How To Make Love Stay...

Who knows how to make love stay?

1. Tell love you are going to Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if loves stays, it can have half. It will stay.

 2. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a moustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

 3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning. ― Tom Robbins

I love this guy! :)

Postcards...

Like 70% Cocoa...

I love you

like dipping bread into salt and eating

Like waking up at night with high fever

and drinking water, with the tap in my mouth

Like unwrapping the heavy box from the postman

with no clue what it is

fluttering, happy, doubtful

I love you

like flying over the sea in a plane for the first time

Like something moves inside me

when it gets dark softly in Istanbul

I love you

Like thanking God that we live.

-Nazim Hikmet

The Tucked Away Home...

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Your Mother...

I loved this story: Your Mother

*****
Your mother hated being photographed. She had romantic notions of how perfect her body looked at certain angles and to have them crushed by the awkward reality of a still life was simply unbearable. So I learned to capture moments using words and silences.

On this day, she sat perched on the first floor balcony’s platformed railing. Our room overlooked the magnificent Bay of Bengal – swollen & angry. We’d mistimed our vacation and landed up at Chinnakalpet in the middle of the Tamil Nadu monsoon. Swimming in the choppy sea was out of the question & even when it wasn’t raining, the weather was spectacularly wild. Earlier in the afternoon I’d run my hands through her hair and lightly kissed her neck as we looked at the stunning view afforded us by the balcony. When I’d asked her if she wanted to walk along the beach with me, she’d pushed me out of the room – “We don’t have to do everything together, do we?” And she was right. I took off with my camera.

With every step, my feet sank deeper into the golden sand. The effort it took to take the next step reminded me of how we were both getting older and how my body was beginning to express its tiredness. We had tried, your mother & I, to have children over the past two years but two miscarriages later she decided we needed to stop. “I have run out of tears, Arun,” she said. Instead, we decided to get into our tiny car and head off anywhere the wind would take us (her words, not mine).

The wind had led me here and if I wasn’t careful, it would sweep me further into the Bay. “Hold on to your hat, man!” cried a man coming at me from the opposite side. Considering he was the one wearing the hat and not me, I found him amusing.
“Nice weather we’re having, aren’t we?” I joked.
“Absolute perfection. I hope you’re bracing yourself for Cyclone Leela!”
“What? No! I mean, I haven’t even heard about it. My wife & I here on vacation.”
“Vacation?!! That’s rich, dear chap! I’d turn my ship right round and head back for shore. Nigel Forman, by the way.”
“Arun Desai.”
“Pleasure to bump into you, Arun. You will not be soon forgotten. Good bye & good tidings!”

And off he went, striding strongly, pushing back against the strong winds. I stood and watched the strange old man as he climbed the slippery rocks leading into the ocean. When he reached the farthest rock he opened his arms out wide, embracing the elements: the violent spray of the sea, the full force of the wind & the unending sky before him. You might say he had a few screws loose but in that moment I envied him his freedom.

I walked further, clicking photographs along the way. Perfect little seashells, fishing boats making their way back to the beach and the odd little picture that our resort’s quaint cottages made on that stormy evening. I began to miss your mother and so I turned back.

I took the cobbled stone path to our room. Along the way, I came upon the family that was staying across the hall from us. They were out on the lawn taking advantage of the few rainless hours. Two little girls played in the dirt as their parents relaxed over a cup of coffee. The younger of the two was an independent spirit. Barely 3 or 4, she wandered off repeatedly on her own, digging holes in the ground en route. Her mother would call out for her at regular intervals, but she wouldn’t listen. She would carry on on her quest; now a flower to be dissected, now a butterfly to be chased. And then there was the matter of jumping into that puddle. Eventually, the mother caught up with her little imp and hoisted her over the shoulder. Both mother & daughter, laughing, disappeared into the bushes and then out of sight.

I don’t know what made me do it, but I looked up at that very instant and caught your mother looking right at me. There she was, seated cross-legged on our balcony’s platformed railing. She had wrapped a dupatta around herself, one end of which was flying unrestrained in the wind like her uncombed hair. She had never looked more beautiful. I instinctively lifted my camera to capture her breathtaking image. But in the very next instant, I changed my mind and there I was, running up the stairs as quickly as I could. The door was open, I rushed right through it and scooped her up in my embrace. We held each other so tight that not even the cyclonic winds churning up outside could have torn us apart.
The next morning, we admitted defeat in the face of Cylcone Leela, packed our backs and returned home. Not long after that your mother announced that she was pregnant with you.

From, Aquatic Static. Do visit the blog, one of my favourites.

*****
Stories like these make it so hard to come back to the real life, no? Sigh.

Someone's Preferred Ending...

The things about you I appreciate may seem indelicate:

I’d like to find you in the shower

And chase the soap for half an hour.

I’d like to have you in my power and see you eyes dilate.

I’d like to have your back to scour

And other parts to lubricate.

Sometimes I feel it is my fate

To chase you screaming up a tower or make you cower

By asking you to differentiate Nietzsche from Schopenhauer.

I’d like to successfully guess your weight and win you at a fte.

I’d like to offer you a flower.

I like the hair upon your shoulders,

Falling like water over boulders.

I like the shoulders, too: they are essential.

Your collar-bones have great potential

(I’d like all your particulars in folders marked Confidential).

I like your cheeks, I like your nose,

I like the way your lips disclose

The neat arrangement of your teeth

(Half above and half beneath) in rows.

I like your eyes, I like their fringes.

The way they focus on me gives me twinges.

Your upper arms drive me berserk.

I like the way your elbows work, on hinges.

I like your wrists, I like your glands,

I like the fingers on your hands.

I’d like to teach them how to count,

And certain things we might exchange,

Something familiar for something strange.

I’d like to give you just the right amount and get some change.

I like it when you tilt your cheek up.

I like the way you nod and hold a teacup. I like your legs when you unwind

them.

Even in trousers I don’t mind them.

I like each softly-moulded kneecap.

I like the little crease behind them.

I’d always know, without a recap, where to find them.

I like the sculpture of your ears.

I like the way your profile disappears

Whenever you decide to turn and face me.

I’d like to cross two hemispheres and have you chase me.

I’d like to smuggle you across frontiers

Or sail with you at night into Tangiers.

I’d like you to embrace me.

I’d like to see you ironing your skirt and cancelling other dates.

I’d like to button up your shirt.

I like the way your chest inflates.

I’d like to soothe you when you’re hurt

Or frightened senseless by invertebrates.

I’d like you even if you were malign

And had a yen for sudden homicide.

I’d let you put insecticide into my wine.

I’d even like you if you were the Bride of Frankenstein

Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian’s Jekyll and Hyde.

I’d even like you as my Julian of Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan

How melodramatic

If you were something muttering in attics

Like Mrs Rochester or a student of boolean mathematics.

You are the end of self-abuse.

You are the eternal feminine.

I’d like to find a good excuse

To call on you and find you in.

I’d like to put my hand beneath your chin. And see you grin.

I’d like to taste your Charlotte Russe,

I’d like to feel my lips upon your skin,

I’d like to make you reproduce.

I’d like you in my confidence.

I’d like to be your second look.

I’d like to let you try the French Defence and mate you with my rook.

I’d like to be your preference and hence

I’d like to be around when you unhook.

I’d like to be your only audience,

The final name in your appointment book, your future tense.

-John Fuller

Arms...

And he looked like that hour of the early morn, and the promise of more.

If Only We Were Human...

This species is a dear, hateful, sweet, barbaric, tender, vile, intelligent, confused, virtuous, evil, thoughtful, perverted, generous, greedy species. In short, great entertainment. 

As I said before, humans are the only species that systematically tortures and murders its own for pleasure and personal gain. In fact, we are the only species that systematically tortures and murders its own, period. 

We are serial killers. All our poems and symphonies and oils on canvas will never change that. Man's noble aspect is the abberation.

Those who argue that art and philosophy are proof of human worth neglect to mention that, in the scheme we have devised, artists and philosophers are completely powerless and largely without prestige. Art, music and philosophy are merely poignant examples of what we might have been had not the high priests and traders gotten hold of us. 

Most animals, when fighting one of their own, will show aggressive behavior, but very little hostility or intention to harm. And when the outcome of the struggle is inevitable, the losing animal will signal its defeat by exposing its most vunerable part to the victor, affording it the opportunity to finish the kill. The victor then walks away without inflicting further harm. These are the creatures we feel superior to. - George Carlin

A Thousand Kisses Deep...

Don't matter if the road is long

Don't matter if it's steep

Don't matter if the moon is gone

And the darkness is complete

Don't matter if we lose our way

It's written that we'll meet

At least, that's what I heard you say

A thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened

Like a lily to the heat

You see, I'm just another snowman

Standing in the rain and sleet

Who loved you with his frozen love

His second hand physique

With all he is and all he was

A thousand kisses deep

I know you had to lie to me

I know you had to cheat

You learned it on your father's knee

And at your mother's feet

But did you have to fight your way

Across the burning street

When all our vital interests lay

A thousand kisses deep

I'm turning tricks

I'm getting fixed

I'm back on boogie street

I'd like to quit the business

But I'm in it, so to speak

The thought of you is peaceful

And the file on you complete

Except what I forgot to do

A thousand kisses deep

Don't matter if you're rich and strong

Don't matter if you're weak

Don't matter if you write a song

The nightingales repeat

Don't matter if it's nine to five

Or timeless and unique

You ditch your life to stay alive

A thousand kisses deep

The ponies run

The girls are young

The odds are there to beat

You win a while, and then it's done

Your little winning streak

And summon now to deal with your invincible defeat

You live your life as if it's real

A thousand kisses deep

I hear their voices in the wine

That sometimes did me seek

The band is playing Auld Lang Syne

But the heart will not retreat

There's no forsaking what you love

No existential leap

As witnessed here in time and blood

A thousand kisses deep

- Leonard Cohen

Broken Glass And Light...

Ask not "when will I find love?". Ask, instead, "when will I find someone who forgives me?" --Via Twitter

I think that's all you need to know about love. Ever.

Curl Under My Hairy Toes...

I know there is a heart inside me.

This is a love poem I sent to Hallmark. I said Fill me

with your papered mush. I was so excited to talk

to you, I put on the wrong lips. I said My other lips

mean business. I said Did you see the sky get angry

this morning? I was trying to impress you

with my ability to look up. I said Polka Dots, get off

the floor when you sneeze. I never want you to catch

a cold. There is a snow globe at the end

of this poem. Inside the snow globe: fake snow,

my skin I have rolled up for you, hello.

-Gregory Sherl

A World Made Of Words...

I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they got reduced to one, to who I am. And that's who I am. --The Weather Man

Just Have Something In There...

“I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don’t already know, and make me laugh. I don’t care what you look like, just turn me on. And if you can do that, I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I will nibble your mukluks with my own teeth. I will do your windows. I will care about your feelings. Just have something in there.” - Henry Rollins

Where Did That Word Disappear?

Go on, I dare you. I can see you looking at me the way you are, just like that. What are you going to do with it then? Yes I’m challenging you; look at me standing here, I’m not budging, it’s your move. I’m an elven Liv Tyler steeling against a wraith—if you want me, you can come and claim me. I’m not even packing Hobbit over here, I’m just waiting casually for you to cross whatever obstacle you see in your path. See, I’m tired of touching your thigh just this way, or placing my hand over yours just so; I want you to romance me.

Now you know I’m not one for gender stereotypes, I’ve asked guys out in the past and I’ll do it again. I’ve paid for their drinks and their dinners and I don’t care. I’ve changed their light globes. I’ve been strong for them when they’ve been emotional. I don’t like it when people say women are so-and-so or men are so-and-so, but goddamn it I am tired of this realism. I don’t want to be politically correct any more, I just want you to romance me. I am empowered, educated, and aware, and now, just for a moment, I want to be the princess you think is worth slaying dragons over.

I want you, once you’re done awkwardly avoiding catching my eye, once you’re done pretending you don’t notice me, once you’re done with insecurely waiting for me to make the first move, to ask me out. I don’t want you to text me or email me. I want you to say it to my face. I want you say it in a moment that will catch me completely off guard, and I want you to stumble over your words and I want you to blush, and I want to do the exact same as I accept.

Or you could just skip all the formalities and just kiss me. When we’re laughing the way we do, you should just kiss me. It doesn’t need to be in the rain or with fireworks exploding in the background. It can be at the bar or in a crowded street or anywhere, I don’t care—just kiss me you fool. And let’s both be gleefully embarrassed afterwards and hold hands in silence for a moment while we both digest the euphoria of our first kiss.

I want you to not let anything stand in your way. I want you to come for me, to sweep me off my feet with a simple look. I want you to want me in this grand, clichéd way, but without doing any of those grand cliché things. We can just watch a movie and drink some wine, as long as you let me snuggle into your side while we do it. And then, because you listen to me when we’re talking and you’re getting to know me so well, I want you to let me have the last slice of pizza, or the last bite of cake (but I’ll insist that we share it anyway, because I’ll know you are romancing me).

You should be impulsive when you’re romancing me. You shouldn’t wait the requisite 3 days to call or text me, you should just do it when it hits you. When your desire for me, to see me, to smell me, to hear my voice is so compelling there’s nothing else for you to do. I want you to be constantly thinking about me, and to do innocuous little things that to me, are loaded with meaning because they reflect the ways in which you are learning me. I want you to be reckless and passionate and I want you to let me be reckless and passionate too. I want you to disengage your baggage for me, and I want you to romance me like you’ve never romanced before.

And when you’re romancing me, I want you to challenge me and argue with me about my opinions. I want you to romance me in this dangerous haphazard way which screams of imperfection—which makes everything all the more romantic, because it’s so wildly flawed, and present and LOUD. I want you to look at me like the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen when I’m at my worst, and I want you to embrace all the sides of me as you get to know them, as part of some ineffable creature you can’t untangle. I want you to romance me because when you think about it, you really can’t see any other way.

From, Thought Catalog.

Tea...

Weekend Meditation by Dana Velden (from the Kitchn)

Making a cup of tea, a proper cup involving loose Assam and a strainer and gently warmed milk, is a start. So you go to the kitchen and put the kettle on and pull down the old white pot with the bright flower decal on one side. You start to feel the comfort of your task, the purpose of it filling up some of the empty space that sadness has carved into your heart. There's a reason for ritual, you discover, as you pour in a little hot water to warm the pot and then encircle it with your chilled hands: the repetition, the body memory, the soothing rhythm of things happening in a certain order and with intention. 

The tea is hot and milky and for a while it is enough. But soon you realize that even though what you are experiencing is sadness and loss, there is also a request, a whisper, for celebration. A tiny acknowledgment that life and appetite must ultimately prevail. So you go to the pantry and find a crinkly package of butter cookies, just three little star-shaped ones with red candy centers, and a clementine. And a pretty plate to put them on because the request for beauty is somehow penetrating, sunbeam-like, the fog of sadness. 

The clementine is, of course, a little too cheery but you gamely dig your thumb into the peel for you know that this is your responsibility now, to turn towards the brightness. The clementine answers you with a gruff, almost rude, spray of juice, sticky and fragrant. Suddenly you find yourself surrendering to it, to this little orange dictator that demands your attention and appreciation. And of course it is sweet and fills your mouth with joy. 

The tea cools, and the clementine detritus curls on the table before you like the skin that a dragon would shed. You listen to the sounds of home, the tick of the clock, the refrigerator's hum. A few random and practical thoughts pop into your awareness: are there enough quarters for the laundry, will the package make it to Milwaukee on time, do hummingbirds migrate? 

Slowly life gathers around you, urging you to get up from the table and start back into the busy doings of the day. You resist, lingering in the sorrow for a while longer, for that's where you last saw your old friend, the one whose passing has brought on this little one person tea party. Eventually you realize that sorrow isn't done with you yet, that it will be your companion for a while longer. So you rise from the table to sweep up the dragon's skin and wash up the dishes, a clutch of tears caught in the back of your throat.

But it's OK, it's alright. You're human and you're built for this.

HT: Divya :)

Stuffed Owl...

I wanted you to be the first to know - Harper & Row

has agreed to publish my collected letters to you.

The tentative title is Exorcist in the Gym of Futility.

Unfortunately I never mailed the best one,

which certainly was one of a kind.

A mutual friend told me that when I quit drinking,

I surrendered my identity in your eyes.

Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny,

the way monogamy is funny, the way

someone falling down in the street is funny.

I entered a revolving door and emerged

as a human being. When you think of me

is my face electronically blurred?

I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest

satellite dish in the universe, your smile

as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.

Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.

I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash,

how I once held the soft audience of your hand.

I've been ignored by prettier women than you,

but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence

so far, without spilling a drop.

Jeffrey McDaniel

LoveSong...

He loved her and she loved him

His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to

He had no other appetite

She bit him she gnawed him she sucked

She wanted him complete inside her

Safe and sure forever and ever

Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away

Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows

He gripped her hard so that life

Should not drag her from that moment

He wanted all future to cease

He wanted to topple with his arms round her

Off that moment's brink and into nothing

Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press

To print him into her bones

His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace

Where the real world would never come

Her smiles were spider bites

So he would lie still till she felt hungry

His words were occupying armies

Her laughs were an assassin's attempts

His looks were bullets daggers of revenge

His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets

His whispers were whips and jackboots

Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing

His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway

Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks

And their deep cries crawled over the floors

Like an animal dragging a great trap

His promises were the surgeon's gag

Her promises took the top off his skull

She would get a brooch made of it

His vows pulled out all her sinews

He showed her how to make a love-knot

Her vows put his eyes in formalin

At the back of her secret drawer

Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves

Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs

In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

-Ted Hughes

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines...

This ruined my day.

Sigh. That delicate delicious ache when you love someone.

(Sometimes I feel I must have been a man in my previous life and I must have loved a woman with all my heart and maybe, I still love her, in this life.)

I could weep for days today. My soul is not satisfied.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered

and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.

Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.

Promises...

From, Thought Catalog:

During the crystalline nights of winter, summer held an almost indecent promise. The kind of promise composed of hands resting lightly on bare shoulders, sliding off a thin slip of a strap from a cotton dress. A time of lying lazily in the grass hoping for a slight breeze to skim your face, of kisses in the kind of cold bars that had dark corners with wooden tables, and of picnics near-forgotten in a whiskey lemonade drenched haze. Afternoons of hazardously licking melting ice cream cones while riding bikes across bridges and nights of telling secrets on roof tops still steaming from the hot sun.

It was the kind of promise that keeps you sane, hopeful, and young.

But instead, summer became sad summer. The kind of a season where the thick, heavy air weighs you down—not with the heat from a storm about to break—but with the mistakes you’ve made, with harshly lingering regret. A time that feels full of significance you can’t come back from, of adulthood no longer pending but here. Gone is that childish wonder. Moments of almost incomprehensible glee find you fleetingly and slip quickly through your grasping fingers, disappearing.

Summer became a broken promise.

Now you sit, hours after midnight, chasing tumblers of whiskey with more whiskey, spinning sentences full of meaningful adjectives with your favorite companion in hyperbole. Each of you half in the moment, half inside your heads, claiming—wondering—if autumn turned to winter will hold a different promise you can reach for. If somehow once you stop running barefoot in the grass, unable to capture that same enthusiastic momentum you once had, you’ll be able to find some sense of peace in where you’ve stopped. That somehow months from now, your previous heartaches will be something contained only in memory instead of your everyday breath, constantly reminding you that your recovery time is no longer as fast.

But even to you that promise holds false.

You know winter holds gray days that take you to dark places, brief bits of laughter book-ended by melancholy. That you’ll find yourself silent, listening to the strains of the National on repeat, exile, vilify, wishing it was still summer because even if your heart was heavy, you felt light. That winter has stolen all the sunshine you once twirled beneath. And that snow will fall on your darkest day, burying you. But staring at that white perfection free of foot prints, you’ll smile. You’ll remember one magical night of stumbling, tumbling, falling tipsily through the drifts. And you’ll feel wistful for those icy days when the wind chills you to the bone and conversation brings you comforting warmth that no fire can provide.

Perhaps the promise of a promise is enough.

A Whore's Heart...

Suddenly this defeat.

This rain.

The blues gone gray

And the browns gone gray

And yellow

A terrible amber.

In the cold streets

Your warm body.

In whatever room

Your warm body.

Among all the people

Your absence

The people who are always

Not you.

I have been easy with trees

Too long.

Too familiar with mountains.

Joy has been a habit.

Now

Suddenly

This rain.

-Jack Gilbert