NAPKIN DIARY: 2022

 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

'