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 sing

 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 a reaction to a song passing by.

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.