In time—
I won’t remember your face,
nor its contours or expressions
Only emotions will remain
Nor will I remember the reasons,
only the pangs of a ‘how could you?’,
the tickling giggle of an ‘oh my god, remember when?’,
not your voice or tone,
nor what was even said back then
The starting credits will read:
‘Based on a true story’,
‘An adaptation of…’
And I’ll impatiently hit ‘skip intro‘—
because I always remember exactly what happened…
or so I keep telling myself.
Tag: nostalgia
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Netfliction
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Potpourri
I want to find a forgotten old photo,
on my phone when it says ‘remember the day when…’
Then fall in love all over again
Get those old butterflies to dust their wings
Ask this old heart to skip a beat and sing
Knowing where those blurry smiles would lead
Like a lush gardens very first seed
The sweet fragrance of nostalgia in bloom
Instead of the dried petals that perfume this room…
…how do I disable this memories thing?
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A writer’s conundrum
The beauty I find in disarray
Turns dismay into a hobby, a pastime
Memories of a time past
Felt everlasting once, but couldn’t,
Alas they must remain in disarray,
In shards,
In pieces,
Broken strings not to be threaded
For there was no single story,
No one narrative,
No words to be lost, recalled, revised or omitted
Only the essence,
The sentiment,
The tender sting of nostalgia
Raw emotion in perpetuity
With I, in servitude to it’s beautiful ambiguity
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No man No cry
This is in tribute to a favourite song of mine No man No cry by Jimmy Sax:
How does the sax man do it?
What’s in those notes that pull with beautiful pain?
It hurts so bad as the sax screams ‘no man no cry!’
No cry? But the journey is down a path where something died—
A part of me,
A world that ended,
Smouldering slowly..
That sax… killing me softly,
A heady nostalgic concoction flowing into my veins.
I’m shaking, but the high is fleeting,
I want to make my heart stop beating.
Succumb to the sound,
Get lost in the memory I just found.
Or is it a reverie? I can’t be sure,
There is no cure,
There is no cure.
Such is the sound,
The sax is tearing me down.
On my knees, I’m begging stop!
Please don’t stop!
Wait!
My heart… it’s remembering something,
It hurts but it’s beautiful,
This memory that was once and then never to be.
Stop but don’t stop please!
What are you doing to me?
I’m losing myself,
Dancing with ghosts to this haunting melody.
Wait, I recognize these visages,
These evanescent mirages swirling just out of reach,
Twirling faster as the high notes screech.
It burns but please don’t stop!
There’s a beauty in this beyond words,
Way beyond cognition,
An inferno from another realm,
Ignited by each note of your rendition.
You’ve killed me once again…
And as I come blinking back to life,
The mirages fade,
My heart wipes a tear.
I failed you, sax man,
You said: ‘No man no cry.’
I’d say I tried…
But that would be a lie
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Desert of Solitude
In this desert of solitude, quivers
The shadow of your voice,
The chimera of your touch
A warm breeze rises over the horizon,
Lifting the dunes into the sky,
As though God himself turned back the sands of time.
Enveloped in this blanket, my love,
The burning sun of distance between us, is a mere candle,
Spilling into dusk’s horizon, akin to a toppled chalice.
Although the chalice has long since dried,
It is as though the intoxication of our first union has reignited the barren sky,
And the fireflies are dancing once again.
Such is the fragrance of your memory,
Sweet jasmine on these winds of solitude.This was my interpretation inspired by the Urdu poem: Dasht-e-tanhaayi by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
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Cloud candy
I was a sliver of silver-lined silk in the sky,
A wisp of a cloud, just floating by.
I was a teddybear, a rabbit—whatever you could dream,
The big bit was a dragon and the long bit was the steam, that split the sky asunder like a candy cotton stream.
That stream flowed into a lake, or was it a giant birthday cake?
Whatever was your recipe, there was nothing I could not make.
As time went by, you forgot all you could see,
Now I’m a just cloud again, craving flights of fancy.
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Coveting nostalgia
Pain embrace the warmth of rays that beseech your clouds to part
Intertwine your fingers with her and tell the rains no more
Learn how to love the memories and yearn to form a scar
You grow listless lost in this wistful mist
Seek solace in the chapters closed, for you rode the pen to the end
Now draw in this night and seek the dawn of the next
Let the bitter slowly sweeten, for we are broken now but we are surely not yet beaten
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Nostalgia #3
Nostalgia the guest arriving unexpected
Cowering yet pigeon chested
Memories cherished and time tested
Accruing interest over time, fighting the haze and commotion of lesser thoughts
Impressive in their claims
Famous to those that recall the tall tales of endless nights
Senseless tantalising trips down memory lane
Severing themselves from the fact, barely intact,
Bordering on lies, nostalgia serves pain dressed as pleasure
A memento mori
A tearful story
Wiping away it’s suffering
And smiling as you look into it’s eyes
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Moments
Sometimes I can’t catch a moment and months fly by
And then like dust in the wind it gets right in my eyes announcing it’s sudden arrival
Yet those moments in which I’m lost in thought about my love
Those are the strangest sweetest pains of all
At once the sensation of having no ground strong enough to catch the sinking feelings and then it catch me all the same
Bittersweet nostalgia of all yesterday’s laughter and love swirling above my head
Though time after time I see more and more that is not fragment of memory but a fictitious few seconds of a moment that never happened
I realise now that these fleeting seconds are hope
Hope of days to come when my love and I will chase the sun and leave the lonely nights behind
Those are my most cherished moments
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