We laughed. We joked. We lamented. We remembered books and plots and characters. We talked about the creativity that is needed to write a voice driven novel. We talked about A Brief History of Seven Killings, and the distinct voices of the characters. And when we reached Kabuga junction, we hugged and parted. I crossed the road, and took the shortcut through Kofar Kabuga, the old Kofar Kabuga, with its few heaps of sand that survived the wear and tear of time, and a goat, resting on its ancient back.
After ages of avoiding the shore, I went back again. This time however, I vowed not to wait. I got a ship. The sailor had wanted me on it all along, but when the time to sail came, I left the shore. The ship was good, but I wanted better. What is wrong with waiting for a little while more when you have been waiting all your life?
You realized later that life was giving you a poetry lesson. Teaching you that just because the first line came out right didn't mean the rest of the poem would. Sometimes the metaphors would refuse to come through. The imagery, no matter how hard you tried to paint it, would just not appear right. You would look everywhere for the perfect punchline to end the poem, but you would not find one. Life was telling you that just because you thought you were good with words did not mean that they would always come to you whenever you needed them. And sometimes, you just couldn’t write a poem, just like you could not write your life into poetry.
We shared a chemistry because books catalysed the reaction that steered our attraction. We fell for each other because books were the gravity that pulled us together. We could fly because books gave us wings. We loved because we were in love with books. We were books, there were pages on our souls.
Are poets really cowards? What if they are sadists who love to mock the whole world? What if it pleases them to see people wracking their brains trying to find meaning in their words while they sit and laugh at their foolishness? Maybe there is some sort of high that comes with writing what sounds like pure gibberish to most people.
Most importantly, I hate poetry for teaching me how to love. Poetry made a lover out of me. Before poetry, I didn’t know that the gaze from my lover’s eyes could loosen my joints. I didn’t know that a single touch of his hands could melt me like candle wax. . .
In essence, you are just like the children playing, oblivious of the uncertainties of life; you are like the lawyer filled with angst over what the judge’s ruling will be on his case; you are like the beggar on the street, unsure of the source of his next meal; you are like the teacher pondering over the best methods to teach his students.
