before it is born and after dying, 
be it a person or a thing
is only an idea, 
and exists only in the minds of people
as independant, potentially different and dynamic
as the people and their minds
and also, just like, a collective trait
be it a conscience or a choice
of a people or a relationship

a lost poem. marked calcutta, india. returned to sender. no such city. no such place

hijacked by a poem
as urgent as a sneeze,

about an NRI with the latest model camera
with eyes blurry with apparent sympathy

molesting the personhood of the semi-nude sleeping rickshaw puller
who had called time out from his justanotherordinaryday

he scribbled frantically on a plastic bag
hiding under the stairs, with a spider peering over his shoulder

the bag was lost like a baby
which had climbed into someone else's basket in a railways station

the poem belong to calcutta
the said there was no such place

when we had first met,
i used to feel like a child
by the time you were done with me
i felt like i had lived all i could bear to
is that what they mean, when they speak of growing old together?

label-o-phile me.
saved and pinched to buy an hermes
i gave you the tie, and kept the box.
 and put in it the dead blossoms of your love
yes and i did miss the flight from milan in the process

its all so pointless to stay.
to go. to give in. to fight on
yet we go on. and on.
day after zombie day
when the pain is desperately bad,
we stare in to the horizon
and wait for it to pass
or grab a random stranger
and try to laugh and talk till it passes.
and it does and we go back to nothingness
no pain. no joy. no hopes. no fears
just a memory.
like cramp in the lung

it is 11 o clock.
the world and her baby is asleep
i helped a new friend shovel snow all day
then an old friend telephoned
and we hicupped through pleasantries
maybe she thought to herself
as she hung up the phone,
how much i have changed
my friend joked about how in her house,
it is her man's job to shovel the snow
i smiled meaninglessly
and got back to sorting my bills
its such a strange divide,
between being somebody's woman,
and your own, own, your very precious own
to be protected by someone "bigger and stronger"
than you bigger and better and stronger.
bigger how?
by your subscription
to the company, the state, the patriarchy,
the mafia
and now i am suddenly, desperately lonely
but once i ride that choppy part
where the wave breaks,
its such an exhilarating feeling

each window in my house
is filled with black and white streaks
of bare branches
clothed in white
against a neon sky,
till it blinks and blacks out
 and another day has passed away