High

I’ve never lived in homes with ceilings low,

breathing on me

like the open windows don’t belong

within the walls;

they’re too stumped,

buckling,

falling,

pressing.

I live now in an old apartment

and it seems like yesteryears were full of people like me

who didn’t want buckling walls ,

let tall lovers graze their homes with no apprehension,

believing in the power and beauty of them high ceilings:

untouchable bases of everyday living,

a space that lets you move.

It lets you explore.

It lets you jump.

Jump because I jump sometimes

in joy,

I shoot up when someone tickles me

an involuntary happiness that I can’t contain

it just spills and reaches out of my body.

I shoot.

Shoots, yes.

I want a lot of them, green from the top

hanging from my indoor skies,

vines filling for the veins of the walls,

pots and plants scaling my thoughts,

upright striving

and a safe space for their flowers to bloom.

I love high ceilings and I can’t lie,

not in houses alone

nor at work or that breakfast diner on my street

but at the psychiatrist’s office

or that bar that was once a bank

and in funeral homes.

The soul needs space to leave that body,

an outworn piece of clothing

the music needs to bounce,

it needs to echo, to want to dance in the presumed void;

it lets me dance with my beloved I bring home

and should he want to carry me high up

straddle my soul on his hips,

breasts at his lips

I want nothing to touch, no ceiling to hold on to

except the high cheekbones of his face.

I can’t be put in places with low ceilings,

they make me seems bigger than I am,

a giant,

an illusion of being free to accomplish goals

and I am not sure that is me.

The high ceilings are a friend

long lost

walls holding them up for me.

They meet me with open, blank slates

my art has the space to breathe,

the poems are up on my walls

living in sprouting light,

shadows incarnated.

When I’m head flat, water in my ears

in the bathtub

naked and suspended of social intrusions

I like looking at the light playing with the blinds

behind my back;

a fresh canvas

not breathing down on me or pressing me,

coercing me to be big

but a tender look that allows my insignificance to manifest.

The crown moulding looks at me like a lover,

the walls let me touch them

slow, I write in the air.

I once read this story about a man who filled his walls

with art, poetry and words,

ceiling resplendent with the words of others

until he hung himself from the fan

and I can’t help but think

how high his ceiling was

because these words can float,

they need no tethering,

they are little free lives in themselves

and if you put them in a box

and throw a person like me in it

I can never make peace with those words

and art, arrogantly mine.

I need the volume to love and it’s important that I love

because that is when I

and the colours

and the words I string

are most beautiful

and should you come to my funeral when I am gone,

I don’t want these words haunting you:

making you cry, kissing you against your will

but makes you rise and pluck words from my space

creating your poems from mine already dead,

streak it with colours

to later tell people about me

with a smile:

That funeral was hauntingly beautiful

and then,

Remember to look up

because

I am probably still there. 

I do not own this image. Collected from Pinterest.

Hemu 

Dangling Feet

   I’m borderline aqua-phobic. The line lies between that simple stance that my feet can touch the floor of the water bed and the assurance that drowning is not a possibility. It lies submerged in the sea-green blues of the waters, the fear of not death but suffocation unto death and the helplessness of it.

   Sixteen years of age was when I set out to Calcutta for the first time in my life en-route to Manipur. The train chugged away, pulling with ease the coaches that followed, sculpted with steel carrying people full of dreams. The locomotive sped at an immense speed as I edged my way to the doors of my bogie, swaying with the whims of the vehicle itself.

  It was noon and everyone had slept into obliviousness. The door was wide open, as I held the handles just on the outside and lunged my body forward for the erstwhile breezing wind to scream in my ears. Drawn to the avenues open to my senses; I merely collapsed and sat down on the steps, still holding on to the rails, feet dangling to the moving Jelly stones. The rhythmic lull of the wagons over the railway tracks seemed like the ritual of love-making between two as I closed my eyes; unaware of the people around me, singled out within.

   I don’t know how many minutes passed before my eyes opened to a change in sound, the return of the breeze alongside the summer sun. The rhythm was the same, but the echoes and sounds that emanated, completely different.  I gazed ahead to look at the calm blues staring back at me, its ripples moving from one to another, in constant motion.

   My fingers tightened around the handles as I peered down. Hundred feet below were deep waters that could devour me alive. It was the first time I saw seemingly bottomless waters below my own dangling feet. The initial flutters of anxiety and fear had drowned in the overwhelming feeling that was caught at my throat. I had never felt this comfortable, alive and fearless of waters. Transience and permanence loomed to and fro, as the moving waters coupled with the climax of the lulling pleasures put me in the moment, in complete awareness of my senses.

   I was neither in the past, nor an eon later. I lived that moment, completely, without the fear of suffocation and drowning lest I fall. In that unknown place, over an unknown water body somewhere in North-east India, I could then do nothing but smile as the cool wind kissed my face.
I have never felt that liberated, thoughtless and free in all my life, ever since.

~Hemu

I do NOT own this image. Source: Google images