Vicious Cycle

Infatuation

Reflection of the clouds
(hold your mirror, sweetheart)
Snow capped mountain tops; clouds were below our feet.
Vigorous imagination of wild wild youth.
Blinded, we gave into temptation.
Insomnia was never so pleasant and
restlessness was never so creative.

Love

We rode the wings of a white horse (early romance)
Then, broke free on the yellow fields of October harvest.
Under lightning and rain, we were swept away by insanity.
Modest breasts, fast bites and dark mark right above your knee.
We flourished each other with delicate noise.
From crimson to crimson, our decadence (late romance)

Betrayal

Two years of cowardice (you don't deserve love)
I looked back if everything made sense.
Our turbulent love in the time of cruelty;
and you dared to name it sacrifice.
Six months of your manipulation and lies (toxicity)
Tears in the dark storm and you called it sacrifice?

Break-up

Death to you everyday (overwhelming darkness)
Snapshots of anger, hatred, frustration and fright.
Irrationality of hope, an essential illusion!
Running through the heartless city of concretes,
I reached the snow capped mountain again.
Still burning, slow heat of two hearts.

Infatuation

Reflection of the clouds
(hold your mirror, sweetheart)

Reincarnation

Hell

My funeral. I woke up by an illumination (Maya)
There, I saw images of my last childhood,
struggles of youth, secret lives of sodomized lovers
and above all, my lies, deceit and betrayal.
I was in hell for five cosmic minutes.
I was in hell naked standing to be punished.

Earth

My mother. Nine months of a whore.
I was a product of unknown father and his lust.
My low life was trapped between hunger and tears.
I was blind, only two dimensional darkness everywhere.
Is that a sound of swans dancing on water? Fly!
Then saved by the love of a socialist, Jesus.

Paradise

Divine polygamy. Promised lovers of God.
I spent seventy two hours, every hour of a virgin.
Uniform conformity and loud music of supreme authority.
Cacophony of dirge for reason and free will.
Banished homosexuals from the garden of Eden.
O Jesus, take me back to earth and blind me now!

Last Love Lore

Let me kiss you for the last time tonight.

I won't judge you; neither will I fight.

I will offer my love before we depart.
Heaven will break the silence of our hearts.

Riots of thunderstorm will deluge our history.

The sound of pain will be sob, our blind noise.

Let me kiss you for the last time tonight.

I will touch you light and play the tunes of lost love.

I will revive the fossils of our good days.

You will win tonight and I will give up.

Dissolve my darling into the eternal darkness. 

Goodnight forever!

The Girl in Train

You are lying in divine disarray!

Your flowing midnight hair is a goodnight lullaby,

an echo of aurora on a crimson river,
and there, van Gogh envisioned his painting
"starry night over the Rhone."

Glory, glory to your burning bright eyes!

hues of concealed passion delight,
and there, Blake crystallized his poem
" ............burning bright,
in the forest of the night.”

I saw her first when I boarded the train to the University Hospital. She had flowing black hair and big, expressive eyes. It was a Friday morning. The train arrived exactly at 9:15. She stood out in the train full of blonde people. The coach was packed with students; I was standing about twenty feet from her. I could see her occasionally through a sea of people. Everyone was busy or at least, looked busy with his smart phone. She was holding onto the iron stand and looking outside through the door.

At the University stadium, almost half of the students got down. I readjusted my location about five feet from her. At this point, I could vividly see her. She was in a black jacket with a grey top underneath. A black skirt with black slakes added to her voluptuousness. About a quarter of her bosom glittered bright in the low November sun. She was most probably in her early twenties and corners of her eyes were yet to yield into the wrinkles of advancing winter. We were standing opposite to each other. When the train started to move, she looked an askance at me. Within a few seconds, she looked again. I made sure to pass a slight smile though I couldn't determine if she smiled back. There was a little movement at the right corner of her lips. Our communication did not last long; she got down at the next station.

On Monday, I made sure to board the same train. My wandering eyes searched for the girl. She was seated by a window beside a young woman with two over exuberant kids. Dark clouds were hanging over the city and a few rain drops just arrived on the window pane. Inside the train, almost everyone was indulged with electronic gadgets.

"I should sit beside her at the Stadium station," I thought. At the next station, I walked gingerly towards her and sat in the front seat. She still had the brightest pair of eyes but, her hair color was changed to chestnut brown over the weekend. Her ample bosom was hidden under the veil of cruel red jacket. I noticed a tattoo of cross on the left side of her neck. There was a beauty spot right below the tattoo; so was on just above her upper lip.

"Those lips are deserved to be kissed with care and utmost passion," I thought. While the neighboring people were busy in their worlds of a foot radius, she was looking intently outside. Once, she looked right into my eyes. It was painfully acerbic. So, I looked at her reflection on the window. Our eyes met at the focal point of the window once. It was smooth heaven.

That night, I dreamed of the girl in train. She was in shabby white clothes. She had scars all over her face, dry lips, slightly bent nose to the right side, hair in shambles and thick lines on her forehead. She was sick and her mouth smelled like rotten egg. She was leaning towards me with her bright eyes on my lips. I was sure that she was in a mood of coquetry. A feeling of disgust and infatuation overwhelmed me. The more I looked at her the more a man, rather than a woman, incapacitated my sub-consciousness. 

Happy New Year

Standing on the edge of this year's swan song,
I marveled at a spectrum of dark cores and bright shores.
Three hundred and sixty five long.
(Happy new year)

I struggled within and pursued happiness.
Friendship subsided my ire; so did toil.
Three hundred and sixty five relentless.
(Happy new year)

I loved beyond (my sweetheart) and kissed contemplation.
'Freed-will' subsided my demons; so did accidental romances.
Three hundred and sixty five elation.
(Happy new year)

I rebelled silently and let loose imagination.
Hope subsided self-doubts; so did courage.
Three hundred and sixty five brave passion.
Happy new year.

Dawn of A Winter Sky

Boundless crystals on a winter dawn.
Nature's tears and her silent yawn.
Muddy clouds in the midnight sun.

Faraway, faraway, flurry of lights run.
When the lazy luster caresses loud,
a vagabond bird glitters almost sound.

Nomadic wings of the bleeding sky.

Hark, hark! flapping sound nigh.

One of Those Days

 By Edward Hyde  

This short story won second place in the "short story contest" by Sponge, Fall, 2013 in the University of Utah. (http://thesponge.eng.utah.edu/issues)  


It was a gloomy October day in Salt Lake City and Vy reached her lab early morning at 8.

  "Hi", she greeted Spencer, who sat next to her desk at one corner of the lab. That corner was relatively darker than other parts of the lab.
  "Good morning Vy. Dr. Jekyll was looking for you half an hour ago", Spencer told her while watching Ultimate Frisbee game on YouTube.
  "Ah! He talked with me for two hours last night. What does he want now? I just want to get out of this lab; tomorrow if possible." She sounded frustrated and nervous at the same time. Her PhD committee was going to meet at 2 PM that day to decide on her defense date. In last few weeks, she experienced bipolar mood swings ranging from the despair of failure to the hope of future happiness.
  "Hang in there, Vy. You will be fine. You've worked hard for the last 6 years; now it's only a matter of a few months!", he tried to calm her down.

  While writing her thesis, she'd appeared for interviews in chemical industries. Two weeks ago, a company in San Diego offered her a job. This bought her three months' time to defend her thesis and join the company. This would not make Dr. Jekyll happy as he wanted her to take a post doctoral position instead of an industrial job. She lost whatever interest she used to have in academics during sixth year of PhD.

  Professor Jekyll's bacteriology lab was placed at one end of the new Skaggs Pharmacy Building. He chose that spot carefully in order to stop the smell of stinky bacteria from spreading.

  "Vy, did you culture bacteria last night?" Marie Antoinette, a post doctoral researcher rushed from the Biochemistry side of the lab and asked urgently.
  "Yes, I did. Why?" Vy replied.
  "It got spilled from the incubator and now, the whole place stinks like skunk. Dr. Jekyll was mad at this." Vy ran to the culture room without saying a word and started to clean the mess immediately. It took her almost two hours to clean up the yellow colored spill. Once done with cleaning, she started to work on the power-point slides of her presentation.

  Suddenly, Dr. Jekyll opened the lab door at the far end and shouted, "Vy, are you in yet?" She sprang from her chair and hurried to her working place. He found her at the edge of the work desk where she started to label random vials with a black sharpie.
  "When are you going to show me your power-points? I came this morning looking for you, but, you were not here." Before she could reply, he started again, "And the bacteria spill is not acceptable to me. This is not professional." Her face became pale and a few sweat drops gathered on forehead. Then, a cruel silence followed.
  Spencer walked gingerly towards them and interjected, "Vy, you have a phone call." She was relieved at Spencer's intervention though angry with Marie Antoinette, who had probably reported her crime to Dr. Jekyll.

  The phone call was a hoax. This was a common practice in the lab to save a student from the firing line of Dr. Jekyll. "Aha, okay.......okay. Sounds good.......Amm, okay," Vy responded to the dead phone call. Having realized that Dr. Jekyll was not around, she stopped talking to the phone and went back to her desk to give the final touch to her presentation.

  At noon, Dr. Jekyll walked in and demanded that Vy show him the slides. "It is almost four weeks since we submitted the paper. I hope it will be accepted. Once you submit your third paper, you should be able to graduate," Dr. Jekyll spoke as she was changing the slides for him. She frowned and released a deep sigh.
  "I am running the last experiment and will be done writing the paper in December. I would like to defend before Christmas", she started with some temper but ended with almost pleading. Deaf to her voice, he asked her to make a few changes and wished her luck.

  The meeting was started at 2 PM. Her eyes were bright but uncertain. Five committee members were seated at a rectangular table. Dr. Jekyll started the proceedings by introducing her to the other committee members. Halfway through her presentation, one of the members stopped her to ask the mechanism of bacterial infection. Then, a deluge of questions followed and the committee suggested more experiments. It was one of those days when her answers were all over the place. After much deliberation, they decided that she would graduate sometime in the Spring semester. She walked slowly to the lab and sat down with her face on her hands.

  "Oh, no! The reviewers have rejected my paper", Vy spoke softly while still reading on her computer screen.
  "I am sorry. You are a fighter and you will fight back hard," Spencer made an effort to keep her spirits up. The lab door at the other end opened fast and Dr. Jekyll walked straight to her desk, probably to give her lectures.  

  Vy tried her best to hold back tears. Outside the lab, it started to pour heavily from the gloomy heaven.