Reservations

My dearest darling Radhe,

My love.

Difficult it was 

for me to write those words. 

Such open confessions of sentiment cause me turmoil, 

spasms in the chest. The fear of sounding false.

The fear of unbelief in my own words.

It seems I have lost confidence in my love for you.

You have told me to disbelieve in it.

And I am trying hard,

and observe the passage of the stages of grief, 

beginning with the visceral disbelief in the loss.

What does one do when all the air leaves the balloon?
Where does one go when one stands atop a precipice?

What are the true signs of wisdom?

Ah, yes, this all certainly brought down a storm

on my smug sense of self

wreaked havoc with my sense of direction.

I am tired of examining this so-called love,
assessing whether it is good or bad, right or wrong.

Asking whether this love is real enough 

for me to cherish it or to miss it,

or simply a most powerful illusion, 

an irredeemable distraction

and the path to spiritual destruction..

And so I end up feeling like Radharani 

trying to excise Krishna from her heart, from her mind

by whatever distractions she is able to find,

as I explore the endless alleys and byways of YouTube

But all drugs dry up eventually

and that is when you revisit me...
as the external entertainments, 

the hypnosis of flicking through YouTube channels

relinquishes its hold   

there you are with me, once again, as one flesh 

I again feel your presence in my chest

on my skin, penetrating every one of my senses,

and so the words burst out 

"Radhe Radhe Radhe!

my dearest, my darling."

It is rare that I can give myself to it

in the full madness that I once knew

It has become the remembered speech of a player

in a remembered role, 

coming as automatically as an alarm clock. 

an un-conscious recital from the underlying YouTube reality,

the undercurrent of my very own life drama

and my frustrated ambivalence to it.

My obsession also had become a disturbance to you

Its legitimacy had been called into question. 

The line between love and insanity is thin.

So you had made a decision

many decisions actually

and you exercised decisiveness.

What else could you do?

Such games are the province of youth

and for us, in the dawn of dementia.
a foolish last grasp at the illusion of happiness.  

Do we never learn?
Is there no time when one outgrows

a belief in love in the flesh?

Love or lust. This is a philosophical path 

we have traipsed down many times before,

Even now, I believe that lust and love can join hands

and one can transcend the false self inherent in lust

and harness its power, ride it like a horse, 

in the cause of love, yes I do.

One lives that dream 

by allowing it to melt you both into a Yugal

searching together as One for prema transcendence..
The very idea of it has an inherent beauty,

that encompasses both the pains and pleasures of love..

Despite the passage of time 

and the inevitability of separation

will I now deny this love as illusion

just because it could never be real and permanent

in this temporary abode of inevitable loss and misery?

These reflections come now after years 

of battering my head against your wall

vomiting and diarrhetic as a cholera victim,

my liquid beauty more horrific with each cry of pain.

Horrific to you. Horrific to me.
And repeating it, repeating it again and again,

in all its horrific detail, hoping it can one day become a story

that has the simple profundity of a fairy tale.

Today perhaps there is a new courage 

that makes me write to you. 

Perhaps there really is an inevitability weighing down on me

whether for good or for evil.

But all this comes after I started writing to you again

after another determined silence. I am becoming stronger

I am feeling braver. I think that I may even be able to write again.

Perhaps it is only an illusion that someone

who loved me with pure lust that makes me think

I may still make a mark in this world

despite being but a speck of dust 

in infinite time and space.

And should it happen, I will still say, 

You made me do it.

I write to you, I wonder why

I write to you. I wonder why.
In theory, I am satisfied with your memory alone
The one alternative is to forget,
but at some point, I decided that this love for you…
even if it is nothing but lust…
was a value I would examine to the very end,
I would keep conducting this experiment
even without hope for verifiable results in this life.

But my memory of you is antiseptic,
it is isolated from its origin, like a medicine.
It is the active ingredient, which somehow
was transferred into me.

It has no beating of heads in disagreement
no pulling or pushing, no wanting no frustration of want;
It is the preserved essence in mind of you;
it is the sum total of everything you did to my senses,
the cell by cell invasion of your hladini power.
It is a conscious force, but I do not know it is you, I only guess.

And why should I want to reach out past the illusion of memory
to a "real" person, who comes with her own expectations
as many branched as the tree of life,
a text-book source of misery,
acclaimed by all the shastras of good will
as a danger to me, an elephant trap,
a honey trap, only to be stung by bees?
Yes, It is a vanity to think one will not be stung.

I know. The real you, you will tell me,
is the one who tells me to renounce,
and by your strength of will,
I have been bound to learn your lesson.

I fear you. I fear most of all that you would turn around
and change direction. That you would say, let's do it.
Then what would I do? What does an old pauper monk do with an old woman?

And yet it is answered: why do I write?
Do I still dream of a reconciliation of real you with memory you?

Memory is a good thing. I am an old man now
and so I believe in the inevitability of loss.
A parade of losses is the preparation for the final moment,
the final breath. What memories will glow in my brain at that moment?
The pheromones ignited by your love?
The Holy Name, and the thought of that mightiest of unions,
at the Soul of the very Universe?

Time I am, destroyer of worlds.
And so time grinds down my love,
ah but I was so sure it would never die.