Pillow Poetry

Let me lay with Sleep-
He is the last man who shall claim me tonight.
I have grown weary of
Twirling around
The heart that is clung to the hem of my skirt,
The other that is snagged in the train of a stocking,
And another unhung from the strap of my bra
Black with the secrets of a million humiliations.
Only Sleep can quieten this whore of words
And bleed the tongue of all language but Truth.

To an Ancient Love

I have taken a step ahead
With your heart still freshly shattered
Beneath the other foot.
Mercy begs my many graces
To cite to our verses
In the bibliography of
My well drawn out second Act.
Your Gospel by which
My eyes were raised in Womanhood
To meet a life that was once meant for us-
A life I now spend in another man's arms
And call it home.
I have taken a step ahead
With your heart still freshly shattered
Beneath the other foot-
With this I shed the memory of all the pain,
With this the bliss tinted Polaroids will also fade.
I leave you only with words
Like a fallen husk
When the seed is lost.

Atop a Cloud of Pillows

With the silvery pale moonlight
Twisting like ribbons through the leaves,
Binding us to be one
Under the sheltered canopy-
Where our love
Is neither a secret nor a song
But just the truth
Stealing itself into
The corners of our smile.

The Unborn Devastation

Meet me at the crossroads of lust and hate

For an object I so desire must chain me.

Cast away your soul and breath

And come only with the weaponry of your trade.

Be unfeeling when I am not chaste

Lest my broken clockwork tick again

And race to keep pace with the life that has flown by

And bear witness to the performance of

Forgotten black angels in their hypnotic masque again

And string all their words in unbearable poetry. 

Meet me at the crossroads of lust and hate

And cast away all that I desire of you.

Be the faceless stranger with the weaponry of his trade

So when I meet my death, you can go your way. 

Meet me at the crossroads of lust and hate

But do not bring your love

I do not know which road to take. 

Written on 8 February, 2013

My polyglot pen tries to make
Several points
On the even surface of
Unwritten paper.
It hasn't got the same effect
For it whores around the whole surface,
Bastardizing various tongues
(Mostly South Indian).
All words break loose
When the good Indian woman's bun
At the nape of my neck
Tumbles down.
Sense can only be
Sieved in the kitchen. 

Sleep and Hunger

My tummy's a-rumbling, rushing

Into mid-day with

Last night's dreams still in tow

Between sleepy lashes

Of mine eyes.

I can only collect

Falling dew

On tip of my tongue

As visions of you

Melt and leak

Out my head

Down the tip

Of my nose.

I might eat your

Candy-cane fingers,

Blue water-apple face,

Eye-balls on a lollipop,

Shred strawberry centred

Marshmallow tongue,

And slurp

The cappuccino cloud hair.

Lemongrass: A Cyber-Space Freshner

The words jump out and glow extra bright-
I imagine the satellite shoot at me.
The internet is fascinating!
My laptop is bright red!
The fall-rise tone of a new notification
Is the only acknowledgement of my cardiac arrhythmia.
His blog is a two-way mirror
That I'm on the wrong side of.
I'm fan-girling like a twelve-year old,
I have that minor-celebrity crush thing happening.
Mama told me not to talk to strangers on Facebook
But what if I really want to get tangled in an elaborate web, world wide?

I will never know how green his blue jeans are
And he won't see how my bed is a chocolate wrapper junkyard
But our IM smells like lemongrass. 

Wordsworth, Blake and Hegde

A picture,
A painting,
A poem-
What use?

Forever it was,
Forever it will be;
Before my mind thought
And after your eyes read
And crumble to dust
In the earthly bed.

A picture,
A painting,
A poem-
What use?
In the end
I will only taint
The perfection
Of the beauty
Of the Mother
With my
Ignorant human touch.

Veronica's Origins

I have not seen you
But you have honey brown eyes
Because he said he loved you.
You have an oval face
Because he said he held it
As he wiped your tears away.
Your lips are frozen crescent,
Colourless and unhappy
Because he said you were another man's wife.
Your nails are long and shapely
Because the scars you gave him
Are the only treasures he has of your love.

Veronica,
You approximant tap nasal plosive-
He breathes in every time your name resounds
In his head and in his heart and in his lovers' eyes.
He sees in them and he sees in me- you.

He walked down the aisle
Of the library with one
Because he hoped
That her brain had your beauty.

And another-
He let the other pat him on the head
Hoping that your motherly love
Ran in her veins.

He looked in my eyes
And said "At last!"
Hoping for your dreams
To shine through them.

What devastation in his heart, Veronica!
He fell.
Now he wanders
With his orphaned love,
Foolishness is
The only other child
You had with him.
For both their sake
He seeks refuge in
She and she and she.
And then one day
He came to me.

I saw him and I loved.
I made a home for myself
In the heart
Of Your homeless man.
And then my love was orphaned,
And I was not you,
And I fell
Full pregnant.
Foolishness is the only child
I had with him.

For how long now I have wandered
From him to him to him.

I walked down the aisle
Of a library with one
Hoping to find his beauty
In his brain.

I patted the head of another
Hoping he'll take
The motherly love in my veins.

But no matter
Who looked in my eyes,
My only dream was him.

Veronica-
You are my theory
And his reality
Behind our big Bang.
Veronica, your Origins-
Our universe
Is governed
By Entropy.

And in knowing this I sigh
From the depth
Of the Language
Of the soul
Rattling within-
His name
Affricate tap nasal approximantly.

Son of Geraldine*

How many times this pen has been held, Son of Geraldine!
How many words it has traced!
Still, it behaves like it has no memory,
Produces no trace of an echo
Even as it writes the same words again
On a pale fresh page
With virgin clarity.

Only the pages remember,
For they are only written upon once.
They remember the force with which the ink flowed
And where it became tender.
When they age, their yellowness will only know
One touch.

Son of Geraldine, you had many lovers,
Your pen has written and discarded
Many works of passion.
Crumpled, they tumble to many corners of the world.
Your words touch the soil of every land,
In every language,
How mothered the tongue, notwithstanding.
Like pupils of a teacher who taught it well,
They carry your coloured words for lessons.

Son of Geraldine, your words remain
In whispered glory
On a last page torn with longing to breathe.
Your word lives
On the last page
Beneath their book's heavy heart.




*Not biological

Your Sister, The Whore

For Nithya

Because we bear the same cross,
Of wanting to love and be loved-

Like Carbon atoms shifting
With new attachments every day.

Organic are our bonds-
They disintegrate everyday.

They say we are special
And want us all for themselves.

I love them truly,
And so do you.

But who loves us
The way we want to be loved?

Bear a Torch to the Toilet

The Greatest Thinkers were born in the loos-
An Archimedean "Eureka" speaks Volumes for their thoughts.
But to a toilet frequented by the country's brightest young minds,
Their heads illuminated by dreams and virgin knowledge-
A Torch needs to be borne.

The floor underfoot is watered twice a day,
It shines emerald when the top layer is skimmed.
Universal truths are deciphered on the walls
Where the delicate pink tile makes patterns in the grime.

The Intelligentsia prance in their night-wear,
All beauty and brain-
Ballerinas leaping over fallen hair.

The Pricklers in the Nether region
Turn a blind eye to their performance
And remain indifferent
To the drains constipated
By the Black mesh of Keratin
And over-flowing codes of Red.

In the toilets congregate
The heavy Recta
And their last meal behind clamped mouths.
The ceilings blink down mournfully at them and die.
The taps snort dryly.
The pleasures of a rear in mid-air
Is plunged in dry darkness.

I step down from my brown ceramic pedestal.
My heels slap the floor below.
I'm at a moss for words. 

*ಅನಾಮಿಕ *

ಮಂಜು ಮುಸುಕಿದ ಬೆಳದಿಂಗಳೇ,
ನಿನ್ನದೆಂತಹ ಶೋಕಗೀತೆ?
ಅವರೋಹಣದ ಅಂಚಿನ ನಿಟ್ಟುಸಿರಲ್ಲೇ
ಪೂರ್ಣತೆಯ ಆರೋಹಣದತ್ತ ಹೊರಡುವೆ.

Sea Roots

Where life began I stood

Beneath the bluest sky 

and the gray-blue sea

Constantly waving and beckoning me.

The gentle rhythm of the ocean

Rocked my mind to rest,

Trying its best to quieten

Your voice in my head.

The ocean sighs 

And our million sighs:

So many missed moments 

of togetherness stolen.

The ocean beckons me,

The shore laughs with people,

And I know I don't want to go

Without you. 

Shopping List:

Abhi, buy these in the evening:

1. Wheat flour (3 kg)
2. Rice (the one that costs 45 bucks) (10 kg)
3. Mustard seeds (100 gms)
4. SSP asafoetida (POWDERED!)- the big bottle
5. Ariel (front load- 2 kg) (Or is it Surf? check once)
6. Eggs (get the small box)
7. your deodorant (must you buy that?)
8. Nail polish remover (where did mine go?)
9. make-up concealer (I also want you to see that dermatologist. come back home at an earthly hour some time!)
10. that ointment (check the name on the box. does it still itch, butt?)
11. pair of white ear-rings for your new kurta- pick something visible
12. large hairclip. sorry, yours broke.
13. pre-blow drying hair spray (HOW LONG has yours been empty??)
14. sun block (Find SPF 50)
15. it's time for your contact lens' solution, too. please tell me you finished the one you bought LAST year?
16. false teeth/vampire fang/clown mask... something. just make sure you stop wearing that expression on your face!
17. peas (1/2 kg)
18. Sun glasses for you. Aviators are on sale at that place. go check.
19. Femininity (25 litres) (I'm making you bathe in it!)

Love,
Abhi

Fore-verse

A mere white tube-rose

Must first be freshly dead

Before it becomes experimental paraphernalia

In the ink-pot.

At first, the broken stem puckers its lips,

Daring to test the moist blue-ness.

Slowly, all the chromes are drunk,

The white tube-rose turns blue

Somewhere between lifelessness and decay

Holding within itself what could have been

A poem, an endearment;

Gaining omniscience over what would have been

Secrets, bitter truths.

Stories consume it

So they can be told in another life-time. 

Bleed

How the red capillaries bloomed under the epidermis,

And you held my hand

Lightly dusting pharmaceutical fairy powder.

A sanitized doctor's touch it was-

The wound healed

The heart only continued to bleed.

Remember how the capillaries blossomed under the epidermis;

A-rose to your first, aiding touch. 

Tonight I Must Write

Tonight I must write-

The road is long

And the sights are many.

In the dark distance

Ruby tail-lights flash,

Threatening to block my right of free passage.

I quicken-

I must go home before curfew

And so I rush.

In the darkness, I don't slow down

To see the chopstick end of our fine-dining,

The tree below which we sat,

Or the road safety board at which I said

"Slow down sweetheart, the speed limit is 50".

I crouch angrily and the accelerator makes a feline growl.

All the time, I think of how I'm not thinking of you.

Somewhere ahead, green turns orange

And in a split second, I break a rule-

Not knowing where to stop

Not thinking about you. 

Perennial Night

It dawned for me, finally-

The day.

But what are you doing still, out west?

I look hard- it is you

Camouflaged in cloud colours,

My reminder of the night before.

I cannot be with you still!

The white on you is translucent,

I can hear your luminous voice fade;

At the brink of my eye

Rises the elegy of our broken temptation.

Go away, now!

It is time for me to be charred

By the brightest gold of day,

It has risen to dispel you- be gone!

I must now seize the day.

You rise and you leave-

With hurt pride, with hidden fears,

With indignation-

Like the last strand of a dream.

But you remain in the recesses of my heart

For me to visit all day.

Lone Marauder of Perennial Night,

You know it is time for you to leave.

Little by little, you disappear each night,

Leaving me in darkness.

Only to return fully

To haunt the-

Garnish

Anger, coriander, love,

What is each but garnish?

Only the tangible survives-

The smells, the tastes, and-

Oh.

The tactile memory.

So fresh in the greasy night,

With half-a-foot's distance

That insulates the heat…

Next to a biriyani stall-

He, she and well lubricated morsels

Of carb-energy,

Feeding seven screeching children in their body.

Impatience hisses, grows, and bursts at the seams.

Quick! Hasten! Run!

The last pairs of jeans will do

What they were created to do.

"Oh, honey! Oh, honey! Oh!"

XXX -Y?

Garnish, they garnish their love.

Flavoured air dances

Here and there-

The tango begins

With tangerine twists of Russian ethanol

Travelling to places

With the rub of

Un-flat bellies.

They satin for each other,

Nails playing different chords,

Teeth whistling in saline hot-springs,

As the prickle sizzling, wandering, shocking

Cloaks them in one swift movement

Plunging them in blank darkness

Putting out all lights but their eyes.

Their eyes.

Glances, touches, whispers-

What is each but Garnish?

Hide

Wash it tenderly

And hold the gleaming ass and say

"Holy Cow! Goddess of Prosperity!

The arrival of Wealth!

You're auspicious, Auspicious, I say!"

Run your fingers over me,

Eye me with greed,

Spank me with the mirth of Acquisition.

You bought me cheap, you prefer it that way;

You milked me so lustfully.

Rejoiced in the triumph my hide had to offer.

And once my skin was touched and used,

Your many devotions came away,

You saw no prosperity in familiarity.

You turned this aging, ugly cow away,

Because I was not that kind of a girl for you.

Unrepaired

Sleepless nights,

Red-rimmed eyes of blackness,

Snot-nosed, the babe fallen lies.

Medicant Time falls dead by her bed,

Past into present crashing.

Future frozen before the morn-

'Die child, die', lulls despair.

To Put Pen on Paper

Running, fleeing, endlessly in circles;

Again, again, Always-

Escaping, surviving

The execution by sharp needles

In narrow clock radii.

Shackled by diktats,

Unable to flick a wrist

In protest or in mere expression.

How then, the brow sheds

The brine of the ocean inside!

And descending, the intercourse with tears

Runs its acid course;

Red cheeks sizzle, extinguish.

Wordlessness streaks havoc

On sun-browned face,

Disappearing in dead mouth,

The hollow of silence.

Potability lost.