The Perfect Kid

here he lies, on his bed again

off he flies, alleys full of stain.

alleys in the farthest corner of his mind,

alleys that could've helped him find

the sugar mills of his yesterdays,

alleys that also caused him his laughter,

alleys that have no real sense of closure:

...

he was the perfect kind of kid,

always wanting to blow off the lid,

always passionate and ready,

ready for that next great adventure,

ready to let his heart leap,

ready to let his dreams skip

a beat or two, just so that the furnaces

of his enthusiasm would burn a while more,

he wouldn't care if his tiny feet held a sore;

he would march his way to the top of his class

and hold his own, his scores none could surpass;

he would play his heart out in the field,

cricket, chess, badminton, you name it

and his zeal would always be his shield;

and he would address the room with the best of behaviours,

cute kids are anyway elders' life saviours;

and great plans would be in store for him,

some his own, while others his parents' whim;

and he would let go of the throttle to his spirit,

directionless, rudderless, guided by society's verdict:

...

it took him a while to know about his curse,

a curse which never let his real happiness emerge,

he sat and pondered over the cards he had dealt,

he knew that his adventures had been greatly misspelt,

it wasn't outward glory that he was looking for,

something in his fragile heart ceased to make sense anymore,

something made him question his own sanity's lore,

for,

he had wanted a sense of fulfilment for his gore,

but his accolades felt meaningless and poor,

others' value for him, credit-less and unsure,

like he was supposed to owe them something,

like he was wrapped in a livery of superficialities;

the distant look in his eyes only grew more distant,

longing for that which he could not see since an infant,

longing for that sense of oneness with the moment,

looking for it in grades and validations abundant,

but his scores only became hungry for more,

that was really all that they were good for:

...

so,

one bright day,

he stopped giving a fuck,

he didn't care to please anyone for any buck,

he had decided to shave his head

and off he walked along the less trodden road instead

and he slowly made love to his soft hidden dreams,

he became a vagabond who made space for life's creams;

he smoked like a chimney and howled like the wolf,

he sat with aghoris dressed in his rags,

eyes smeared in red, heart carried no bags

or lags or tags or any kind of lax;

he looked up at the sky and laughed so hard,

he shed his cocoon for which he had no regard,

he became friends with dogs and roads,

he wanted to kiss princesses out of toads,

and he sang songs of Floyd and Plant,

and drank from the cup of his pineal gland;

the lantern to his curiosity

always glowed a sparkling green,

and in the moment's flow,

he would indulge in everything obscene,

he walked up to the snow-capped mountains of Kalga

where the clouds danced for him,

where the apple orchards

reserved tiny little spaces of beautiful brown earth

around its dwarf barren branches

for him to sit and pop his acid,

the whole terrain covered with snow and trees in a grid,

and it was all poetry to him,

his years, the sun, the rajma and the thuppa

all running in the celluloid of his mind's film;

he had made a point to run away from his curse

but, soon, he was about to fill in the blanks in his verse.

...

you see,

somewhere when he had been running away from his grades

and the identity from them that turn so many into slaves,

somehow they had caught up to him and showed him a mirror,

and after a long while, he saw his self a little bit clearer,

and the image in it then made him notice something familiar,

that the distant look in his eyes was back again,

looking for something that he had lost in his disdain;

the perfect kid in him was perfect no more,

the perfect kid in him wanted to reach his shore,

for, he had been lost in an ocean of numbness,

he had called out for help and for some fondness,

and he couldn't bear the agony of that kid,

long lost soldier of his, his best trump bid;

that's when he realised that the curtain would close on him

if he didn't save that kid from drowning,

if he didn't relieve himself from frowning,

if he didn't embrace that kid as his own,

his only chance of salvation would forever be gone.

that kid had not been perfect for the grades he reaped,

fuck no!

he was perfect because he stood for what he believed;

that his soul never knew any kind of wrong,

his intentions were pure, his inclinations too strong:

...

now,

all this he saw and he made a vow,

to finally pick up his arrow and his bow,

and this time, he would shoot for the goddamn moon

in his heart, he once again felt that old typhoon.

he had already left his friends

in the beaten, battered, cold streets of his memories,

they would, perhaps, feature in one of his many stories;

and the few lovers that he had

were probably scared

of the intensity in his heart,

he dug a fine burial for them in his mind's graveyard.

so, the story comes a full circle,

he got to see both sides of the coin,

he was the perfect kid with a golden marble,

he was also the hopeless rogue with an empty loin;

he fears not a single sand of this universe

except, perhaps, his old marijuana container's curse;

he knows that he may never find what he's looking for,

his heart has pumped way too much for it to pour

sweet yearnings for a lost dawn,

his only love is his work and his late redemption:

...