History

What happened to us?,
and whatever didn't
became real..

3 AM

Under the pandora of all street hymen's
she stood with her arm,resting like a pet
in the other,
i sniffed,customarily
for the place hounded my liver
but tickled my groin,
She strolled about
dropping voids on the street
i was walking onto
Her breasts were something
i had been looking for yesterday
when sleep had been murdered
by the pastiness of my life
Like an epiphany from the grave
my heart ruptured down my skeleton
which was separated by this unbearable distance
from her feet,for she ran and ran
into the sunset,into the hollering alleys
until i realized,she was sad
and i wanted to be
as i spat,on a man's shoe
and spent a lifetime passing that corner....

Water's aisle

Crusaders,hanging on to rungs
of old ladders
left cultural notes that crowd the streets

Vivian who was a large shadow
in one such place

often broke down,like a pot of all the opera
that was left in corners to rot
staged to faces that had nothing but the floor to look at,
His feet wouldn't move when he had to piss,
so he looked for a new place every night
after sitting in the sun to dry,all day

Home is where the heart is

Is it anatomy to be poor in thought
or accidental to be poor in putting
it to words...

Sitting by the street with no reasons for waking

I sit occupying the doorway
like a castle of fading rainbows
swept against the ankles of a door
opening into a street
that wears the flesh
of a winter graveyard
tread on by torsos,
devoid of skin
feeling for the last
colorful explosion of tears
across their eyes

My feet are dewy
with the reminiscence of
collapsing existences
condensing close to the ground
like buckling knees
of the brightest moment
under the dark side of the moon

Between me
and the next breath
free of metallic sounds
born in a basement,
is the voyage of a man
so naked,
a quintuplet of stars
would be his dogs
for the night's howling

Heaven it seems
is rolled up to its shin,
For the only smoke i see
is rising from between the lips
of a pregnant woman
who brings together
this morning for me,
with one little smile

Between the whore and the moon

I stabbed the moon
with a wet paintbrush
i had never used before

I watched the blackness
of its heart
spill over the earth
like colors
off a young prostitute's new underwear
dissolving in the rain,
the night all penises hide

Nights of the living young

An hourly child
sucks nipples
in doorways

where pants leak
morphine like change
for the night's sexual transmissions

as their mothers
stand half-dressed
like empty syrettes

poking at the moon's
asshole all night long,
waiting to be milked

Confessions to the moon

Did you see me walking by the ridge
one legged to keep me from falling
into the arms of a dream,
the new growths on a darkening torso

Dawn is carried around in a handbag
that reduces shoulders to ash
whenever hope walks along the
arms of a common heartbeat

Did you see me,dissemble my desires
over stones like cutting fingers
when even the smell of morning
left me hanging over the kitchen sink

Night is a bold queen
that undresses in daydreams
and pricks like a scalding trident
cutting through body and soul

Did you see me,never look at you
like i never looked at seraphs
that were fed to me through
tubelights and emerald book covers

Life is like a bubble of vaccum
An emptiness in this thick air
I never asked you to be beautiful
You just are

Junky

O night's kitchen
has dawn hatched out of an egg
for i'm flattered by cartoonish growth.

Painting after a nightcap

She smiles like fire
staring from above the clouds
When the sun slips between
her sweating legs,piloted by my tongue

The roof blindfolded with aprons
of a deaf mistress speaking to my taste
moves slowly,like snow
ambling over water

I grab avenues from the air
and hide them behind her head
resting upon which
is the tremolo of near death

She believes this is as far
life will let us be,
In the dark, her white bodice
is the burning shadow of my underskin

There is this murmur that elevates
dirt from the floor
like magnetic doornails
perforating through a metallic draught

To all graves of our antiquity
with a mouthful of the mortal earth
i kiss goodbye,i kiss goodbye

Continue

Morning,says
You are not
the first
You are not
the last
of anything.....

Walking the line

The strokes on my palms disappeared
when black and white dogs
walked like simple visions of the past
i stood between,on the noisiest street
shaking with the stir of
beams brown with years of rain

They wore blood like beach shirts
with the pockets
glowing like flourescent taps
that bled into the sewers
the ineptitude of love
that i licked from under their feet
all my life

Stopping by a traffic light

I see this old woman beneath
the arc of an aflutter traffic light,everyday
She carries with her little plastic bottles
filled with daylight and painted black on the outside
that she drags along the road,to keep them warm
i think

The sun is not kind on her,
For he too has grown old with her
So i ask her why does she need the bottles

She tells me there are little children
made of wax waiting for her at home

The night would become a hiding place
for all those who will end up seeking..

The traffic light collapses to a green subsistence
as her hands tremble against a masculine roar
i have an old sun to race against

A song for you

Have I ,for you a song

Myth and reality meet
in the bubble of love
as some unformed life
keeps me on the highways
all night
searching for lids of empty
garbage cans gawking
like black envelopes
that i shall hold
along opposite sides of the planet

all night long,as you my love
lay hastily close to your destiny

a song,not this

have i,a song for you

As large as life...

Panting below the sea
In some dreadful,lost
shimmer from a broken treenail's
journey over fire
that serves our hunger


A heartache so tender
as the flower that dies
in the hands of earth
washed and amassed over steel gates
that fence troubled waters from the shore

Ashen,with the shoulders
of dusk to carry our bodies
forward,Life's faces change
like the insipid flickering
of a dark star in your head

behind your watchful eyes...

Nation/notion

There is no bad religion,
not a bad coin

Yet buddha dropped many
over bridges

to be engraved with republic faces

Floods come and go

Sexual Orchestra

The space between the sheets and the roof
is skied by red umbrellas,blowing away
in the wind that passes between your legs
My face shudders like a tin can
kept out in the rain,
in which i preserved myself
all this time,it took you to gather love
from underneath my tears
Your hands remind me of fresh autumn
slinking tepidly along my spine
kissing flowers that now grow out of me
In your eyes i find constant hate
for the morning,cut into pieces
as little white crystals that i
drink,mixed with your new found nubility
as i glide from one side to the other
with you as my vessel

Distances to the sky...every which way you look

The sky,a slow moving zebra
riding on the ripples
of water poured from
our oil laden oceans

A child,swims through them
looking for the last dying pomfret
everyday,

An animal's vanity is
chewed on,sometimes even worn
by desolation,hungry for
a ear to speak to

Lullaby for tomorrow's children

The asphalt sticks like
powdered gum to bottles
that roll down avenues,
with fire scarfing
pavements flushed with
vomit and electric fog,
There are weak men
holding batons with
ribbons dipped in
the blood of those who
couldn't be born,

Their voices spill like
cheap liquor over a prostitute's bed,
Old men,who can hardly stand
carry infants of their vengeful sons
shouting and singing in one breath
that may be the only freedom left..

Through a cardboard camera

Sundown,Hyderabad(India)

through some faint observations

All alleys of the world
are pinned to the wall
like old calendars with
windows to better days,
Pages fly off them
like wooden houses
kept on the walls
of cemeteries visited
by gloomy meadows,
The rain pours down
like wrath from a gun,
the pastures outside
seem like my morning bread
invaded by an army of insects,us

Dust

By the seaside
from a ageing tree
hangs a purple light
under which the dead
suture the sea with the sky
when the earth sleeps,
They walk along the ocean
talking about saloons where
these lights are sold
with poisonous tails
for nothing more than
this poem's price...

Fall

Hope has survived
wiping wires from outside

on my chest

It beats on the inside

like swollen feathers

of a crow who waits

under blinking lamps

for the last drops
to trickle to my feet..

The changing sounds

of the rain slipping over the piano

make faces,standing in the doorway

where i burnt candles

to the floor

last night,searching

for pieces of glass

you dragged outside

with your eyes....

From the underground

What do you know about loneliness?

No more than the widow who walks down aisle's
with men she doesn't know
About as much as the ocean
hungers for calm

As much as the man
who makes paper towels
out of the morning news.
I live with loneliness
as if the corners were my arms
They cut me into identical pieces
over metal boards that make roofs
for you to drown in whatever you do under them
Everytime you walk over my spine
the sound of my bones breaking
is like the words my mother fumbles
singing lullabies in unused phone booths..

Shut,picture and brown

The opus of a poet
circles dead trees
far from which clouds
weep above the ocean
his lasting words,
Birds of day sing all night
after parachuting with fresh wombs
of his love,
They shudder when windows light up
in the middle of the night
on the street,called home

The roof paints on my heart

Wooden birds leap
across corners in my room
Hanging by the neck of
faces i gave birth to,
I chase them with  
matchsticks ablaze
like the hands of little children
decorating coffins
in my backyard,


Death sleeps beside
like an old friend
Waiting for me
to put my arms around

As i'm known from love

in the streets waiting for the worded wind
Your spangles behind my eye
Your brown mowed jeans
pierce my ears like gleaming trains
weaving music on the tracks
You move like a slow knife
leaving my heart

On the pavements,there are roses
Crushed like my pockets on the inside
I would buy love for you,if love were money
My penniless pants jingle with
the tic tac toeing of your sandals
I've never been down the corner
you head towards,and i never want to come back
empty hearted so i can count words
that didn't cost me anything
but this poem

From off the green

Smoke from a scooter's

modern flute,like soiled rain

runs through my hair,

They fall one by one

like bottles in a bar

Lets sleep on a child's 

shoulder tonight,

For the rest will work

Don't try

(for Charles Bukowski)

Every night the sky rips
to shreds,little pieces of paper
you hold on to,with your thoughts
hovering above empty graves
with nothing but you looking up,
from inside them...

For all we search for...we always go back

i scour for roadside delights
inside pockets of wealthy men
with streets named after them,
They walk around groggily,
inside their mansions
chewing wires to keep alive
butterflies stuck inside
lightbulbs,in the darkest hour of the night.

The beat goes on

The beat goes on
in renegade corners
of the world,around which
people walk and smile
for miles,until they are
carved out of rock
to stand among crowds
bereft of the slightest grin..

Poem

girl your face
partakes of wines
i steal from behind
footlights,in your path..

Thanksgiving

For a while

You don't recognize your reflection
off broken glass doors,
you pass everyday
But you stand hands outstretched
in front of the ocean
over which voices fly
talking of your fear,
of drowning ,which make us
one of you..

Then

Photographs from the Andaman & Nicobar islands(the people of which depend on the fishing industry to survive)                                      

Collar Men

I crawled through the fashioned streets
Warding off eyes with grief pouring out
like the mailbag of the postman,i never think off
He waits under a borrowed umbrella
Waiting for the ink on his own letters to dry
He carries them around all the time
with names in them,
he wishes someone knows
The asphalt grass cleaves to his boots
Like a few torn pages from
his book of gods and their coming,
He lowers is head and disappears
among the dripping collars of grown men
that i live inside day and night

I stand behind glass doors,
Its not my sun that is setting

Shouting from the rooftops

Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver(1976)

                        
I'm sickening from the neck above
the air is violating air everyday
Standing like a naked woman
under the droppings
of quaffing birds,wayward
on their routes

Thích Quảng Đức,June 11th,1963(Saigon,Vietnam)

                                              
i have passed too many
corners without turning my head

A brave homecoming

little bounces of the ferry
over her sore shoulders,
the air hectic with swollen kisses
of women, wet like letters
hidden between their breasts,
from the hands riding in,
washed in blood of
those ,who lie unread
like epitaphs of the night fairies

A little,too little Monsoon

Clouds moving between two buildings(Hyderabad,India)

Sitting seven houses above the ground,
yet,cars moving across the windows
splashing wet grass on my vacant face
my brain squeezed to a feather
that fell off a reposing bird today
at the feet of a girl ravaging
the authority of fear in puddles,outside
Night approaches like the wall to the windows
swallowing a little pride,and a little dance
and the rest

Little Diana

Lighbulbs are fetching insects from doorsteps
the glory of music has been buried in the backyard
little diana sings,uselessly to her deaf father,
his eyes puckered to a gossamery stone,
Mother seduces sunsets on deserted streets
Her legs trembling every now and then
Men she doesn't know stop by
and kiss her on the head
She blushes and glows like the bulb..

Father to children

I have love,
a child..
emptying bottles,
the stench of funerals

God's losses,
made mine..

Living away from mother

I fling stones
towards the sky
with my tears hanging
off them,
Why does mother,
write letters in the dark,
They rain not
in her arms

In the court of life..

Life: i do not wish to bear your company anymore..Both of you...have stretched me beyond my existence of which now very few or none understand the meaning..
Happiness:But why me??...i made you worthwhile..i was the reason every pulsating heart grew richer to your value...
Pain:But without me...that value would be unlearned..

Life:i despise you both..It is your utter disregard for the nature of certain things that forces me to treat you the same..I am the ruler of all..and i shall decide
your worth..You both have for long enough occupied more space than you were given..I have twisted and turned to satisfy needless entities,your seeds..For once
now i want to be free...I want to unburden myself of you, pitiable pharaohs of hearts...

Pain: I will follow you ..Wherever you go..I'm endless..I exist because of you..
Life:I dismiss all vengeance that you may hold....I ride away from none..And i ride to none..The art of escaping has become being nailed and hung on the wall..And that
is where i wish to be now...

(Just then the door to the courtroom opened..A wailing sound followed, siphoned by the sound of the winter breeze)
A grubby man stumbled inside..The person seemed tired and wore nothing but a draggled coat..It seemed he had been living under a fiery sky for ages...
 He seemed broken and distraught...

Pain(laughing):I have claimed another..
Happiness:Ohh poor soul..your time will come..wait for me

Life:Who are you?? And what do you seek??
The squalid figure mustered a few words...
"i have come from far away..I live alone ...in forsaken lands...I dissipate everyday with my own existance and cower in my own filth..I do not have a shadow to talk to...And i don't have time to admire the sunrise or the sunset.....i dance in the coldest places..with nobody but the past watching....i bemoan my existence with each passing moment.."

Life(unperturbed):Again..Who are you ?? And what do you seek??

The man started crying uncontrollably,but not before saying...
"I'm death..and i seek love"

The room imploded with sound laughter....

Moksha

The face of a woman
being dragged in sand,
from the sea

Buddha,setting on fire
a flightless bird

Evening optics

            
               north
                   ...
the sun
      ..
        . ..
         a drunk magnet
                 .. 
                     ...
                 ...
             ....
              south

Rainy day

listen to the child
the rain,
lost in the wind

Listen to the wind,
the rain
is a child,again

The night and growing up

The halo of sweat and games
drawn on the ceiling invisibly
the murmurs of daunting tasks
echoing about the head,
i feared opening my eyes
for i thought
blackness,of all night
was the light, i couldn't see

http://www.scotomaphobia.com/

In the desert

The grievance of thoughts
resonating with songs unsung
the sky askew with reflections
of this cold desert night...
the moon sits with the puppeteers grin...
my heart unleashed..upon me....

A postcard from summer

April,fly
to the sun
Why burn here?

Sands

Stagnant by the tree
the water's poise,
Sitting in a desert
smoking dry leaves
asleep before their fall

A moon of this world
not known to man
flickering and flying,

Counting stars to be less,
from below empty pales
The thirst of a dog
the blackness of the blind.

Beside the umbra
of the glowing tree
Dry sands,with little
feet,blowing away
with infernal winds

Trains

Red wagons scuttle by every now and then
Heading for places on the other side of day,
Wavering like a leaf in their storm,
I would jump with my hands highest
above my head,piercing the trembling air
trembling with fear of my reach
With each passing of the day into nights
Those places rose with cold hands,
pushed me to the tracks again,
My train may have run its last
I hear only echoes of  last night on the tracks,
They keep running in dazzling places

The autorickshaw Diaries

 

photo by Lian Chang

By the road

An apple grows fatter on a tree
Newton has slept for years
The nightbirds sing in alliance
I extend my hand to the breeze
which is sticky from surfing over rainwater
Night is arriving like a falling star,prayed for
A tree stands alone,out of place
by the road ,spitting dirt
It watches these mysterious capsules
rush past,with nothing but figures moving inside
The 'tuk-tuk' reaches a raging high
As the road passes through sheer silence
Where are all the women?
Two concrete marvels stand
Their faces made to look at the other
They probably smile
or cry,when no lights glow in their bellies
There are red and blue bulbs bouncing
off their heads,
The sky it seems is pleased
There is this infinite space to look out to
But clouds pretend to be the sky,
Do they mistake me for
the weather man,only he could tell
The chuckles of my rickshaw
send me to sleep.


Takeover

The sun burns with palish delight
Flesh under the sun,erotic
My arms ache of ironic hugs
Has the road been straddled to a horse
I have bounced more times
than the dog i command,
He must be somwhere
Another yellow chariot moves alongside
A face hiding behind a black veil
looks at me,the sun bickers
My rickshaw slows to a halt
I want to move on,run
The life in me is leaving,
has left


Endless

The gusto of early mornings has died
The draught has dried up and coughed
blood,of birds that can't fly beyond a rock
Pigs move restlessly,They could be better clowns
But clowns live endlessly,The faces behind faces
never alive,never die
I'm heading somewhere,the fatality of things
has held me by the throat
I spew dust,trying  to break free
The driver asks for directions
I've been down this road many times
Clueless,Names have never been my idea of love
Ideas have never made it close to love
i'm not stupid,i just end up being
Stop here,This seems like it
There are a thousand windows
prompters of great work,i suppose
i don't do good work,Move on
The meter is running within itself
maybe strapped to a rat
The rat is me
Run you rodent!! The ticking is the clock,
Your heart has one too



'tuk-tuk' is the sound that an autorickshaw makes,
in some places the rickshaws themselves are referred to as
tuk-tuk's

also read..this

Talking to elms

Walking by the trees
the necklace of the sky
glitters like windows
with shocked eyes

the water in puddles
lies dead like sleep
somewhere nearby,
a dream shivers quietly

Of sleep

Lights cross
under the bridge
of the sleepless

in nights

The street alight
shivering to leftovers of the night
cold and calm they stare at, kiosks
loved by hunger and talked to
by dogs

maybe its time to look at
a brighter thing
the sky smokes enough
blackness

straight lines

an old man sits, singing at
the break of dawn,pulling
the sun with his hands
that take him places

His days have been spent
rolling wheels and the nights, rolling over
death hangs from the rooftop
pouting at the heads below

He looks up every night
like a bent tree waiting to grow
to the sky

marigold

sitting atop a motionless train
a headless eagle
wavers to the wind
like a nymphet,
to a song sung by boxes
behind glass doors

a tunnel tapers like night
on a train moving away
the girl stands bare feet
with the end in her eyes

Land of the rising sun

Crowning a linnet's gore
the sun now sets
in arms of the evening child
who kicks the earth
to bury and find..

china

i deposit my dreams
in a china
simmering with
new puberty every night,
strut to your window
wait under the rails
of all promises broken
just to see your shadow

i  wake up each morning
feeling i never came back

growing,amongst walls

she flowered into a woman
lying secretly naked behind gardened walls
as the moon hovered in
corners of the sky
with the shyest gaze

today she kicks around in her abode
little siblings of yesterdays,
lost in her heart
the memory of being alive
for death kissed her so slightly
she danced into its arms

submit

     Return to brilliance

ghosts of tomorrows flying backwards

Light is masked
by teardrops prowling in the air
waiting, to kiss your face
meekly as it glows
in the shadow of my head
turned away
there would be velvet in your eyes
and songs about dreamy equations
if tomorrow never comes

Crash

He is fixated on the movements of the wind.His head dragging against the sidewall.Every now and then the pupil shrinks as if the walls have opened up in to vacuum.Bright vacuum.He dreams on the curves of a light bulb that flickers belligerently in a corner of the room like a rat under paws.He thinks of himself being into the dim light,still.The wanderings  of his mind run towards the walls and fall flat on the ground,unable to cut through.In this room devoid of structural ardour a window stands barely hanging to the insides of the wall like an old man's ribs.Untouched

There are taxis running in the streets below, delivering one famished stomach to another.A baby girl has been crying for an hour in  a cradle,due to hunger as her mother and others sleep to orchestrated sleep patterns and butt warming quilts.Another child cries under a bridge slowly vanishing into dense fog.His mother besides, dead an hour ago.Blue and cold.He might follow.
Seldom seen women are reaching orgasms with raging tension in their bodies and minds.As some men puke salted waters on the side-street for love not found or no reason at all.

He sits ,his face ashen surveying the ceiling back and forth with no movement at all as if life were written on it.Blank
In another similary disarranged room a man recites verses from a romantic poem to read to the girl he has recently fallen in love with.He cascades pictures of her in his mind,her salvaging smile and then a drive into the setting sun until they turn into little black silhouettes.The girl stands on the 11th floor of a building above the fog ,glittering.She has plans to jump off.She was a read a poem not true ,not fulfilled.However not a word promised anything.

His tongue has become dry like a shriveled leaf clinging to a twig.His throat sticks to the back of his head.Inertia has dropped dead.He wants to drink water but gives up the idea.Everytime

An old woman lies soaked in her own piss behind a garage door shivering under a leaking staircase.It will be morning before she knows it.But not this time.Godspeed old mother.
The neon bulbs at a railway station scream numbers and names.Some of them correct with relation to the future.These are the real soothsayers.Thousands of eyes study them with a common discomfort.An old man steps down from a wagon.Shrieks in pain and tumbles.Dead before hitting the ground.Its incredible.It takes an hour for his son, selflessly searching for his old man to finally find him.Lying cold like a sculpture in a museum.People staring,flashes discharging.

He suddenly slaps the air in thin light and closes his fist shut.With a jerk he pulls his arm back and lets his arm rest casually on the floor.Where it remains.A smile abrasions his face.A teardrop slides down his face.The coldness of it relaying like pain down his face.The smile widens.His last one.

Down in the street a blind man stands on the sidewalk trying to draw configurations of the street using sounds and smells.It will take him 20 minutes to cross the road after a young man helps him across.During these 20 minutes a hungry dog licks a dead snake in a roadside furrow.He registers something across the road.Rushes for it.Won't make it
Morning arrives almost furiously.Cars start rattling and screeching on the roads.There are offers listed everywhere.Bargains.Bring happiness home.Give something to your child,to your mother,your father.Take some for those you love,Take some to express love.Leave others behind.Leave everything behind.Live large.Live with style.
The doors to the room open as light swallows the stuttering light bulb.There is wailing and dry expressions of grief.A gaping wound next to the wrist, an open cut is posing monstrously.An old man stands outside the door scared of the redness of the floor.Tired.In his hands a bottle of wine that he wished to share with his son,after he watched an old man fall dead to the ground at the train station, almost in front of him.It can be too late sometimes.he concluded then.
The doctor has already declared 11 people dead tonight.He notices the tightly clenched fist.He forcibly opens it.A dead butterfly falls to the ground.He will cry himself to sleep tonight.

guttersnipish murmurs

I'm sitting on the sidewalk
selling fallen stars
rotten with wishes
sunken below dreams,
people walk by 
with helplessness 
stuck in their eyes

But they'd rather 
still look up at night..

Friends within the darkness

  I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible--
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.

the old composers -- Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.

finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take away my hours
break them
piss on them.

now I work for the editors the readers the
critics

but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in. 

                 -Charles Bukowski 

from carlin

This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.

Inked

i'm waiting for things beautiful
to write
desolation is still staring
from under my pen
as too
the wrinkled piece
of paper
like many of the other things
better left naked

Bed of roses

i have nothing to breed but silence
there are flies in my stomach
that have not fed on roses
for a while
my hands are full with breasts
i think they said something
it was a funny feeling
                      inside

A regular occurrence

Squatting intently at the edge of the
pond
he had been launching stones into
the water
as if to find holes

a wise man passing by looked over in disgust
and said
"you could be doing a lot more with your life,
you could change something in the world"


the young man turned around in amusement
"can't you see i'm trying?"

Perplexity

there are noises of cars
pumping smoke
in my dreams
trees lying on roadsides
smiling
dragging themselves to dirt
in search for the sea
and still smiling

as wines choke to their
final vows
peace is abound
in trained thoughts..