This morning eating my sand- witch, I wondered which is which: me madness me, When I saw jets playing

tic- tac- toe On the winter sky board. And said "Wooohooooooo lovely game."

2001:12:02 01:20 Atlanta

Riding the prairie roads, one autumn afternoon with you, I felt invincible, the car Was a panzer rolling along the asphalt, the orphaned sun was shining right along the embankment, and I pointed my finger at the blue sky at the edge thrilled I said,” Let’s my dear, Let’s keep driving."

Halloween pumpkins were grimacing at us through the windows, perhaps you didn't notice them as you were busy humming a song to yourself and driving, perhaps they knew something about evanesce that neither of us knew then, old town streets were inlaid with reds, yellows and browns of the maple leaves, and driving along we lost our realities, In that maze of twirling color.

The old two lane passed through small town America and I was dreaming of a life that was as clear and sharp as the sun on the grass and on the wings of blackbirds whirling in the distance, perhaps I dreamt too much for that beautiful fall morning to bear. Perhaps I heckled the breeze too much with my enthusiastic shouts of joy, as I sometimes gazed at the quaint towns we were passing through and sometimes at you. "Oh god", I thought to myself, "she is beautiful."

And we finally stopped by the river as the sun was setting, we had the wharf for ourselves, and I pointed out the contrails of the jets, beyond the edge of the dark, and as you looked up I saw that they were golden in your dark eyes too. Perhaps my indecision, of whether I should look at the sky or the sky in you, was too much for the seconds we spent there, holding hands framed by a naked tree casting it's shadow on our one, as the cold began to move in from the river with the blackness of the night.

It's fall again and the trees are as bare as I am, the cold, tonight moves in from the windows that frame a dark sky, in which I sit and trace highways. I obliterate the stars with the hail of my tears and I shame the quarter moon, with the incandescence of my grief, as I ride the roads again, to go beyond pain that comes without you, without you.

2001:11:27 22:30 Atlanta

It's strange to write about grief without actually crying.These words were coming from the skin of memory again.

Something returns to me now, In my eyes, your fading smile; Points and mocks my unloved state. And from deep within, coarse and Serrated feelings of unclassified love, Hack my sleep, hack my peace, hack me.

I sit with my fists clenched threatening My magnified shadow on the opposite wall. That alone is left, alone just like me, To speak to, to cry with, sieved in Stray beams of this night's diminishing light.

Image after image, word after word raise, From the currents of this night; the wind Stops and comes back; wave after wave Of unceasing movement of tree, leaf and cloth In substance, in the transparent tears that Fill my eyes, in hope, in despair, in recall!

Even these sparse words refuse to hide, the stark naked turmoil each unforgiving living day seems to bring in again and again. Death is what would be better state; yet Why is this anguish still insisting to live? In what slight hope? Awaiting what certainty?

Even, even a sudden death is not for me. And On a night like this I must console myself With the fact that to sleep is to forget a little and thus die for a little while. This I must tell myself Knowing the futility of remembering you and your words and the way you laugh.

But right now I am most helpless. My ragged breathing is helpless. And so is this flow of line after line. What can I do? You return.

Sometime in 1999, IIT Kgp.

I wrote this poem one winter night at Kgp, almost two years ago.On rereading it,I find it's forced in some places.But I remember writing it then, in a sudden rush of words that would have brooked no mental editing.