Vanished

What has happened?

No, not now

But all through your life

The milestones you cherish

The memories that are too stubborn

to fade

Those events

The nuts and bolts of your life

That's what-

That's what's happened.

It's

Where you've been

The places you've seen

The things you did

Those would have beens could have beens that cling

Like hinges in your head-

But in time they rust

And fall away

Yawning open and shut

And then

They're quite gone

Fallen away

The whole sequence of images

Swept away like autumn leaves

Flown to stick in crevasses

And cracks

Where old memories can live

Cheaply

And unmolested

Out of the blow

Of the winds of change

They can stay there for ages

Like inscriptions in books

That outlive their owners

Even make you wonder

Who they were-

Mister and Misses Memory

Mirrors-

With no reflections

Except what you remember

You can work it back and forth

Embroider

Rewrite

Retrace all you want

Repeat

Rewind

Play

Go where you remember

Revisit.

To go

Go again and stand there

Step to the same spot

Now unrecognisable-

But that's because

That time, that place, that day,

it's, to tell the truth-

Vanished.

Gone.Truly gone. That place is put to another use in another time

That graveyard with inscriptions of dead Scots

Is a parking lot, a playing field,

Different people go to it

For entirely different reasons

Making brand new memories

Your place in time

Is

Changed, obliterated, replaced,

You feel like a fly on the glass from long ago

A two-footed dodo

Vulnerable, mortal, waiting for the axe to fall

And go extinct

You are

Waiting to vanish

Rubbed out like chalk on a blackboard

Marker on a whiteboard

Wiped out

In

A conclusive calamity

Designed just for you.

You feel ethereal

Bodiless

Alive but almost ghostly-

Because nothing about your presence is engaged

With the present

Of the place

And everything you remember about things you did

In that place

Is in your head-

You are mocked by the indifference-

Your traceless unprovable memory is mocked

Time does that

And so does a place

And space itself-

Space that

Dissolves

And takes you with it

As if you were cream in its coffee-

So you feel like an old madman

muttering to himself

Making funny faces

As you walk down the divider

Between past and present

While the world rushes by you

Both ways

Like so much rushing traffic.

Your delusions speak to you

With words

Sing to you with echoes of lost tunes

That themselves have vanished.

Vanished. All of it. Gone.

Your life of long ago

has vanished-

You

Are still here

Of course

But only you know that for sure

That it's really you

The same you-

Time is not linear and neither does it double-up on itself

It just gets spent

Like life in an hourglass-

You could pass this way once

Or twice

Or a hundred times

Like all these present day people

And still

It can be as if you never did

And just as you can't hear the silence for the noise now

They are, never were

In your waking dream

but-

They're here jostling you.

All that you're on about

has-

Vanished.

The good thing is,

You can shrug it off

Tell yourself that the memory, all those memories

Are not that big a deal-

What value

Do they have

If

You

Or Anyone

Or Survivor

Can challenge

Them

So boldly-

Cast aspersions

On their

Veracity-

Make your whole life a doubtful

matter of opinion-

A hypothetical thing

A debatable

Proposition?

Since your past can let you down

like this

A toupee blown away by the winds

You must figure

As you look for a solution

That tomorrow

Yes tomorrow

Is more important-

Besides you're alive to look forward to it.

So walk on in

Into the present-

It's like turning a switch-

Blend in with today's crowd

Listen to now sounds

Smile at a pretty girl, young for now-

Speculate about taking her to bed

And how her legs would splay-

And how you would take her for a long long time

Keep that thought-

To let you know

You're still alive

If a little wrinkly.

And then walk on down the road

Till you join in with your memories

embrace them all and vanish.

Nothing really necessarily happened

Just because you lived it, remember it, feel it

And after a little while

And this should make you smile,

It is certain-

That your memory

Can play games

You can make them up

As you like-

And if you don't like what comes out

Do them over

Or

Just

Erase,

Wipe your slate

Clean-

And make them

All-

Vanish.

13th April 2011

Gautam Mukherjee