Florentino Ariza

You have no right over my tears
The ones that flow often and freely
Like rivers of perennial sorrow
Eternal in my suffering.
Why expect me to forget
Moments of love and loss?
I will live and die each moment
Willingly without remorse,
Over the past that was ours
And the future that wasn't.

Bed Of Sorrows

As she walked down the empty path, oblivious to the drizzle around her, lost in thoughts made up of myriad moments, all revolving around him, causing painful emotional convulsions and pale mirages; she suddenly remembered that tomorrow would be his birthday. A mere six months back this would be a cause of silent happiness, silent because she could never let him how she felt, even though she knew it was a lame attempt because he already knew.Theirs was a relationship of ironies, paradoxes and contradictions. It went beyond love and was nurtured in silences. Silence bound them together, since neither would speak while the other could listen. It was only in corners of a heavy heart that such feelings found utterance. Pain and love go hand in hand, destined to be apart and forever to be enveloped in mists of tragedy; this is what she truly believed. She wanted him to go away forever, from her memories, her tears and from that emptiness she felt when she tried to sleep each night. She had finally expressed her love for him but with an act of betrayal so pure that only love could match it. With each harsh word that she had spoken, it was love that was expressed. A wounded dear's helplessness in its inability to live life, a woman's tears reflecting her own helplessness to love, freely and fearlessly. What made it all the more unbearable was the knowledge that he wasn't fooled, in fact couldn't be fooled. She had to forget him for the sake of her sanity, pluck him apart as coldly as humanly possible. Burn every memory doused with his love. Refute those advances of long past moments draped in illusions and possibilities. She often thought of moments spent together, with loving glances and unsaid words. He had awakened the woman in her and for the first time in her life, she had felt alive. She could feel love and happiness pulsate silently, forcefully in her veins, strengthening her heart, melting the icy contours that had always surrounded it in fear of getting hurt. But she had hurt him, intentionally with the clear purpose of an assassin who knows its mark and feels no remorse for its actions. She had finally killed the love inside him or so she desperately tried to believe.
She walked on, haltingly, chewing her lower lip, occasionally biting her nails, an act of intimacy he shared with her. In the looming shadows of the wet streets, a neon light shone brightly, almost in an obscene way, challenging the very stillness of the street. She looked up and saw TATA SONS written brightly, the light behind SONS was dim and TATA stood out majestically. Only if Birla was written next to it, wouldn't it complete the beauty of their goodbyes? It was a private ritual of sorts, cryptic to the world around them but a purity which made sense only to them. They shared quirks as motifs of passion, dissolving beautifully into their words and gestures, almost like a private language of love too intimate too be understood by the world. Her limbs ached as she walked on but she welcomed such aches, she liked to believe that she was being punished and her sins were being atoned. The worse ache was the one she felt in her heart, a song of lament, whenever she heard his name. He was hers and even his very name uttered by someone else was sacrilege. Each night brought back heady memories of past and a curious emotion welled up inside her. It was an amalgam of pain and love, an unfulfilled orgasmic tragedy that failed to find utterance each time it sought to. She had hidden secrets from him, letting him live in his castles of illusions but she did not know that he knew about her past as well as he knew about her future. He saw through her completely, those large dear-like eyes filled with sadness and sorrow. He knew, she never wanted to believe it but he did know everything about her. Such was his love, it took in everything, patiently and gently, almost like her father who was her pillar of strength. He too was special but she had to do what she did, she had to let him go, she had to make him let go of her. There was nothing noble about her love. Such was the illusions she made up to sustain her sanity.This was her love, pure cowardice fused with betrayal, projected as grandeur of surrender and sacrifice, something she had never truly understood.
As she walked back home, her bed of sorrows awaiting her, she realized that loneliness is a faithful companion.

Chronicle Of A Betrayal Foretold

Every now and then,
Once in a black moon
Comes across a girl
Who makes your heart swoon.
Then you fall in love
And the usual croons
Of love and longing
Of desires and passions
Haunting shades
Murmurs in darkness
Taps on fingers
Gentle, often.
Then she leaves
With silence
Leaving lingering pain
Without remorse
Or even a thought.
She forgets instantly
And moves on
Like a parasite
Locust
To feed upon
New Lovers.

Jesting in Peace

In nakedness and pride
In death and life
Lies a queer balance
Refusing permission
To end breaths
Refuting my love
To slit a wrist
And move on
With moments
Less mundane.

Saviours Of A Lost World

We are coming to save you
On foot or on beast
Perhaps in shambles
In battered spirits
Halfheartedly for sure
Whining about left behind
Wine and baked morsels.
A cozy bed and  a barmaid
Is all that we want.
But sullenly we are coming
My dearest
To take you away
From them.

Mispronounced With Delight

Let me dissolve as a fading memory
     of your past.
A note of sodomizing music worthy
      but of rape.
A ruptured vessel of a now dying heart
      infinitesimally so.
Remembered only as a shadow behind
       those teary eyes.
A hope so bleak that even bleakness
        makes sense.
Blending a new emotion which thrives
        on idiosyncrasies.
And breathing from a hollow soul
        an angry realization.
Of a past skewed with spurts of
         rage championed.
But beauty has accompanied me
         too often.
In moments of uncertain designs
         and vagaries.
So i know with proud conviction
          of finality.
A hint of caution to my own self
           about edges.
Would complete the equation
           of moments.
A word or two about vagueness
            is important
For ways of these moments also
            betray often.
And thereby give a solemn birth
             to contradictions.
Then should I try to escape the
              innate chasm?
Or channel a force bought to life
               by silent legacies?
The beauty of destined rise and fall
               lies in concealment.
It's sanctity cannot be challenged by
                your morality.
For to love is to fight and conquer
                 not sacrifice.
Since sacrifice of the purest form
                 is war itself.
Not a veil of convenient cowardice
                 acknowledged.
I know worth of life is realized by
                  chosen few.
The premise of my sympathy is but
                   human.
And each word uttered without passion
                   is nullity.
Certain digressions are permitted with
                   disappointment.
But nevertheless accepted as tenets of
                    human condition.
Let me devote that each moment of life
                     to exist.
Beautifully as a cosmic continuity and not
                     as an aberration.
           

With A Whimper

Those shady bars have for long whispered sweet nothings to my hollow mind
Beckoning like a mistress who knows you well enough to be your mother
And for long I've evaded the question that my friend Thomas had asked,
But the bitch in my memory refuses to die.
The best in me is no longer fit for your consumption and
The worst that I carry rots healthily by the dilapidated sill by your side.
The tragedy that will now unravel like an artsy film is very personal
The fall ,if there was a rise, of a young mind now seems to be in vogue
For mediocrity too has to thrive in this hobgoblin of a world.
Where eunuchs make true love, shimmering with emotion
And men whimper with impotent eyes
Watching the world suck their virility with casual ease,
And worship sexless bodies who like to tease.
Its not for your shocked eyes that I write
But for the bitch in my memory who refuses to die.
To fight the impossible is not my aim
But to sit in the corner and then proclaim in vain,
"My dear sirs, would you like to do me too?"
And then those gentle hands adept at hiding filth
Will descend on me and again with casual ease
Beautifully take the worst out of me.
Be not be mistaken that it is anger my muse
But my friend Thomas who taught me to use
Words and more words to suppress true intent
And mock this idea of a world with clownish ruse.
I always bluff my way into another life
But the bitch in my memory refuses to die.
Under the bedsheets my world lies
Where naked swarms of dreaming delights
Hides carefully the shoddy reality of life
A world where emotional holocausts
Are meted out by one and all
Again my dear sirs with casual ease!
This casual ease is what I have begun to hate
And the good lord cites it as rightfully chaste.
I fear it may bring the end of me
For women come and go with men pinned up to their breasts
Singing sonnets with drunken sniggers
The most delightful whores love could buy
If you thought I'll mince words each time
Then my sirs and lovers
To break the third wall is no crime
My friends, long dead, taught me so
And till the last of my breaths it shall be forever so
Forever and ever till Nightingales shall sing
Men will be condemned for they believed in the gospel of Howl,
For my bitch that refuses to die
I've a message, my darling chocolate pie
Till the memory of you shall remain
My dead friends shall always keep me insane.