The Butterfly

There is no story behind it.
It is split like a second.
It hinges around itself.
It has no future.
It is pinned down to no past.
It's a pun on the present.
Its a little yellow butterfly.
It has taken these wretched hills
under its wings.
Just a pinch of yellow,
it opens before it closes
and it closes before it opens
where is it?
-- Arun Kolatkar.


The Old Woman

An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along.
She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.
You've seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt.
She won't let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.
You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.
When you hear her say, '
What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?'
You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.
And as you look on,
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.
And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls
With a plate-glass clatter
Around the shatterproof crone
who stands alone
And you are reduced
to so much small change
in her hand

From An Old woman by Arun Kolatkar....who died last night.....

"RELATIONSHIPS ARE JUST PATTRENS IN YOUR HEAD" (Fr. Berkie)
In our brains there is always a representation of what we take in, as in our experience, an event, a thing or a person, makes a psychic representaion in our minds
A trace of object permanance, that we internalize, almost automatically... This is why when there's a break...from something, a change,
ohhh let me just come right out and say it...when we break up, we're going to feel the loss, whether we'd like to admit it or not, the reality i.e. that the oject that's been represented is no longer there... will eventually hit home....
Only time can erase the trace of a missing object from the mind....
that's why the popular cliche...time is the healer...
So go ahead take your time.......

"Sunshine you're bad
I'm mad but I can't remember why.......
Are you sorry that you wasted our time??
Never You Mind...."

apt words, at the apt time
even if I'm borrowing someone else's rhyme
dedicated to you time after time...

I'm happy in my life right now, things just seem to be falling into place....
A new job, which compliments my old one so well....
Being asked to judge that elocution contest at school...
My grades staying up,
My parents proud
My friends full of love....
validation all round
and through all of this
my thoughts didn't turn automatically to you....

But as a certain someone says, every silver lining has a cloud....
just the thing, the closet pessimist was looking for....

Why is my happiness and contentment contingent on them....on him....on you...
Why do I sulk when things are said, or unsaid?
What separates me from feeling fine...when I am separate from you
You exist independent of my thinking and I exist independent of yours...
Why can’t we be together?
And yet see,
We’re not one entity,
And if i know all this
Why is everyone so worried about me??

For you who came last

A stolen look across few tables
I was game and you were able

But with no ball set rolling
The Inertia of your not calling

Scanty memories of a single tryst
I’m struggling with losing interest

So you’re busy, you have no time
But Do I even cross your mind?

Perhaps just a projecting, me
Another psych casualty?

You set this whole deal in motion
Disappointed with your lack of devotion

A crumpled card at my dustbins base
From my list of contacts you’ve been erased

You ask no patience? No second chance?
I ask not to be taken for the granted dance

In Memory of Sigmund Freud

When there are so many we shall have to mourn,

when grief has been made so public, and exposed

to the critique of a whole epoch

the frailty of our conscience and anguish,



of whom shall we speak? For every day they die

among us, those who were doing us some good,

who knew it was never enough but

hoped to improve a little by living.



Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished

to think of our life from whose unruliness

so many plausible young futures

with threats or flattery ask obedience,



but his wish was denied him: he closed his eyes

upon that last picture, common to us all,

of problems like relatives gathered

puzzled and jealous about our dying.



For about him till the very end were still

those he had studied, the fauna of the night,

and shades that still waited to enter

the bright circle of his recognition



turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he

was taken away from his life interest

to go back to the earth in London,

an important Jew who died in exile.



Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment

his practice now, and his dingy clientele

who think they can be cured by killing

and covering the garden with ashes.



They are still alive, but in a world he changed

simply by looking back with no false regrets;

all he did was to remember

like the old and be honest like children.



He wasn't clever at all: he merely told

the unhappy Present to recite the Past

like a poetry lesson till sooner

or later it faltered at the line where



long ago the accusations had begun,

and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,

how rich life had been and how silly,

and was life-forgiven and more humble,



able to approach the Future as a friend

without a wardrobe of excuses, without

a set mask of rectitude or an

embarrassing over-familiar gesture.



No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit

in his technique of unsettlement foresaw

the fall of princes, the collapse of

their lucrative patterns of frustration:



if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life

would become impossible, the monolith

of State be broken and prevented

the co-operation of avengers.



Of course they called on God, but he went his way

down among the lost people like Dante, down

to the stinking fosse where the injured

lead the ugly life of the rejected,



and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,

deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,

our dishonest mood of denial,

the concupiscence of the oppressor.



If some traces of the autocratic pose,

the paternal strictness he distrusted, still

clung to his utterance and features,

it was a protective coloration



for one who'd lived among enemies so long:

if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,

to us he is no more a person

now but a whole climate of opinion



under whom we conduct our different lives:

Like weather he can only hinder or help,

the proud can still be proud but find it

a little harder, the tyrant tries to



make do with him but doesn't care for him much:

he quietly surrounds all our habits of growth

and extends, till the tired in even

the remotest miserable duchy



have felt the change in their bones and are cheered

till the child, unlucky in his little State,

some hearth where freedom is excluded,

a hive whose honey is fear and worry,



feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape,

while, as they lie in the grass of our neglect,

so many long-forgotten objects

revealed by his undiscouraged shining



are returned to us and made precious again;

games we had thought we must drop as we grew up,

little noises we dared not laugh at,

faces we made when no one was looking.



But he wishes us more than this. To be free

is often to be lonely. He would unite

the unequal moieties fractured

by our own well-meaning sense of justice,



would restore to the larger the wit and will

the smaller possesses but can only use

for arid disputes, would give back to

the son the mother's richness of feeling:



but he would have us remember most of all

to be enthusiastic over the night,

not only for the sense of wonder

it alone has to offer, but also



because it needs our love. With large sad eyes

its delectable creatures look up and beg

us dumbly to ask them to follow:

they are exiles who long for the future



that lives in our power, they too would rejoice

if allowed to serve enlightenment like him,

even to bear our cry of 'Judas',

as he did and all must bear who serve it.



One rational voice is dumb. Over his grave

the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:

sad is Eros, builder of cities,

and weeping anarchic Aphrodite.