Shoelace Love

Hungry Strings hug my heavy feet
White Toe Nail, Love
Tinkling with
Hysterical grunts, Muted screams
God plummeting down
My blue-eyed love

My Blue Eyed Love
Who sits at the edge
Of a broken chair
Absorbs my glance
In her blue, green eyes
To taste it later


My blue eyed love
Hanging in smells
Of whitewashed rooms
And cheap disinfectant
Speaks the language
Of whore love
Where her words
Play with mine
And make love
On distant trees

Legacy

Defeated ghosts
Knock on
Rubberwood doors
Sniffing
The warm air
Of many children
And stagnating youth
Mingling
In one great
Remnant
Of what was once
Family

Nightmare Wind

A naked dream

Clothed

In empty glances

And listless thoughts

Conspires

To achieve

The impossible

Love

Maze

Empty sounds
Jingle
In my hairs
Buzzzing
With discontent
And
Angry words
Conspire
Hurl abuses
At my cardamom
Breath
Old bottles dance
With sober intentions
In hungry orgies
Like schizophrenic peacocks
Keeping me suspended
In the light of
A tired dawn

A forgotten tune
Flat as
My hollow thoughts
Reminds
To remind me
Of Something
I'd forgotten
Before I
Could be remined
To listen

I am finished
I am finished
I am finished

Red Rivers Speak

My red river
Red-crusted river

Orphaned by day
Reddening
Over a surface
Of pale mourning light
Like the essence
Of her
Purple hazy eyes

Oh! Purple hazy eyes
Purple and red
A litany
Of translucent woes

Ductile and malleable

As whore-love

My red river
Tinkling
With the sound
Of anorexic buffaloes

Protruding ribs

Like taut emaciated

Rainbows
Wading through
Deep bellied grunts
And empty gazes
In claustrophobic
Dreams

My red river
Seductress of
The nightbird’s song
Piercing my red river
Like spiralling
Screams
In the space
Between my nails
In empty graveyards
Where dogs scamper
Over decomposed memories
Of my red river
A lethal concoction
Of implausible glances
And persistent queries
Of god and whores
Makes my red river
Red
Redder

My red river
Exists
In me

My Grandma

My grandmother, granny
Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old
Is the strongest woman on earth
My grandmother, granny
With eyes like tender, dew wet
Grass on winter mornings
Like a dark overcast sky
Eyes, liquid and placid
With untold tales
Only she herself knew
Is the strongest woman on earth
Her long, flowing hair
Now washed on alternate days
With shampoo and later doused
In Cantheridine
Is not as old as her
It was cut, forcibly
When two and a half summers ago
The doctor, with a constipated face
Had clicked his tongue, and predicted
The unimaginable

Her hair, white as the fresh snow
Which formed,on the tops
Of the tea-trees
In the tea-gardens
Where she lived with Grandpa
Would wash her hair, herself
With a generous dousing of Cantheridine
Is still the strongest woman on the earth

Her mind, once a treasure to be mined
From where she had recounted
Age old wisdom to her grandson
Of things interesting, of things unkown
Now lies looted and empty, widowed
Like her
Like the middle
Of her forehead
Which she’d once adorn
With a big, red bindi
Perhaps she’d concentrated
Her indulgent self, all of it
Into grandpa’s pyre
And sacrifices all
To the flames which engulfed him
My grandma, who now sits
In a permanent stupor
Is still the strongest woman
Who cannot be shaken out of her rut
Like six springs back
When she had to watch
Her younger son
Consecrated to flames

My grandma Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon-old
Is the strongest woman
Who is not afraid
Of the holocaust wind
That sings a perennial dirge
Of burglars on the prowl
Of economic recession
Rising price of essentials
And all petty matters
Which worry, and make
Her progeny sweat
Their foreheads, dotted
With beads of sweat
As they discuss strategies
And counter strategies
To fulfil their earthy existence

While all the while
My grandma Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old
Sits there, in no hurry
And contemplates
The glass of water
On the table

Believe me, my grandma
Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old

Is indeed

The strongest woman
On earth

She is
My hero

P.S : This poem is dedicated to my grandma, who has turned totally blank and mute, thanks to schizophrenia.

This is her story.

Time Travel

An old, rickety bus
The old rickety bus
Drab and destitute
Too old to run
Forsaken, left
In the old junkyard
By Amir’s house
Across her school
Could take you places
We had learnt
In childhood
From someone
Who had learnt it
The hard way
The old rickety thing
Bare and dirty
Fillthy
Useless
Like an old whore
Like her grandma
Left slone to rot
In a bare, open road
The old rickety bus
Can take you places
Anik da told
He was the older one
And therefore
Wiser and he had:
A thin line of black forming.
Thin and sparse
Above his cracked Lips
With pockmarks all over
His bloody, red face
He was the older one
And therefore
Wiser, surer
And he said
“Come Come, chalo!!”
Speaking those words
With a british accent
With a bree-teesh-ac-cent
And we shouted
Shrivelling, trembling
And he shouted back
“Get in you bastards!”
And we boarded the old
Rickety thing.

We were proud
And courageous
Gallant, restless
We were excited


To go to places
Unsung, unheard of
Finding a seat
To sit on was
The only
The solitary
Problem

We were ready to go

Those were the days
When childhood
Was not a cud
To be mulled over
Fags, girls and coffee
Today, I know
An old rickety bus
Could take you places
And I am proud
I learnt it
The hard way