Arunoday Singh

I came across these fragments and unfinished pieces.  The notebooks themselves are falling apart with age and neglect.  Thought this would be a good place to preserve and clean them up.

***

Lonelier than the people I see

Feeding pigeons in the sun

Whistling to the squirrels

Begging them to come.

I sit in a crumbling tower of dreams,

Behind a forever-locked gate.

Staring at the empty pages

Smoking the cigarettes I hate.

Trying hard to capture a moment

Feeling unworthy every time.

I look into mirrors to remember my face

Reading words that can never be mine.

Who am I pretending to be today?

A poet, an actor, a wandering flame

Trapped in a stillness of spirit

Looking for something to blame

Searching for my corner of Beautiful

Somewhere to hide the love I keep.

To greet the dawn with a smile

And dive a thousand kisses deep.

***

You remain hidden from me,

Like all the hopes

We dare not breathe.

Sometimes I catch your scent

Lingering.  A wisp of magic

In a mundane day.

I see a smile I recognize

On an unfamiliar face.

I search through Coltrane

To understand the meaning

Hidden just beyond the words

I don’t quite understand.

All these words…

What happened to my voice?

I can’t force a picture to smile

Or a glass of wine to be truthful.

We are all locked within

Parodies of ourselves.

Searching not for a way out,

But to trap another within.

***

Where do your dreams take you

Love?

Into the meadows we were banished from.

Into the songs the Seraphim hum.

Feathers on the summer wind,

Where do your dreams take you

Love?

Do you see my face, there

just beyond the Light?

Where all the things you wish for dwell.

Waves of hope against the darkness swell.

Do you see my face there

Love?

I cannot make the words beautiful.

I cannot make them sing the songs I hear.

You are the beauty and the song

The flame of my hearth.

You are my burning bush,

my desert cave.

My brimming cup of nectar.

You are my final goddess

My last loss of faith.

There are silences within us

We, who reflect only moonlight.

Silences they cannot drown

Or wash with television,

Silences that never whisper

Music that never stops.

I do not remember

My dreams.

I search the faces,

For the bright ones,

With eyes like drops of nectar.

We gather the sheets, and

Whisper “Good night,”

to empty beds.

Linger with the shattered

Things, and whimpered dreams.

Away from the silence.

This begins with guarded smiles

Safe distances, excuses wrapped

In Hookah smoke and Turkish coffee,

And two perfect cups of lemonade

Wearing matching smiles.

Words dancing to her voice.

Fingers weaving around each other

Like dragonflies in the sun

I take her eyes in mine

And forget to look away.

A song sung by this woman of quiet,

Distant places, and desert suns.

And hair that curls and flows

Like the pen of an Arabian poet.

A woman deeper than all of this,

A sound vanishing beyond itself

She sprinkles me across her sky.

Jasmine dreams in a secret garden.
She gives me the words
I told my ears to forget.

A prayer calling its priest,

As I take her in my arms,

And welcome her home.

I decided to finally stop procrastinating and go see Michael Jackson’s “This is It” tonight.

Moment of silence…………………………………………………………………

Words cannot begin to describe the nostalgia, the euphoria, the overwhelming shaking of the booty, and the heartbreak I felt whilst watching.  I have loved that man’s music ever since the first day I heard “Thriller” playing, in July 1991.  In Swedish House Dormitory at Kodaikanal International School.  I was all of seven and a half years old, and I had told my parents the year before that I wanted to go away to boarding school.  I have no idea what had gotten into me to leave my comfortable home and my doting parents and move to the other end of the bloody country, up a mountain, and into a boarding school.

I remember the green stucco walls of the dorm.  I remember the alien sounds coming out of the Tamil maids as they cajoled, pleaded, screamed, and jovially pushed all of us into the cafeteria for dinner.  I remember the white tiles on the floor that smelled like spilled spaghetti sauce and Coca-Cola spills.  I remember the heady aromas wafting out of the kitchen which wasn’t really separated from the cafeteria by anything except one of those saloon doors that they show in the old Western films.  And every  now and then, Mary, the chef’s wife would step through like Clint Eastwood and thump unidentifiable stuff into the bowls in front of us.

I remember that first dinner, sitting at a table alone, watching everyone so comfortable with each other and themselves.  I tried to understand all the jokes, decipher the stories being told and the references they used.  I knew nothing, and noone.  I had grown up on a pretty secluded farm, with my only contact with kids my age at the local public school where we all had worn uniforms and not really talked to each other.

That’s when I heard the music.  Michael Jackson playing on the most beat up tape recorder I had ever seen.  But this kid called Dhanus Nair, who would later become my room-mate and my friend, put it on and did an impromptu jig in the middle of the cafeteria.  Our dorm parent, Mrs. Lazarus, a tall statuesque, Amazon of a woman (who later become as close to me as my own mother, through my time in that dorm, and later, as I moved on, grew up and grew out) come storming through the doors like one of the ghouls breaking down the door in the video.  But I, sitting alone in the corner, was the only one who noticed her smile when she turned away again to walk out after chastising Dhanus.

That smile was the first moment I felt the weight and the fear lift off my chest.  And I’ve always associated that feeling with Michael Jackson’s music.  It’s one of those strange psychological associations that happens.  Doesn’t have to be logical, doesn’t even have to matter to anyone else.

Till this day, all I have to do, to feel like a kid with an entire universe of adventure ahead of him, is to play Michael Jackson.

You were an angel Michael.  An angel we raised up then tore down and threw away.  How we wailed when you died…how we beat our chests.  But what we cried for wasn’t that you were gone, we cried that we had ever known a moment of doubt about you.  That the world made us stop loving you as much, even for a little while.

Forgive us. 

And thank you.

For the music, for that feeling, for the love.

You were it.

Have fun teaching the angels how to Moonwalk.