I know Nothing. I Know it Well.   

  

A blank page stares. I am afraid, 

I am going to write something on it 

and rob the infinity of its white noise. 

It could have been anything. From the confession 

of a serial-killer, 

to the bemoaning baritones of Ian Curtis 

and in between, some bleeding suicide notes, 

or some unrealized fetishes of the boy  next door.    

Or it could have been the holy texts,    

to inspire the generations of half-wits to kill,   

plunder and preach. 

  

 On the other hand, I could have 

left the way it is, and let it be 

 the notation of Cage's 4'33" 

or Dr. Dennis Upper's paper on Writer's Block 

or Rauschenberg's breathtaking paintings of none. 

I could have just left it blank 

and let it be the answer 

to all questions, that Buddha did not answer.  

The Whole Day, It Rained Heart-Attack and Vine 

No, I cannot pen the pain, 

the way Tom Waits does. And I can't sing 

the sad ballads which 

can make the Zircons weep, 

can torture the thousands chasms. 

But those longing for the unseen nymphs 

fleshed with ether and flowers; 

The angst, anxieties 

and the skin-like sense of a lonely world,  

the heart-aches that just don't go. Yes 

I am smitten all right. 

  

Existence is one of those voids 

that you can never fill, 

not with a bottle of Cognac at least;    

so one day, I made peace 

with heart-attacks and vines. 

The price you pay, to be a thinking man; 

a lot of self-made scars and that looming sense 

of impending doom. 

  

There are no glitches in the matrix, 

because, there is no matrix. 

Stay love. Stay rose. Stay tight                       

There are oceans of sorrow to drink.     (A tribute to Tom Waits) 

Sudeep Adhikai