Monday Morning

i'm feeling low

the way you'd feel

on a grey winter morning

when the snow on the ground

has lost its brilliance

and turned to slush

like my soul

on such muggy mornings

when the coffee is cold

and cigarettes stale

and everything goes

just the way its supposed to

until its supposed to

then comes crashing down

like a house of cards

on a dollar-store dining table

"special offer - a quarter off"

the sale of your self

and else

where you go is not here

but there

where you came from

crash

switch tracks

i'm tired of sleeping and

meeting and talking

and this eternal goddamn need

to be not something

or someone but any

thing

that catches the fancy

of a particular moment in time

that keeps threatening

to run out

and leave me stranded

in this place i know

so well

but yearn not to

escape from

in all my laziness

and complacency

that nurtures the hurt and pain

i believe i have felt

in lives i would have lived

but for circumstance

and chance encounters

in bus-stops and railway stations

and halfway houses for disconsolate

bums such as my

self

where red paan stains

mark floors on which

souls greater than mine

have bled

for causes i can only pretend

to believe in

for lack of faith and hope and love

and all those constants that mark

a man's being with completion

in slow soft streaks

like the scratches on my back

i carry my own private cross

of your loss

which i have imagined

in this void where you would have been

and lived once

in my mind

through visions of your body

leaning against mine

self pity is a marvelous aphrodisiac

to wallow in non-existent

woes and grief and

sometimes i sicken myself

sometimes

with this constant desire

this craving for blank gazes

and hot sighs against my ears

where i can still feel

your warmth

and absence

like a slow persistent ringing

i try to fill with loud music

and harsh words and cool cynicism

that bounces off a vague memory

of your smile

and hits me in the gut

where true feelings lie

true feelings

not those we desire or those

we create or those

we try to milk

out of random moments

of romance that life hands us

like that first kiss in the moonlight

that never really happened

but happened somewhere

because i remember it so clearly

so

fucking

clearly

as real as the cranberry taste

of your lipgloss

so fresh on my lips

from fingers dipped

in a plastic box

when all i wanted was yours

against mine

i stray dangerously close to losing

a bit of what i thought i had

but probably don't

no wait

i don't

but have craved more than

being itself

pause

and so i end

back where i began

between kisses i felt

and your smile

where i put my life

in dreams half finished

before awakening

to another monday morning

14th February 2000

Karachi