Correct me if I'm wrong

Am I really a writer? Or am I just a diarist for thoughts streaming through, or even just a typist for ideas cascading in from seven windows, ideas that the poor old keyboard cannot express? I prepare to find out...I’ll try a 12 point, Arial Bold, I think, No, a demure 10 pt in Lucida handwriting, methinks again…and in the brilliant world of the alphabet canoodling words of gold with strings attached, strings attached like the spider’s web, to chipping nails and calloused finger tips, I let it rip, putting it out there is worth my while, floats my boat, makes my trip.

I’d like to do a 'Show me the money or your head’s in the duffel bag’ in Bold Capitals-Baskerville old face, of course. 
Arial - too ordinary.No, not even Arial Rounded MT bold. 
Tahoma! - This ain’t no Hawaiian holiday invitation!  
Bodoni MT? Is that a station in Gujarat? 
And, I see there’s an Algerian lurking around. You can even choose between a Centaur and an Elephant for the ride into your wild imagination. 
Rago Italio- is that a pasta sauce? 
Calibri, sounds like a deli cheese. Let’s feast on words, indeed.

So yes, I would like to do a 'Show me the money or your head’s in the duffel bag’ in Bold Capitals-Baskerville old face for my unsuspecting boss, who’ll probably laugh at the joke and look me in the eye with ‘Number your days’ typed on a letterhead in Times New Roman bold. So I dot my i’s and cross my t’s and console myself.  Writer’s don’t work for money, do they? Also, whoever uses webdings, seriously?

Nothing happens. But that's ok. I can wait. I’m not taking the bait. I poach a few apples and let time fly me by. Ah, you know, in the brilliant world of the alphabet canoodling words of gold with strings attached to God as understood by writers..a God called inspiration…sometimes, some portentous times, the phone rings. 

'Yes, hello…What?!  You’re here to see me?  Yes, this is where writers live, Ah, yes, ah, you need directions? Yes, take a right turn at delusions of an artist, stop at the bar, peg a round of drinks on your paycheck, what? They’re belting you out of the establishment? Right. No, don’t take a right, Run!  Leave your valuables, make an escape. Yes, you can grow your beard, change your name.  Do you see a sign board, 'its all a game’…got it? It also says inane things in the sub headline like ‘ Do it for love’, ‘Whatever’s meant to be, is meant to be’.

Are you there yet? Now gather all the facts and narrate these events, be generous with the verbs, and use adjectives sparingly….ah…that’s correct; that is what I just said…put it on paper…well, no? You can’t seem to? Ah, I see, If you can’t do that, you've arrived…yes yes. Of course you can spend some time with us…Do come in, this is indeed where we live, the writer’s bloc.'

Writers are a hard lot to please, something that everybody knows. Ever tried laughter, a joke, any punch lines on them? They don’t really laugh with the masses. They snigger. They play killer whale tricks with meaning, they savour it from all angles, apparent or not, and getting it doesn’t tickle them, it clunks down like coins in a vending machine into a cache of sorts for later use, with a label that reads, I’m onto you.

Serious writers worry me.  It’s not that jokes on sitcoms don't produce the usual guffaws anymore, it’s not even when rubinous verse fails to evoke that glint of immaculate perception in their eyes. It’s not even the absence of the usual sound of a hungry intellect munching what’s left of the brain, to see life alive and squirming, this searing intelligence, that rowdy wit, this exulting meaning of a moment.

No, none of that worries me…I understand… every high has a low, every birthing of an idea is surely followed by a waning moon, the languorous lull of a blank mind, missing status updates, Sorry, the person you are calling is not available. Or if you subscribe to BSNL, Ee number astitva dalli illa.

What worries me, is when expressions turn into stone, into this pale, stoic, gypsum face resembling a war veteran’s statue, unfazed by what existed before all things, unmoved by the prime mover, the origin of All that is: the Word. Yes, writers become immune to emotional expression. They become de-sensitized to the word. They use the word fuck.

Then, the more loaded the punch line, the hollower the cheeks. The longer the lead up to it, the thinner the line of stiff lips.

When writers fall out of love with their muse, they don’t like the opening line, it’s too long. Or the idea is so the done thing. Or literary bravado goes missing, heroes vanish, and chapters evaporate from ink that’s meant to flow at the speed of thought.  

Or you may find pages full of those annoying red waves on MS word that underline your use of words that don’t yet exist. Of course they don’t yet exist dear apprentice wordsmith, duh! And then, it insults the poetry of the moment with suggestions like ‘delete repeated word’, and further suggests geography instead of jeopardy, and you breathe and crack your neck, you breathe again, you patiently ‘add to dictionary’, you ignore, you ignore all…as if all this affords the fullest show of exasperation for minds teetering on the very edge of reason…also the reason why writers have acquired a reputation for being weirdly excitable, suddenly explosive and disturbingly quiet creatures, I imagine.

When writers fall out of love with their muse, memories escape recall, semantic analysis doesn’t yield the damn derivation, the dialectic dribbles, articulation stops mid-sentence and the C word arrives. No, Don’t. Don’t guess it, don’t think it.  Never mention it by name, like Harry Potter says of his mortal enemy.  

The Critic, he is the Valdermort in a writer’s life.  He lives in the same body, walks through the same mind, dreams the same dreams insidiously, he lives to cut, blunt, full stop...to erase. His mission: to cause the crash of the hard drive after the last word.

Writers in the past used to live their lives, the critic begins, not borrow from the lives of others who did. Where’s the plot? Hello! Seems like we’ve lost the plot.  Where’s the hero of the story, where’s the grist? The grime? The grill? The sauce? Where’s the anti – hero, who makes being bad so good that I want to be him? Where’s the serial killer, posing as a lover? Where’s the friend who would give his life for you? Why are you not taking it? And why are you ignoring me?

Where’s the contrarian in the 21^st century? The critic asks, in the same way you would ask, ‘Where’s the bottle of fig jam we got from the market yesterday?’  The critic sees no difference, the profound and the profane share the same origin, ha ha ha, he observes, as if he was created solely to over-simplify and trivialize. You pass the jam even as you hear that muffled voice under his breath, 'Deplorable, yes, yes, the state of writing, deplorable indeed.' 

Sharpen this bit, elaborate that part, oh, that’s so lame, so predictable, so melodramatic, so cheesy, so yesterday, change this here, and that, we won’t need that. A hundred voices, white noise, neurons burn out at the synapse, not a single muscle moves.  You feel the fear and do it anyway, burn those pages, smell the gum on fire and watch the flames. Why? 

Because the author of your life is you.  And because the author of your life, is you.

Ticket to Monsoon

So we've left a place called Blue Sky

Where everything is always as clear as day.

I have a ticket to Monsoon

where waters nourish, I’ve heard

the what, the why, the how and where

of one’s unresolved bearings...

The people of Monsoon, they cheer,

They warn me of what’s to come, of lashings,

and of molten vapours that sting

And of a sound that is more than I can bear…

Clouds are celebrities in monsoon

A trillion volt percussion event opens the show

They gather on the sly, mischievously, I’m told

Rather fickle creatures they are

Making promises wherever they go.

Silence, guest of honour, She arrives

She is the calm before the storm

She calls to the clouds, all dark and blue

Bursting at their seams in a biting cold rage

Then it begins, first as a lustful roar,

I hear it everywhere; I feel it in my core

Thunder’s symphony begins a celebration in the sky

With rowdy clouds, dancing into the night

with nourishing sweetness, the waters pour.

Midnight comes with a full moon up high

Those warm wet drops recede from Her expansive eyes

Through gullies and rivers and the great seas

And us, awestruck, passers-by.

The Nuts of the Red Gum Tree

Brawling with ra's and hiccups that sounded like suppressed laughs in a tummy full of struggles and deficits of a gut that couldn't quite digest what was really out there; and watching a fire from a hole in the pocket, a conversation embered out from the bar…

Someone missed a crucial point. Someone else picked it up.

 One lady buffered the fire and it hissed after her. A tall man in a trench-coat said ‘What is this wood? What is it called?’ and buggered off.

One woman laughed between sips from her stout

like a wicked witch disguised as a young nude for a portrait.

 Young men scattered their joys like squirt.

 One man tried to hide his boredom, then gave up, and that made him happy, for the ra's and the hiccups that came out like suppressed laughs from a tummy full of struggles and deficits of a gut that could not really digest what was really, really, out there.

Obliging men in very well tailored suits without any gumption whatsoever twitched like mice and made cool fools.

They also pissed themselves, laughing.

 And one answered the question, ventured ‘Red gum’ to everybody in general and nobody in particular.

The bricks warmed up. The lights dipped into the beer and the wine.

The cackles tried to make sense of it all, while the lady of the house bosomed bread and butter, with exotic dips from distant lands on a wooden tray, like a liar who cannot keep promises made.

She got wind of the raucous situation and an ousting, a cleaning job and further licenses awaited the dawn of the new day.                                                                                                    

More glasses returned coyly to the exact circumference of beer sweat that they had left on the planks that made the solid tables

And even less was heard from the lives of the corks that fitted the mouths of bottles of Champagne.

The wood surrendered a further piece of itself to the fire.


Art: http://petescully.com

Match-maker, Match-maker, can you light the damn cigarette? Please.

What happens when your boyfriend is someone you remember routinely only come Monday mornings? What if life’s simple pleasures leave you feeling so pleasured, that the thought of calling him on the weekend never crosses your mind? And it suddenly hits you that you have the same feeling while calling him that you felt, while running an errand as a child? It’s got to be done before I can get the goodies...


Those being, an undisturbed few hours of doin’ my own thing, my playlist grooving through my veins, my haunches on my spot on the sofa, with my hard earned chocolate mud cake with double scoop

of vanilla, the TV remote in my hand to watch whatever the hell makes me happy...did I leave the hot fudge and hazelnut crumbs on the desert topped with cherries? And sure, I may suddenly change my mind and want to go shopping, but no, you cannot use the computer to play games until such time, ‘cos if you do, then you tamper with the fabric of choice. No, don't you see, we're creating the perfect couple, minus all the...ah…..the...umm...You.


Are these signs of a relationship maturing into a phase of domestic bliss, routine happiness or is it a sign that there is no more need of one, altogether?

Oh, so hard to tell...The shadow of pink and black are both a shadowy grey. How could something like neglect, which strangely makes me gleeful, make its way insidiously into a relationship? Maybe puppy love was meant to end with puppy for adoption. How do people shift so much, their world-views- what once made them

exotic in each other’s minds is now a strange blur in recollection...how did this happen? I’d like to know, because the boat seems to be sailing away in its own current, away from that island, called No-man. I guess the next stop is that show called One-man.


Two very different people often end up creating a hybrid of a relationship in getting to know each other: They invent terms to understand the middle ground; they create points of references that are new in the landscape, never before sat-on walls, never-knew-you-could-that feats of human achievement, ah! Never-even-knew- that-was-possible positions. If pasta is what he likes and sushi is what she likes, they decide to meet at Bean Salad Burritos.



The current is so fast and all consuming.. that it ends up making all things that were previously talked about,

un-newsworthy. Does this mean a relationship- has broken up? Maybe...so, this must be Moving On. I used to be bothered to try to understand to know, but the ice cream is melting. I am curious...who wouldn't be, after all those cats, but I hear we don't do that anymore...Curiosity just found a real lake on Mars.