MY BOOKER PRIZE

MY BOOKER PRIZE


I wrote the first lines of my diary. Those were beautiful, very, very funny. I could see the lights, the glitz and the glamour in that line. The glitterati at my feet, people who would love me because they couldn't understand me. All the parties and the fame; teenagers who wouldn't read, asking, begging me to sign autographs because their friends who read told them I rocked. I was the favourite author of so many. Parents wouldn't let their kids read the book, not because they were sexually explicit but because that was weird. Because they didn't want their kids to be me, no one did. Because I would be the new god-the youngest writer, awed, admired and secretly adored. And old men who spammed my blog would run behind me to get me to sign contracts with other old men, their friends to whom they bragged that they knew me from my pre-famous days as a kid who they thought was lean and flat. I wouldn't be anymore, I would have enough money to stuff myself, not that I need any. I would tuck and pull and soon would be photographed in bikinis riding in expensive cars with rich men, not necessarily handsome because they could never be so. All the money stuffed up their buttocks would make sure they grew ugly, and I would love them because I could hate them all and still be loved. I would be hooked with the juiciest and the famous ones. I would be cheap, rich and a bitchy diva. All because I had money. I would be photographed more, and soon be called one of the sexiest. I would be this, that and little more of this.

Then one fine day, I would be a slut.

And then another day I would be caught doing drugs/on a kinky video tape/indulging in smuggling/stealing.

I would fall, slowly at first, and then I would be there, still. Waiting, the dark would spread with all that I loved before. Anonymity and silence, except for the loud voices of my dreams and words; but there would be something wrong. I was scared of them, my own children, I would be scared and lost. I would want more of the lights, that shone bright in their neon loudness, mercilessly butchering my own. This time all alone-where I belonged, I would be scared and tired.

Moist, sea opens up above,
Where the lights shone bright and enticing,
I wait underground, for a sign,
A duller light that shone in simple delight.

DRUMBEATS

Drumbeats

This is about a boy. He is a monarch in his way, a freak in the others way. You cannot like him, he promises. I gifted him the bullangells in yesterday's dreams, for him to have company. He can't grow; he can fly. He does fly, from me, from you, from everybody. One day I will write about him.

The fowl sleeps on the last rays of an orange sun,
An effervescence of light, immobile-
A black-eye purple traced childishly with a dwindling interest,
A picture book of bizarre dreams left for a blank child to see…

On a green velvet leaf, a dethroned god waits,
Drunk on tears for an unquenchable thirst.
The bullangells wake and close in, to worship his rusted days,
A dull energy of drumbeats and a handful of frozen blood flakes-
Dreamily, the monarch wakes,
Orange on his eye's horizons.
A hunger flames on the corner of his mouth,
Wide-awake, he rushes, eating with a maggot's greed
Himself in and out and again.
The bullangell weeps -'tis a bizarre sound-like a child stuck midst laughter tears.
He eats still, the greed growing-his fingers, his arms, his soul.
Blind now but to his want, he eats, the monarch as in whole,
The bullangells cheer, egg him on with the dull drumbeats of their giant feet.
Till daylight rips a hole in his meal, a gaping distance in his senses.
Now the mirrors wake, where the bullangell frolicked,
A muse on their stony stare,
A mocking stillness as the monarch squirms and watches his jewels fall,
A nothingness, a no good man, a eaten crown and a broken heart,
His territory lost, the monarch flies again,
Bullangell scream on the end of the day he follows-misfit and a freak.

I

I, the captain of a shipwreck,
With a heart of weed and a soul of a butterfly.
I, the captain of a shipwreck,
With a string of hope and a pill for joy.

I am not alone, just lonely. They hide calmly playing dead till I am sad. I can see their fingerprints tied up to my hands if I watch closely. If you tried that, they would disappear. They live a minx' life, they tell me-they hurt, they bite and then wipe it all away. Only someone with too much love could do that for you. A mischief in hand for me to put under my tongue, till the saccharine dies out, till a hollow grows. A water bubble encased numbness that floats up and down and finally settles in.

Some mornings I disappoint them with my fist full of hope, my glossy yellow bangles and my lovely eyes. I walk into bright lights. N-O-R-M-A-L. With a smile and a tamed flutter for my umbra heart. Till someone comes along and tramples on my glass bangles, bruising them from black to blue to crimson of my shameful blood. I walk back to them, searching under my rucksacks and my pillows, on my knees pleading, asking for forgiveness. They punish, their spidery fingers jabbing into my dead butterfly soul. You are ugly and you will always be alone, you know we love you. Only us, only we, only us, we love you. You have nowhere to go, you would die, you ugly, ugly, lonely soul. I sit and sleep, curling up in my sheets trying not to cry. They fall eventually, not tears but the moans muffled in my pillow and my hands move over me, no longer mine but theirs, fingering me, pinching me, till I cannot reason and till pain mixes with pleasure mixes with melancholy mixes with pleasure; longing for flesh, for a smell not mine. To wrap myself over the smell of a flesh not mine.

Tomorrow morning wakes to find me stronger on my bed with invisible bites all over me. It is their strength that I sucked on yesterday, open mouthed, longing, wet for it. All Night. I could laugh, could smile, could smirk. Not feel.

I, the captain of a shipwreck,
I, who wades through nursery rhymes,
I, the captain of a shipwreck,
With tears hidden in his phallus.