Trojan

It’s all a matter of time:
Love evolves into honesty
And the tube light glare
Rips through at some point.
The thing that was once hidden,
Under the guise of empathy,
Lies naked for all to see,

Like a broken body after rape,
Open to the lenses of posterity
And a boggling public
That cranes to see which part
Was most abused.
The need to hide exists no more.
Justice demands sight and hearing.
A lynching is required.

Love is stronger than romance
And it can withstand a slap,
Or two.

Compromise is a grey area.

Love was not the same,
Either for Helen or Mumtaz –
Tom had jumped on a sofa
And after begetting children
Of blood, they say,
It all ended amicably.
I mean, the jumping ended.

I think myself grand enough
To think mine will last.
I shall let the Trojans in though;
Because I love horses.
(That is a different kind of love.)

High

The fruit has ripened.
But it hangs high on the tree.
It will ripen further and die,
Slowly.

The sun will hit it hard.
The moon will not help at all.
The best thing for it to do is
Fall.

Birds may help it perhaps,
Maybe a strong breeze,
A god may help, if it says
Please.

Knowing providence though,
It’s more likely to hang and rot,
It’s one of those things that love just
Forgot.

It does look tasty and juicy,
But it’s so very, very high,
I might as well give up before I
Try.

Fade

All relationships start off with so much fervor. Each of them is based on confidence as they start and as time passes, the confidence wears onto faith. Then faith quietly turns to hope and most people who are in relationships don’t even realise this progression. Finally, comes the acceptance, if logic and reason is applied. Otherwise, despair lurks like a predator in the shadows.

I have had friends by the dozens over the years. They have come and many have gone. A few have stayed around. But eventually everyone realizes their own inadequacies and the relationships falter. Distances help. I always wondered how they could. But they do. Familiarity really does breed contempt. However, I will say the strongest relationships pull through time and space constraints. Most do not have the temerity and or the will to stick on.

We all begin with so much care. Ambitions seep in and miles get interlaced between hearts and the desire to continue. We think we will keep in touch. But what happens is that the heart is morose when alone. The moment other people step into lives, the older ones get pushed back in the queue that happens to fall into place. Even the most fervent and intense relationship gets tested by time. Feelings remain, I suppose.

Feelings. A quaint noun. They signify all the shades of grey. From the darkest to the faintest. That’s how most of life’s heart goes. Dark to light. When you meet someone and find them fascinating, feelings grow intense and vibrate in their blackness. As time goes on, and it flows onto them, the colour fades. It depends on how dark they were to see if they last or fade into nothingness.

Then there are other colours merging into them. It is an ebb and flow. Like the tides upon rock. It is all a matter of time when the hardest rock corrodes and falls away into the sea. But that doesn’t mean the sea isn’t the better for it, or that the rock while it lasted never lent its support to land. Its entity changed and it went from dark to light.