This is how the night is,
It’s raining softly,
Some streets are awake
As you wander through them,
As you lie beside me,
Asleep,
And I wonder what dreams
Will I break into
If I just held your hand.
You sigh softly,
And the rain hears you,
And I hear you
And move my hand away.
This is how the night is,
Your fingers curled into
Little dreams,
And mine like thieves
Break into those dreams,
And I wander,
Ducking and hiding,
Searching those streets
For traces of you.
For traces of me.
If for instance I decide to lose myself
In a cave as big as London,
Don’t find me
-find me.
Don’t follow echoes of my footsteps,
Or the smell of cigarettes,
Or the sound of breathing,
And especially not the squiggles on the walls,
Those are escaped thoughts
And will lead you astray,
In a cave as big as London,
Don’t find me
-find me,
Don’t follow the trail of pebbles,
And paper,
And peanut shells,
And a coil of thread that leads the way
To a pool as wide as the Thames,
Don’t cross over to the stalacite as
High as St. Paul’s Cathedral,
Don’t weave your way down a passage
To a hole in the wall,
About 452 yards away,
On the right,
Because you won’t find me
-find me
Sitting at a table set for two,
And if despite of all this
You still do,
Then shh…
-let’s eat.
Never thought this would happen… Sesame Street meets Sufi classic hit ‘Dama Dam Mast Qalandar’ and that too in its film soundtrack version from a 70s Pakistani flick. Though the element of surprise was the killer translation or transliteration or whatchamacallit. It’s brilliant.
Walking home on Sunday night
I passed a couple at a bus stop
Loving each other
With eyes locked into eyes
And arms locked into arms,
And just as I reached them,
I heard him say,
You know something I’ve always
Wanted to do but couldn’t do?
And though I wanted to stay
And listen,
I knew it wasn’t meant for me,
So I just made up the rest,
I want to race an airplane on a runway
And win, till it crosses me by,
It’ll be a short race,
I want to bite the end of the cone off
And suck the whole scoop through it,
I want to make love under a streetlight
(To which I’d like to imagine she’d push
him away, but just so)
I want to play hobo for a day, then take
All the loose change and toss it into the Thames,
Watching the tuppence plop, one by one,
I want to pretend I’m a busker playing an
Exotic instrument, when in fact I’d just be
Beating an old shoe box,
I want to read the Ulysses and get past
Page 255 for once,
I want to burn my laptop, Blackberry, iPad,
(And she would remind him he didn’t have an iPad)
I want to own an iPad… to burn,
(Yeah right, she’d say, but how will I reach you?)
Just call my name,
(She’d laugh- That’s silly!),
Shh… I want to find a magic lamp and wish
That I may breathe you forever,
Breathing me,
So that’s what I thought he’d want to do
That he couldn’t do,
As for me, I wanted to call someone,
And hear her say,
