Jon bhai ki chai

The man makes tea as the table blares under his heavy arms as if being dragged down a staircase.His face and his sooty beard is clearly visible despite the torrents of steam now rising from the pan which has been clearly heated beyond its last good year."A man's simple ways can even kill you",he says."Complication is all about having to rub a little dust off of someone's person.Discovery is part of our being,besides where is the fun in scalping a bald man.You need that mysterious pire to call you forth.Deaths are hard done by simplicity.I mean fuck malaria man,who wants to die of malaria.I want to burst open into a flood of flaming lava when i go.So they can look at me and wonder if there was more they could have known.I may not be the open book but i want them to want that opportunity.I  mean i may not drink from your glass because i fear infections or because my religion asks me to but i can't let you know that.You'll consider me a dead man.You will identify my fear of unidentified saliva as the corner stone to a grave i dig myself to comfort my provocations in.How can i possibly live in a place where every other man who walks in smokes 6 cigarettes in 40 minutes and still thinks i'm the one who is going to die because i got it all written over my face.That is self abuse.Your face is where you parked your car.That is all they care about.They do not praise the ones who self doubt,the ones who are too busy biting their own nails that when comes the time to grab someone's throat they are lying in the corner of their sofa,in the corner of a room shaped like a corner itself pondering over the intricacies of overlapping decisions.You need not always grab that throat but you need to look out because there are a whole lot of people trying to raise their heads over your shoulders to see what you got.Now i'm not saying you have to work hard at it or something,because they aren't the critics or alike who you have to silence since you heard them.These are just the eyes that watch you do everything and the moment you think twice or as much as let out a rant at about how pathetic your life turned about to be,they cross your heels and stab you in your back in a way that anyone but you can tell you are a dead man walking.We have nothing,and that we know.But that is a simplistic idea that must not kindle.You need to rub your coins before you put them in the jar to make them feel that you are a schemer and you have things up your sleeve."I grabbed the cup by the broken handle and as i was noticeably looking at it he smiled at me and said "You ain't got to lick it from the outside,have you kid..Just drink it and we'll forget about the money for this one". 

A new day

I have sleeves rolled up to my shoulders
and i think people want to look inside them
I walk a quarter mile putting one foot behind the other
and i think time will no longer move forward
I stand at the beach and i picture myself
drowning in a brown grey green welted ocean
I walk up the stairway only to look down
and wonder what mischief free falls are
I look at the children who look at me
and contemplate biting my fingers
I wait for the lights to fade and the people too
before i can talk to them and relate
I feel the plush skin of the draught
and appreciate it dressing down for the moments i love
I notice cities change identities,huge cities
but fail to find myself wearing the same collar
I sit by the streets and see the sky
parachuting to the earth in bits and pieces
I draw leaves but not the trees
as i sing tunes and not the songs
and i say to myself "What a day ! ",Everyday

Guarding the river

The whistles slur over the aspects

Words lost in the river ask me to bend

and give her a kiss,but her heart i can see

A misconfiguration of colours

not separating the vessel

from the shoulders of spring

Between exile to my peripherals

and interpretations on the inside

many a strange creatures have toddled by

fearing to raise me from my rehearsals,

Little men in green suits,Three legged mules

the sea-goat of Capricornus or her alibi

i believe there are monasteries up in the hills

in my name,mortal after all

A wet rock just as capable

i snuck under my toes the moment i realized

the illness of time would have me

Years of watching over the banks,

Idolizing the idleness of life

i inevitably sin today

in peeking across her arms,

Her fire glazed chest and

beyond that the first remarkable utterance

of immortality that was promised

A man suspiciously like me,

from the face to the bearings down

drives his fists into the ground

kicking up the earth,

a pile of rocks slowly emerging to the eye

I hear a melody chancing its nudity

with this unholy dance,

i find myself unwittingly removed from conscience

There are strange things i can think about

right now and maybe tell you

But for now i'll help the man play another song

The wind today is a joyously leaping parakeet i feel outspoken by

This way home

The staircase sang the song.The click clack of the old man's neck straightening to swallow supper and the mind falling down the boneless stairs in a rush.The foyer,the mother's womb where the arts practice what the arts preach.In its all too uncanny embrace of warmth the night sky glows like an ellipsoidal blanket torn in places where the skin of my hands touches its anguish of being homeless.The taxis race around,as if the windows punch inwards their irregularities in motion other than the half naked women pretending to sleep in the laps of men who can't get the ash off of their cigarettes.A draught bends along the curb sighted only by them whose reluctance in crossing to the other side is a window they wish to push themselves through to be untouchable.The gatekeepers wipe their frothy lips as i bite into mine.As calm as the idea of silence becoming an epidemic may sound i can hear the city give in.Podiums of greatness have been reserved for poets and painters who laugh symbolically as they think hard about the latest misnomers or find themselves shelved in every house,a place they will refuse to abandon for the rest of their lives. Listening with my soul in one place through the cracks of noise now ringing across my ears(of hearing myself breathe),streaks of light fall through denuding the many structures that shadow my first impressions,second of the tenacious women who scrub the sidestreet walls with their metallic heels having almost come to terms with their pace and need.Perhaps,that is just my perversity slipping through an open jar i conjured out of thin imagination.But wouldn't one be allowed the indulgence.Is this the way to treat a man who has just arrived himself.

Starry night,Van Gogh

                        "Cafe terrace at night" by Van Gogh

The sound of a steel chair unfolding
raises the stars
from underneath the moonlit arches
of a bend in the ruins beneath,
i sit in the verandah,
a piece of paper and a pencil in hand
wondering if they do the same

Mr Kumar

The sun beat down like an angry movie star.To say it was going to rain
is a lousy metaphor for a sad day.But it really did seem like a sad
day.I had Chinese quarters in my pocket.But no Chinese phone booths
around.That is strange isn't it.So i walked around a while until i saw
this man reading the paper at the steps leading up to the corner
house.Dressed too well to engage in an activity like that ,i thought
to myself.So i asked him if i could use his phone for a very important
call i needed to make.He was kind enough to oblige so i took his phone
and fed in the number.Just as i pushed the dial button his phone
popped up with this name a "Mrs Kumar" to whom the number belonged
to.I'll be honest with you the first thought that came to my wind was
Whore.What else would anybody think.So i walked up to this guy who by
now had swallowed half the paper and probably was just only getting to
the news.

"Excuse me,but i noticed you seem to have the number I was going to
dial already on your
phone by the name Mrs Kumar,May i know how.."
He sprang up,and before i know the sports page was in my face with
some football player's trailing leg blocking my view.He ran like a
monkey through a flooding tunnel,disappeared before i could add to a
possible list of answers to my question that ranged from "My cousin
sister" to "My weekend fuck".

There was no way i could've made sense of it alone so i dialled the
number again.
"Honey" i said "i've been waiting for you for two hours now.Where are you".
I did not want to catch her offguard or something if she were found
guilty of anything eventually.She said she was just letting her office
mail check out
and then she would be leaving.The sun by now had betaken and
surrendered to a conglomerate of sullen clouds probably as a
reflection of the events that had transpired so far.My eyes threw up
at the very possibility of having to endear with the theatrics.I
decided to put the pigeon in the cage because i did not want to
confront her face to face.I am like that.I hate to confront people
when i know i have them in the corner they don't know the sides to.It
makes me weak instead.

"Hey i was waiting here and i asked a guy lend me his phone to make
this call and he already had your number in his phonebook,under a "Mrs
Kumar",Do you know ..."
She hung up.I could hear the bleep bleep and i realized something was
*bleepingly* wrong.I had her in the corner but now i could feel myself
growing.I checked the phone for the other names,messages and his call
logs.There was nothing about him and her sharing a phone call or
exchanging any text messages.As convenient as that was to feed on my
curiosity i shared little of the enthusiasm to build it as a
coincidence.So i dialled again but her phone wouldn't ring.I was
panicking now.


What could it possibly mean.I thought about going back home but i did
not want to go gung ho about this in front of the kids.So i thought
i'd go to her office and meet her there.I called for a cab and quoted
her address.It really did begin to rain.For a moment i thought the
windshield would crack open and driver would be sucked right through
it.I don't know how to drive so i'm anaemic to the thought of losing
people who can get me from one place to the other.We stopped just
behind the gateway so she wouldn't see me coming.I paid the cab driver
with the Chinese quarters and keeping my head down entered the atrium.

He was there,already.Sitting on the couch,reading the same paper..how
absurd is that??.That probably made me lose it even more and like a
poacher i jumped all over him ferociously.He hollered in pain as i
jammed my knees right into his ribcage.

"Who are you ..How do you know...Why??" It was all rushing out like
poisoned food i couldn't help but spill

Just then i was hit by something on the head so hard that today when i
woke up here in the hospital the doctors said i nearly died.

What a strange story that is..Isn't it?? I'm not sure if he was even listening..

"Yes it very much is Mr Kumar.Please put out your arm now and this may
hurt a little" is what he said.

So i did as he asked and the bastard put a needle into my arm.

"Someone is here to meet you.You do know your way to the visitors
holding Mr Kumar?"

"So she is here..Well i do have a few questions". I said the second
part way too quietly.Probably that is why he did not say anything in
return..

I got up and starting walking towards the door when i heard something
jingling in my back pocket but was too drowsy from the needle already
when it hit me like that hammer blow.

It had not rained at all yesterday or my shoes would still be wet.

"So tell me first Did it rain yesterday?"

Wednesday haiku madness

From seed to syllable
this poem
growing into meaning

Orange shift
over the horizon,
and the cannabis

Tuesday
Still no fish
along the coast

Bordering the house
a grey crayon,
in his stomach

First breath
Too early to be,
Long and purposeful

Stereo shapes,
The walls sing
if they could any

Not this day,
the roses bloom
and we notice

Midnight
The stars getting nearer,
the way i see it

Wisps of rain
my wounds
reminded to me

Streaks of light
clash in the sky
to the pin dropping

Tall gates at the mansion
My attitude
lets them be

The undertaker,
Not knowing how
to dress to a funeral

The blind spot
having just,
passed me by

Grey Winter day,
A shroud for the snow
Not long ago

An old mirror
in the corner
reflecting on life

Her Hazel eyes
I have prisms
that seek them

A slanting tombstone
Another opinion
caved in

Sunrise
The lopsided shadows
take birth

Approaching dusk
An old man
waits for the lights

A cloudy summers night
the moon
falls down the steps

Autumn leaves
their shades
fall first

6 pm at the station
i watch Darkness beginning
to resemble her

God's own country,
fought over
by the mortals

A hole in the sky
he can finally
look through 

Through the vent,another empty bubble

Walking down the back alley,
where the walls continue to lean apart
but not in definitions of them
as the people push through,
with the wind breaking lines,
they barely made it to

Their black and brown suitcases
i find,grinning at me