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Drive

 

When was the last time you took a drive?

Just sat in the car, unclutched all your thoughts and accelerated far away from whatever is holding you back or towards whatever you want

The headlights come on, clearing your mind and the path ahead, showing you where you’re heading

The seat belt clicks you back into reality but as you pull out of the garage, you feel unfettered, free

Is it necessary to know where you’re going? Sometimes

Will you always know where you’ll end up? No

But does it matter?

The blinking street lights zip past like orderly, well behaved fireflies

Suddenly there is no traffic and you are left soldiering alone, against the inky black sky

Enjoying the solitude, enjoying the nothingness, enveloped in nothing but a nippy breeze

As you stick your hand out to tame the wind and try to grab fistfuls of it, your hand keeps flailing around, almost merry

And it’s a loss of control that feels amazing

Your hair, pulled away from your face is the only thing looking back, taking notes

While you blaze ahead, liberated, anxieties annihilated

Feeling like you’re infinite

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Determined

It flickers, dances, now you see it, then you don’t

Playing hide and seek like a twinkling star

But it’s there.Sitting at the end of that road, that tunnel, that journey

Egging you to try, to fight, to walk, then run towards it

It keeps you warm in the biting cold

It sheaths and shields your passions in the blinding rain

It is baked and stoked on the coals of your determination

It is carved by your shaking but stable hands full of clay and doubt

But it will take shape 

Morphing into people, faces, destinations or dreams

The journey between where you are and where you want to be

I can see you so clearly that it seems you were made for my sight

I can feel you in every pore of my body

My knees might buckle I will still crawl to you

My hands might shiver but my elbows will renew

With every fibre of my body withering and washing away

I will conquer, vanquish , I will have my way.

2

In Search


My toes peep out from under their comforting blanket of sand.

Weary but happy that they have been bold and adventurous.

Every little blister stings and sings of that new nook, that new borough they found by chance.

A crab wriggles over my toe, not entirely happy that my clumsy feet are sitting atop his humble abode.

I coax this industrious little lifeform to sit by me and tell me tales of the many beaches his claws have sculpted.

The friendships, the battles, the joys and the sorrows,collected like little pebbles along the way.He relents and then we watch the sky in companionable silence.

A little sparrow now finds its way to the crumbs of the biscuit laying next to my hand.

A crumb for the many clouds it has circled.

Another for the many wonderous skies it has painted with its wings.

The last one as fuel for the new journey that this humble seeker will embark on in a few moments.

Each one of us is a traveller.

Some walk through the rigours of each day, content that they have found the same version of themselves in bed at the end of it.

Some will forever wander, looking for new meaning. In every new city, on every beach, under each pebble and grain of sand, ahead on each road, in what they see in the mirror each morning.

To those restless souls, those wandering toes and those keen eyes, may you forever roam.

1

A grand love


She ran to you and nuzzled her nose in between your knees, shutting the world out.

You caressed the fluffy tuft of hair on her head. She looked up and gave you that smile.

The smile that’s reserved only for you.

You smiled back and shut out the world that existed beyond the both of you.

I wanted to lock this moment in my head and throw the keys away.

So far away, into the depths of the ocean,

Where no one could touch this memory, nothing could change this moment.

Not age, not distance, not the cruel talons of time.

I’ve looked deep into those small twinkling starry eyes many times.

When they open, they search for you till they can find that old familiar figure extending an unwavering hand that is always searching for hers.

When they become heavy with sleep, they push and fight to just drink in one last smile , one last picture of you.

When they dream, it’s always a sunny day where a head full of silver and a tiny black one, Bob up and down along the beach, holding hands and exchanging fantastical tales and silly jokes with equal fervour.

The dreams have travelled a lifetime now, from my eyes to hers.

But the common and the constant is you.

I will never know your secret games, your endless conversations, your special communication even when no words are spoken.

But there is one corner of my heart which will forever be lit up with the memories that I have locked away.

Of an old man and a little girl and their little world.

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Red Bosphorus


Every part of me aches.Racked by a nameless fever or rage, despair, hopelessness.

I was infected by tears, mutilated bodies, lives torn asunder and ashes of hope.

Hope that were dashed against walls by terror, guns, knives, bombs.

I look at you gasping for breath now, clutching , grasping for composure and it breaks my heart.

I walked your cobbled streets, walking to nowhere, breathing in the industriousness and determination of those fishermen selling hamsi every day. Served with just the right drizzle of salt and smiles.

My heart rose and fell with the tides of the Bosphorous.

My eyes glazed with wonder as they swallowed the grand mosques and minarets dotting your Crimson skies

How my aching feet danced away with those little childrenin the streets of Grand Bazaar.

Rows upon rows of twinkling chandelier studded lanes lighting up sparkles of hope.

My hands are now still. Sometimes wringing in wretched frustration, sometimes in prayer.

Look what they have done to you my poor darling.

Those warm smiles , embraces and chatter have dissolved into tears and are flowing away, turning your shores red.

Let our prayers, memories and love be the raincoat that shields you from this storm of hate.

Let them lash, let them rage and spew hatred outside.

They will never get to your golden soul, but one day the world will get to them. And they will have nowhere to hide.

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Dark Skies


There is something that brings out the melancholy when it rainsIn the sheets of blinding rain I see faces, of people loved and lost.

Pouring onto my window pane, questioning, thundering, complaining, how life flowed along like an ebullient little river, without them.

Wasted sinuous streams find their way to the gutters, gushing out of sight like the trips and plans that never materialised.

Pregnant, voluptuous waves crashing onto the shores, frothing, seething, venting a nameless rage.

Blinding lightning stokes unknown fires buried deep in the dark shadowy recesses of my heart.

The pitter patter on the porch through the night, competing with the ticking clock on the mantel, a constant reminder of the never ending race against time.

Tick tock. Tick tock.Tick tock.

But then the next morning a cool breeze hits my face, the clouds turn white, the slight drizzle is like a warm embrace.

I breathe deep and fill my lungs with a beautiful, bright day,

Oh I know you’re there, rumbling in the distance, but you’re still some miles away.

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Hush…


Honking Horns, roaring machines, angry screams and a frustrated shout.

Welcome to the city, noise is what it’s all about.

Sometimes I think, to let my own thoughts in,

I need to drown out the world and lose the crowds.

Once upon a time there lived a little girl.

Who told many tales to a murmuring brook.

The whistling wind in the willows heard her secret.

The chirping birds listened intently, but knew all too well how to keep it.

She played with her friends in the tall grass, filling the air with chortles and laughter.

The owl hooted a lullaby every night while she dreamed of a happy ever after.

The brook is parched, it’s dead and gone.

It won’t speak to her anymore, her childhood stories lie waiting and forlorn.

The wind has dissipated lost amid tall towers.

The chirping birds drowned out, they’ve lost their power.

The owl wails a melancholy song of the times that have been shown the door.

The sound of silence, the sound of happiness is no more.

1

Fearless

 

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In a land faraway lived a shadow of Doubt.
But one fine day it came home, never slept, always alert, always up and about.
It suffocated me everyday with its power and might.
Each step each decision, always wrong, no matter how hard I tried.
It strangled my happiness before I could make merry.
Uprooting all my hope in its tearing hurry.
What if everything is lost? Dare I risk it all?
Success was a faraway dream, how could it not? Doubt wouldn’t even let me fall.
Then one fine morning I decided I would not be afraid.
I would hurt I would suffer, but then that would be my own destiny, my own fate.
I might not have the answers, but I will not live in fear all my life.
You don’t control me anymore, Doubt, I now banish you from my life.

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In between the lines.

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I would have never even known it was there.
If the waterfall of cascading books in the attic had not revealed all.
It sat in all it’s past glory, full of secrets, yet so humble.
Brown, it’s spine bent, in a cloud of dust, a diary with a yielding lock
I unlocked a life.
I unlocked memories.
I unlocked more than even it’s lock thought it knew.
Dog eared pages folded away the remainders of busy days when there were so many other important things to do.
Brown, crumpled pages, that were mangled in the rush of life.
Amoeba shaped stains that were born while lip smacking recipes were being discovered.
That musty smell that wraps up memories in a warm blanket of reminiscings.
Different coloured inks dipped in myriad emotions of the author.
Scribbles, doodles that dotted many corners full of mental meanderings.
Daily accounts of pockets full and then emptied mercilessly, telling tales of sometimes a king and sometimes a pauper.
How can a bunch of pages be so vocal in the most utter silence?
How can they write the beginning an end of someone’s story, an entire life?
Who are you? Will I meet you some day around the corner of a street?
We might be strangers but I know you so well.
I walked 200 pages of your life, not a soul will I tell.

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