Three short poems

No matter how hard I try
I can never recall
the colour of your eyes.

It's almost as if
I want to see them for the first time
every time.

***

Remember that evening
we spent walking in the Père Lachaise?
Summer had just ended,
but the birds didn't seem to know it yet.

It was the first time
I saw tears in your eyes.

Night came down swiftly
like a vast, mute protest.
There were no stars to be seen.

***

My favourite picture of you
features only a part of your palm
in the backseat on a highway.

The evening falling
slowly, sadly
all over the windshield
as the picture is being clicked.

Every bit of it sublimely ordinary
except for the hand
caught at the edge of the frame

unaware of its own grace
like a poem about to take shape.

On reading Homer

Tonight I got in a cab after work,
went straight home

and read Homer at my desk.

The last flight out 

was never taken.

A window seat was not chosen.

A "just landed" text
was never sent.
No smiles were involved.

A cab outside an airport
was never hailed.
No addresses were given.

A late night doorbell 

was never rung.

No hugs were shared.

A midnight dinner
was never cooked.
No dishes were done.

Elsewhere

Someone did not discover a star.

Someone did not get groceries.

Someone did not start a war.

Someone did not visit the dentist.

Someone did not light a fire.

Seven billion worlds never came to be.

There's only one for us all,
and that's all there ever will be.

Tell Me

Tell me beginnings matter.
Tell me hugs can be awkward.
Tell me postmen will survive.
Tell me great questions can have simple answers.
Tell me childhood is a place we can go to.
Tell me pride can forgive and be forgiven.

Tell me spontaneity is overrated.
Tell me there are things even nightmares are afraid of.
Tell me happiness is a language we can learn.
Tell me there's more to love than just a young man's poetry.
Tell me home is not what you leave behind, but what you bring back.
Tell me silence is only a manner of speaking.
Tell me highways have memories.
Tell me a story with a happy ending.
Tell me, tell me again.

Anthem

Morning.

Sunlight sinks its fangs into glass.

Thoughts bend to laws. Refraction, reflection.

Distant presences intruding on an absence.

You are not here.

Noon.

The shadow devours itself into a dot.

The hot air screams into itself. Shattered silences.

Dusty tears burning up a lonely countryside.

You are not here.

Evening.

The wet Earth deepens into a chasm. 

Sky-high lines drip into circles. Drops dropping into drops.

Miniscule worlds making themselves up, splitting apart.

You are not here.

Night.

Darkness drips onto land, ink from the heavens.

Bundles of black piled upon one another. Invisible walls.

A wordless heart echoing a bursting anthem.

You are not here.

You are not here.

You are not here.

WiFi History

In my left pocket,
protected by glass, silicone and passphrases,
is a list, forever safe,

of all those visits
I made to the web of our collective consciousness,
a history of somedays and somewheres.

That friend's house where I spent thursdays listening to Greek piano.
That surf shop in the Portuguese village which was once the end of the world.

That sunrise viewed over a bedecked window by the Ganga.
That Parisian library I first discovered Brodsky in.
That common room in Rome where I failed to console a tearful stranger.
That yellow bistro by the North Sea on a winter afternoon.
That Venetian streetlamp that bore a letter to a three year old.
That stormy night spent in a four poster bed in Pondicherry.
That Viennese apartment with old German books and fraying wallpaper.
That sleepless night in Firenze spent in anticipation of the Uffizi.
That room in Hyderabad that reeks of my tenacious youth.

That Bruges hostel where a housekeeper slipped me a note on Szymborska.
That breezy evening spent alone in a pool by the Vembanad lake.
That long railway dream through an Andalusian landscape.
That rainy day spent in London's streets dreaming of Turner's seascapes.
That Bangalore house where my poetry breathes quietly in a shelf corner.
That kind stranger in Coimbra who left her network open.
That blissful night spent on the Aegean Sea in a floating room.
That friendly old bookseller in Madrid who loved Tennyson.

All those homes, momentary and sedentary,
rains, chuckles, beginnings, cafés, chances,
horizons, friendships, errors, names, airports,
conversations, burdens, faces, absences, choices

reduced to a list narrated in circuitry and code,
a composition that can never comprehend its own beauty
but will, by design, relentlessly pursue its own future,
growing longer, longer and longer
until it no longer can

just like life
just like life itself.