"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
- Ayn Rand

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Eowyn: I stood upon the brink. It was utterly dark in the abyss before my feet. A light shone behind me, but I could not turn. I could only stand there, waiting.

Aragorn: Night changes many thoughts. Sleep Eowyn, while you still can.


The full and absolute impact of hitting rock bottom.

Don't call

Love of my life,
pot-headed tramp,
guardian angel,
jug-headed bitch,

9 times
you rip apart
the open wound
that you un-stitched,
at the wrong time;
each time you try
surgery
with trembling hands
and amputate instead

love of my life,
pot-headed tramp,

You're impotent now,
and I'm not sane,
you did 'it', and how,
don't call again.

'And from here the well-loved Brutus stabbed and mark ye how the blood did flow, like rushing out of doors, for Brutus as you know was Caesar's Angel. When Caesar saw him stab, ingratitude much greater than the traitor's arm quite vanquished him. Then burst his mighty heart and at the base of Pompei's statue, while all else ran blood, great Caesar fell.'
William Shakepeare

'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows'

-The Tempest,
William Shakespeare.

2:43 a.m

I sleep late
rather often
and get up early
hardly there
and wonder if
your walls are better
than the palms
I planted there

I wonder if
the breeze is worth
the cold and wet
and sun and rain
or if the walls
that keep you safe
are charming in
their brick and pain

I wonder if
I am morose
for lack of shelter
and lack of wear
and wonder if
you smile too much
because you breath
a stale-ish air

I wonder if
you draw too heavy
and leave too little
to exhale
or if it will be
my end to
draw easy
on this heavy air

The Final Quatrain

I built a massive city with you.

Large structures, tall buildings, open spaces, gardens, restaurants, bars, alley ways, parking lots and I marked them all with cryptic words, undecipherable to the rest of the world. I don't know if you remember the marks. I did what we couldn't in the real world. Illusion is the first of all pleasures. So in the specificity of the design of our city I included all your idiosyncrasies. It was a beautiful mesh of all our basics: color, taste and touch.

I built the axis of the city. The tallest tower. I built it and I gave it to you. I stocked it up with silken robes. I lit warm fires inside. I never stayed there, but as a guest. I preferred looking up at you. I preferred believing you were closer to the sun than I was.

I built an altar for you. As a compliment to the tower. A celebration of you, for the world. I felt selfish about keeping you to myself. It was the first thing that started to rot when the city began to decay.

I built walls, all around. Defending the city from everything around. When the day came, I couldn't. But the walls worked for a while. Till you wanted to stay within them. They even looked aesthetic.

I built roads to lead you out. I built carriages to bring you in. I carved poetry on the walls that I built to remind you of why we built the city in the first place.

Why did we build this city? We agreed that we both had different conceptions of what a city should be than the rest of the world. But it became difficult to build a functional unit in isolation from the rest of the world. So I started leaving, always to return.

Last when I returned it was at your behest.

The city has suffered since then. You haven't tended to it. I've come back and waited for too long and the isolation that I built is unbearable without its cause. So I am leaving the city. Not how it is. Because it breaks my heart to see it rot. I will destroy everything that you abandoned. I will not let my poems on your walls decay. I will tear it down, stone by stone. I won't make the place virginal again, but I will make it unlike our city. And I will erase the mention of it. So that those try to build a city do not fear the attempt.

The story of decay is sad and long. It belongs to an idealist and his muse. It's really a story of how the world was right. Nothing worth knowing about.

I feel a lack of ability in trying to conclude this in soothing verse, and so in brusque prose I declare, that this is the final quatrain, of poetry, in motion, over all the walls of the city that was spoken of.

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feelings"

Oscar Wilde

Bad Poetry

In so many words
let me say
what I meant,
in the first place
that is to say
I only wanted
to let you know
that in one line
I changed the words
and I could say
what I wanted to
and what I didn't want
to say.

'Better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or by raising an arm against a sea of troubles and opposing, end them?'
- Hamlet,
William Shakespeare.

Confession

I haven't written a poem in ages because I sincerely want my next poem to finish with a pre-decided verse. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing the same things with my life.

Excerpts from Dostoevsky

'What if man is not really a scoundrel? Man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind- then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it is all as it should be.'

'But you're a poet and I'm a simple mortal and therefore I will say that one must look at things from the simplest, most practical point of view. I, for one, have long since freed myself from all shackles and even obligations. I only recognize obligations when I see I have something to gain by them. You, ofcourse, can't look at things like that, your legs are fettered and your taste is morbid. You yearn for the ideal, for virtue. But my friend I am ready to recognize anything you tell me, but what do I do if I know for a fact that at the root of all human virtues lies the most intense egoism?'

“It would be jolly to go to Kuragin's,” he thought. But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrey not to go there again. But, as so often happens with people of weak character, as it is called, he was at once overcome with such a passionate desire to enjoy once more this sort of dissipation which had become so familiar to him, that he determined to go. And the idea at once occurred to him that his promise was of no consequence, since he had already promised Prince Anatole to go before making the promise to Andrey. Finally he reflected that all such promises were merely relative matters, having no sort of precise significance, especially if one considered that to-morrow one might be dead or something so extraordinary might happen that the distinction between honourable and dishonourable would have ceased to exist. Such reflections often occurred to Pierre, completely nullifying all his resolutions and intentions. He went to Kuragin's.'

Dostoevsky

The Phoenix Anthology |

Remember me?
I was you
I'm back again
How long has it been?
My lonesome being,
I'm glad I left
I'm glad you stayed
for the sheer force
that resonates
when we burn
into one again.

The Phonenix

Phoenix-

I cannot laugh
without cause anymore
but I often giggle
out of place
without poetry
or rhythm
in conversations
not meant for me;
I often smile
at myself
when I giggle
out of place
tracing boxes
on the floor
on hazy days
in lighter dreams

Love is a verse
shoved in a herse
love is an open book
to a verse
of your
bad poetry,
this is,
coming from me.

Give me a line,
Dance with me until
I feel alright.

The joy of drinking a stiff black label with a few men, on a cold night in a foreign country.

Specially, when the speck of the foreign country that you're on is New York

There's a question that I've always wanted to ask everyone.

In those inane, drab few moments when you're switching on the light, or changing the gear or folding up the sides of a paper for no real reason, do you think? Do you really actively think out something that is completely amputated from your apparent stream of consciousness. Do you construct complete thoughts, imagine entire fantasies, come up with water-tight ideological retorts and fore-see your own future, while making toast? Do you elaborately think about how you're going to brighten up someone's day on a given date or how you're ruining someone's summer right now? Do you?

Or am I just mad?

The Window

The glass
of the window
of my car,
is so much cleaner
than it was,
the horn sounds clearer
the gear is smoother
the axle still wobbles,
but the wheels are firmer
than they were,
when there was
still a thumbprint
on the glass,
of the window
of my car


Rishi Razdan

2009

Will you'll promise to be little forever?

Poetry in Motion

I will write to you
when the time is right
to write,
to you.

I will explain
what I can't
when I can,
talk to you.

It won't be long
or take long
or feel wrong
to you.

It won't be rude
or angsty or real
but it will
be the truth
to you

I will write
soon;
and I won't,
pass it on
to you.



Rishi Razdan

Of all the things in the world, there is one thing I suspect that I have managed to achieve. I sometimes feel like I can, far more clearly than I could, distinguish sincerity from insincerity. I suspect it strongly. I almost even believe it. I should. The alternative is, I just don't like a lot of people anymore. I look forward to the distractions that the year has to offer.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at the close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright,
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight,
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Dylan Thomas

Love Poems: Langston Hughes

|. Love Song for Lucinda

Love
Is a ripe plum
Growing on a purple tree.
Taste it once
and the spell of it's enchantment
will never let you be

Love
Is a bright star
Glowing in the far Southern Sky.
Look too hard
And its burning flame w
will always hurt your eye

Love
Is a high mountain
Stark in a windy sky.
If you would never lose your breath
Do not climb too high


||. Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night,
And wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue buses,
Taxis, Subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make it a drumbeat,
Put it on record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day---
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl


|||. Problems

2 and 2 are 4
4 and 4 are 8

But what would happen
If the last 4 was late?

And how would it be
If one 2 was me?

Or if the first 4 was you
Divided by 2?

Splitting the Atom

Do you know anything about dreams? On most occasions they are unnatural, manipulated and wholly constructed by those who claim to dream them. Do you know what I dream about? I dream about something far far away. It's a rather vague thought. But what I gather from this rather vague thought is this certainty that the generic feeling in this place 'far away' is in every micro sense the antithetical of what I feel, where I am right now. Do you know what that feels like? I'm guessing not, because it's apparent that you've found excuses to embrace this inertia. These excuses include facebook, the cell phone, text messaging, 'lunches', short trips, meaningless engagements, music and substances. I, on the contrary, use the same excuses to extenuate on what I don't like about this current affair. Do you feel beaten hollow sometimes? By not just the circumstances that siege you, but also the times that we live in. There is something wrong within my arc of the world that I call the world, that I cannot quite correct. Do you know the burnt feeling on your tongue when you've had something that was a tad bit too hot? It desensitizes you to taste for a while. It clouds taste in the strangest way. Even though you cannot taste a thing, you can taste enough of it to construct the rest. And by virtue of imagining what it would taste like, you realize how you can no longer taste it.

I do not share the same doomsday as the others. I would not be surprised to trade my doomsday for theirs and be pleasantly surprised at utopia-in-a-box. Do you know how hard it is, to mutually believe in something and act for it? Do you remember what happened when they tried to split the atom? Do you remember why they wanted to do it? For the first time in my life I today realize how far the subject matter of this post is, from what has been written. It's just a feeling that I'm dispersing with it. The thick gravy of the protein dish.

Delusion is bliss. Keep dreaming.

"What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load

Or does it explode?"

Langston Hughes

Poetry in Motion

This is just to say
that I have eaten
the plums
that were in the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving for breakfast
forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet and
so cold

William Carlos Williams

Choices

If I can't do
what I want to do
then my job is to not
do what I don't want
to do

It's not the same thing
but it's the best I can
do

If I can't have what I want
then my job is to want
what I've got
and be satisfied
that atleast there is
something more to want

Since I can't go
where I want to go
then I must go
where the sign points
though always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral

When I can't express
what I really feel
I pratice feeling
what I can express
And none of it is equal

I know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry

Nikki Giovanni

'...give me a sword, and take me to Orleans'
-Joan of Arc

21/03/2011

Out of doubt
Out of dark
To the day's rising
I came singing in the sun
Sword unsheathing
To hope's end I rode
And to heart's breaking
Now for wrath, for ruin
And a Red Dawn!

Tolkein

Musings II

Think of me as I am;
Let nothing extenuate,
Of one who loved,
Not too wisely,
But too well,
For never was there,
A story of more woe,
Than that of Othello
And his Desdimono.'
- Act 1, Scene 1,
Othello.

'In sooth; I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me, you say it wearies you. But how I found it, caught it, or came by it, what stuff 'tis made of; whereof 'tis born, I am to learn. And such a wantwit sadness makes of me, that I am much ado to know myself.'
- Act I, Scene I,
Merchant Of Venice

'To be or not to be, that is the question...To die; To sleep; No more; And by sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to...to sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub, for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil.'
- Act III, Scene I

I cannot study.

I want to, I really do.

On Being A Hypocrite

Not to mention
There isn't much to mention
I must now say
There is nothing much to say
And reiterate my points
In a matter-of-fact way
Perfunctory philosophy:
Words for sale
On blogs and tongues
The common tale
Musings about
Love, god, thought and belief
Only love really;
Of struggle and relief
And the claim of truth
In the many stories
Enforced and uncouth

The lightness of words
The songs of birds
The beggars' cry
The lovers' sigh
The fortitude of knights
The darkness of nights
The honesty of fears
The truth about tears
The coming of revolutions
The doctors' prescriptions
The quality of things
The lord of the rings
Musings over things
The addictiveness of tea
The depth of the sea
Touch my heart
And fail to convince me
Of themselves
and of me

This is my truth
As I'd like it to fit
My dissartetion
On being a hypocrite


Rishi Razdan

Musings 1

Can I pride myself on loyalty?
Or will I berate myself for being a conformist?
Will I ever cross a fault-line in the very many years of my existence?
Will I even remember this question?

Blackberry

Kind friend
you exhaust me
with this phone
which is neither a fruit
nor a phone
it lies of its color
and its kind
it speaks to you only
and whispers deviousness
into your eyes
and occupies you
from me
and pings
like a bee

Forget this lovely mistress
she is only your keep
for once leave it aside
and look at me

Poetry in Motion

Milleniums have passed between moments
the warm hug that stayed our bodies
the morning vent
the bitterness thereafter
the rift therein;
all precede
the reconcilliation to come

All apologies are none
our scathes and jabs
sweltering as the summer
and pelting like the rain
all as we lay
we are all seasons
in a day.

Tell me what good is

Saying that you're free

In a dark and storming sea?

Poetry in Motion

The burden of your beauty

On my shoulders

Meek as glass

The sharp shards

And minuscule particles

From when it last broke

Are still somewhere

And somewhere is

Where we are

Between dawn and day

And without the moonlight

Guided by nothing

But wind and tide

The infallible sea

Is a little small

For the continuum

Of what we feel

Between dawn and day

With either way to drift

It is too dark for the night

And too bright for the sun

You are of course,

Poetry, in motion.

Love altogether, as an emotion, has a negative basis. It is based on possession, sacrifice and bondage (see: commitment). It is so easy to substitute it with any of these three. To forget love, absorbed in an iron grasp, self righteousness or needless worship, is but natural. The corny Hindi songs about love being like a dangerous poison or alcohol (depending on the quality of your translation/translator), were not altogether wrong. It's hard to dodge a blackhole-ish continuum of jealousy, care, sex, apathy, commitment, romanticism, friendship and every other set of antithetical values in the world. As Prince Charles famously completed Princess Diana's answer to whether they were in love:

Journalist: So, are you in love? (or something like that)

Princess Diana: Yes

Prince Charles: (aside, caught on the mike) Whatever that means.

Ps. She died.

Woma(e)n

Honesty is easy. Honesty, with the full and complete knowledge of what people want to hear, is difficult.

'The Rose is a Rose,

And was always a Rose,

But now the theory goes,

That the apple's a rose,

And the pear is, and so's

the plum I suppose,

Dear only knows,

What will next prove a Rose'

You of course are a Rose,

And may still stay a Rose,

If in the throes

Of vindictive prose

You retain that scent

That really shows

What really makes a rose

And unless I am blind

I do see a Rose

With thorns a-plenty

And a bud that froze

But for my the sake of my lows

Shed this winter ghost

And remain

A rose

Everyone around me is so pretentious that I would rather be a hypocrite.

Bookmark

I move today. I look forward to it. Things come my way. Choices *puke* await.

Ps. Apoorva Shankar must stop singing 'love the way you lie'. Ergo, I have to stop humming it.

Dear Old Lady

Dear Old Lady,

I received a call from you today. It felt nice. Inspite of the niceties. You have so much strength. I am terrified of you. I am even more terrified of what I did and how little I can do to un-do it. I want to write but it seems like a mockery of the situation. Please call back.

Soon.

Love,

Rishi.

Dinner

Trust diligently self righteous half baked, ill-constructed, forcefully presented, freely passed, crudely critiqued and imitated thoughts to put me off dinner.

The only individuality allowed in the existence of a house maid is that of a few idiosyncrasies in an overbearing servitude. Nothing more, nothing less.

Tolerating incitations and coarse tones is respect.

I'm full I think.

On the shores

"This is fucking epic dude", he said. "I've got you, the fucking beach, the fucking lights, I'm tripping on fucking New Years' with my best fucking friend", looking straight at me, and then flashed a smile that was too big for even his gigantic face. I put an arm around his shoulder and from the far South end of the conglomeration of the beautiful coast of Goa we looked North up till the last light. A beautiful semi-circle glazed with a rich dollop of lights at at least fifteen different spots. Once you looked inside these little private fests, they were pitch dark. It was the most scintillating compound of light and dark in my brain and on the shores. Over 10,000 people conjoined in these few hours to bring in a year to be forgotten, much like the others, in dateless mentions. A great celeberation of the redundancy of what has passed and an empty hope that the future will be better. Most of all the feeling that the night has brought some sort of accomplishment with the wind and the substances. Something that did not up till then exist.

But it did.

I look at him, he looks at me. We smile. "I feel like I've thrown this motherfucking party! It's my party!", what I said to him, you said to me. The world comes another circle. A year ends, a feeling ends, a role ends, a phase ends, an idea ends and I hug you. I suddenly know what each one of them means to me.

Poetry in Motion

I implore you.

With all my honesty.

Love Always,

Rishi.