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