NAPKIN DIARY: 2022
DON'T KNOW
Don't know
Where to begin?
Never know when and how to begin?
Bt begin I must...
What will I do otherwise?
Yes, what wll I do when
It all ends?
MY ONE HPPINESS
My one happiness
Is when I read a good book
But which book should I choose today?
I look at all my books constantly
And say to myself...
"Yes, this one..."
"OK, not that one..."
"But this one."
'This books twice.'
"sometime, three timesth, this one."
I stare at them some more...
"No, not that one."
"Definately this one."
"Yes, this one because I haven't read this one for a long time."
"Yes, I read it before, but I always read the book twice"
'Some time, three times."
Some of the books I read all the time
Like, PARIS SPLEEN BY BOUDELAIRE
That's my bible...
That book taught me to call all my poems, all my vignetts, all my observations,
PROSE POEMS...
I can't decide...
I move along...
"Oh! I forgot about this particular book.."
"That's it. I am going to read this one today."
'"The decision has been made."
They are all good books
Of course they are.
The are my books...
They have to be good.
I have good taste as far as literature is concerned.
Actually I have excellent taste when it comes to books.
"I think this is the one...by Maupassant or Flauberet?"
I must begin now, the sun is going down
Soon it will be time for dinner...
Can't read when I am cooking
Cooking a lot these days.
Manhattan bistros have become outrageously expensive.
'I keep telling myself every day...
'Couple of hours before the sun goes down
Are reserved for my books by dead writers...
I like dead writers..
No one can write like Balzac, Camus, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, Genet, Sartre, Pinter, Rimbaud,
Dostoveysky, Gogol, Turgenieve, Tennessee Williams, Boudelaire, and they are all dead...
My one great happiness in life, to read these writers...
But when I read them, I think of death
And that makes me very very sad...
See I didn't read my book again today...
I gave away my one great happiness in life because of my sadness...
And sun has gone down already...
"YOU TOLD ME."
"You are busy."
"You told me again, that you are busy..."
Now I don't think of you...
Neither do I miss you...
"Now I am always with a book...
'If I was with you...I won't be able to concentrate on Shelly, Keats, Rilke, Gibran, Rumi, Byron...
'I am so glad that now I am with my poems."
PERFORMANCE
Drowning in the overflow of words...words...words.
Performance this Saturday...
Very wordy writer am I?
Performance won't work...
Far too many words...
Saturday came...
Performed.
Two complete strangers told me...
"How much they loved my writing."
The third stranger told me,
"How much he adored my performance.!"
It made me so very happy...
It made me so appreciative of their kindness.
'Do I want more praise than that?"
"No, I don't...
"I am not such a greedy poet."
SCATTERED
Light
Darkness
Cold shiver
Thoughts
Scattered
Difficult to gather
Thoughts lacked discipline
Gather if you can
Can't
Scattered across the occean...
GRACE
God given
Can it be acquired?
Perhaps not...
God given
Like everything else
Imagine if most people had grace?
What would How are you?ve happened to Vulgarity?
Vulgarity which is essential for the modern world...
HARD OF HEART
Her heart was made of stone
Or maybe clay?
Can't be clay...
Clay is much softer...
One can mold it into different shapes...
Her heart has marble in it...
Marble's difficulty
Is lack of feelings...
Lack of compassion...
Lack of sensitivity...
Nice to look at it...
All surface beauty
But a very hardened heart...
Does marble have a heart?
That's the question...
Any one can answer.
SORROW
The sun
The moon
The light
The rain
The flowers
The grass
The birds
The clouds
The wet earth
The road lined with trees
Remained unsuccessful in lessening my sorrow...
CONDOLENCE
A close friend who never came for condolence
for my dear brother's sudden and shocking death
said to me after I ran into her after months,
"I got confused after I got the news from you."
'Confused?"
She got confused...
Her confusion stopped her from offering condolence?
I don't get her stupid excuse...
Am I insane?
CONCENTRATION
Completely shattered
I used to raed...
Loved books
Still do...
Now every book I pick up to read
Reminds me of Arshad, my precious brother
Gone too soon...
We had the same exact taste
Same kinds of books we both adored...
He used to read the whole entire book under a popal tree in company bagh...till dusk...
Back home when we were students ...
House used to be so crowded with family, servants, food, prepration of it, with guests, tea time,
tailor bringing newly tailored clothes...
Washerman bringing clean pressed clothes...
He couldn't concentrate on his book...
He didn't only read his book...
But studied it...
The book which was meant to be read leisurly...
He studied it as if he had to write an essay for the English teacher...
In the garden, under the popal tree, he had great concentration
He took my concentration away and gave me tremendous loss in return...
SUN AND THE MOON
Scorching sun
Soothing moon
They never meet.
Though they are the two most lovely
People in the world...
Did I say People?
Wshful thinking...
I wish they were people.
We need them so badly.
We are going to be burnt by the sun
And the moon would have healed us.
They both would have helped us in their own way.
The real people?
The real people are constantaly looking forward to utter their hurtful remarks
They think they are. expressing their unlimited vocabulary of being geniuses.
BLESSING
People walking around used to seem like they are going through
an aimless, ordinary, every day activity.
Now it seems like a great blessing.
They are blessed since they are still walking around.
I wish, oh! I wish I see my precious brother Arshad walking around
aimlessly, leisurly without a purpose along the lakes of Copenhagen,
Stopping occasionally to watch the dancing swans and smiling with joy
and then walking leisurly again, and then stopping for a coffee or a glass of chilled white wine
in one of those lovely cafe's along the lakes, sometimes with me sometimes with Annette, sometimes
with Camilla and Philip...
I wish I was that blessed to see that happens or blessed enough to be walking with him and chatting
away about everything happening in the world, good and bad...
But alas! He is gone and left me crying...
"And man!
Man?
What a horrible animal!
Wicked, proud and disgusting."......Maupassant
"One should love,
Love madly, without seeing the object
of ones love." Maupassant
"They are not the ones who love me.
They deliberatly say the wrongful things.
They hurt me.
But they say, they love me........BS
"The man who loves,
Who laughs,
Who suffers.......Maupassant.
"Expression to intelligence." Maupassant
"We have to use labour, effort, invention, imagination,
Industry. talent, genius, to make this root-bound stony soil
some-thing like a dwelling place."..........Maupassant
"think what we have done to establish ourselves in
barely tolerable conditions, hardly decent, hardly comfortable,
hardly elegant, unworthy of us." Maupassant
'
