep us away from all of them. He told us that it was okay to be ourselves. That it was okay to feel different. That it was okay to be addicted. That it was sweetest kind of sorrow to have one’s heart broken. He made us love our misery. But he wasn't ‘Mr. Misery’; he was plain old Elliot Smith. The one who wrote for the underdogs. Moreover, the one who wrote for himself. The on who wrote the truth.

And then he went away. Just like that. He gave us warmest hugs that turned colder than the winter’s bosom. They said he took his own life. They said he fell too much in love with the misery and confusion he taught us to be in awe of.

I discovered his music rather late. Years after his demise. Yet it might sound rather unfair that I sound as if I knew him so well. It’s because his songs talk to his listeners. His voice comes from beyond death, whispering forever and ever more.
But in all fairness, nobody knew him. Elliot hid behind is words. He hated being termed ‘shy’, ‘dull’ or ‘different’. Much like we all did. Because it never let us go beyond that.

Elliot killed himself many times before. Every time he broke up. Every time he fought with those horrible ones who thought they knew it all. Every time they called him weak. Every time they called him different. Every time he drank or injected himself with the right substance that could ‘make it all okay’ and ‘drive them away’. But not that day.

You see, that day Elliott didn't kill himself. He was murdered

One might think of the theory that suggests that his love, Jennifer Chiba stabbed him to death. That she couldn't take all the mood swings and the drug use, and she placed a cold knife deep into where most of Elliott’s thoughts came from and reached. I want to believe that she did, for our heroes never die like that. They don’t die a weak death like suicide.

But this was Elliott Smith. He made sorrow his best friend, depression his estranged lover, death his mistress. But was he capable of taking his own life? Was he capable of such violence? Was he the ‘Roman candle’ he said he was? We’ll never know

But he was murdered. He was murdered by everyone else. He was murdered by the people that surrounded him. The ones that never found the depth in him. The ones who were quick to judge him for appearance. The dreaded society that Elliott despised.
Yet he did nothing about it. He just floated through it like a balloon, avoiding it all. But balloons ultimately pop. And the one who was Elliott did too. The streets are too ‘sharp’. As sharp as a needle in the hay. Except it seems more like hay in the needle. Carefree balloons don’t belong there.

I don’t know if Elliott could've been better. I can’t really imagine how it would be if he was alive today. He was too beautiful for this world. I do admit his songs glorify the grim sorrows we all are bound to feel. But they all have a certain hope to it. A certain warm positivity within them. It’s almost as if we wanted us to feel alive with each lyric. Elliott did have an ironic sense of humour. 

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XO

Call the Cameras

I've been addicted to Elliott Smith...again. I seriously love the way he wrote his songs. His story is one of the most interesting ones I've come across and it makes me really sad and obsessed. His music is seriously addictive. Here's to Elliott.
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Baggy clothes and shabby hair

He holds a balloon of his heart

His mind holds not the slightest care

Yet his thoughts could take him apart

Call the cameras, they'll make up a story

They won't care, they'll spell his name wrong

He'll be the last one to notice it all,

He'll be gone by the end of his song, by the end of his song

His mind a Roman candle that burns with the sorrows he holds

His heart broken to bits, held together forever by cold

And his feet tired of dancing and dancing on pots of gold

Inside as beat up he may be, tries to appear bold

Call the cameras, they'll ask him to be there

They'll push him away out of their way

He'll move aside like he always does

And avoid it for he knows he'll be gone away, with nothing to say; nothing to say

He sang the songs of a tired soul,

His words put us in the warmest black hole,

But his peculiarity took its toll

They said his own life he stole

Call the cameras, they'll call it tragic,

And say it was all for the best

He'll be alive as if by magic

And we'll forget about all the rest, about all the rest.

What is Love?

A lot of  my posts are somehow about love. I guess it's got to do more with my age and I can't really help it. This post is more of a diary entry than a piece of actual literary writing. Its I think the most simple post I've written. I recently had the fortune of meeting this person and we discuss almost every topic under the sun. I'm really thankful to this person because it takes that one person to make things so clear and in perspective. I hope my anonymous inspiration reads this. 

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Love is possibly the biggest cause of misery in a person. That is a fact.

Drunkenness is its own kind of misery, true. But one may drink to drown the memories one’s unrequited love. Nobody asks if a drug fiend injects copious amounts of poison into his veins for he never got the love he thought he deserved. Nobody ever thought about the man who gave it all away because nothing else mattered as he thought he had it all for a moment.

I’m naïve. I really am. So I don’t know what really drives the pursuit towards love. Why we wish to seek its warmth where each of us thinks it belongs. How it belongs. How it makes us feel.

I tried looking for the answer in Science. Darwin told us we evolved from apes. Price told us altruism was an evolutionary instinct. Nobody told us what love is.

I turned to religion for answers but I got confused further. For it confused me why God would want love to exist in a fog of misery. Then Friedrich Nietzsche told me God is dead.

Maybe the answer is too simple but comes with only with a hard core pursuit towards love. Cause, while many scholars never find why it exists, a tiny voice inside your head still goes ‘It’s just love, silly’. It tells you love’s nothing to be afraid of. It tells you it feels so good and it does. Why can’t you be sure though?

I wish I knew the answers. But I don’t.  And quite frankly I don’t want to. I’d rather not. Geniuses over-think. I'm barely one. And as simple as I want to keep it I hope I’d feel it better. I know I’d feel it better.

We have all these complex terms and ideas of how love should be. How it should have all these unnecessary rules. How it should never be so simple. Why can’t it be so simple? Why can’t it be just a simple beautiful thing between two people?

I don’t have the answers to all those questions. I never will. But I know I always will have love to look forward to. To pursue in the depth of my heart. To ponder over.

But I know one thing for sure. Love isn't misery. It might not even be the cause of misery. It’s just love, silly. 

Delhi

One of my favourite poems is 'Slough' by John Betjeman. And I really don't mind the controversy that surrounds the poem. I suggest you read that before reading this one as this is a homage to Betjeman's original. I based this one on Delhi. Delhi is no longer the city I was born and grew up in (for a while). 

Come friendly bombs and drop on Delhi,

For it feels more like a beast’s belly,

With clogged streets and drains smelly.

Chaos reigns!

Come, bombs and blow the caucuses

Or those air-conditioned government offices,

Filed papers, Filed lies, Filed confidence,

Filed tears, Filed pains.

Drop and clean the mess they call a city-

A room for 20 large, still itty-bitty

And extra for electricity

For a month at least.

And get that man in white clothes

Who kings and sins and grabs the throats,

Whose skin is drenched in people’s loathe

The blood’s his feast

And burn his hat that once showed truth

And smash and burn his office booth

And stop his ways raw and uncouth

And make him cry.

But spare the young ones on the street

Through those only jobs they make ends meet,

It’s not their fault the city brings them defeat,

They’d rather die.

It’s not their fault they don’t know right

Their justice lost in the dark of night

It’s no surprise that they just might

Sigh and give in.

Have drugs and booze they might just

Talk instead of their animal lust,

Won’t try to win the love and trust

And now they sin.

Their mothers warm polluted breads

And serve them water that they dread,

And fruits too are chemical red

Their poisoned toasts.

Come, friendly bombs and drop on Delhi

For all they show is hate on their telly

And politicians think they’re Machiavelli,
The city’s a ghost.

The Gargoyle and The Angel

Gargoyles are carved stone figures on Gothic churches. In architecture, they were made to convey water away from roofs. In myths, it is believed that these creatures come to life at night to scare evil spirits off. 

I wrote this over the last few weeks. I guess a lot of us feel a certain emptiness coming to a stage where everyone you know has to drift apart. I filled the emptiness writing this.

                                                                                     

I guess my ‘24 hour rule’ doesn't really work. I need a little more to be over her. I take a seat in the study room. Most of my books are now packed in huge wooden boxes. Except one, that is. It’s on the table.

Her memory lingers on like the scent of a crushed rose. A part of me knew this was coming. A part of me never wanted to believe it. I've been living in dreams. I guess I always have. And so I know I’ll be fine. No, I hope I’ll be fine. I really do. 

Part of me knows that by tomorrow I’ll be gone, far away from this. A part of me is sure I’ll never leave.

My phone buzzes but I don’t want to pick it up. Its two buzzes so it’s probably a message. But I don’t want to see it. I leave the study. My bag’s all packed. I've already checked it twice. Almost as if I've forgotten something. Like I've left something out. But I know it’s not something that will fit in this bag.

I walk into the kitchen and grab an apple. I don’t have the heart to eat it. I walk back to the study. My phone buzzes again. It’s probably one of the friends. I know I should meet them before I leave. And as much as I want to leave this place, rather what it’s become, it’s almost as if I can’t. And so I don’t want any more memories anchoring me down. I couldn't take it. 

The aforementioned book lies solitary on the table. It’s titled ‘The Gargoyle and The Angel’. It’s a thin book that caught my attention at a book fair about two years ago.  There’s something really intriguing about it.

I've read it around a hundred times. The story never changes. Years ago there dwelled a gargoyle atop a famous cathedral.  He wasn't the only gargoyle on the cathedral, but certainly the loneliest there ever was. For his perch was the highest and his body the most stained by the wind and the rain. And at night, as the legend has it, all the gargoyles came alive and lollygagged around, for the town was free of the evil spirits they were made to fend off; he would be alone atop the cathedral staring at the stars. For the whole town bored him, and the cathedral seemed to remain ever unchanged. The only thing that did change was the sky. And so he’d spend all his nights staring at the sky above, looking at the stars that shined so bright. And in those stars he’d see shapes. Figures. A flower. A cloud. A fruit. A human. Beasts of all sizes and kinds. Even winged ones like he was. But never a gargoyle. Never. For gargoyles are a mix of all those creatures, but seen a little too differently.

This made the gargoyle sadder. For even in the night sky he loved so much he couldn't see himself. He had never heard tales about gargoyles. The ones he did from the old gargoyles of the northern wall of the cathedral showed his kind as antagonists. Never a poem was written about them. Never a song was sung. And famously St. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke out against them. The old gargoyles had long gone now. Taken down because they had worn out. So, there were no tales for him.

But as it happened one day, the gargoyle on his perch was woken up by this bright luminous light. It was a creature he had never seen but only heard about from the old gargoyles of the North wall. A bright face with the most beautiful eyes, skin as clear as the sky on moonlit nights, hair covering the face like the clouds would hover over the moon sometimes, and wings beautifully shining unlike his leathery stained ones. Surely this creature before him was an ‘angel’. The last time these creatures were seen was about a hundred years ago, when the Plague broke out on the town. They appeared as a sign of blessing to the land as God’s messengers, even before St. Romain had cursed the gargoyles to protect the churches of towns across the very land.  

He looked at the angel before him, sitting there holding her knees. Her eyes gazing at him in surprise, as he rose dusting himself off, staring back in amazement. He could see a speck of fear in her eyes. She asked him if he was one of the gargoyles she had heard about. Very shamefully the gargoyle told her he was. He didn't ask her if she was an angel, because he was very sure she was.

Somewhere inside, the gargoyle felt she’d leave. They all do. Even the occasional bird atop the cathedral would leave at the sight of him. But somehow she did not. He asked him if he scared her. She said he didn't.

And so the angel would come to the gargoyle every fortnight. They’d talk about the view from up there. They’d talk about the sky. She’d tell him stories of distant lands and magnificent creatures. He told her whatever little tales he had inherited and the ones he conjured up from what he observed. Never had the gargoyles felt the way he felt waiting for the angel every time. Expectations would ache his soul in the sweetest way possible.

And one night, while gazing at the sky like they always did, the angel showed the gargoyle a shape in the stars. A shape that looked just like a gargoyle. Just like him. And the gargoyle wondered how he had ever missed it. But he also knew that angels did live in the skies above.

Although, the angel told him all the tales she could and all that she felt, he couldn't as much in return. For his heart was made of stone; and angels are creatures too majestic and too divine. More divine than gargoyles would ever be. And although a few experts will tell you that gargoyles too are known as the ‘Angels of the Dark’; a lot of them will also tell you that they were made to keep water away from the roofs of churches, and that that was there only duty as their kind.

And so as much as he hated it, the gargoyle remained just enough still and cold, for he feared what he thought he might get for his stone-cold stone heart, warmed almost prematurely by a tiny ember.

One night he waited for the angel but she never came. He waited until the morning rays of the sun turned him to stone. He waited the next and many nights ahead, but he didn't see her again.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't have an end. The last few conclusive pages of the book were torn away, leaving any reader clueless about what happened to the poor old gargoyle.

I feel the left-over pieces of the pages torn away, stapled and bound firmly to the book as if wanting to never let go until the story was complete. I felt for the pieces. I guess nobody wishes to leave until there is an ending to a story. But maybe sometimes there are no endings. Maybe sometimes getting used to abruptness is like that lukewarm glass of water that you have to quench your thirst with.

I want to believe that some terrible sadistic tore away the happy ending of the book for twisted pleasures, and there really was a happy ending to the story. I want to believe that the angel came back. I want to believe that the stars grew brighter for our gargoyle. I want to believe that his heart wasn't just a cold stone no more. I want to believe.

The phone buzzes. I keep the book down on the table. I pick up the phone up and walk outside the door. I’ll go meet a few of those who I call my own. And although I don’t have the slightest clue what tomorrow brings, better or worse, I’ll believe that angels do return; I’ll believe that things will turn out to be just fine and there’s a chance that there  will be happy endings.

Death/Love

I read somewhere that a poem cannot be about more than one thing and that it must have just a single central theme. Daft idea. That challenge was accepted and I wrote this, which can be read for both 'Death' and 'Love':

Sometimes I wear a cloak of satin and velvet

Sometimes I maybe naked, with a bow and arrow

But sometimes I wear a cloak darker than the night

I am known to this little child, yet I am to him the biggest mystery

To this old man here, I have brought pain and joy throughout his history

I am celebrated; as celebrated as anything could be

And yet at nights I cry, I weep

For as celebrated as I may be, I get blamed

I get blamed for when two young souls see trust in each other’s eyes

When the clouds get dark and one of them dies

For all the times when there’s betrayal 

It’s me who gets soaked in their tears, when they cry

It’s me who takes the blame, it is I

And so I weep

For I'm feared

Feared more than war is

Forbidden, I'm a young man’s worst nightmares

And a maiden’s curse

One healing hand and other full of daggers

I cut infinite names of my victims on stone walls of sorrow

While the other hand paints beautiful faces I borrow

 For as long as there is the wind, for as long runs time

I run through; crazed; silent, as speechless as a mime

Touching thousands I come across, more subjects to my crime

Running, sweating, shouting and screaming

The horrific sights of smiling faces; gleaming

Black birds follow, and I know what horrors for their future they’re scheming

I'm out of breath for everything’s real, I'm not dreaming

But then I stop

Time is up

And I stop

I can’t go on

Maybe I should just stop, end this

I can’t take it any more; and I know a thousand more that can’t

A thousand more victims that rage and rant

But I wish I could stop, But I can’t

For as long as there is the wind, for as long runs time

Because I know that someone right now is walking out the door and across the street

Because I know that someone is unaware of what fate on the next turn one might meet

And so I’ll move

I’ll keep on moving

Sometimes I wear a cloak of satin and velvet

Sometimes I maybe naked, with a bow and arrow

But tonight goes to all those who despise me; 

Tonight I wear a cloak of white

Also available on my collaboration blog 

I Swear

A lot of my friends and family tell me that I need anger management and need to control my swearing. So I looked into it and one of the suggestions I got was writing down the things I don’t like but not using curse words. Here goes nothing:

I get really frustrated and agitated sometimes and get quite a rage

My counsellor says I need to work on it but it’s quite normal for my age

I do admit I never was normal or completely mentally fit

Don’t really care about other people, they can all eat sh…..uh...er…faecal matter 

Just saying

I admit there are things that I don’t really like in my own life

Like the fact that my parents probably want me to get married by the age of thirty five

I really won’t like that, and I’ll have to be blunt

And if the girl annoys me I’ll stab that cu….uh…um…..that girl

(I wouldn't really do that…it’s just…hehe…anyway..)

I’m kind of socially awkward; I guess I mostly stay alone

I’m not the cool kid in school, I’m really not that known

I don’t get much female attention; I’m not noticed by chicks

So I don’t care about them either, they can go suck some d…uh...Danish chocolate bars, they’re nice

I really don’t have anything against the ladies… or Danish chocolates…or people. It’s just humour…I guess…..I hope

I’m kind of a rebel; I don’t really like the system

 Their rules and policies; I’m not usually with them

Crappy education system, anti-gay policies and telling us to lay off the ‘grass’

I don’t really care about the government, all the ministers can kiss my a…..wait…they can kiss my…uh...aunt (?)

I don’t know why I would write that. She’s a nice lady. Just ignore.

I don’t have plans for the future, I haven’t thought of a career

It makes me sick but I admit, I usually dig a well when the 11^th hour is near

8 figure salary job or unemployment; I really don’t have a clue

If you judge me or hate me after reading this here, have a nice day and f**k you
yeah that's what I said 'F**K you'
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I swear I can go on and on. I have a lot of curse words in my vocabulary and I can rhyme. Anyway, good luck and mind your language........not.