The little voice

It's always whispering,
Muttering curses, little bits of
Self-flagellation.
It's soft, and often hides
Around company, shy,
Doesn't like to be shown-off much.

It's a nag, though! Constant,
Creeping,
Inspired, with an Imagination
That is vivid, artistic
Almost!

I shut it up, swat at it,
Tell it to eff off,
And it retreats, for a bit,
When the sun shines and the grey cells
Stay busy.

But back in the quietude,
Its favourite hunting-ground,
It springs,
Vicious, like a marauding
Predator, on my dreams.

They're confused

They want to know why I prefer
To read
And miss the dazzling fleshy
Make-up pretty men and women
In orchestrated beauty
Onscreen
In CGI! With tigers and
Soundtracks and action and
Noise and vivid sex and
Blood-red blood and made-up
Glory.

But in my pages, the browned
Worn, ratty pages, my people
Live.
They breathe -- the dwarves and
leather-clad sex gods. They mimic
The voices inside my head.
The prancing young girl
Grows
In my mind's eye
To dazzling young woman, to mother,
To crone.
The men -- they're mine, they're created
But I give life
like God!
I draw breath from my being and
In my pages
They live.

And nobody else see them
Like me.
They know them, but my people
They're difference from other people's people.
My places are the same, but different.
My moats are bigger
My meadow is a different green and my busy sidewalk
Has different faces, holding coffee cups,
Striding busily.

So my pages, my worn, ratty
Thumbed-through volumes, my dusty
Shelves of Annes and Aidans and
Janes and Darcy and Lalithas and
Ford and the Millenn
ium Falcon, they live.
They live and so I live to live
With them.

And everybody else remains
Confused :)

A great hope fell/I am now an insomniac

It's quite funny that I have progressed from find-me-a-moving-car-with-air-conditioning-and-I'll-fall-asleep-like-a-baby-with-my-mouth-open to closet insomniac and bad dreamer. These days, with changes in work times and late shifts, sleep has been elusive, and for some reason, dreams have been a little less than pleasant.

It's just like everything else in life -- somethings you think will never leave you -- sleep, people, feelings, idealism. Then suddenly, things change, life gets a little difficult and you're struggling to keep up with everybody else and what you're supposed to be -- and you realize that small things have changed. You spend a little less time with real people, you stop worrying about what everyone else is talking about, and you try to stop expecting more than this from other people.

But I miss my sleep, I love my sleep! It was one of those things that I could boast about -- oh dude I can sleep anywhere! Ok I still can, but still. And I hate bad dreams. For the better part of my life, I was hardly plagued by nightmares, my nightly ventures were a sunny reflection of my spoilt existence. I had the occasional tsunami dream (for some reason) and sudden LTTE-attacks dream, but that was it. There was the one time I saw someone hacked to death, but well.
Now suddenly, I wake up with a start and thank God profusely that what I just experienced viscerally was just a dream, only a dream. It's worrying.

Random Emily Dickinson thought I picked up. Wanted to FB status this, but that would be followed up with a volley of well-meaning "Are you ok?"s from too many good people. This, I cannot be bothered dealing with. On another thought, I need to find more Emily Dickinson...she's strangely elusive on online poetry portals.

"A great Hope fell
There was no noise
The ruin was within"

For the whole poem, try

http://hayquaker1.blogspot.com/2011/09/great-hope-fell-emily-dickinson.html

On that happy note, Happy March, and all that.