Pablo Neruda and the Unfaithful

I read Pablo Neruda after twelve months.

I read Neruda’s words on his website and in a swift, time-stopping motion, something rushed back. It felt like someone was blowing air into a thin reed pipe and it was pillowing against my face like soft cotton on a summer day. It felt good, but suffocation is not supposed to feel good. The days when I used to sit for hours in front of a blaring, full-lighted computer screen, my head throbbing with the pressure of noisy color and electricity, and read rows and rows of lines written by Pablo Neruda. 4am in the morning, words skid and slide just below my eyelids- only barely touching my eyes. But I read because I was hungry. It hurt me not to read. Something itched and allowed a fine red, Neruda rash to grow through my blood.

There was a different man then.

I read for myself, but Neruda was him. Actually, scratch that. I am still confused about where I made love to Neruda, and where, through Neruda, I was actually making love to him. I was unfaithful, and I do not know who was wronged.

Cancer

Every morning these days,
When I wake up I see
a clump of words on my pillowcase.
I do not know when they fell out
in the night
but every morning I lose
more and more words.
When I write, they bleed
imy hands, my fingers.
I have blood on my hands.
I kill them myself.
Everytime I wrench them out
like a tweezer pulling at an indignant hair
I am pressing a razor to my wrist,
and they come out, the words
rushing, pouring.
I bleed words.
When they are inside, they are
my blood and I am them.
Outside,
they are corpses
of what was alive.
I kill.
“Them”.
And I no longer know
when the words have bled,
what “them” is.

He Who Sculpts Words

Meri teri nigaah mein jo laakh intezaar hain
jo mere tere tan badan mein laakh dil figaar hain
jo meri teri ungaliyon ki behisii se sab qalam nazaar hain
jo mere tere shehar ki har ik gali mein
mere tere naqsh-e-paa ke be-nishaan mazaar hain
jo meri teri raat ke sitaare zakhm zakhm hain
jo meri teri subah ke gulaab chaak chaak hain
ye zakhm saare be-davaa ye chaak saare be-rafuu
kisi pe raakh chaand ki kisi pe aus kaa lahuu
ye hain bhi yaa nahin bataa
ye hai ki mahaz jaal hai
mere tumhaare ankabuut-e-vaham kaa bunaa huaa
jo hai to is kaa kyaa karein
nahin hai to bhi kyaa karein
bataa, bataa, bataa, bataa....

-Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Only a diamond can cut through a diamond. Nothing more. Nothing less.


Of all the cliches that I tried pushing out of the train I was in, this was the only one that clung to it's seat and made me sweat.

But you know that diamonds don't have blood in them.
You won't find blood.
Only a gash on yourself to equal the one you make.