Nobody Gets the Poet Right

A hundred stanzas linger by the stem of a book –
poems converge to a little title, emboldened by texture.

The little boats dare not betray the bank –
the pull of the margin, a protection against
interpretation.

Letters, obliterated by the lamppost;
meanings, congruent to the light –

nobody gets the poet right.

A Ridiculous Place

Infinite reflection, a thing of the past; it has been long I fell into a mirror.
To tell you of how I have been avoiding the error,
I’ve painted them all noir.
Yes, I’ve coloured them black in French, a language I love to hear
but do not yet comprehend fully.

There are perils, of course. Like there’s no alarm that would wake my smile.
The sleeping snake, visible on my face, attracts questions.
The opacity about renders the space limited. So, I find myself
burning the window meshes, bringing in new holes for light –
a little, comfortable portion of the infinity without.

But of course, my house is not an acceptable aesthetic.
With the noir mirrors and the burnt windows,
with the opacity and paucity of space, and
the serpent, dead, on my face – love knows it isn’t invited,
friends call it a ridiculous place.

An Inverted Image

Ripples of plaster on the ceiling –
underneath a woman peeling
glossy paper off a difficult box.

Her gown, a blue bandage,
she tears at the tape, loses a nail
to the present. The ceiling gawks

at her helpless form, kneeling,
trying to unravel the future
of her past.

Holes I Drill

Poetry is the holes I drill into the walls
to hang a memory of
what I couldn’t sustain;
it is the invisible crutch 
that blesses me 
with invincible handicaps.

Poetry is a snowflake I chase –
I can neither ascribe
the tragedies of my life to destiny 
nor accept
any meaningful story that it weaves –
I chase the translucence 
that poetry offers, 
to ‘be’.

Spinning Webs with My Spit

I’ve danced on these staves all my life -
black bars that contain
my risings and falls, my being and not being. 
There’s no dearth of sounds
that drown 
my consciousness. 

Yet I go on 
spinning webs with my spit, 
verbing melodies 
that may trap someone
into a momentary timelessness.
I do not hope to achieve any better than this.
 

Who Were the Men?

Who were the men who planted her voice 
across their vast, brown, barren stories?

Scarlet, emerald and ink, her whispers -
smeared around the edges of nothing.

They told her that she’d been only a drum
they beat to feel the blood in their veins.

Who were the men who lit walls with her eyes,
and saw their houses come into being?

They bejewelled themselves wearing her hands -
who were the men who’d needed all the sheen?

She dwelled a persistent hum in their heads -
they belittled her, a God in their hymns.

The Bazaar

There exists a bazaar,
claiming pieces of you
I believed were mine.
I shiver at the edge of your laughter – 
this laughter that is a universe
you never invited me to. 

How the lights about you
could never warm me;
how the depth of my yearnings
never reached you.
My poems lingered waves
never seeming to crawl
onto all your head-banging. 

My meanings
only pretty from a distance – 
in love, I shrunk a shadow.
The light from the bazaar
kept sweeping me away from you.
And yet I have been waiting.

Decimals Appear

Decimals appear on her dark skin.
Sound gropes her ears, colours thin.
Blacker she turns the blackest flower –
Between her folds suns cower.

The sky tonight reduced to a goddess!
Decimals are jewels that hook her senses –
piercings galore, the bride’s unsteady –

Hope’s an oar; the buyers are ready.

As bugles onto her body crawl –

sky becomes a frozen waterfall.

It Bounces

It bounces perfunctorily –
abandoned in a dark corner,
forgotten by the very hand
that once owned it.
My breath shrinks,
loses its music.

I am only a little limit now –
wanting lesser and lesser
of the great
that your hand had meant –
needing it
more than ever.

Father

Frames have grown fangs
And pictures curl to warp faces.
Truth leaks, an edge to these hands –
Hours speak to the stasis.
Every day I look at your death,
Redo the memories, an oasis.

Momentary Eternities

The eternities were momentary.

Intuition would always wake up
and spill distances between them.

Love, when it seemed to run out,
would be replenished by her 
cutting a vein or two.

Tears, when they would
hint at colourlessness,
would be dried,
prevented from achieving an orgasm.

Distances – 
how pronounced they would be 
within entanglements;
how visible in the eyes
when they looked at each other.

She dropped kisses on his eyes –
snow that befell a roof one winter,
only to melt as he woke up
to the suns of their times, together... 
And away.

The eternities were but momentary.

I Have Nothing to Complain

I have nothing to complain –
the illusion contains me dignified,
keeps me occupied.

Our love’s without a stain!
All the blood out of sight,
the illusion has me dignified.

Words are all that remain –
what of the unspoken tide?
Thinking keeps me occupied.

Mornings never bring rain.
Now that you have died,
the illusion has me dignified.

Brute

Yellow, with a core yellower –
the slice looked a petal on his palm.
Perfect manners, he consumed 
with a spoon –
a fruit fresh from the farm.

Translucence, the residue,
tossed away in a bin –
decaying as he gets ready
for new appetite.
 

Public Figure

High tide,
your cheek against
the moonlight –

does it matter
that I am not the spire
you fly towards?

A grain of sand,
I cannot capture your
mighty moon-shadow.

Your laugh
is for the eyes –
you flutter, because light.

I crawl to the shore
as you soar to the white
that cannot be had.

You Killed The Artist

Pierce stars,
slip them into an abacus.

Let them twinkle
but on a cactus.

Between the bars,
the sky would linger.

Let it exist
robbed of its status.

As you adorn each finger
with the torn stars -

as you bow to Mars
and plunge into Venus -

think once of the galaxy,
think of all the stars.

Did you steal from a womb,
its sleeping foetus?

Thirteen Lines for 'The Poet'

Of course, everyone would be there but you.

Crawling into the ‘lit’ mouth, converging 
to the tooth that bites into your poetry.

Smiles would be thrown, aficionados shown
the restless tongue of the coterie -

Of course, ‘candid’ moments would be caught
by an unpaid amateur,

an aperture twinkling to tinkling glasses.
And you won’t be there

the anonymous loser of the lottery,
loyally by a book about death,

talking to your late father - founding a therapy
in the proud madness of rejecting reality!

Why?

Why to touch what has
settled into a coil -
why to add to a stagnation?

I see you crawl
around your point -
slowly you’re inching away.

Not further. Not behind.
Elsewhere, on the finite globe,
the mind that has us, two thoughts.

Why to look through the same lens 
when I want it further
and you need it larger?

These venomous trails,
that were once our ballads
are broken compasses, that’s all.

I don’t mind waking up to a blur.
Why do I care to clean
your glasses?

Limited

I’m limited to you -
a lake you pass by
and absent-minded,
throw pebbles at.

You do not care
for the momentary ripples
they create -
you think they’d rob me,
expanding my dimensions.

Yet within the nebulous
you hunt yourself.

We're Too Poor This Christmas

We’re too poor this Christmas.
All we own is a breath,
long, tedious and green,
a piece of bunting, a futile chain.
We hang it between
two distant numbers on a clock.

And then as we look at it for long,
we get creative.
With a pair of lurid scissors, we chop
this decoration into hyphens;
we use the little lengths
to contrast the grotesque walls
of the rooms that occupy 
us.