This Isn’t About Writing Poem by Ayan Dasgupta

My days of youth in the markets and the streets of Calcutta South pined with hopes of fulfillment; they came into my being entered my head and rocked me to the balls filling my insides with the salty warmth of the sea and that was the time when I started penning down sun and moon - a few lines of distaste – few words of insolence – a few of premonition – cats crossing my path – bad omen with numbers and cow jumping over the moon – engrossed in heat like pubescent animals in captivity -

How my days were marked with waiting, growing up to nothing under the shadow of unpronounced phrases with my being, being scathed in marks of insolent zeal - bliss of boyhood - words forming within like tensive joy and how joy gets onto your head when you don't care about consequences. Ah! How blue was the life surrounding me, how golden the spark of youthful rigor, how falsely speculative were the pitfalls and how amorous was the heat of June and I, the bellhop full of ingrained anticipation and anticipation of quelling my conflicts with the force of my being, moved from doors to doors and finally none opened though I moved in and out of life and faith came in those alluring lingerie shops of my prejudiced adolescence - growing and falling from one belief into the wake of the next, faith came in the 50 paise cigarettes in the wake of unattained adulthood, faith came and perished into faiths in unison - one after the next and as they came my birthmarks lost their count. The two-paise liquor of my youth, the youth of my intoxication, the intoxication mellowing my dreams and the dreams defining my lust - the lust carving out the words - those words that were supposed to come and those that never did... I wanted the grandeur of plaintive lust - the sun - the moon - the signs and the sacrilege - growing out of long lost pleasures.