Aria of a Buskin

Those damned days when the countless voices of the sundry alters (as in alter egos!!!) you created with blood, sweat and tears (and a reasonable amount of insanity and, to be fair, maybe a little psychosis!), over 26 gruesomely long years, stop talking to you one day. ‘All the bees in the bonnet have left the building’, they say. And you have already written about not being able to write, well, that’s pretty much the end of the road, I guess.

Moving to a new city (and a sluggishly slow one at that!) may be the worst time, I can imagine, to be abandoned by those imaginary (they might be for real, too, but let’s keep that a secret!) characters in my head. Since I am pretty much clueless about what to do with my weekends (not that I am a whole lot sure about my weekdays either!), I miss those nagging buggers more than ever.
Since they are on a break (from me, I imagine), I was thinking about things I could write of. Things, places, people, objects, memories that I was fascinated by; that could be quilted together into a (somewhat) sensibly flowing story. And, (as my rusted luck on a lazy weekend would have it) I got a picture in my head, of boots. Interesting shit! These boots had had quite a journey. Although they were only an acquaintance, I had met them, but, once! But heck! Was I fascinated by them! They belonged to a friend whose father went to the Kargil war (and the boots went with him, of course!). They not only went to war and back and survived to tell the tale but are still in a hearty condition (better than my current writing condition, and that’s ‘not’ saying a lot), now, sixteen years hence, passed on as a legacy (or just passed on, to avoid the dramatics!). They seem to be taking the transition into civilian life darned well, from what I can tell! Anywho, if I was feeling a little less punctured, this one would have been a funny one. But for now it’s pretty darn sullen. And not my best, but hey! I at least got something down after so long! Some credit, yo!

Aria of a Buskin

That trip to the barren lands,
I remember;
The unceasing tors,
And clouds of dust,
Searing ground and no vision,
But for
The rotting red
At every step,
That the eye caught
For a second
Before getting lost,
In the haze.

The trip to the brackish lands,
I remember;
An echelon of,
Discombobulated resolute
Passers-by,
Who didn’t pass-by,
No more…
Loose grounds and no sound
But for
The sound
That merrily jounced
In the distance,
Discourteous
To the dead.

And the unnerving clamor,
Of steel
In his pockets
For each penny
That he won,
For the bet
At the beginning
Of the trail…
Between fits of laughter
In the bunk
Where he states
To all his mates
‘I will bite the dust, nay,
Before you,
And long after,
The fray.’
A bet, now, he wished
He never made…

That exit from the treacherous lands,
I remember;
Graven
In the shape
Of a feather
Of excellence,
Clasped time
In a tight rein…
Sixteen years hence,
I lay supine
Exposed
In the warmth
Of the sun…

Treading new lands,
In old feet,
With the same
Raw poise
And thick skin,
Scourged on the inside
That no one knows of,
But him,
And his son…
When they look at me
And silently smile
As they tell the story
Of my trip to the
Heretic, graffiti lands!