"What gifts ..

Dear me. What do I make of this poem? By these standards, it's no wonder I am still single. Again, no idea when this was written, although I like to think it was around 1990-91, which would mean I had written it for a certain man-who-shall-remain-nameless, the only one I can think of who came close to loving me this way.

What gifts do lovers exchange?

Bodies entwine
but grow shapeless and old.
Lovers exchange that which never goes cold.

Roses of red
lose their scent, fade and dry.
Lovers exchange that which never should die.

Champagne and song
thrill the heart, then are gone.
Lovers exchange that which always lives on.

Jewels and gold
can cost more than they mean.
Lovers exchange that which means more, unseen.

These objects we give
on this path we are set
are treasured, and hoped for, and valued, and yet

lovers exchange
that which sets them apart.
Lovers exchange that which comes from the heart.

"Caress

I was going to say something cynical about getting back to the mushy stuff .. but I'll let it pass on this. I wrote this for Bops, of course, and I think I entered it in a poetry competition at Christ College's Spring Fest that year. Did not win, evidently .. and soon after I lost Bops too .. was whisked away from Bangalore in an attempt by my desperate parents to save me from that terrible Coorgi boy who had ruined my life (and by a strange coincidence, his equally desperate parents were at the very same time hugely relieved to see the departure of that terrible Muslim girl who had ruined their son's life). After writing this, I don't think I wrote any poems for a long time.

Caress.

Do falling stars grant wishes?
Do twilight dreams come true?
My nightmares turn to golden dust
with a soft caress from you.

You give my dawns their hope,
Carried on fresh breeze.
You give my afternoons theirlanguid warmth.
You bring my nights their peace.

One look, one word, one gentle touch
And all my dreams come true
I want to live forever
If forever means with you.

(for Bops Feb/Mar? 1987. Spring Fest).

I can't be cynical about this one. It's too sweet and it brings up too much sadness, and although I can no longer connect to those feelings, it touches me that I once was the person who said this and meant it, and that gives me a sense of loss .. not so much for him, but for that Me that I no longer am.

"The mirror's shattered ...

Here's another embarrassing one - also scratched out with the words "iddhu yena" scribbled underneath! (That's Kannada or perhaps Tamil, I'm not sure, for what amounts to "what the hell is this crap?"

I have realised that at this point, I have moved on from tortured adolescence into not-much-more-mature tortured adulthood. I was 21 when I wrote this. Oh dear. I mean, iddhu yena.

The mirror's shattered.
The spell's broken.
The unspeakable has been spoken.
No use for charms and amulets now.
Where have the gentle caresses
And soft whispers gone?
Is everything over?
And am I really and truly alone?
I am so very lost
Without you.

(Written on 29/1/1987, 4.10 p.m. Presumably after some wrenched-apart-from-Bops time of my life. I wonder why I always insist on writing the exact time I finish a poem?)

"I'm an orphaned child ...

This poem I found scratched through rather viciously with with the words, "Yuk not worth reading!" scrawled underneath. But I'm being brave enough to post all my poems, even the ones that bare soul and secrets, so I shouldn't be scared of adding this. So here it is. I don't actually remember what it's about, but I'm assuming that I must have had a fight with Bops, or perhaps broken things off with him in an attempt to get off smack. Or perhaps he just went away to Coorg and I missed him. Who knows. Maybe the poem wasn't written for him at all. Maybe I was turkeying and wrote this to smack?

I'm an orphaned child,
A widow.
A bottle floating endlessly in the sea.
I'm the last lost dinosaur
Crying and calling for no one to hear.
I'm the final dry leaf
That falls from the withered limbsof a tree
Come back to me
I don't want to be free.

(Written on 29/1/1987. 4.20 pm.)

"Do You Believe"

Reading these poems today, I feel almost irritated at myself. This next one, I want to go back in time and shake myself by the shoulders and tell me that I needed to ask such questions to myself, not somebody else. This is another poem for Bops, written in that worst year of my life. Perhaps I'm too hard on myself. Perhaps I DID write it for myself, but never knew.

Do you believe in miracles?
Do kisses waken sleeping beauties?
Do falling stars grant your wishes?
Does God answer prayers?
I don't know.
I believe in you.
And I wish you did too.

Written in September 1986, for Bops

"Without you ...

Dear me. In the midst of all this chemical torment, I somehow managed to be in love. I do remember that Bops and I once talked about (well, argued about) how our love was really a threesome - it was not just him and me, it was him, me and smack. And yes, it really was. With both of us feeling resentful and jealous when the other would make smack a priority over us. All quite dark and depressing, but fortunately memory is a hazy thing. Which might explain why this poem is so over the top. Oh well. Teenage love. My "first". I'm far too cynical about "love" now, but this is what I made of it back then. Of course, now I see it as immature and exceedingly emotionally unhealthy, and anything BUT love. Obsession, maybe. Infatuation, for sure. But I don't think this poem describes true love. Today this poem just shows me how empty I was inside, if it took another person to bring these things to life for me.

Without you life is not life
You give my sunsets their glow
You give my stars their sparkle
You give my afternoons their lazy warmth
My twilights their tender chill
You give my dawns their hope,
carried on fresh breeze
You give my nights their passion and dreams
You give my life its meaning
You give me a reason to live.

Written in September 1986

"Fly away, my soul ...

Dear me, dear me ... I meant to do this chronologically but occasionally get it wrong. Here's something I wrote to the same guy a few months earlier. I think it was when he went off to Coorg to try and get off the smack and straighten his life out.

Fly away, my soul
I can't hold you back any longer.
Go and look for the sun.

But if you get tired of searching
come back to the warmth of my arms.
Just let me know when you're coming back
so I can shed my armour.
(Written on October 17, 1985)

What I like about it is the way I expressed feeling exposed and vulnerable without him, having to armour myself in order to survive without him. (And we think this is "love"?!)

A few months later I wrote another version of this poem, by which time I was, like him, badly hooked on smack, and I think I (or perhaps we) had begun to realise that our love affair was a threesome - him, me, smack - and that our being together only pulled us down further.

Fly away, my soul
We can't be one any longer.
It's time we looked for the sun.
And when we've found what we're looking for
come back to the warmth of my arms.
Just let me know when you're coming back,
so I can shed my armour.
(written on 22.3.86)

"Forever pulling down ...

"Dear me!" isn't enough here. It's more like, "Good GRIEF!" I was almost too embarrassed to post this one, but then I thought: maybe there's a lesson in here for someone who surfs by. A lesson about low self-esteem and bad poetry.

Perhaps I should have titled this "Forever pulling down my pants"! Or the more succinct "Doormat". When will we girls ever learn? When do we open our eyes and see the ride for what it is?

Forever pulling down his days,
turning special moments sour,
being there when I'm not wanted,
dragging it out hour by hour.

Something somewhere is going wrong.
Something tells me that it's just me.
Somehow I'm not good enough
and we both end up feeling empty.

We make love and the next second he's dressed,
while I lie there sated but feeling like a whore.
And when he leaves, his kiss is cold,
and he's hurt as I've hurt him so many times before.

He very rarely asks for much,
but the times I've responded are so few to recall.
Yet he still loves me, I wonder why?
I love him but somehow can't give him my all.

I wonder if I'll ever do it right,
when I'll learn to put his feelings before mine,
to give him, without making an effort,
the intoxicating shivers of love's sparkling wine.

(written on Dec 23rd, 1985, at 8:15 pm)