For Araku

(A valley that falls on the Eastern Ghats of India, located in the Vishakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh)

I haven't seen your crests or felt your air hitting my face
neither have I walked past the greenness reproduced in my head

I have circled around you
in breaks, but like a good falcon,
gone back to my abode when needs reckon

Yet I have inhaled the scent of your earth

in dusty whiffs of a good spliff, I have tasted 
your soil that is thought to be only as good 
as the tons of bauxite 
it produces for industries and governments

I have redistributed the control of your fertility
in my small drags of resistance.

I haven't been sheltered by your deep enticing caves
or met the eleven species of owls that you house in your thick forests,

But in palm-length buds and slender stems,
I have consumed the sweet scent of your creation
like a plant-worshipping pagan, I too have teleported to places
other than the Deccan.

And when the time comes, I will have met your people
who can launch a thousand spears against any Naidu or Adani,
and refuse to mine aluminium in place of the most aromatic coffee

Araku, I will pull myself asunder to see you
for one stimulant doesn't seem enough to be. 

Your Skin

Wondered how thinking about your skin
can make me crave, salivate
swallow the juices produced inside my painful mouth
(with sores on the tongue pricking from all sides)
that rests on too much salt
sticking on the edges of the weirdest muscle of the body
(the tongue is transgressive; both inside and outside)
like your skin that shivers, before our bodies
take hold of each other’s-
that process which I found out is called ‘horripilation’
and which further makes me wonder
why the language of pleasure shares itself with that of horror,

is this why Dracula is the cultural icon of the seductive monster?

All bodies are grotesque
but not all are salty,
I have tasted bitter hearts and cold lemons before
that did not make my tongue sore
but I want to consume you
because thinking of your skin can bring me tears

(and I always liked consuming my own tears)
Salt, salt, salt that can touch my tongue again, sore it again
bring my mouth to pain even when the tongue isn’t a prisoner
of either pleasure, pain or horror
it is the weirdest muscle that can feel your skin best,
and maybe ‘horripilation’ breaks down in meaning
when the salivating tip of my tongue touches you

maybe it tickles, raises the thin hair on your back
but the violence of pleasure is a different kind of violence;
it is neither horror nor pillage
(nor anything entirely external to the body)

Maybe it is time to stop iconising the Dracula,
Maybe it is time for the tongue to sore with too much salt.

'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 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.