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.