(Not quite) Haiku

“Forgetfulness”

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I keep forgetting things -

Over and over again.

I forget them so often that,

I have actually forgotten

How it felt to have forgotten

something for the very first time.

?

“Forgetfulness 2.0”

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I sit alone at the corner café

checking the back of an envelope

I have this burning need,

to write a poem about life.

But the words refuse to come.

All the secrets of the past

have risen and melted away.

Stealing all my words in them.

My blank poem stares me down,

I look away, trying to imagine

why life too forgot me as often

As I tried to not forget it.

In obscure corner cafes.

In endless unwritten poems.

?

“ Wrong Number”

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The phone rings at 1: 30 AM

She speaks in Kyoto Ben

Or it could be Kansai too.

I have no means to know.

Something has broken her.

Distraught, she keeps weeping,

in a dialect I don’t understand.

It is a Tuesday, in May 2013.

She hangs up her phone at 1: 34.

I hold on to mine till 1: 37.

?

?“The Explorer”

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At 13, you’d stand motionless,

holding a bottle in your hands.

There’d be a note in the bottle.

You’d stare at it with eyes

that would forget to blink.

You’d feel bad for the message.

Wondering how it could ever sail

To the other side of some ocean,

Captive without a will in a bottle.

Thirty years from then,

you’d stand at the far end

of the Pacific. And realize that,

life was just another bottle.

?

“ Are you happy ?”

--------------------------

I can tell by my eyes that I

have asked the wrong question.

They look troubled and faraway

No worries. We'll change the subject.

Or maybe, the mirror?

?

”Time machine”

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When you were eighteen and if I had told you :

That from 40 , you’d be stuck in a life, for life,

trying to mend your destiny with surrender.

You’d have thought I was jealous of you.

?

“Planetarium”

-------------------

Our stories are like dark skies . With strange stars.

Where no matter how punctual we try to be -

We’d always be either too soon. Or too late.

?

“Limits, Limitations”

--------------------------

Bracing yourself like an angel with a broken wing

You try to be optimistic again: heading for disaster

Which has always been the way with you.

I'm glad that this time I know that you know it too.

?

?“Summary”

---------------

All those promising roads of life..

Every frigging possibility led here.

This was where you were headed.

Forty something years on earth…

Trying to get drunk by yourself,

And sometimes staring at stars.

wishing one would fall off. Only one?

?

“What Happened ?"

--------------------------

You were the coolest one.

In the whole of the 90s.

?

Now you experiment lingos,

and post random poetry,

on shallow platforms -

Using feeble pretexts,

fake joy, silly excuses

and orchestrated modesty.

To fish middle aged admirers.

?

At times I bleed when I see you

trying so hard to be happy.

At times I wish I could gift you

a new melancholy to fret.

?

And steal that smile for good.

Wrap it. Hide it. Make it real.

?

To coast through,

when life comes knocking.

As it often does.

?

I spin like an errant top

Equidistant from all the space

between you and you.

?

You ache like a metallic silence

in the harbor of my dreams.

?

It is actually 2017.

And I still don’t know

What went wrong with you !

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?( Ayon’s Blog? , 2017 . ?A fanboy tribute to Ruchard Brautighan, one of my favorite modern poets)

Image - My Short story collection from 2022, available on Amazon in yoru country