Dark......

Suddenly I find myself awake, wet and hot... It's confusing and conspiring...

Sensory perception shifts in the dark and I study the lines and shapes of furniture, drapes and sense rather than see the layout of my room.

I can hear the slumber of the world, and of my world, the house creaking and settling, The silence creeps onto me, there is an eerie silence in my soul, I try and remember where I am...

The old Goan House.....,
The high wooden roof......,
Stained glass windows casting colorful shadows on the pale yellow walls...
the ancient fan revolving ever so slowly.......,
the creak of the blades as it completes another circle,


The air is laced with a sweet smell of Jasmine... Raat Ki Rani (Queen of the Night)...

It reminds me of her... She came into my dreams again tonight...
Her haunting smile luring me to the edge of reason , taxing my sanity.
I miss her next to me, the softness of her skin, the mammoreal sheen of her body as it gleamed on moonlight nights... Where did those nights go....??

Outside the air hangs still, the trees are all hushed, the cicadia's have stopped their screaming, it makes me feel so alone on this mosquito net covered four poster bed, drenched in sweat on this steamy sultry night..

There is an unearthly silence which envelopes me and folds the night over me , blanketing my sorrow, but hope is yet to dawn and I am alone and forlorn....

But I am not the only one awake at this hour; I hear a stray dog bark once...then twice....the siren for the shift changs goes off for the nearby docks, and that means it's 3:45 a,m. The morning catch coming in...

Another night of fitful sleep...


I’ve been dwelling in dark books, good books but not good for lending, books that if I loaned out I’d have to make an apologetic disclaimer about the images trapped in the black and white text by the authors.

Images of death, of dead animals, of sickness, of plague, of drowning, of murder and rape and suicide, images I wish I hadn’t seen in my mind’s eye.

Images I wish I could put back inside the book and close the cover. It was not my intent, just as so much of my life was unintentional...it wasn't my intent that things would turn out the way they have..;

A good book is more than its fragmentary images, but some thoughts linger like retina burns.