Singularity

I started writing; I made a dot, a dot of infinite possibilities.

It could be the tittle to an I, the top to a L or the cross to a X,

Or simply a period to nothing.

It could stretch anywhere in two dimensions and write a story,

Or spiral around in blues and greens and paint a Monet.

It was all in a dot, the potential to expand.

So I let it stay within,

and let it be a dot of infinite possibilites.

New Start

A faith forgot, a fear evoked, and passion may have lost

And all she did, was sit amid the tears that were but frost.

She wiped her hand, on their iceland, and tried to rub them wet,

But like her hope, her warmth was but, loaned to her on a debt.

And so she cried, and froze her tears, and built her own sad town,

And hung mirrors of crystal tears that were candid of her frown.

But one day, her tears just froze, in a shallow concave tile,

And when she frowned in front of it, she saw it turn a smile!

And though her face was upside down, she liked it well that way,

It made her laugh, it made her blush, she swore for it to stay.

She laughed with joy, and stored that tile, inside her gloomy heart,

Her body warmed, her town got washed,

She got her fresh new start.

Bottle full of Music

He was happy with me, I believe. Once, though, when I came back from MIT—I'd been there a few years—he said to me, "Now," he said, "you've become educated about these things and there's one question I've always had that I've never understood very well and I'd like to ask you, now that you've studied this, to explain it to me," and I asked him what it was. And he said that he understood that when an atom made a transition from one state to another it emits a particle of light called a photon. I said, "That's right." And he says, "Well, now, is the photon in the atom ahead of time that it comes out, or is there no photon in it to start with?" I says, "There's no photon in, it's just that when the electron makes a transition it comes" and he says "Well, where does it come from then, how does it come out?" So I couldn't just say, "The view is that photon numbers aren't conserved, they're just created by the motion of the electron." I couldn't try to explain to him something like: the sound that I'm making now wasn't in me. It's not like my little boy who when he started to talk, suddenly said that he could no longer say a certain word—the word was "cat"—because his word bag has run out of the word cat. So there's no word bag that you have inside so that you use up the words as they come out, you just make them as they go along, and in the same sense there was no photon bag in an atom and when the photons come out they didn't come from somewhere, but I couldn't do much better. He was not satisfied with me in the respect that I never was able to explain any of the things that he didn't understand. So he was unsuccessful, he sent me through all these universities in order to find out these things and he never did find out.

-Richard P. Feynman

I had a little bottle inside of me that was filled with music,

Made of crystal that wouldn’t let it escape

It would try, but reverberate, and only when I opened my mouth to sing a tune would it come out in melodious liberation.

I was scared to open my mouth.

I didn’t want my bottle to run out.

So I refrained from listening to Beethoven or Mozart,

And focused my attention on paintings and art.

One day, I held my baby in my arms,

I wanted to sing for her—she was too young to understand Monet.

So I sang and sang and sang and sang, ready to sing enough to empty my bottle.

But it never ran out.

Instead, it dug a hole at the bottom and sucked my sadness,

And made it into something beautiful.

Be an Ant

Brittle was the spider’s web,

When scissored by my fingers,

And yet the ant got trapped within,

Where that spider lingers.

What if I did not have the strength,

To snip away on its rims?

Could I be so big and yet,

Be prey to a spider’s whims?

I may be big, I may be smart,

But if I think I can’t,

I’ll probably end up in that web,

I may as well be an ant.

One Line

I could see the light as a bundle of strings that followed my every movement.

So I played music on it.

Being a Sphere

I decided I am a circle,

I start and end with me,

And encompass a part of the world within,

Enough to buttress my form.

But when I transcend into the third dimension,

I add smaller circles on either side to depend on,

I eat myself

To end in two dots

That float in an independent dimension.

I don’t feel like I’m in control anymore.

Damn, I guess I’m a sphere now.

Existential crisis

In my two-dimensional façade, there is life.

Life, that abruptly stops at my boundaries.

Life, that exists along my fingers, and then stops in between, and suddenly sprouts again when it touches my skin.

In my two dimensional façade, life takes refuge,

With every breath I take, it gets renewed.

Life is without me, as I am without it.

Untitled

The little green leaf met the yellowed leaf in the lake one day and fell in love immediately.

He loved her amber purity, her bold maturity crassly perforated by her diffident insecurity--

He loved the whole of her, and the holes in her.

So he floated towards her and then under her and confessed his love and told her that he will protect her and cradle her craters in the palm of his being.

He said he would cover her voids and stall her fears and care for her till they sank unto the soil.

But alas, the yellowed leaf shunned him away!

She told him to float to a leaf that needed caring,

Because her holes were her own

A part of her as much as her veins, or even more--

Because through them sparkled the water that taught her to float.

Fairy Lights

The plan was to walk on the lights and turn the bulbs on with every step.

The plan was to be so fast that by the time the light went on, I was on my next step.

The plan was to glide against the wire, uninterrupted by the little buds of bulbs that grew out of it.

The plan was to swing on it, and swivel the bulbs till they were emancipated into a ring of fire, and then lie down on the wire and pretend it was my halo.

The plan was to be fairy.

The Merciless Killer

The bullet left a hole in the center

from which waves of cracked glass

rushed towards the boundaries

as though trying to hold on to their frame of life.

The bullet then left a hole in my center

after having abused the only piece of glass
that would preserve my surviving blood.

Just Breathe

I struggled to come out but I did.

She had to push hard but she did.

They wanted me to cry but I didn’t.

She wanted to hold back but she didn’t.

I tried to breathe out but I didn’t.

She wanted me to live but I didn’t.

My life was on her till I was in her.

It sucks that she had worked hard to push me out.

And then, when it was upon me--

I didn’t.

Consciousness

Night and day, I just heard the clock tick. So much so that it was embedded in my brain. It was a feature I possessed, an extra limb that I needed to perform my daily functions. I heard it as I slept-- my breathing patterned itself to each second in Pavlovian hypnotism. Till that one day when it was so indelible in my head that it became a drone and I thought I would go crazy. Instead of ticking according to time, it started ticking according to my moods. If I was sad, it slowed down, if I was frustrated, it fastened to a pace of continuous buzz, like a fly was stuck in my ear. It was driving me mad. I cut my ears. But it continued to tick. I decided to condition myself to another sensation. I decided to keep rubbing my fingers together so that I get addicted to a tactile awareness. But instead, my ticks adapted to the rubbing, and every time I touched my fingers together, the ticks would get excited, like a dog wagging its tail on being petted. I decided to commit my sense of smell, but then, every time I inhaled I could hear the air click against the inside of my lungs. And then I started seeing the ticks in every strand of hair that fell from my head to my forehead. I started seeing it when my glance moved across the room—it decided to have a rhythm. I could not see a whole image in continuum, because my eyes now moved in incoherent inches. And so one day I decided, I really have gone mad. But in this apparent madness, my senses united at every tick to remind me that I existed.

The Rain and the Renegade

I know the rain falls from the sky, but that is what the world has told me.

What if the world was lying, because the vast white sky is our king?

Am I a renegade if the trees are my lords?

I only see the rain against their backdrop, so why must it belong to the skies?

I see, with every sway in the wind, the leaves beget a string of water,

The sky just roars as the bearer of good news,

When the trees are pregnant with the dew.

It is them that the raindrop serves when it falls unto the ground.

The Funny Little Firefly

Tucked away behind the shadowy tree was a funny little firefly.

She thought no one could see her if she fluttered quietly by herself.

She did not seek a mate,

Nor did she seek a deadly fate,

She had no light patterns, no beauteous trait,

Except that of maintaining her lonely state.

But one day, she saw another firefly,

That flew in circles around her tree,

Her light went on and off and on,

She seemed happy, she seemed free.

Now this scared the funny little firefly,

She felt so pointless, like she could die

And no one would even know she did,

Because through her life, she only hid.

And so decided the funny little firefly,

That she would suck it up and suck it in,

And make her own light patterns and beats,

And fly up and about,
To deep and within.

A Call to Death

The smile to his eyes--

In his smile, the fright forfeits,

In his eyes, it ages well,

And when he laughs, his wrinkled cheeks,

Lift his eyes in sweet dispel.

The eyes to his face--

The battles lost, he has forgone,

But lose he did, he did disgrace,

And when he laughs, his gaiety eyes,

Gleam forth from amid his face.

The face to his tears--

He holds his grief inside of him,

His face quells the fears he bore,

And when he cries, he sees that face,

Trapped within the tears he stores.

The tears to his smile--

He sits within the pool of tears,

And smiles for all that has become,

And when he cries, he laughs, he cries,

He laughs, he cries, and then succumbs.