An Ordinary day

It's an ordinary day
  and men with scythes
for tongues, move from room to room;
  poets, they call themselves,
     and with imprecision
  they stare and stalk each breath.
      There are arguments between those
who write, and those who mean it
    to death, and those who plainly suffer.
But eventually - as if their
histories hold them for ransom - they
   lock themselves up, separately, without
    ever confessing to each other that, they suffer
               because life, for everyone else
        seems like an easy nothing.

Setup

Under the arbour
  we sit, two of everything;
    her the wings.I the one clipped.

Lethargy

A butterball belly, nearly
 makes me feel responsible
for all of humankind.
 I keep punching the air
   with what I will call soft coins.
And they keep returning
 as if to ask what will it be? then
drop back into the waist-basket
 where others keep on living -
whole, of everything left of them.
Rivers rise and fall,
  destinations, turn into clouds
as windows continue to sweep.

Blacks are experts, only on blacks

Luke 10:25-37

Parable of the Good Samaritan

Jesus: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”


White experts

Underneath black coats

Are not, your neighbors.

White experts

Underneath white coats

Are doctors.

A summit of sorts

when only,
         the bubble gum endorses
your grist on life -
          a life that makes you shift rocks
next to each other
       to make them seem like leftovers
of a mountain,
          a mountain that can breathe above all the filth.

Postscript

  Though consciousness parades
before you a tilted, skewed, abstracted reality  
there are equalizers like there are
     flags for every piece of land, an oath
for every taker, a corpse for every name.
Take for example, the night;
   its blade, rich, and pointy.
Light and everything it fills,
         swoon at the sight of it. Freckled faces
revel in the subtraction.Lungs and trees breathe at the same pace.
  Reapers partially choke, in midway alleys.
       Birth becomes a right until the gleam of dawn. And like to everyone else,
it seems better to take away blood than hope.

Jeopardy

The rug skips from underneath
my mind, as night wakes
to the concrete's gnashing of the teeth
either side of the window.
Their coloured afterlives,
a knuckled-in feeling of
grandiose, unstained
because stains are only black
and grey. I look far, and the farthest
I could: until I note the solitary hill,
or the swanning blackbird, the moon tied
to my shoe-string or some random reduction.
Life then moves to the street, to the
cornor-slicing offices, and somewhere
in the middle,I look back twice because
men usually die
on their way home.Because on your way
home, you assume that jeopardy is insincere,
that the invisible are so, because their
work is done.No.A lot more has
to be done, tomorrow and the
day after that.The road travelled
and the one left behind do not match.
But work has to be done - a lot
more than yesterday. Yesterday
when the blackbird unsparingly
rose, the hill threw back its head
to the sun, reduction totalled
to an additive and shoe-strings came not
undone.Work, though, has to
be done, where the stage is set,
and comeuppance is targeted, where
hustlers and doctors do not meet
except in their dreams.

Not among the roses

Instinct curates hypothesis
 as and when I feel the liveliness
of a bloodied rock I sit upon.
 The questions are windward,
and so is an irrationally warm
 November. The harshness may
be warranting, and life a belated
 apology, but still it doesn't
have to be about rocks, does it?

Defining sequence

And if like a cloud
   you are caught between
the drift, or bursting open

into scant consideration.
   Off your limits, contemplating
death - slow and quick

like a shipwrecked sailor.
  And if like the abandoned
lie, you are someone's greatest

memory, the unworn rope
  around the sea - one that
always finishes in someone's

 hands. There is silence to look
  forward to, and look back upon
 like there is water, at the
 
middle of the ocean - an ocean
 incapable of curbing its appetite
for the deserted, and the loved alike.

It's me, not you

Breakwater types 

 that men like to hold on to,

dress in envelopes

 and send to whosoever will read them,

thoughts are like 

 lacerating muscles

unveiled to look 

  their nightly best

but because night rises

 and dusts itself 

after it falls, and not

 because their is the relative

evil, as there is poetry

 in a lot of unspecified space

because it simply allows

 it, to be me rather than you.

Before people were born

I lived inside the clock,
threw my head, back into

the penal jar, like the
apostrophe following

a learning, that with time
on the outside, I could die young
    and not know about it at all.

Want

Let me not walk to him
when he looks to the sea

Let us not find together, his
fists in the sand

Let me not hear him say again -
someone please get it

Potatoes

Wishlist -
Death working
its way up

Winter, her face
translates everything

No birds in the sky
I came and went
as told

Parched throat
Half of every life
spent screaming

Coughing blood
into the sink
the ocean rises

Not enough wind
comes this way
Not word from her either

The moon lies still
a spider in my head
weaves the rest

Benzylhidrinithium !
try guessing chemistry

The brewery on fire
seeing her
in a new light

Unexpected deaths
I would do better
I think

Clouds close to water
slurrpp slurrpp slurrpp

Grazing-
touched by warmth
in the grave

Old silence
  snow breaks
on the nonliving

Sunday noon
a firecrest unlikely
to slow it down

the four seasons
     only autumn with two
languages to learn

  Water in the dog's ears
  A thing so uninterrupted

Grandma's old watch
Cancer ticks first

And the river turns

Disdain, had its eye on fire.
Shadows of dandelions used to fall
across my feet - where I now stand -
as did my children. Renting
life in each other's arms, under
that little pride we chose not to weep.
They raped, but left my wife only cut,
and me from the inside, forever lit

as I began to hear more in the dark.
About the menstrual sickness,
the turning of the book shelf,
boiling of the antelope's horns
in a town far, far from here,
where a feast prepared - they
called it the holocaust - of her
body as soup, and my brain as the bone.

Yellow gloves of contentment

Mid-July, we sat, with our
hands inside yellow gloves
as I tried not to look through
every blasted hole .
We were henchmen, of
seeking-the-white-in-smoke
Trees, even the ones
I visualized, burned down.
Grandma now, stood alone
in front of the Taj Mahal.

How the fish would have
contemplated swimming in
boiling water, or how the
neighbour dog would have
tucked in, the tongue that so loosely
hangs, a little while after it started -
these were softening glances, Maa said,
of eyes that had now opened
inside of us - but need not speak now.
Father, she said, needed
the quietness - it was worse enough
his food tasted like ash
even in office.

Do you have something for me to read ?

There may not come a day
when we no longer count
our fingertips,as peaks
we feel all better for life on,
he wised,and I could tell
he knew what he
was saying.I had to try
and confront him, because
I never quite belonged;
and I thought I knew my
mountains from the unpoetic
apparatus.I had theories about
recreation, while he likened
to the kind of man with
something he'd want to have
and someone he'd like
to be. A rush of cold-blooded
city breath turning over inside
his chest could be heard
whenever he spoke.It hurt me
immensely, that he referred to
poetry as whiskers-but-no-teeth.
They are like watchmen,
fond of wishing - Poets that is
he said.The poems,
and these were his last words
before he left for ever,
are their apologies to themselves
for wishing for someone else's
sleep.I stayed back for an
hour or so, after which I told
myself - I have stayed back an hour
or so, there is no point in leaving now

Someone asked me, when will you settle down?

I would feel settled
if that is some sort of thing
I know my mother is settled
because she tells me - bring
good luck if not good money
There are threads of discontent
I leave behind, like flicking my
tail while in the middle of a dog-train
My father, who is also settled
weaves them into plain
soliloquies which I trust
him to share at some
point in the future
I know the neighbourhood
is settled because men
and women gather to tee-hee
in the streets - some misfortune
in each guffaw, some
dents in each car
The city, must be settled
as there is no escape from the
identity of its weak -
as is with every other city
There is a whole lot of chewed gum
sticking to the underbelly
Country, of course, is settled
since there are no second
births, there are just second
lives. Lives that cannot
be lost ,or lived for free -
the economy of all of it
I'm not settled because
I exist on maps, feed on
arguments, and unrealistically
valued as real, like - borders

Lingerie

At times, I detested you growing up.
As if my conscience had been nabbed
from remembering us, twined
in a corner of the yard, in summers -
tarrying sustenance of any kind -
in winters, the breakers of spring.
Your windows, once glazed
with poop pictures,
I drew for you-now with
spunky whites,laced with black and blue
unfit for scoping, through my hands.
Hands from whose shell, the oysters
have stepped out - as if toe to toe,
You still had bigger steps to take.
And now there is this void, of ineptitude-
You never talk. You only ask.
But I promise,
I will find something for us to do

Quietude,for Gaza

Room,
  cradled in whistling
silhouettes
      of men,women
and children,who were
    once there

away from the awful
       silence,
     unlike, my heart,

far from exploding

The infestation

At the table,opposite her
   peering through the window
 at a city,routinely unengaged.


    The photographs on the walls,often,
made
me sweat.Blown into a crevasse
   of reality,they were challenges
to it.
Carefully vacuumed,as always
          the plate tilted,
and the food tasteless,i saw 

 a rat scurry across
     the kitchen floor,and towards
her nonchalant face i stared,

the nerve of her-
   
    She knew poison could 
slow me down,but love,love
     would kill me

Dirty books

But what sparkling,
  little boats

the

pages
   of pornographic outrage,
           would make-

 by and by that
     happen to stick together

Sexual

Unpeeled oranges,
 in an overrun alley,
   Sewage as is seen
from the sky,unrelenting
  in its corruption

Visions out of romance
   have families stated,in them- 
the rope is tightest
   near the knot.
  
 From that point  

Back and fourth, if
   you were to walk,
 brow tipping the sunshine
    with a pint of shame,
 
unable to tell,two legs,apart
 for reason-
   momentary injustice

 "What do you do for oranges"
someone asked,and
    into the mouth of the wolf
  i howled

The missing tooth

On a not so common night,
searching for an aching
tooth in the backyard-
that new river sound
now,turned into loss,
I dreamt of pain
all night long,holding
one arm with the other.

Parapet after parapet
I keeled over,breaking
in and out of sleep
like concentric circles
I drew when i was five years
old,convinced with a sense
of incomprehensible gravity
that they were to be my
greatest attempt at art.

How playful can
asymmetry in life be-
unapologetically giving
me a mouthful of reasons
to smile each morning

Pete, the hearthrob

If his parsnip cemented breath does not
create his locale,the size of his car does.

People believe his mind is its own erection-
that in his own image he is the utmost

that can be achieved,by him.Guilty of such
self pleasuring,and uncommon support

Pete still dreams of having grit, like his teeth,
and the ambition that subtends it;

His history written by women,purporting
the one he writes himself-cross-bred vanity

The theatre of his general exposition,is often
conducted on muscle-either his,or of his machine,

a common place,where depth
is yet to be extended to.
 
He can be seen driving across the parking lot
with the speed of light-zero to something in some seconds,

before he brakes at the exit ,as if
the cracks in his glass frames,actually existed.

Yes

I have a freckled need for convolution.It is almost necessary to deny my defence
and at the same time provide to its selfless logic.How easy, is it to say NO? Easiest of all things.
I have found it the easiest thing to do in life.At times it shatters,every structure,underpinning a history of existence.But my mind,still urges the secretarial worship of paradigms.It is not astonishing,hence, to view
death and conscience on a collision course.It is probably the same as having the colon and consequence
in the same line:YES as a renomination for loss.Losses that are now impossible to recount.Life repeats itself,Yes,in real? NO.Perhaps,all revisits are negative,when condensed under a progressive lens.Positive thus,bears the negative-the negative being our only identity, in isolation.My repetition of ideas(thoughts i have about my thoughts) is defaming for the heart,because i like to speak freely and write attractively.I've not only perfected preoccupation,i own it.

Flight

Midway through the flight from Delhi to Pune,
an epileptic bulge seemed to push me deeper

and deeper into my seat.Figuring your maleficent value
in a coach full of two hundred people, at twenty thousand

feet above the ground is extremely challenging.It is
probably less challenging however,to do it wrong.

As I murmured to myself-never again,the coach
rumbled-emanating from both sides a sound of

debilitating horror.Animated gestures of bladder
activity can make you nervous:so can the darkness

beyond the little window with faint lights
visible in it,probably as some consolation,

for the vague point of reference.I vicariously
closed my eyes,blacking out the immediate

area of danger,and unfocussed I reveled
in the thoughts of being untouchable by past

misery at such a height.

Last in heaven

It has not been more than four months,and vital signs of life
can often be found affixed to the refrigerator door.
There will soon to be the delineation of spaces to
walk in-settings of a law-a new kind of law.
The decibel levels are set according to mutual
disagreements,a routine for the wind to follow-almost
as strictly as mine.The windows chosen out of invalid
discourse may eventually misshape our lives,but chances
of that happening are as vague as my concern for them
in the first place.There is no better way to stay in line,
than drawing it yourself-everything but that.The writing,in
an acute sense,is really never on the wall-rather a deafening
silence of incredulity,of refusal to doubt.The sun alone
tips the edges of this flower brown.Within,it is all red and bare.
There isn't another place I would rather be at, for
a million years,as replacement value becomes
a metrical injustice.In between addresses of the mind
and heart alike,postal and poetic threads intertwine.
Her lips pour,triumphant words like "forever",
when in her mind she travels as far as "now".

The summer bucket of love

Clouds
shepherd-
we are
    in thoughts;
hopefully not 
         outnumbered,
       by relaxations.
Along roads and windows
   we have rolled,
 some with broken
   glasses,broken skies
where to the
 wandering trees
         we were stars

And I wrote about us

unlike queer flowers

    we,thorn-like 

blew side to side-

    ashes

 in telluric tubes,

          arms to pillow,
  hearts to wrestle
        blind,like birds
 under a bucket.
    eyes gave us measure,
some pieces
     of the mirror I sleep
beside, and what is
   left of it, in your way

Crisis of doubt

Imagine
 error
without reasonable doubt,
  and it looks
good ,    abruptly
 they say
mountains-even
the metaphorical kind-
            inevitably,
               make you go backwards,
and turn horses
  into men ,who
 would
rather undergo surgeries
     than crises.

Ward-3

Seated in this chair;my mattress
now breathing,reimbursement
in the fact that not one person
died in my room this week.There
was the unusual flailing of the
arms,and some difficult groans
by the man who shits by his bed.
But ward-3 made it through
last night as well.I hear there
were 2 next door- you wouldn't
really call them neighbours. Because
for once they are unwilling to
receive your mail,or hold your
keys.You don't want postmen
making mistakes at the hospital.
It is midnight;men and women
dart in opposite directions,other
side of the window.The random
appearance of a person who
looks like-isn't scooting to save
a life,is actually,relieving.For two
hours that has not happened,and
I think it is awfully unquiet elsewhere.
Besides,you do not find aggressively
apathetic visitors,outside a bar,
in the middle of the night.Here,the
moon,the night,the dawn matter only
in a passive sense.Mornings in
ward-3 will see attendants,return
to their jobs.Hopefully,from exile.

Ship Of Theseus

I rarely ever let my other-world life leak into my blog ,but I have been overwhelmed by a recent Film.The first of its kind made in India.Here is a short rant about how this is something I had been waiting for a long long time.

That Indian cinema has been for years,even decades, treading a fine seam,unfolded by its own sense of directionless is a mere understatement.The coming of age for this industry has been now ,for an eternity an ever dropping sun on the backside of years of darkness.In a country where an art-form is often objectively summarized in terms of the artist and not the piece of art itself,something of a breakthrough has been made. Anand Gandhi's Ship Of Theseus has made nearly a century of history in the Indian film business look like a popcorn gummed,tearfully spun,inanely bubbling bowl of soup,the deli at the corner of the street might serve to earn the vindictive buck.
It is no point in mathematically dissecting the film for its title,subject and conclusion(available elsewhere).That is of course, at least in this case, for the now 'fabled'Indian cinema goer to consider and construe.Ship of Theseus presents little in terms of a chumming opinion one would prefer to form of nearly two and half hours spent,didactically learning,and eventually unlearning their well placed terms of moral coherence.Cinema,especially in this country,has for years driveled out stockpile after stockpile of transversely discontinuous waves of emotion,doing so much so as momentarily flip self-associating burgers for the transfixed man sitting in the front row,having coaxed himself into accepting 'promoted' realism as his fast food for a fast life.What Ship of Theseus offers is completely different from anything that has ever been accessible to the Cinema fan aside the perplexity at the sheer inaudibility, of the voice-over one may get to hear any time between the evolutionary handover from generation to generation of this art.Of course there are un-relatable minor threads in the film and even a broad dissonance in what is infectious about films in a personal sense. But then nothing really captures the essence of the film in one word other than 'strength'-in the sense that probably for the first time the Cinema goer shall feel empowered about his own sense of purpose,or the lack of it, even in something so 'hippie-shly' mundane as watching a thoughtful motion picture.Visually astounding,elegantly written,seamlessly intelligent,this film surpasses all its descendants if ever there have been any,to the extent that their one lasting impression of 'chance' by the end may have been otherwise, considered as unfortunate.Only, if compared with the international arena does a sense of perspective arrive in eliciting flaws in the film,otherwise unblemished,mainly for its courage to be prudently different. Thus has been delivered ,some retribution for our metronomic endurance of this trade,if and that is if you consider yourself a connoisseur of the music now reluctantly playing(inside the myriad theatres of the country),and not the instruments.

And..

Midnight,half-way
through,caressing,
her side of the bed

Potatoes 3

         chimes
Wind            
           -less  attic

Eulogy,
Men read
from their palms

Polished boots,
wearing the right
one,in the left

Heaven's door;
he says,it's the
mood swings

Subway,
Faces paler
than recent death

Starry night
before I woke up,
I'm told

Moving past
the showers,the
sky in folds

Rising with
an elevator,
the reflected sun

Beach side,
old lady
builds her first house

Back exit
of a theatre, tears
and crumpled tickets