A Sermon on Forgetfulness

A sparrow was found
hovering mid-air,
its wings sagging
and the tail
like a teardrop,
just at the brink
of being sacrificed.

Bound
nowhere.
Found mid-air.

Eyes dragging
vision out of the jail;
it forgets to look
at the moon stale.
Forgets to blink,
chirp, hop;
its tail like a teardrop.

Forgets, forgets to fly...
Bound nowhere,
the sparrow forgets to die.

Window To Despair

No air to take me 'there';
my breath's caught in a snare.
I look through a window
that has me 'fair and square'.
I look and I swallow
my one silent prayer;
I hear my tomorrow,
wailing, full of sorrow:
"All knowledge is despair."

To Love With One's Teeth

This consummation that is
denied us;
this dream that has
belied us -
we seek now to love
with our teeth.

Love not,
each other;
love not,
any further -
all we seek now is
to bleed.

To give ourselves away;
to tear them apart...
we seek not to love
and not with our heart.

The flames have been soaring;
the skies seethe -
and here we choose to love
only with our teeth.

Our Simple Reasons

Because I
dreamed of you,
I know you have been
needing me.

Because I
wept for you,
I know you have been
bleeding me.

Because I
walked to you,
I know you have been
leading me.

Because I
wrote for you,
I know you have been
reading me.

Between Us

His eyes claw
at her golden arm -
my evening's the coquette
he's fallen for.

Half kept from me
this new secret -
I lose him to
the wanton hour.

Silence trickling down
his breath -
I hear him talk
to her.

Shackled in his embrace,
I wait...
I wait for the gilded eyes
of the night
to scrape the black on him.

Shackled,
I wait for him.

Defeating the Beat

The beat-
it nibbles at your feet;
you're turning into dust.

Look, if you must-
you're a whirlpool
when you dance.

You tempt it so;
yes, music knows of lust.
It drinks you neat.

Twice did you swirl,
once did it halt-
Time's unjust.

Dance, defeat the beat!
Let music teach you-
what it knows of lust.

Riddles

Goldilocks and a teddy bear-
love's impotence is just too clear.

He raised a clock tower in my heart-
it beat and sang; it played its part.

That thing about his voice, I say,
makes me drift everyday.

A handful of art, nothing more-
what's there to a sea but the shore?

Riddles one too many, my dear-
love's impotence is just too clear.

Eyes I Love

You never uncovered them for me,

but your eyes were serendipity.

The sun may sometimes be caught

in a rain puddle.

And the puddle never survives.

But with our eyes,

it's different.

Yours make me too happy.

And I survive it.

Mine,

should you see them,

burn like you.

I go to your eyes and bath my soul

in their blackness.

You never look at me.

His Hands

They ask me about my preferences:

"What do you like in a man?"

The 'Misses' at the University,

walking their eyes across my dress,

dragging white fingers across desktops,

killing

time.

Handbags. Eyes. Lipsticks.

"What would attract you?"

I hear them all, one by one

and never know what to say.

I do not know any men.

I dream. An evening drowned

in purple bruises and white lies.

Flies. And hands.

Hands that held the mood. Hands that played

it all. Hands that beat. Hands that were bitter

and hot. Hands that sawed air and broke

my breath into two. Hands that hush-hushed.

Hands that rubbed. And rubbed. And rubbed.

Hands that bloomed and betrayed. Hands that

contained. Hands that took, took, took.

Hands that crawled. Hands that clawed at the silence.

Hands in my hair.

Hands.

"Come on. Don't play shy!" She insists,

"The smile?" "Chivalry?" "The style?"

"His hands."

Nothingness at Boiling Point

So choked am I
swiveling on this chair-
the pivot of nothingness;
takes me nowhere.

I weave half-circles, then return.
What for is the meaningless sojourn?
I burn.
And never completely burn.

What for is all this that I learn?
A formula for everything!

Clinging to the kingpin,
swinging and stopping,
I trick myself into futures
that will never be.

I do not move when I move.
I do not love when I love.

I heat it up, just
this nothingness,
like it were Desire and Promise.

My thoughts, like broken glass bangles
are kept
only for the sake of keeping.

Two Poets

They came for us one day;
I hid behind the buttons-
Q, W, E, R, T.

He turned, walked away-
walked to the furthest room,
the room with one door
and no windows.

                                                 There had been nights when we'd
                                                 played lovers, me and him;
                                                 I, perched on his 'window', would sing
                                                 and he

Q-W-E-R-T-

                                                There had been nights when I'd
                                                flown in through the window,
                                                a sparrow and hovered
                                                for a moment to see
                                                what they call an eternity.
                                             
                                                I'd been rain on some nights
                                                and a snowflake on others,
                                                falling, dropping, giving in, dying.

                                                It was beautiful-
                                                our being perfectly free.

Then one day,
they came for us.
We weren't found, of course.

I still hide behind the buttons
and he lives a windowless existence.
I don't knock, not me.

Reading the Notes

Weightless on a bike,
I travel like
the unreal quaver
playing in my mind,
leading me to forgetfulness.

I look up at the sky
and open my arms
to the blackbirds that fly-

birds,
like musical notes
on an endless sheet.
Sky is music
and so am I.

Halt me not,
let me go today-

I look up at the sky;
my eyelashes like staves,
trapping a few bird-notes.

A Birthday Party

They were blowing into balloons,
themselves
and the balloons wouldn't take it
for they came in sizes, too small
to be inhaling emptiness,
containing
the weight of it.

The balloons burst.
They tried newer ones.

Mother got tired.
Father needed a drink.

I picked the reds and greens from the floor.
It pricked me when I saw him
head to that door
while she tried
to try a little more,
my mother.

Because Poetry

My heart has been in hiding ever since
he took me off of it and painted him
like skin, like sin, like things I can't evince,
like reds and blues and moods, he painted him.

There's this bed I sail on
during nights darker than his eyes.
And it feels like so many storms
trying in vain to set me right.
I write.
Because poetry.

There's a tear that I never shed;
I bled red, but I never shed,
this truth that I left unsaid.
I write. I write.

A million gongs to the morning,
bells and more bells-
he tickles and I cry,
our silences have gone dry
we try
to keep away.

A million alarms to the night,
we feign sleep before shadows.
They make love while we
make poetry.
Because poetry.

I Write, Why?

There was nowhere to go
but I whipped the horse anyway;
made it run
and bleed,
this steed I call my pen.

I wasn't speaking the truth.
There was no truth to be spoken!
The truth dwelt in silence
and I invoked words.
Words?
I drew from a dry well.

The ancient soul is but too young-
it is artless.
And here I paint pictures,
I design.
I wince with want 
of words!
I write
when it cannot be written.
I write, why?

Ride. Ride. Ride, they say.
But when I ride,
I feel like being ridden
by the beast instead.
Why must I saddle myself?

I write
when it cannot be written.
I write, why?

In the Mouth of a Zero

Every night the ceiling fan

weaves me a whirlpool

to drop my eyes into it,

to land weightless

in a stale pool of desire.

Every night

in the mouth of a zero,

I find your dream,

bubbling like

it has just escaped from a bottle,

like it has come with a tide

to be gone,

to be gone.

I peel the white waves

off the shore

and wear them like morning

across my neck.

The ceiling fan never tires

of weaving me this endless drape

of nudity.

To Be Contained

Bones are bars and behind them is a bird

that flutters and fights but only to fail

escaping them until the rail gets blurred

and the bird is delivered from the jail.

The heart that learns to beat between the 'bars'
the soul that is limited by a 'score',
the game, this life and all its destined wars
are but the music He creates ashore.

And we die 'being', we live only to cling
to these waves that are nothing but the trail
of thoughts He drops into an endless string;
we embrace the wave but forget to sail.

Why is it that the father so ordained
that we'd be us only till we're contained?

Process

Id

I was born a poem to God's mind;
I was to her a tarantism.
Her fickle butterfly, a favourite, perhaps.
I was God's passion, 
but she gave me a name.

If

In the blinking of an eye
I learned to flutter my wings.
God kissed me often
and sometimes she called me a name.

Then she gave to me, 'you', a poem.
And you were as mine as I was hers.

If only you would rest on my lips,
you fickle, colourful thing.

It

We swam to the silver depths,
to frozen red wine.
And we did balloon into two lakes,
you and me.

Two poems were never a pair.

Id

I bear you everyday
in my poems.

Death is a Delivery

Hark, you wildlings of the world!
The world is but a wing
of Time.

Look! It perches awhile
on the weightless branch
of Space.

Hark!
A leaf is dead-
disowned
by the tree.

Hear!
The crisp skeleton of a heart-
frail leaflet,
it goes.

Look!
Time ferries it again.

Look!
Look how it grows
in the womb
of the Universe.

The shedding was
a delivery.

Death too
was birth.

Phenomenon

Report the poem; go tell it to the mountain.

Do whatever!

Love is godless.

God is not a meaning!

You are not a word.

I'm soundless.

We meet, we kiss. Not really. Never really.

Non-words and soundlessness are heard clearly.

I loves the I dearly.

Panacea's Proxy

They bring me black holes, they bring me black souls;
they bring me the night, calling it starlight.
They bring me a jar, the make of their spite;
they bring me power, they bring me controls.

I am playing Panacea perhaps-
they bring me their open wounds to nurse.
A pot of poems, the pithos of verse;
why do they present me my own collapse?

Absent minded, when I open my heart,
all bonds fume to nothing; their names escape.
And I am left a creature sans a shape.

Panacea playing Pandora's part-
I am but a myth floating in the scape.
I am only a drape and not a shape.

The Prufrock Paradox

Is there a word that you’ve forgotten too?

And do you hear it in the mornings when

a shy bird sings, the cuckoo refusing to coo;

when silence simply is beyond your ken?

Is there a sound that you would love to woo?

Is there a thought you would want in your den?

Is there a feeling which being absent, you

beseech your fingers to besiege a pen?

Is there a voice you’re trying to undo?

Is there a song for which you’ve not a yen

but you recall it only to get through?

Is there a word you remember often?

Do you write 'nothing' on many a day?

Do you speak and yet never have a say?

Prevail

Prevail again, only once more, I say-

will you return to me, my only one?

I am the adret and you are the sun;

won’t you retouch the sky, make it a day?

All my words- they come to naught as I pray,

so I stand forlorn, flowerets undone

and I wait for you and me to just run,

but there’s nothing that will push me today.

I am frozen but yet unbroken, come!

This tilt towards you is ‘hope’ beseeching.

I am taken but yet unshaken, come!

This guilt, this pain; you should be reaching.

I cannot exist thus forsaken, come!

What for is the dark, when it isn't teaching?

A Wail to Your Avail

These tears that fall into your lap tonight,

are love gone sour and life that lost its grip

on time and truth and trust, only to slip

into the dark abyss, that zone of fright.

If you will laugh, my dear, spare me the plight!

Unlike the kiss that blossomed from your lip,

these rivers do not flow from a red tip;

they dip, a black ship that'll be lost to sight.

Concern for them, command for me, or more-

do you have something to give me today?

Don't open it again, that wanton core,

remain, if there is nothing you could say;

return nothing and just settle the score.

Your tears will flow and my heart will obey.

Thumbelina

Thumbelina. Cymbeline.  Mambo, if you please.
Pleased to meet me?

Toes, they touch it briefly-
the earth beneath your feet.

Dance, let us move. Tango, if you please.
Meet me once. Drink me neat.

Wild, wild eyes. The chase of chickens.
And all we do is eat.

Maybelle. Farewell.

Thumbs. Cymbals. Mumbo Jumbo.
No. No. No. No, no.

Come

Do not axe it.
Follow the wild trail
of the root underground.
I will be found.

North

We have never needed a compass. Here, where we

sail, the North that is, we need commas and conjunctions;

we need socks for our feet.

Veiled women do not need anchors. Wombs here are trenches.

Nobody drowns in the North.

I once went sight-seeing to a bunker. We had tea and an over-priced

packet of potato chips and mud and oxygen, yes. We climbed out

to better things- a house, guards, guns.

Mountains, caught up in an embrace. Echoes, mistaken for heartbeats.

Rivers giving themselves up. Temples, mosques, churches.

For whom the bell tolls? Never mind.

Poetry must rhyme; every syllable accounted for. Here in the North,

there’s a question nobody answers. Everything is flawlessly flawed.

Nobody drowns.

This is mine. And that is yours.

One owns the boat. The other, oars.

Rivers, shores. Manners, mores.

The Caesura

The mirror’s white-

a warm shower just ceased to be.

I drop one leg in my jeans,

half-filling them with me.

A blue vein on my wrist-

ticking, I can see.

Chipped nail-paint, tan-

No, I don’t need the mirror to tell me.

Separation. What will tomorrow be like?

Frail like the past.

An outcast.

Separation? Can it be?

Upon beading your name into my breath,
He tied the thread across the neck of death.

Rape Therapy

That I am a mother, you do not know-
you who eyed me a can
to be emptied in a gulp.
Tin, skin and never a soul, never whole;
you found me a honeycomb,
a fruit you beat into pulp.
But the womb
was never yours, and you
never were a man.

That I am a mermaid, you do not know-
you who fixed me a Saree
when lust swam about in your eyes.
Legs, eggs and meat; never complete-
you wanted me a meal,
a drink, a drug to lend you those highs.
But the feel
was never yours, and you
never were a daddy.

I once drew a cow tethered to a yoke
and then I erased it fearing the men
who'd come for its milk.
I was too young to think; I was too young I think
for I had erased the cow and nothing else.

My memory is a coward
still yoked to the men I'd not drawn.

That I am a murderer, you do not know-
you who raped me with silences
and reaped me for seasons.

That I killed myself and that I killed you
when I said nothing and fulfilled you-
this you do not know.

That I am a medicine, you do not know-
you who are healed where I'm held.

Nothing Unusual

Nothing unusual about your eyes,

only that they’re a little too common.

Nothing remarkable in their blackness,

only that it reminds me of the nights

we spent away from each other, struggling

under the sky, vowing to set ablaze

everything that refused to burn with us.

Nothing extraordinary in the gleam

of tears that are half hidden by the lids,

only that I presume them to be love.

Indeed they are your love and a lot more-

they are your liquid soul; they are your voice,

untouched, orphaned for an eternity.

They burn me; is that unusual?

Run

"Run" I tell her

at the Cinderella Hour.

                                                “Forget the foot and float-

                                                  let your heart be a boat.”

Her heartbeats misled

by the wanderlust of Time;

I tell her to forget.

And to run.

That she can be told;

that she will hear,

is clear to me, too clear.

                                                “Don’t drop the drape, just dance;

                                                  embrace the womb of chance.”

Her thoughts gone astray;

feelings that no longer rhyme-

I tell her to forget.

And to run.

That she will uphold

whatever she’s told,

is clear, too clear.

                                                “Why weave yourself new wings?

                                                  The heart’s a sling with strings.”

“Run” I compel her.

“Run” I tell her.

The Corona

Little compliments
and unspoken endearments-
I sit wreathed in love.

His Pride

Two black strokes, her brows-
pave the passage to his pride;
he follows, gets lost.

Today I Build a Letter

Today I build a letter in my mind,

with loving words and little blocks of dreams;

a letter you will seek but never find.

Today I write with my small breaths aligned

to the spring of life and its many streams-

today I build a letter in my mind.

The dervish dances to tunes undefined;

what are planets spinning at their extremes?

The letter you will seek but never find.

Remember the times I’d been left behind-

because I would stop to collect sunbeams?

Today I build a letter in my mind.

Our love is a tide, let me but remind-

that which first forfeits and later redeems.

The letter you will seek but never find.

This ever-rising ladder that I lined,

is thoughts that but intertwined at the seams-

today I built a letter in my mind;

a letter you will seek but never find.

Blankness

Air, unfurling ‘you’-

white paper, curly edges.

My pen may not kiss

but my breath will touch your being;

your blankness will inspire me.

A Pauper's Poem

The shadows have left them

and my eyes are now lonely-

I cannot find any dreams;

my sleep is famished.

A lone beam in my heart,

a bar of dust-

I cannot touch it;

I cannot be blemished.

The sky is widowed;

I scavenge stars from its skin.

Yet what I have lost-

can it be replenished?

In days, another moon will grow.

But these lamps of mine

will never be lit again.

The fuel was love and it’s now

finished.

The Impossible Expression

Nights would have been expressionless
had it not been for the moon.

The moon, I say, is a mood.

I love it when it's lips; a perfect 'O'-
like I've woken its passion;
rekindled it.

Sometimes it grows pale and yellow
and I believe it as fickle as I am.

Then the crescent of Eid-
like a downcast eye,
like Buddha's smile.
And the placid brow
of a mystic, when upside down.
I moon my nights away,
admiring the pout on the sky.

The moon is never a face;
it's a chameleonic feeling.
Sometimes I peel it off the sky
and swallow it.

But on days like today,
as it snowballs into a dream,
I pet it and spoil it.

Its fullness tells me,
it's been enceinte a fortnight.

Nigger Night

The night's a nigger
and the crescent, its white smile.
While the dawn sleep walks
in a silk robe and slippers,
the darkie dreams, perspires stars.

Riding the Deadly Wagon

Every morning
we ride in Death's car,
me and him.
He drives and I sit back
wondering if I will make it
there.

He loses the wheel;
the grip is forgotten
as thoughts and more thoughts
become important
to him.

I look at everything
through the opaque glass;
perspectives change.

There, when we'd started
with a jerk or two
and here, at a signal,
forgetting to shiver-
we have come too far.

We forget.

Green light, again.
Jerks.

I squint and he coughs
as the little car puffs it all out.
"Did we die, Pa?"

"Pa?"

He drives and I sit back
wondering if we will make it
there.

Stints and Stunts

A dream showed me in and I

tiptoed into the lie,

an unripe ballerina.

Fate's fool, porcelain,

I pirouetted through
the red curtain
and shed my all.

I shed my skin, my tenderfoot;
became a silhouette, a shadow put
before countless eyes
that looked down upon me
like stars winking,
each to each.

I danced;
the spotlight romanced me
until we couldn't go on
being one.

Light escaped then
freezing me, erasing me
and showing up elsewhere.
The Coda was but a breach.
Stars winked, each to each.

Light escaped then
like the flight of the soul
from its mold.
The beam shrunk,
left me a trunk-
leafless, lifeless.

"Death of a star", they said
and it showed up elsewhere.
"Birth of a star", they said.

On and off it went,
the momentary scent,
lighting and looting;
eclipsing the show.

Death breathed behind the curtain-
eyes could never know
that the life of the shadow
was trapped in light.