'the imperfect is our paradise'

The staircase is endless now,
and the window is an opening
stretched elastic by mosquitos in need.
But you and I,
we haven’t grown more different
from each other than how we were
in the beginning,
or have we?
Does living together
also mean growing apart?
But distance may not follow difference,
we could’ve been clones and yet been
repellent to each other,
yet not found closeness in smelly mattresses
and half-torn bedsheets
yet not fallen asleep together

But we did,
and who promised that it would be painless?
who swore that you wouldn’t be looking for me
when I was right there?

Presence changes
As people change

Maybe my presence smells like the plants
we killed together
leaving them beside a light bulb for too long.
Maybe that’s why you smell of musk
and not minted ice anymore
and that is what perhaps dogs sense better than us,
perhaps that's why they don’t need an epiphany
or a breakthrough
because we are so hopelessly experiential,
tied down with a leash to our living conditions
so momentarily sad-happy-existential-sexual,
always looking to complete the whole that
we think we deserve to become,
sooner or later

that we dive right in
when the opening feels like an elastic peephole.
Yet, maybe in the January of 2015,
the mosquitos in need found what they were looking for
rolling along with Maynard’s passivity,
lost again
but a better lost

You and I, my love, are imperfectly evil predators

and this is our paradise.

20

the time you turn 20, your throat will be a thorn
more like a cactus,
filled with lonely thorns standing apart
or perhaps double-edged nails
dancing along the slim skin around the tonsils
remember that it's an acidic reminder
for all things lost,
for all things gained,
for the similar acidity you felt
before the good things in life played

your heart will be pounding
for reasons bettter left to the chemical
cluster of the body
palpitation was your old friend
but now as your stomach punches itself,
forces the insides of the body to scream
and scratch against the double-edged nails,
you remember,

remember the time when your father told you the story of his father's friend, who always fainted on hearing Begum Akhtar's 'Ae Mohabbat Tere Anjaam Pe Rona Aaya'
how he was widower, a soul lost in the remnants of love like all of us, and you imagine all the things that might've been floating inside his head transmitting through his body,
how this pale, thick gurgle of cough binds you and him together for seeking remembrance
how love is but another reaction to a song gone by, but a song neverthless

my feet do not know,
when mud and dirt is slung on them,
which way to go

there is only that one where water is clogged
uptill the knees
and i feel like i can swim across an ocean with you

in the midst of cigarette butts dancing in puddles,
my feet want to imitate their movement
but i am stuck in the swamp

of my mind, which surpasses the assurance
of cemented roads
always almost touching the skin of my feet

the closer to the ground i get,
the more scared i am of losing it
perhaps the reason you hold still is that you wear boots

the shedding skin of my feet tries hard
to renew, rebuild the hold
while i only end up feeling vulnerable

like the snake whose newly exposed scales shine
with all the dirt nicely seeped into it,
so when you tell me that you'll make it all go away

touch my skin and stop the shedding
i believe you, i believe you with all my heart
but my selfish feet ask for more

I cannot click photographs

Every time I try, the image slips away from me
It’s not that hard to understand, really

because if you imagine yourself waiting
for hours
as time becomes redundant
like an insipid advertisement
to catch your fish and end up missing it
just at the moment of pulling the reel,
you will know what I mean.

But you try, and mostly you succeed
you tell me to look for lines
or doors and windows,
something to focus,
to set an angle

to turn the image into a photograph

And I am not quite sure of how to do that
there are oceans everywhere for me,
an excess of existence that is always slipping away
words are always too many to be writing selectively,

images most often blur into each other
the fish cause a chaos over crumbs of bread
the reel entangles itself with my cotton shirt
until that one moment passes off,
full of scorn,

a drunkard’s shaming.

Excesses

My cramps are my needle pricks

needed as much as I need you,

as much as I need you to feel that need

and as much as the rush I get

slapping myself

hard

for feeling that need,

because it is my body that feels

not my brain

-however much hormonal secretion

is the source of it-

It is my body which feels like my heart has been

pulled out forcibly and banged against the wall

with the wiring still plugged through my rib-cage

so its reverberations are felt,

and heard,

playing a requiem.

It is my body which feels not only the force

or detachment

but the utter shock of it

as if someone had told me that the plants I watered

for years had been plastic.

Lies and silences are just different

seasons for the same garden,

But this isn’t the Bard’s garden of love;

this isn’t a midsummer night’s magic trick either.

This is my body being reactionary to the force

slipping words out of sick hands

which promise you nothing,

puking particles from my stomach

which feels inexorably similar

during cramps of menstruation

and in the throes of orgasm.

What I Wrote Was Always Incomplete

We’ll spend our lives in ellipses,

And you won’t even get to know

My snores

                       In breaks

Try to reach somewhere

Break

And resume again,

You said,

Like there’s a voice inside

Wanting to

Like your sleep

It has no cycle, 

                       Only        

               a

                                            maze

and you and I focus to find

our routes

underthetress

ontherocks

insidedreams

with your sinuses and medication,

my sad nothings and

commas in clouds

                                      or were they birds?

We reach the end,

The start

Dices in our hands

                       
                               We created this maze ourselves

                         On ellipses

Now the Train is here

Our platforms different

But

Our dreams

Won’t be

You aren’t lovers in Delhi

if you haven’t been to the bylanes

of Connaught Place together,

seen the broken balcony

above the chai-wallah shack

and shared the vision

of standing entwined on such a one

to encase the sun setting

into the abysmal cemented

terraces

but shared it in the space

between two separate heads

that which is better left unarticulated

and indistinct in shape

like the smoke released from

two separate cigarettes 

making love in the air,

 exalted.

Without-Another

(Inspired by Eunice De Souza’s ‘Another Way to Die’)

I would have imprinted my name

in the space between your ribs,

if only I liked my name enough,

and carbonated the eight letters so that

they may be clung to your skin

when your body is nothing more than fossil

And those eight letters would be

as dysfunctional as I am,

breaking into funny patterns

when you’re all alone in the dark,

when your brain shuts down

and only senses remain

because you don’t see maggots  

suffocating you to death,

or yellow bulls floating in the air

with blood dripping from their horns

-your blood-

only to realize that there is no

cosmic carousel,

nor a fantastic marvel

to your self-loathing.

Only being called out is enough to

make me realize that it isn’t your voice,

only touching my finger to someone else’s

is enough to remind me that it isn’t

your body next to mine.

Writing through Peepholes

What have I got to write about

when experience falls short of the metaphor

and those sailors of the sea use and abuse the nausea and sickness  

for all the poetry in the world

and those soldiers, friends of the soldiers,

friends of friends of the soldiers have their grim realities to themselves-

struggle, life, strife, achieve and lose- all in the same moment

which sounds more hysterical than grim

--so you know how they package their syllabus,

those English departments of the world, defining Sassoon’s poetry

as a moment via the experience of shell shock

and you know that we’ll never get rid of categories, but you also know

that engagement with categories is essential--

all too familiar to me when, with no sense of realization,

I have to shit and piss and bleed in the same moment

to get rid of the undesirable category of pretension

some name-dropping guy puts me in,

but you have all too many selves to keep track of  which one

is thrown inside the court to fill the numbers because

man, you’re too scared of the ball hitting your head

all that you can do is run around and prevent coming in anyone’s way

--but the point is that the ‘I’ remembers a time when

I wore that guy like a pair of jeans

and you know how they package pairs of jeans

with all your ‘Curve’ and ‘Diva’ collections

but that doesn’t prevent you from buying them either

it just makes you feel like living in exile,

the scale of which is set by comparisons between

a Malyali and a Kashmiri living in Delhi,

an Assamese and a Mumbaikar studying in Ghalib's city

--because when I say that you know how everything is packaged

I’m talking about staring into the sun teary-eyed and seeing a personal rainbow

but don’t believe ‘em saying that to add colour in your life

is the best way to live--

yet even this is'nt something that I have got to write about.