tonight, I fall in obsession with anyone

who notices me, drag them to that shore

of half-sleep where reaching towards a

dream feels better than being in it, caress

them in the fridge glow of fantasy, incubate

their impressions then foster them

fettered in my fusty mind, to the point

that the real & the imagined become

strangers walking back to return their

cups of chai, one smoking a filter at the

dangling lighter, the other scouring his

fingers with oil from a plastic wrapped

jaggery bun, one spilling kafka the other

filling frost, two people diverge in my

mellow hood & I'm sorry I've lost them

both, at the end of the day we're all alone

but hey it's only morning now so I carry

an obelisk on my shoulders, black hole

in color, horizon in shape, reaching

towards that shore & draping it like a

double helix shawl of hourglass sand &

even though parts of my mind war secrets

at each other I touch myself with the obelisk

with the world, scratch my body in

vinyl scars that make me music as I run

against my falling obsessions, touched

by the stylus of the world in exit wounds.

~Ajay

29/09/2020