For someone who'll read this

500 years from now

How are you?
I am sure a lot has changed

between my time and yours,
but we're not very different,

you have only one thing on me -
hindsight.

I have all these questions for you:
Do cars fly now?

Is Mumbai still standing by the sea?
How do you folks manage without ozone?

Have the aliens come yet?
Who from my century is still remembered?

How long did India and Pakistan last?
When did Kashmir become free?

It must be surprising for you
looking at our time,

our things must seem so strange to you,
our wars so little,

our toilets for 'men' and 'women'
must make you laugh

our cutting down of trees
would be listed in your 'Early Causes'

our poetry in which the moon is still
a thing far away

must make you wonder, both for that moon
and for the poetry.

You must be baffled,
that we couldn't even imagine

the things you now take for granted.
But let that be,

would you do me a favour,
for 'old time's sake'?

Would you go to the Humayun's Tomb
in what used to be Delhi

and just as you're climbing the front staircase,
near the fourth rung, I have cut into

the stone wall to your left -
'Akhil loves Rohit'

Will you go and see it?
Just that, go see it.

Romantic Love Quotes for Him with Pictures

When love is not madness, 

it is not love.

If a thing loves, 

it is infinite.

Love will make you steal 

someone's heart and give them yours.

Love is life. And if you 

miss love, you miss life.

Love means never 

having to say you�re sorry.

Most people will be about as 

happy as they decide to be.

I want someone who will stay with me 

no matter how hard I am to be with.

If I know what love is, 

it is because of you.

I'm not perfect but you'll 

never find someone who 

loves you as much as I do.

When Farida Khanum

sings now,

she does not hide the age
in her voice,

instead
she wraps it in paisleys,
and for a moment
holds it in both of her hands,

before
she drowns it in our sky.

When she sings now,
she knows

that at the end of that note
when her voice breaks
like a wishbone,

he will stay.

Who're the ones marching that day?

L.G.B.T.Q.I.H.K.
What does the headline next day decide?
To call it 'Gay Pride'

2015 Best of Poetry Lists

More end-of-year best book lists are being announced. There are the known and "official" best of lists, like the National Book Awards and there are plenty of lesser known ones.

Still time to grab an end-of-year poetry gift for a friend or for yourself.

The GoodReads website has its list of readers' choice book awards, including 20 books of poetry. There are a few titles or poets that I know, but the majority are ones I don't know. There is Felicity by Mary Oliver, but also the winning title, The Dogs I Have Kissed, by Trista Mateer who is "Known for her eponymous blog and her confessional style of writing, this is Trista Mateer's second collection of poetry."



Assuming that the list is simply based on votes by readers of the site, you can either see it as a real list of books readers enjoyed or a chance for lesser-known poets to have their friends vote them up. I'd like to believe it is the former, a kind of crowdsourced what-I-read-and-liked list. Either way, it brought to my attention some books I would not have seen otherwise.

Another list of 8 comes via the Flavorwire website.  

I occasionally look at Amazon's list of best-selling poetry books because it does mean something to know what people are buying. That list always has titles that seem like they were purchased by students for a class (lots of anthologies) and also a bunch of current titles. I'm not a big buyer of anthologies, but I can see someone buying 100 Best-Loved Poems in the way that I once bought the Miles Davis "Greatest Hits" album (knowing he never had any "hits") in the hope of getting the best in one place.

Tonight

You're still glued to the bus-stop seat,
I pull you off it, "91 is here."

On Gray's Inn Road,
you again call the houses "so miniature,"
holding them between your finger and thumb.

On the double-decker,
you're still dozing off on the back seat,
asking me to wake you up when we get there.

As we get out, I'm still telling you to
"wrap yourself well, it's always colder
near the river."

As we walk below the Waterloo Bridge
and you turn to look at me, I am still
one-part longing, one-part fear,

wishing, tonight, that you were here.


(thanks to Daniel Titz and Dorian Lebh)

You have parked so badly

You have parked so badly
making it very difficult for me
to get my car out.

Were you drunk?
You are certainly very selfish
and inconsiderate.

S. Banks.



A handwritten note left on the windscreen of a badly parked car in Bristol, UK. Submitted by Daniel Mehmet.