Leftover Thoughts About Fear

I remember
knowing that I shouldn't be guilty, and having
to eat out my own heart, clenched tight as a fist.
I remember the smoke, the feeling of floating.

I've been searching for treasures in the dark, in the dust,
in the dirty delicate streets of decrepit Dilli. Pages flutter
in the wake of time, like unbound pieces of our skin
left loose in the whirlwinds - language lilts as the days pass,
holds on to my tongue fiercely as fear envelops my bones,
wounds little parts of my blooming as it holds on too tight,
too tight; the rest of me is still. I am afraid of teleology,
tautology, the long shadows of time. I burn with a fever,

trying to be kind to myself and yet create.

My hands ache at the moonlight tonight.
All the metaphors I had been saving up,
gathering in the folds of my skin, they
trembled and settled like dust on the ground:

Fear is a terrible and vast thing to run away from.
A body is easier. A body is a monolith, but not
an ocean. An ocean, but not the air you breathe
into clenched lungs. Fear can smell like water,
like air, like a throbbing at the back of your head,

like a roomful of nostalgia, like dying flowers.

mistranslations

i must be less afraid - of mistranslations, of falling through the sheets of glass that separate me from myself. perhaps - and perhaps - these various silences will come together in the sun and mean something again, something real and fearsome, something i can fold and keep safe, revisit.

maybe i'll miss holding the universe together.

i came back from the past to spit that at myself. how absurd. i always thought i was real but i am unseeing that now. the electric rush - the floating sky - the tremble and burn of writing these lines. the inside of laughter. the outside of sorrow. we must not be undone by these things. we must not be undone.

i don't think i'll return this time. i think the cycles work fine without me. i think i;
but not really. the syntax and semblance of structure, the falling through, the sheets of glass. the crumbling buildings. the refugee pictures. the tears i cannot untie from my eyes because they are not mine. it will always be a mistranslation. i am too happy to be sad. hegel scratches at my dialectics/ i scratch back at his. always a doublethink. my poem is a political manifesto. my poem is the knocking in act 2 scene 3. macduff and lennox never came. that is the secret. my poem is laughing (my poem understands derrida's jokes, i wish i did). these simple things.

these simple things. the script of a new language floats about in my head, leaves shadows on everything i see. a quick poem. i want to unlearn this nightmare. i want to learn this nightmare inside out so it cannot make me bleed anymore. i want to go home, but not home. how absurd. my sadness is never going to be sad white girl shattering golden at the wrists. my sadness is a brown girl. my sadness is giddy with joy. my sadness is shattering in my mind. my sadness might not be golden enough. these simple things. my sadness reads a lot. scrolls mindlessly. my sadness erupts in a mistranslation. these simple things.

this here

this here
is where i lose
my tongue:

this circling
this searching
this falling through, this always i.

of course:
weightless; alive; here;
there are always
various kinds of peace.

(where? peace lives in
freshly revisited poems;
monday afternoon sex;
songs that feel like flying;
long and lovely journeys;
gold shadows of dusk)

but always, there is
this here: this lonesome
revival, this returning, this
fog, these lonesome smokes

the fear of falling
this where/ more than here

this politics of form. this ache and sun.
this time that sits in my hands like air
and the hollows i carve in my throat
and the dreams i scratch in the sky
and the searching, the always i

Tenderness

I always thought lovers

(like cities, or oceans)

would only ever teach me about loss.

 

On various afternoons soaked with sun,

evenings drenched with longing and rain,

I found this for myself, and for the world.

Like a kernel of truth hitting hard against my insistent teeth.

 

You came:

You came here like an early spring,

fresh green leaves and flower scents in your wake.

You lay me down in evening light,

bathed my shoulders in golden,

eased out the various knots in my back

with warm and calloused hands.

You asked for nothing. 

(I have mapped, far too often, the insidious drafts that follow love into the room,

I have met, headfirst, passions that promise depth; but they always leave me 
a little hollow, parched and longing. I have dug my malicious teeth into too many
known places, left too many echoes, fragile beating scars, too many. I'm always
afraid, most of all of myself. You asked for nothing, and smiled a lot. You took
everything I said, as it was. Covered everything with wildflowers and wind.
You are magic, you leave no spaces through which I could scratch out
my familiar, despicable mistakes. There is only wildflowers and wind.)

I thought I knew all there was to know,

and every day, life gently proves me wrong.

It is tenderness you are teaching me about

and your gentle lessons settle in my voice like honey,

taste like redemptive sun on a ruined city.
You make me tender. Soft in the strongest ways.

 

So tonight, at the fort,

full to the brim with poetry and exhilaration,

I knew enough to pause

as the moon soaked unsuspecting clouds in light 
and stone walls shone golden through carved windows and crevices.

I knew enough to watch the landscapes of my sister's voice tremble

and remember how much I've forgotten to be kind to her.

 

It is tenderness I try to find tonight,

place my hands on her unsure shoulders

and ease the mountains and valleys of her back, the unsaid
distances, the silences like forgotten roads. Her muscles tense and ease
under my insistent hands, tense and ease. It feels less like loss and more like love.

It is alright to be lost, I want to tell her. It is alright to be
young and lost and a little sad sometimes.

 

Together, we listen to the unfamiliar rhythms of Rajasthani songs,

watch the candles flicker and the light falter.

Shadows flit through the arched doorways, but my bones are shafts of light. 
Your hand is right here, on mine, and I couldn't be gladder. 

Growing

The various structures of my mind

are breathing, inhaling and exhaling,

small window spaces open, open and growing.

The walls I built with stone and wood, now

collapse - but in a wonderfully surreal way,

they tilt and sway, they groan under weight of

Derrida Lacan Foucault Freud Deleuze Guattari Saussure 

and my mind hurts sometimes, muscles straining to

comprehend, fists tight and jaw clenched, still waiting

for paradise as a place where I can sit. Sit, not stand,

not move, not constantly be moving, there is no comfort

in an understanding that opens windows and doors but also

breaks walls, hurtles the raw power of wind on the pillars,

nudges the very ground on which I stand until it expands

inwards, to a single dark point in the distance. My mind

hurts, yes, but my soul is nourished, it is bruised but it

grows, the various multiplicities of my mind refuse to be

flattened, and Eliot and Roy murmur deep in my ears, 

I understand things about beauty and love and life that

I never did. I see the world as darker than it ever was,

but I see stars. I lie down in oceans of light, and I trace

connections on the taut skin of sky, I create constellations,

I breathe, deep and unaware, deep, so deep that the world

decides in a flash to breathe with me, press thundering heart

against my flutter-bird chest, and inhale. Exhale. Inhale. 

I tremble at these various gladnesses. 

chiaroscuro

today i'm made of
jazz and wildflowers,
my mouth an ocean of smiles.

my fingers are giddy
from tracing the lines of your skin,
shadow lights and diamond darkness.

these moments are so precious;
stretched tight like the strings of a guitar
until the gentlest touch produces a melody
so taut and brimming with moonshine that
i could cry.

Notes on Auschwitz

 1. The day I went to Auschwitz it almost rained, but not quite. The sky and I were brave. We held back our weeping, untied our tears from our eyes only in gentle drizzle.

2. If these buildings could talk, they would scream.

3. I stepped lightly on the gravel, not wanting to put my weight on this broken land. I was guilty even touching door handles, grazing the walls with my numb fingers, or looking for a moment longer than necessary.

4. I didn't want to leave too much of myself here, didn't want to carry back too much from this place. It was an altar of grief, a monolith of despair.

5. Other tourists (the word in this context made me even more nauseous than I was) wanted to hold on to this moment. Thousands of cameras clicks filled the air once colonised with bullet shots. I wanted to claw my heart out of my throat.

6. Our tour guide told us that there wasn’t an inch of land in Birkenau not covered in human ashes. The air we were breathing, the ground we were walking on, all of it was ashes. I tried not to breathe.

7. We walked through rooms filled with used children’s shoes, with women’s hair cut off from their corpses, with empty cans of Zyklon-B. My jaw was clenched. My fists were tight. My eyes burned with a fever, and I ached blind.

8. Our tour guide spoke in perfectly mediated tones. She had told these stories of horror a hundred times, but she kept that bitter, indignant tone alive. To me, everything felt like a farce, everything hurt. Eliot muttered to me about the ancient women who gathered fuel in ancient lots, and I kept him in my mouth like a prayer.

9. I think I survived that place because of the wildflowers. They were everywhere, delicate as only wildflowers can be. Lemon yellow, deep lavender, pale white. They grew over grief, human ashes, the quiet stench of desperation. They bloomed fierce, like stars dotting skies of anger darkness.

10. I plucked two unassuming wildflowers near the parking lot, left purple imprints in my notebook. That hope was all I wanted to remember of the place.

The Moon Told Me

I accidentally swallowed the moon tonight.

It burnt my tongue, scorched my throat,

caressed the caves of me with the white-hot,

the fierce bloom, the licking flames and ache.

Memory is a terrible sin, almost

carnal in nature.

Seductive, but vicious

when it is able to possess.

Physical in it’s urgent needs.

I swallowed the moon and it told me

not to cry, it told me that a hundred times

and I always listened. It is a terrible power

to trace my scars and know that I left them

on my scaled skin myself, I myself was always

the one to wield the knives. The moon told me

not to cry and I never did; I was too strong to

let myself get hurt, I was protected a hundred

times over, and I paid for it dearly: my skin is

a fragile beating of scars, I wielded the knives

and lashed out in self-preservation, wounded

the others, so many now, and left myself here;

hollow;

navigating the echoes of my cruelty

for so many shadowy months after;

the traces I left on my own life, as well as the

others, their kindly faces, those gentle lovers.

The moon told me to forget.

Today, I could not listen. It has

been too long, and I ache blind.

I swallowed the moon whole, told 

myself to be a better person, not

let twisted ideas of beauty guide

me to thoughtlessness, impatience,

the unforgivable cruelty of protecting

my own wretched self with the books,

the stars, the dried leaves and stories,

round pebbles, swaying sunsets, new

friends, old poems, golden sunbeams,

or this magnificent, malicious moon

shining silver in the darkness, an exquisite

dinner plate accidentally left in the sky, a glow

left on too long, a piece of beauty that blooms

so fierce it is hard for me to remember

the reasons or this thudding

ache in the centre

of forgetful

chest

War/ a life

War is cruel.

Of course, there's so much cruelty in this world.

The people, billions of them, their lives, insignificant
as flies. Some of them, with deceptive comforts, the
fairytale lives of the first world, the struggles of
a date gone wrong, a sulking child, a stained blue dress.

The others; the outcasts, the fallen, the skin stretched tight
across straining ribcage, the cold dripping through makeshift
walls, the dehydration, the sticky tears, hunger beating through
sense like a carnal sin. The lives lived in refugee camps.

War is strange, brings it all together in the most horrible of ways:
the mothers, afraid; the lives, built over years and years, come to mean
Soldier; the throats eager to find a cause, a belief, a reason to live through
simple joys and winding pain; the countries, making sure nobody remembers
what is wrong here, with us and our people - the imagined communities.
The easy route to belonging somewhere
(anywhere), knowing you have validation
to let the carnal instinct of hatred take over
the strained civilisation you were born in.

It makes sense - war is peace. Orwell smiles in black and white. It makes
sense, but somewhere it drives me wild, it pierces somewhere deep inside,
somewhere it hurts. The world, singularly obsessed, following the news as if
it is the kind of conflict one can solve with another battlefield - a fistfight
on a playground, a larger punch, the shrill ringing bell that brings comfort
and louder cries for revenge - the kind of conflict that can be solved in this
unreal trajectory, with another silly paper signed by another dignitary.

I don't find War in the heroic battles, even in the armaments, the horrifying bombs.
Think about it with me for a second: a life, that too, the whole and gorgeous gem
of a life, a childhood precious with mist, the one afternoon the chubby babe said
"Mama", and his mother almost cried, called the neighbours and beamed like a
sunbeam at her husband; the evenings they dined together, the roses he picked
from the schoolyard bush, the first time he fell in love, the long conversations on
crackling telephone lines, the one sunset he watched on vacation and remembers;
a life whose sole motive becomes either to fight or escape the terrifying battlefield.

A life, forgotten in the rigour of army training; a life, kept precious back at home
with the conversations on repeat, the precious studio portraits, the awaited letters.
A life, the hundred things he might be thinking as he marches; the one sandwich
he is craving today, whether his ragged blanket will survive another day, how he
must darn his socks, write a letter, remember a word. A life, the hundreds of lives
that go into bringing up a child. A life, the scar on his right ankle from when he was
just fourteen, the small mole on his collarbone, the way his hair curled around his ears.

And of course, the inevitable, the climax reaching a denouement that nobody told him about,
the single afternoon picked out of so many, the mindless bullets, the single deadly shot, the
body in shock, the sky bluer than ever and the sense of a falling, the crowds marching, the cry
of a bird in the distance. The silence and ruins as dusk approaches. The corpse in a nondescript
corridor in a city of shadows. The compact pool of blood, as large as an ocean, the colour of wine.

And of course, the moment of eventual discovery. Another wobbling, broken soldier
who throws him into a grave with twenty others; or a war photographer, sick with
emotion, full of everything, convinced of his noble war against the war but unwilling
to touch this gruesome still mountain of a life. And of course, the picture, black and white,

in some museum or the other, fifty years later, another insignificant piece of art
that wants to be a part of history but is too small, too unlucky, doesn't know how.
And of course, me, quiet and wound up, in part the criminal and in part the victim,
in part the ruined scene of war - a landscape of destruction, a cracked time and space.
Of course, me, walking through another museum in another strange city, fists clenched
tight, full of everything, willing my eyes to absorb in all depth, walking small steps until

I reach this picture, this same picture a hundred times over;
a corpse, on cobbled stone or in overgrown grass; a corpse; a corpse; a corpse.

That one decisive moment, a life, for god's sake a whole goddamn life
wasted in the propaganda now long forgotten, the slogans and the meaningless
news reports, political angles, new weapons, maybe whole factories for uniforms
and boots and warfield toothbrushes; my god, a life, and nobody looked back,
nobody could blame it on the accountable remorse of illness or the callousness
of time; a life, not gone because the child was stillborn or unlucky with disease
at an early age, not gone because the adolescent decided that this life wasn't enough
and a noose would have to do instead; no choices, just a life blacked out, a life.

A life, and it made no difference. Nobody lost and nobody, nobody won.

There is so much cruelty in the world
but all of them still hurt, burn themselves into the white secrets of my flesh.

Image I

ref: In Vain from Berlin bhf. by Tihanyi Anna

The image: the whole tense obscure ocean
of a person (me?), sitting on a bed. A hotel room
or home? It is all the same, sparsely furnished, devoid
of the undulating familiarity one secretly craves, never
truly finds. Comfortingly ugly wallpaper. Luggage,
the disconcerting sight of rootlessness. Tightly packed.
The door, shut. The symbol: me, an ocean, for once
without an island? Embracing solitude like a master.
Strong as a mountain. Stepping over these stones
lightly, with the springing step of a quieter animal.

But the other, darker, corners of my picture frame:
the door, shut but not bolted; instead, precariously
balanced into compliance with an incongruous pile
of telephone sets, pastel coloured, last century. Yes,
the symbol: communication, my crackling voice
reaching out to yours through twisted black wire;
hearing but not seeing, hearing but not really
listening, are you? Are you listening? My voice
is bruised in the darkness, it is stained with light,
it has slithered under the warm carpeting to reach
your waiting ears, please tell me you are listening,
this is my last hiding place. My secrets are safe now.
My voice as a wonderful thing, a deceptive bridge, a
burnt ruin on a thundering river. A phone call, not a
conversation. A conversation, not my soul. You think
you see me, but my doors are shut. My voice wears
my clothes and parades around the streets. I sit, pick
my choice of pastel telephone set, pack and repack
my eternal luggage, watch the shadows in this room.
Light the lamps at dusk. Avoid the mirror.

Travelling

I have not put pen to paper
in so long.
I have been writing
poems

in my mind;
daydreaming in elastic prose,
talking to myself in Eliot, Roy,
imitating the woman's voice
from crowded metro stations
in dilli. Vishwa Vidyayala:
doors will open. Please stand back.
I am lost in language. I must make words.

I have strange dreams sometimes;
one long afternoon in a guesthouse
on a lazy Rishi Valley day, I dreamt
myself walking in the forest
wrapped in the same white bedsheet
I slept in, austere, as if I were on a
pilgrimage. Half-asleep, half-lost,
I named every plant I saw. The dream
was half made of image, half of words.
The air crackled with poetry. It sounded
more like prayer.

There is so much I want to say.
For months it brims over, and then
for months I am fallow. A tired field.
May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. (1)
A hundred voices are leaving bruises on me.
This is just the way it's meant to be.

*

I have not been home for more than a week.
It is bittersweet - the comfort and the complacency;
it always has been. Home seems to stay the same
but I am not. I am travelling.

I still cannot define poetry. I get tongue-tied.
I hope I am able to impress. Somewhere, I still worry,
the mermaids, I do not think they will sing to me. (2)
I do not know what it is, this constellation, a poem,
but I know what I want to create. Something made
of dust and water, an infusion of scale and feather,
bruise and mist. (3) Something solid, firm, not one word
more than necessary, something that stands erect and
sturdy, stronger than me. I want to create something
that isn't afraid to sway, something that leaves enough
space for anybody to enter, leave, possess it as they may.
Something made of air. Something that shines in mellow
evening light. I want to make magic. With words.

Sitting in various buses in various countries
I marvel at the horizon. The sun beats down
hardest before it begins to dip, stains the blue
of horizon a faded purple, orange, pale grey.
Every day, I worry that I am not writing.

The sunset was beautiful in the evening,
a few hours ago. Today I munched on the
final strands of prose of the book I was reading,
let myself fall down the rabbit hole headfirst, no
hesitant touch, no gentle withdrawal. The words
lit up with the passing beams, they shone yellow
and rose on the page. I could taste them: wholesome,
yet hollow. Every word as a good poem. Every word
a country I passed through, a new horizon I watched.

There are so many places to see. So much to learn,
so much to read. I have not put pen to paper
in so long, but I must give myself time.


(1) Arundhati Roy
(2) T.S. Eliot
(3) Nayyirah Waheed

Right Words

Looking for the right words
to say all the wrong things.
The heat is passing through
this city, making every breath
unbearable. It's an effort to
be.

Everything outside of me
is dry, cracked, broken.
My mind and heart
are still rejoicing
a monsoon
that seems too far
from where I live.

There is so much I want to say.

I see things:
The tremble of beauty,
the solid sorrows of time.
It is a skill to break
experience
down into language.
I have it, and every day
I am thankful for it.
I do not want it
to become my only
way of interaction
with the world.

Sometimes
I will not find the right words.
I don't want to be afraid of that.
I want to embrace it.

I want to calm, sometimes, the bubbling
in my belly, the thunder in my fingers.
Perhaps I must shrug off the structures
around which I organize my world.

The chaos terrifies me,
but I will learn to love it.
There's a new crisis
every day, a new and
wholly different way
of looking, of learning.

Falling
harder, faster, sooner
than I'd want to fall through
the various rabbit holes of
passing days.

midnight meditations on meaning

After a long day, I lay in my bed, listening to the fan whirr, cool wind from the window brushing against my thin shirt; preparing myself to sleep, I stretched my legs, felt the muscles tense and pull, and I thought: I thought about the marvellous, opaque, diamond of a world, and how it produced the first spark of life, of consciousness, a single cell that trembled with agency, and how woefully, miserably meaningless that was - how it evolved, step by painful step, and all the meaningless deaths on the way; life, and how it filled the seas and the skies, and how there were creatures that could scream in agony and in ecstasy, make tools and make wars, and how we evolved from there, how my tensing muscles remind me of my forest roots, my singing seas, my sparks of life that created this complex body based solely on survival and need; I thought about how meaningless it still is, how much more life there is and yet, how little it does, how the sky is a hundred shades of blue and the sea is mighty and tidal, and how they will rest against one another in an endless dance and that will really be all there is in this world, no matter how hard we try to leave scratches on the rocks of our lands - and yet, as I lay there, cool wind caressing my hair, I thought about my day, about how I inhaled the scent of home after months, and how my sister's eyes shone brighter than the sun, how I unpacked my memories disguised as empty boxes and paints and scarves, how sunbeams fall in shafts on my bed, how the books that line my shelf are trembling in eagerness to be read, and how I could smell the spices from the kitchen as I bathed, cool water rushing down the caves of my body to meet with the earth, how summer fills my heart with warmth and I feel clean and alive, how I can still hear the ringing laughter that I laughed today on my parents' bed, limbs intertwined and hands held by warm hands; and I thought about how much joy there is in this world, in my simple life, in a warm day. If there is such joy in this world, can we not find meaning? And if there is such joy, do we really need meaning? And if there is such joy, is it not meaning enough?

homeward bound

home isn't home anymore
it's a place of transit:

home is where I go back to
after things end
and
before things begin.

it is the secret I hide
in my pockets.
the word that i say
when I want to leave -
even if it's not really
where I want to go.

home is the smell
of lemongrass incense
clinging to my hair.
the half-smile on
my father's face.

it will be sunshine
in the summer -
everywhere, shafts
of solid light falling
on furniture and floor.

home is the music
my mother listens to
when everybody goes to bed.
the sound of it wafting down
to my bed, raining down
nostalgia.

it is where I always return
to settle in my skin, if only
for a few days - where everything
I've learnt and unlearnt in all the time
I've been away untangles slowly, and
falls into place in my mind. that's home.

right now
I'm almost homeward bound

I reek of exhaustion:
sleeplessness buried in bags under
bloodshot eyes, and
my mind an overfull cup.
mosquito bites and bruises
leave purple blossoms on my skin.
my bones, made of shafts of light,
ache. throb. sigh.

home:
I need you to caress me
as gently as you can.

sunshine music

listening to sunshine music
at 4 am - humming to Nietzsche
under my breath,

i'm feeling all of summer at once:

the heat that rises up my spine
and murmurs on my skin like dust;

the songs that wrap themselves
in my arms and ask me to listen;

memories of faces that once
lived inside of my life and composed
the harmonies of my days - faces
that faded faster than smoke,
whose curves and smiles
i can't quite recall anymore.

summer murmurs different melodies
to me every moment -

the joy that flutters in warm wind,
and the summertime sadness
that settles on my shoulders,
heavy as light.

there are
new faces now.
they change
in darkness and light.
there are
new eyes i want to confide in
but i am shaky and restless, unstable,
i'm floating - trying to learn
from wild hearts that break mine.
my heart says it's wild
but really, its a baby, and it doesn't
understand the nuances of the world.
afraid of rawness. afraid of settling.

sunshine music settles in my heart
like wildflowers. warms my shoulders.
it is heavy as light.

summersong

this sneaky sun
finds its way everywhere

slips under my bedsheets,
winds itself in my hair,
hides in corners.

summer beats down
relentlessly

names every month
may
and sings a song
of fire

weaves a blanket of sun
on the world: cobbled streets,
concrete walls, dying grass.
sun lays itself down,
burns through skin
lights up the white secrets
of my bones and flesh.

my fingers are laced with sun.

music

fingers tapping to the beat
sitting politely in my bell jar
i smile - milkshakes and madness,
fingers laced with fog, silly heart.
i wish i could make music
mellifluous and kind

something that you could
weave around yourself
like a blanket
or the ocean.

April 30: Summer endings

Heat leaks through walls and wind

and spreads itself out in dusty rooms.

Summer is here, with its particular

joys and sorrows, days stretched 

elastic over wavering horizon as

scent of sun clings to everything

we know. All I have with me is

description;

does description presume emotion?

Recollection, revolution, regression,

salvation? 

The fingers of a poet

itch to write life into

passing days - words

are only a way to hold on, 

to remember in contortions

of language, keepsakes of 

this restless traveller 

known as time. 

My stories are blinded by sun

today, the brightness sits in every 

corner of me and leaves no space

to breathe; all I have is the promise

of night, of petrichor and moonlight,

of wind running through my hair and

claiming my wild heart as its own. 

There is no time yet

to consolidate

no time to breathe easy

and sink into water and soil

grow flowers or new leaves.

No time, no time, no yearning

days and quivering nights, just

the sighs of summer endings,

closures and conclusions.

I will gather ideas and words,

colours and scents, pack them

gently into empty boxes: I will

have memories to unravel over

days and weeks, new promises

to write into my fingers, new 

blossoms to wait for in faith.

These grounds are parched,

these cups are full: with time,

balance will restore my mind.

Monsoon will nourish my 

desert dreams, and time

will take wisely from

my overfull cups,

leaving space

for me to

grow.

April 29: O Stranger

Your name sounds strange
in the tentative caves of my mouth,

but it tastes of truth.

I folded my fear into a perfect
sphere, and tucked it in my pocket.
When I came to meet you,
I wore courage alone.

All night, moving in time
with the rhythms of your body,

I almost forgot the music.

O stranger,
your eyes shine in my darkened days.
I wanted nothing more: the smiles, the
words, the laughter and dance. I needed
the conversation, the reminders that life
is full of beautiful people and moments,
the gentle nudges to remove what fragments
of fear I still had wrapped around my waist.
The scent and murmur of your skin might
fade in my mind with time, the tremble of
desire and memory might leave no trace, but
I will keep your generous smile, your gentle
truths and your kindness, the exuberant joy
of your body as you dance. I will keep the
hope you gifted me graciously. I will keep
the courage I discovered in your company.

April 28: Solitary

in a room too big
walls too wide roof too high
i curl in one corner,
taking up no more space
than a blanket or a bag

music leaks from the speakers
spreads over the room like ink
finding its way under my shoes,
behind the bed, inside the closet
and in the murmur of my skin.

bittersweet memories and scent
of life passing by gently, roughly,
slowly and too fast all at once.

there are stories in my hands
that tremble like water
there are dreams i write into
awkward mistakes and tears

and we laced conversation into darkness
and dealt with the world from our safe haven
time moves just right but also too fast

mellifluous. pebble. harmony. tremble. hiraeth.
all the words remind me of your footsteps

April 27: Samsara, over lunch & dinner

Dinnertime today:
Darkness settles: the swarm
of mosquitos swells around
silhouettes, a bulbous moon
swimming in a cloud-faced
sky. Big smiles and flutters,
living large in a small life;
I float my expansive soul
like a kite in starless skies.
I will find joy and name it
mine.
I do it every day.

Lunchtime, though:
'Everybody you love
will die one day', we concluded
in philosophy class today. Heart
burning with unmentionable fears,
I walked, didn't even pretend like
it doesn't matter. It matters. It matters
that my civilization looks at the world
as sorrow, as damnation, as something
to be cast off. Samsara, the endless
cycles of life and death, of birth,
where life is only

suffering;

what nonsense!
Life is not suffering - life is
pastel shades and warm lighting,
dark forest secrets and midnight kisses,
life is mysterious cloud shapes, lost letters,
new lovers, lilting laughter, thunderous rain.
Life is the happiest thing we know. Of course
everybody I love will die, of course sorrow
is certain and joy is so delicate, fragile;
but that is not all. That is not all.

We grimly declared the
'surety of our sorrows' and
the 'precariousness of our
pleasures' and my heart
swelled in sadness.
You know what,
you're wrong - I have faith
in my life, and it will blossom
and bloom in colours you will
not imagine, it will transform
and tremble in moonlight and
every moment will be precious,
every moment, even the ones
where teardrops lace my face,
I will remember that it is
precious
precious
precious.

Give me a hundred lives.
I have a jarful of light and pocketfuls
of patience; I will survive, and I will
make music. I will write sorrow into beauty;
fragile, yes, but trembling in joy. Trembling.

"In this world, it is very hard to escape happiness. That's how it is."
- Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People

April 26: Foolish Love Poem

The space between
your arm and mine
crackles,
and all I want to do
is run a single thumb
down the valleys of you:
jawline set like an unwavering
horizon, taut curve of neck facing
the stars, unyielding collarbones,
gentle rolling hills of shoulders,
and arms dusted mahogany.

When you speak,
the gravel of your words
settles on my skin, and clings.
My world wants to open up
and swallow you whole; you
just don't want to be a part
of my elaborate plan. O you
angry young man,

is this a love poem?
I hope not. I hope not.
I have come to believe
that I can write one only
at a time like this: lost,
unloved, unsure, foolish.

April 25: When you bathe

When you bathe,
remember
to wash it all off:
the hurt that gathers
under grimy fingernails,
the anger you folded
and tucked behind your ear,
the unsmiled smiles
hid beneath your fingers.

Let the water
burn your skin
raw, peel back
every lie you told
today, and every
sigh you didn't let
escape your mouth.

Don't be so gentle
with yourself. You
have survived worse.
Scrub every face
you put on
today. Every simile
you wrote and placed
into your hollows,
every word you used
to call yourself.

Remember
to tie the scent
of water
around your wrists,
and name it
home.

April 24: Sunset and Thoughts

Evening settles down
in the warm lawns and
corridors, darkness has
not invaded just yet;
bruises of light
still blossom
in the steadily purpling sky.

What if the only kind
of magic that exists
is what you choose
to imbue the world with?

I shudder, but smile,
making space for a sliver
of silver moon, placed gently
in the clear bowlful of sky;
watch remnants of golden sun
tremble into darkness.

April 23: Heroes

The thing with heroes
is that they're always
lying,
and seeing through the
screens is the worst part
of growing up. By far.

The thing with heroes
is that they only know
as much as you.
They're just as strong,
as brave, as kind, as
true. And when you
have bad days, they
can too. The thing
with heroes,
is that one always
expects too much,
hopes for magic
in the form of a
mother or a poet,
an elder brother,
a brilliant teacher.

Magic comes,
but it's everywhere,
and it's always fragile,
that's the thing. Magic
isn't something concrete
or solid - it's more firewater
or thundersmell, more like a
sliver of silver moon in a bowl
of sky. Don't you wish heaven
was a place in the map you could
plan to go? It isn't though, paradise
is as alive as you or I, but you can
never sit in paradise. You find it in
the middle of motion, in a moving
river, in a journey that whips back
your hair and stings your eyes. You
can't stop. You must keep moving.

There's no perfection
in a slice of time.

April 22: Circles, ad infinitum

Life as an endless
abandonment:
learning to love
only to lose,
settling down knee-deep
and then dusting yourself off;
learning and unlearning
like the endless motions
of the oceans - the tides
falling and breaking
falling and breaking.

Life as the infinite
regress:
moving in this
brightly lit circle,
round and round
a single-corridor maze,
the blossoming of flowers
leading only to their death.

Ideas that you hold
close your chest as if
they were precious - you can
only ever truly love knowledge

if you're willing to let
everything you learn

burn

again, and again. There will be no water
in this flickering flame. There will be no
sand. Only the anger that swells in you
like a flooding, only your eyes closed tight
that realize what it means to live in time.
Marking circles on the ground with your feet,
again, and again.

April 21: Tuesday Morning Blues

1:13 pm
(late morning or early afternoon?)
dusty sheets in disarray, beginnings
of sunshine lacing the room with light,
Radiohead and Nietzsche starting the day;

amidst the bloom of debris and disaster,
a pair of lonesome legs
locating memory and desire
in an unrelenting maze

1:21 pm
(quiet pangs of hunger)
prayer flags hanging still
in various colours of vanishing,
the tremble and burn of losing a city;

in the wreckage of fear and forgetting,
the bags under my eyes, heavy as light,
searching for the gentle ache of sleep
in this particular
pulsating
circular
dream

April 20: An Ode to Writing

Stringing together words

with thread of silk; there comes

a time when dreams stain reality

and the metaphors build cities

in your belly, unwilling to leave;

you, as a series of similes, as a

continent of darkness in oceans of

light, listening to deep underwater,
watching the shatterglass surface
as if from afar, the gentle bloom

of words rising like a trance
in music and memory;

embracing the depth and form of
water, you let yourself rejoice:
here, where light burns the murmur
of your skin, you declare yourself
a new-born god surrounded only by
the countries of void, the stories of
loss, the coastlines jagged by regret.

You need nothing else. You are
immense
in your kingdom of words.

Emerging from this tidal paradise
is madness, is impossible sanity.
Your heartbeat thunders the song
of the waves. The clocks float past,
impatient, leaving pulsating numbers
in their wake. Your shadow calls your
forgotten name. Searching in the dark
mysteries of your mirror, all you want
is wholesome countries of yourself, the
simple comfort of identity holding you
to your singular self. Your shadow calls
your forgotten name. Your shadow calls.

All you own
is fragments of faces,
the wreckage of memory and desire
hidden under the darkness of alphabets;

the words pile higher,
smelling of lies and water,
debris and disaster;

language blossoms in your eyelids

your fingers 

your curled toes

in your chest rising and falling

with the beat of music: hiraeth 

April 19: Song of Smoke

burning eyes and guilt

(even though everything is okay,

everything is okay tonight)

thankfully nobody can read

your fingers laced with smoke

today the sun was the lightest hue

a singular clear orb set against

a sky made only of clouds 

grey and smoke

everything is okay.

it isn't hopeless anymore.

fragments of a moving life

follow you like stains

sometimes when you hold

the cigarette between two

hesitant 

fingers, you forget that it's

you;

your eyes follow me in the dark

my days are sandcastles 

next to your seas.

April 18: It Matters

I know it's hard that
everything matters.
I know it burns you
that I nitpick, catch on to
'inconsequential' things that
you say. It burns when I bang
my fists on the table and tell you
it matters what you eat what you
drink what you smoke what you
wear, what you put on your face
what you put on your hair. It matters
what you write what you cite what you
choose not to fight. Goddamn it, it does.

It's hard for me too.
It's hard because none of us
will ever be able to make the
kind of difference we want,
never be able to truly find
the right blend of meaning
and reason, never be lauded
for all the things we secretly
want to be lauded for. It's hard,

because the world is the strangest
carnival I ever did see, by far the
most neurotic psychosocial fantasy,
the worst kind of nightmare that you
don't know how to flee. It matters,
despite comfort. It matters, despite
the fact that yolo. Because this world,
this beautiful magical fucking scary
world, it does not live one life.
This world lives a hundred stories
every second, a hundred heartbreaks
and a hundred secret tears of joy, this
world is larger than you will ever be,
and yet it's only, only as large as you
choose to let yourself see. Only as kind
as you will let yourself be. Only as wise.

April 17: Ode to Angie

"Dull Gret: We come to hell through a big mouth... I'd had enough, I was mad, I hate the bastards. I come out of my front door that morning and shout till my neighbors come out and I said, "Come on, we're going where the evil come from and pay the bastards out"... You just keep running and fighting, you didn't stop for nothing. Oh, we give them devils such a beating. " - Caryl Churchill, Top Girls

O Angie,

you big baby.
you sick child.
you image of
everything that went wrong here,
in this particular hell, this apartment,
this schizophrenic society where
ambition
forgets to be kind
and change forgets
what it needs
to change.
You are woman and
forgotten, woman and
fallen, woman and
fighter.

You scare me.
You are the big mouth of hell
and you are the devil's desire,
you scare me because you are
larger than life, and yet
so
small.

The spectres that haunt you
give me hope. You are the
big mouth of hell
through which the women
can walk through and fight,
finally too angry to stand
another night, you are the
devil's desire
that will carry us through
past tonight, do you know?
You are the world
in an angry child.
You have so much
to fight. Not just
the men and not
just the devils.
Women too,
mothers,
angels.
every
day.

Demand
more for
yourself.
Demand
more for
us all.

April 16: Loving, & how

I'm afraid

that too many people equate

growing up 

with forgetting 

how to love

innocently

shamelessly

bigly. Wisdom is not always

kindness, & well, intelligence

definitely not always wisdom.

I'm afraid

that I too am not able

to love like the ocean.

Not perfectly, contained

in all the right boxes, but

big. wide. liquidly. 

I want my loving to be

the colour of the sky, &

as shamelessly willing 

to cover the world. I can

forgive myself for not loving

the right people the right way

the right amount the right time:

but I will never forgive myself

for not loving strangers enough

not giving enough birthday cards

flowers poems hugs notes & smiles.

I'd hate to be afraid

because people around me are afraid.

I'd like to love fearlessly even if I am

loved fearfully. I'd like to love bigly,

always. innocently & shamelessly,

no matter how old or cynical I get.

April 15: My Little Date

I might be blundering a little, falling
more than I thought I would. Perhaps
the darkness is throwing me off, pushing
me too hard for me to balance, hang on
to things quite right. Sometimes, I'm
afraid of silence. Of solitude. Last night,
I had a little date

with myself. Quiet, and yet so loud.
No white tablecloth, no roses or candles.
Only a wooden floor facing the bright
windows of the library, only a single
strip of sky and two stars, only a plate
of sandwiches and namkeen. Only a
phone resting on tired knees, playing
soulful strings to myself. Only the wind,
tousling back hair and the leaves of potted
plants in the vicinity, only the strange looks
of passing strangers. Only the smiles I could
give to myself. Only the smiles.

The music grew bigger and leaked out
of its bubble, until it filled the collegescape,
coloured everything a warmer hue, floating
into my badly-lit corner and rising, soaring
past petty worries and little aches, my bent
back and clenched limbs, the weight of the
world in the bags under my eyes - the music
painted everything lighter, named it all brighter,
called me moonshine and firewater, touched me
until I tingled, brown freckled skin over bones
and dreams, as tall as mountains and as deep as
the sea. The music grew so big I couldn't see it
anymore. The music was inside and outside, the
wind grew louder but more silent, and I flew.

The sandwich was divine. The corner was serendipity
in form. The moment, though trivial, was incomprehensibly
large; my little date with myself was a sonnet to solitude.
I had no white tablecloth, no fancy restaurant - I was dressed
baggy, unprepared, on the ground with throat to the stars.
It was all I needed, to tell myself
hey. I love you, man.
I don't need a white tablecloth or a black party dress,
the bright lights are enough, the dark sky more than plenty.
Life itself is all I want to aim for - life itself, my friend.

April 14: It's late.

The poetry called out to me all my life:
sometimes quiet and sometimes loud,
it nudged me as if from a river, water
rushing through my fingers as I tried
to escape - poetry called out to me, yes,
but it never asked me to stay so late,
never told me the clocks would fall
asleep before my eyelids drooped,
never told me that moss would grow
in my bones and I would have to let
it blossom, and hope for wildflowers.

I can say it, say it loud and say it
low, I can hold a hundred mirrors
up to myself and watch the reflection
of golden sun white out any image that
I should see - I can wear a hundred masks
and pretend each one of them is me. All
that you need to know is
I'm trying to
break even
with myself. Perhaps all I will achieve
will be hollow and paper mache. I might
lose the sound of my name. I am taller,
taller than the weeds in my backyard,
taller than the marks on my wall that
measured me once, taller than the lies
I never thought I would tell. The night
goes on, and doesn't end. It's late, and
my flesh is complaining, muscles and
bones aching with the ticking clock
and whirring fan. It's late, and yet I
must be awake. I need myself here,
wrapping the night time like a shroud.
Upon ache and sorrow and misplaced
wanderings.

April 13: Hope

The story of a single walk -

one of many, in the dusty, worn

streets of Dharamsala, amidst monks

and foreigners, trinket-shops and cafes,

constantly surrounded by misty rain and

mountains:

as if in a pop-up card or a picture, the deep

radiant shadow greens, the colour and bustle

of a tourist city, the particular midday smiles

of travellers in transit, resting tired bones here, on

this restless mountainside, searching for sunshine

and salvation on endless roads and reclamations.

Turning left before the monastery, three small figures

swaddled in bright woolens walked up an empty path.

 

The mist gathered before us, and we were okay

with getting lost. The great elsewhere murmured 

from the mountains, and cobbled streets and brick

walls led us to residential buildings, small gates and

open sky filled with smell of pines. A solitary rooftop

under construction - we paused; rubble, grey concrete

and iron rods marring our cityscape and rural views.

We turned our backs to the occasional passersby, and

we were silenced, pine trees and quiet buildings now

opened up the horizon, mountains filled the foreground 

and faded into shadows, the humming city was still, a

river flowed. The sky brimmed over, and a world

unravelled itself graciously

before our simple wanderings.

We were silenced.

Sharing conversations and a smoke, we watched

the world anew. Snowpeaks hid behind mist, and

smiled. Sunlight was gold and white, and darkness

of exhaled smoke rose up and vanished. We were

born again, resting on the horizon like three baby

sunsets. Intoxicated on mountain air and stillness,

we walked those winding roads, through cobbled

streets and alleyways, jutting pipes and steep steps,

climbing and jumping, shuffling and stumbling, I

held on to the parts of the city that offered itself to

us that afternoon, complex corners and wildflowers,

prayer flags emerging from every mountain peak

in that blessed little town. We found our way out

of our beautiful little maze, 

onto an empty, wide, cobbled street. To my mind,

the people smiled and were still, as if in a photograph.

The shops were bright and cozy, incense wafted through

the air and conversations were warmer. As we turned to

leave the little paradise we had discovered, I chanced upon

a sign on a fragmented little wall. Somebody had spray-painted

an arrow in the direction from which we had come - bold letters

in blue stood out against moss and rock. The sign said one word,

hope

April 12: Rituals

Evening on the football field
is purple and gold, clouds settling
around goalposts and hills, the orb
of sun resting precariously on horizon.
Me, in the business of finding joy,

standing amidst high socks and studs,
even grass and kicks, hair desperately
pulled back and held with bands and clips.
Oversized t-shirt and oversized shorts, oversized
heart and smile in minute body of skin and bones.
Me, in the business of desperately holding on to
joy instead of sorrow, finding meaningless rituals
to anchor myself against so I don't float away.
Breakfast every day, and class on time - 6 pm
on the field, convinced to run, clench teeth and
fists, hear heartbeat thudding in it's fragile cage.

Sometimes
I regret that I can hold on to meaning
only through these rituals. Perhaps I should
throw my computer, have conversations only
when they are truly meaningful, and eat when
I'm hungry, not when I'm supposed to. Rituals
are a desperation instead of a reclamation. I did
belong to effortless truth all my life - I'm not yet
used to working for joy. To discipline and dates.

Sometimes
the evening surprises me, and standing on a field
surrounded by skies of purple and gold, truth comes
effortlessly, in a continual gust of wind that pulls my
hair out of its tangle and my heart out of its cages, it
seems to be calling my name, a single vowel of longing
etched across the clouds - running and passing, I notice
myself smiling. The shadow of the wind tousles my hair
even when the gust is past. The shadow of a smile stays.
I will have dinner after a bath, and then I will work. I will
sleep before it's too late, and embrace the ferris wheel of
everlasting days.

April 11: Weekend Preludes

It began with a singular catastrophe -
a hilariously awkward coincidence, a
quietness that sat in my heart like a
melancholy familiarity, a silent loss.

Determined to make music
of my weekends, I resolutely
walked on, dust and crowds
gathering on my sorrow like
vultures - I called the sun my
friend and sweated with a smile.
If happiness wants to play catch,

I will run after it with
all I've got. I promised myself
this, I owe myself far too much.
Travelling alone in the streets of
Delhi - mysterious, narrow-eyed
and wide-laned, callous and kind,
pulsating, pulsating with life - I fly,
soar above my trembles and tears.

I plan with a vengeance, phone calls
and messages, a grid and a map in my
mind, until I am prepared. Looking out
various windows, wind tousling back
hair, I can see that I need this. I needed
the soft music and wine in coffee mugs,
the darkness of night sitting on me like
a shroud; I needed the silence.

Now, I need noise. The metro whizzes
past, and there's always someplace to be -
old friends and new, the crackle of beer cans
swaddled in a checked shirt, glugging down
in turns, between giggles and conversation.
The sun beats down on Connaught Place
despite curtain of clouds, and sets my skin
on fire. Laughing and walking, intoxication
and reclamation. A strange mix. The streets are
nearly empty, and so are the cans. Beer and sun
wrote hope on my arms, and winding walks down
darkened Delhi that night settled gentle joy like
dust in my hair. Street lights and April showers,
every word said in jest and yet, every word carrying
the weight of days of darkness and stagnation. Hope,
gathered in pools of lights on rainy flyovers, folded
into the warm blankets and hot showers of a home,
offered in fragmented smiling exchanges over tea.

I never knew I would find hope in dusty Delhi streets,
in weekend preludes lightly brushed with alcohol and
independence, in emptying my mind of the foliage
that grew there for days. Salvation comes sometimes
in cities - I smile, and I can make music again.

April 10: The Memory Pot

"Memory is not a keeping

but a forgiving, the thresh and burn

of what we cannot salvage" - Leah Silvieus 

Today, working and reworking

moments as if on a potters wheel -

changing my mind and putting both hands

forward, gently lifting this massive mound of clay,

the whirring wheel, the squelch of splatter

earthy on my arms, smelling like rain.

I cannot wash the remnants off,

they dry on my skin

and crack.

Perhaps this is memory -

everything I could not fashion

into a piece of art. Perhaps this is me,

how I hold memory, paint over peeling

clay, painful to the touch, and call it

beautiful;

perhaps the memory of tonight
can only ever be of remnants: your scent,
the tender smiles, the mahogany moon -
everything about your arms that I could not
salvage
while I was there, holding on too tight.
Perhaps I will save the scars as well as the
shadows of stars, pack them into brown letters,
and write left-over words in black pen.
"Once", I will write. "If only". 

April 9: As You Will

"I wish you were as I would have you be" - Shakespeare

O Will, old man, don't we all?
I know your will is mighty strong
but do you really always know
what you want?

'You are what you eat'
and I contend,
you are what you read,
what you watch,
as well as what you pretend.

Every morning, wearing
mask upon shattered mask,
layers of shadows and light
upon flesh and sinew until
all that remains inside is
remnants;

hollows through which
wind whistles through
and whispers echo loud.
My name is not my name.

April 8: Poem of Sadness

The whirring fan, the listless legs,

the exhaustion that creeps up on you

like a shadow. One never expects to

have to constantly fight, be ready for

battle, fists clenched and jaw tightened;

but that's where you are - every time

you pause, take a breath too deep, a silence

too long, the sadness comes swiftly, diving

in arcs around you, rising up your arms just

like smoke - and all you want to do is leave

and there's nowhere to go.

Time moves in leaps and crawls, fragmented,

and you lose all sense of it before long. Work

piles up and slips off the table, conversations

grow trivial and you start to forget what you're

supposed to do with your hands when you stand.

Fiddle, twitch, bite your finger, twiddle thumbs,

adjust the side of your glasses or wipe your phone.

There's no reason - no reason - and that's what 

really gets you at the end of the day. It's a war

you're fighting, alone in your head, an endless

ocean you're swimming through and each breath

you takes robs your lungs of something important -

and you're getting nowhere, nowhere. People scare

you. They scare me too. Buildings look bigger, the

sky caves in. It's a constant struggle to smile wider

do better work harder run faster read more cry less.

Maybe this is what being an adult is like. I thought

the sadness lasts less when you're older, and along with

knowledge and wisdom and vocabulary, you gain strength.

All I'm gaining is perspective, and that doesn't help, really.

Sadness is fine in small doses - like medicine - as long as

the rest of the time you feel new, like a baby leaf, and know

to watch sunsets and make good choices, as long as five nights

a week you can go to bed with a smile on your face, and as long

as hope outweighs outlasts outlives outshines outscreams despair.

But don't worry just yet.

Don't worry yet. Hope is here, 

just quieter, slower, older and wiser,

less ambitious than despair, less insidious.

When it comes, it'll come with all the force of

a thunderstorm, a falling ocean, a vowel of longing

written into the taut skin of the sky. Keep faith, my friend.

April 7: Magic

I'm searching for MAGIC:
hiding and smiling, moving and grieving
the songs and the sea - I'm walking, learning,
falling and crawling, marking out stars on the
blackboard of sky until I touch them all - touch
them all, their fiery eyes and flaming tails, distant
conversations and categorizations, I need you to know:

Magic comes easier when you're a child -
if you want it, it wants you right back, embraces your
footsteps and your shadows, nudges your elbows when
you tremble, and lights up your windows with shafts of
sunlight and love. Books were my magic - I read hundreds,
and filled the shelves of my mind with the kind of hope
that's hard to find as you grow older and

books grow sadder.

I'm searching for magic - people wish they could go back
to being children, but really, I'm okay - I'm searching for magic
and bloody hell, I'm going to find it, I've learnt a hundred new words
and a hundred ways of thinking, I'm taller and stronger and less afraid
of strangers, my eyes look less silly behind this pair of glasses, and
I'm sure I can do it, I'm sure I can. Isn't this what we work towards,
a goal and an aim, ambition and creation, most of all reason?
When I say MAGIC I want no sparks, I want no dragons and
no wands - all I need is reasons, unbelievably starry nights and
heart wrenching poems, winding conversations that tell me,
HEY
life, life really is, really is
worth living. This moment
really is, really is precious.

I always thought
this kind of magic
would be easier to
find as I
grew
up.

SO WHAT IF IT ISN'T
the struggle is real but so is the flaming,
fierce, ferocious fire that rages in my belly.
I will fight the ravines that will one day
stretch my skin, I will hold a hundred happy
moments in my calloused hands, and when
age hits me like a tornado, I will hug it.
I will have lived well enough.

April 6: Countries of the Body

"There's a place that poets seek
as real and fearsome as the body."
- Tishani Doshi

Tishani - may I call you that? - I need you to know,
I'm in constant conversation with your words, how
you delicately string them together with silk, hang
them to dry under red sunsets and mist of memory.
How your words wrench me from myself, future and past,
here and now, space and time. How your words transcend.
Your every line captivates me, but nothing so much
as when you called the first collection of poetry,
Countries of the Body - oh, how to explain to you
the shivers in the various continents, the swaying forests,
the revolutions, the silhouettes of truth, the trembling restlessness
that arose in the cities of my belly - how could you
coin a phrase so beautiful, and then put it out in the world
so it would reach me, wrench out my regret and lay it
to dry under the stars, touch me in places I didn't even know
existed - how could you?

I've been wondering for years now - what is art? - and
I understand that it must transcend representation alone.
And yet, with a pen in my hand, all I want to translate from
the shadowy world of images is the body - the poetry of it,
the misty mystery of it, the shadow smoke and concrete curves
of it. How the universe could really exist in a single mind, and
how a mind exists in this separate, almost self-sustaining universe
of a body - how it escapes definition, preservation, categorization.

I want to paint a hundred bodies, have people hold still
while I let my lines caress their corporeality, their mortality.
Flesh, muscle, bone and sinew - the creation of metaphors
began in the body, the realization of metaphors too.
What is as beautiful as skin, skin, stretched tight over
a form you perfected of yourself in so many years,
your errors and misjudgements, your petty joys,
your stories and your rainy days, your memory -
wrapped up so tight, tucked up inside, giftwrapped
with golden-brown, slightly freckled, even toned.
How gorgeous are curves - not only breasts and hips,
but the curves of sensuous arms as they rest against
a wall, catching a single shaft of sunlight against
shadow complexion. Calves and ankles, muscled
with strength and resolve, stray hairs lit up in noon
sunlight, shadow and light entwining until this thing
of beauty is formed in my eyes - who can say all bodies
are not beautiful - close your eyes for a moment and
when you open them, notice only fragments:

the strand of dark hair pushed aside with long fingers,
motionless mouth with contours and crevices, full lips
open against sky. fluttering lids of star-speckled eyes.
undulating plains of thighs. ashy mountains of knees.
twitching ankles. wrinkled hands. mysterious ears.
All bodies are beautiful. All bodies are singular worlds.

One day I want to fall in love with somebody
and name every country of their body. I want to
soak afternoon sun in the ocean and dissolve my
unyielding flesh to the seas. I want to outlive my
corporeal frame. I want to live only as long as it
lasts.

April 5: Things Distance Lets Me Say

I'm afraid when you go, you take my poetry with you.

I find it so hard to write love poetry - I find it so hard 

to love - but it's easier now, when the distance makes 

the shadows clear and your absence lights up the lights

that I wondered about so deeply on starless nights.

I'm not telling you I love you. I'm telling you I miss you,

and you and I both need to see that those are two different things.

I'm sorry 

for taking you along with me 

on this voyage of promises and starry shores

(when I myself could never be sure, can never be sure).

But now, at least, let me write lines I was afraid even to feel:

when distance makes my heart pump louder, thud harder,

let me tell you that your face is lit up in the dark for me -

that your laugh has slipped deep somewhere under my skin

and your smiles caress the sores on my overworked mind.

You and I will always be too practical, too afraid, too cautious

to throw away our anchors and put up fragile sails, to truly hope

that such a thing as love exists and your hands really do belong

in the crevices between my fingers, your flyaway hair against mine.

For me, it's the easiest thing to run. Run and then regret, run from 

the regret. And what if right now running is the wrong thing to do,

another incident I will laugh about while my life grieves in the silent sea?

I'm afraid because I'm still not sure. Half of me wants to run, this time

back into your arms like old bookshelves worn-in blankets scent of comfort,

and half of me will keep running even if I reach where I wanted. Don't

come back. Please come back. These are things distance lets me say,

things I know you don't want to, don't deserve to hear, and yet

I throw them behind you in the ocean you waded into. I'm sorry.

April 4: Home

"These young girls do not know it, and I cannot tell them, but I have discovered that past and present blur together, become one and the same, so that time means very little at the end." - Kim Edwards

When I reach home,

the afternoon turns the colour of gold.

Memory lights up the smiles and soothes

the bruises on the walls, the cracks in your voice,

the hollow spaces and the restlessness.

I search for comfort wherever I go

but poetic justice declares that I will find it here:

in the bed I slept in when I was eight, the room

I ran away from, in the city I hated like a disease.

Comfort where once there was unease and movement

settling into my bones like an unseen tremor.

Alone in that bed, scent of the past wrapping around me

like mist or music, listening to father and sister watching

sitcoms in the next room - every sound magnified,

the whirring of the fan and crinkling pages of books

resting against bare thighs and brown arms.

Walls covered with crayon drawings, shelves filled

to bursting with odds and ends, ragged toys and leftover

board games with missing parts - where I lost little bits

of myself as a child, under the bed, behind cupboards,

tucked into childhood books like bookmarks -

I don't need to search there, just sit.
Let myself breathe in the music of this moment.

Hope will find its way home,
it's lived here for too long.

April 3: Angry/ Guilty

"There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear...
I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex
and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations."
(from Who Said It Was Simple, by Audre Lorde)

The language I write in will never be my own,
my accent either an apology or a betrayal, my choices
doused with flammable history, fragile at the end of a match.
My skin will always carry with it the memory of oppression.
My sex will be a signpost, a barrier, a letter of inferiority.

I'm angry at the weight I have to carry.

I'm angry at history, at sorrow, at the tears of blood,
at misrepresentation and no representation, at the lies
of law, the blind faith, the scars, the servile compliance,
the leftovers, the ladders of grief, the child-sized coffins,
the loss of identity, the tall tales, the powerlessness, the sin.
I'm angry at the inevitability of this narrative.

Learning to negotiate the chasms between theory and reality,
I tiptoe the blurring lines of forgetting and recollecting.
Trace out a situation, hold it up to the light, watch the
shadowy dance of political economy and heart-thumping humanity.
Most of all, I'm guilty that I'm not affected enough, guilty for
my education my privilege my facade of white and superior.
I'm guilty for the American sitcoms the denim shorts
the stuttering Hindi the hazy memory of mythology.
Guilty for the jokes I laugh at: sexist racist thoughtless.
Guilty for this intellectual academic knowledge of the stories
I carry inside of me and around me, the liberation handed out
to me freely, as much as I could ask for: guilty for knowing only from afar,
being able to forget at will.

April 2: Stars on fire

Do we believe the stars are on fire
and the vein on your forehead might pop,
do we believe that it's not all okay, that the insides
of your mind are a hell right now, that your hands shake
even when you laugh and even when your gaze is so
steady; how do we believe it

if the streetlights still look like fireworks to you,
if the horizon lit by sun means the universe to your
petty gaze, if you can possess beauty with a click and
if all you really need is the warm touch of comfort,
a body against yours and a blanket for warm nights -

I'm afraid I'm afraid I'm afraid

because my fears are multifaceted and so complex,
my anger at the world is a hundred different hues of
gender colonialism social construction and
I talk to Camus in my sleep and my boulder
gets too heavy some days, the existential ache of
trivial conversations hangs in my mouth like a lie,
and my problems are pathetic, intellectual emotional bullshit,
if it's pseudo I'm sorry but it really does hurt, in a hundred
different ways on a hundred different days, and I'm afraid
of not making a difference I'm afraid of ambition I'm afraid

most of all, I'm afraid that talking doesn't help anymore,
I'm afraid that the answers aren't where I thought they would be.
I'm reading all the books and underlining big words, I promise,
but the questions keep getting bigger and I try to remember Rilke
telling me to love them, the questions themselves, as if they were
locked rooms or books written in a foreign tongue, and it helps:

but only because of the particular feel in my chest when the words
come together, the memory of joy in a classroom, of discovering
beauty for myself that I could keep. The answers the answers the answers
are taking too long, are taking too much out of fragile me, the answers
might never come and the questions keep piling and comfort doesn't always
arrive;

but when it does it's never in the form of an argument, logically arranged
or typed out double spaced font size 12 Times New Roman no
the comfort comes in the form of

golden sun streaming through windows at 5pm, lighting up corners
of my room and my heart, it comes in the form of a doodle in my notes,
rotring pen lines as thin as an eyelash, or watching the birds fly in a flurry
away from approaching footsteps, comfort comes in the form of memory,
in the form of desire, raw and earthy. Comfort comes in the shade of home,
in the scent of rain, in the sound of conversations dipping and rising from
the ashes of ideals I fashioned and polished once, then shattered and
burnt

still shining like stars on fire but I'm afraid
I'll forget someday to look down for comfort, to
recognize simplicity, to lie down in grass and breathe
to myself. And if I forget, I swear, the insides of my mind
will be a hell, my hands will shake
and I will forget to laugh.

April 1: Beginnings

Beginnings
are different now.
are different every time,
bruised by months and weeks,
the hues and scents slightly changed,
the weight of memory against twisted back
shaping the winding pathways and conversations,
the sunsets. the phone calls. the stargazing loneliness.
the secret tears that hang from the bed like icicles. the mosquitos.
the smiles I smile to the moon every summer, the quiet
disbelief at joy, the corners of my mouth lifting at
silly interludes, April darkness and memory
of white fog enveloping the long night.
singing songs of leaving home.
then songs of returning.
the things that
change.

And then the things that don't. The things that write themselves into
your skin, and always feel new, like discovering secrets in the sky.

To Damien Rice

Your voice is like sandpaper
on my soul - I never pretend
to understand music, but my god,
you have to stop tearing me apart
like that, watching my secrets and
fears as if I were an open book - I'm not.

I never listen to you sing until the right moment arises.

Right now, last shadows of golden sun falling
against college lawns and library glass,
work piling up on my table and my soul
refusing to sit, only fly and flutter, hold on
so tight to the past and the future and the
trembling present - your voice is the last touch
I want to stir the storm in my mind, your voice
caresses the chaos in me and reminds me that
life is so beautiful and so fragile, a shard of glass
in an ocean, a single blooming bruise on a painting.

You have settled on my skin like dust,
and I have to scrape you off like peeling paint
when I take off the headphones, ease you out
of the recesses and ravines of my mind.
It's been years, and you're a guilty pleasure.

Do you live your life like art? Are you an
asshole in a relationship? - I'm sure you are.
Are you kind to strangers? Do you sing to
yourself on rainy mornings, strumming on
an old guitar, watching the sun fighting fog?

Your voice is like a mountain coloured dawn.
Like bitter alcohol in a coffee mug, like a dying
memory, like a frozen ocean making waves.
"I'm going to be dead soon", you said to the
interviewer, "And I want to kind of grow up
before I die." What nonsense, Damien, you're
always going to be old and young, wise and
unbelievably foolish, raw and burnt out, burning.

When you give the world a fragment of yourself,
you give the world a piece of time. You might change
and you might live a real life, walking to get coffee in
the morning and waiting for a phone call, forgetting your
towel out of the shower and falling asleep to the sound of
midnight - but you will never do these things in my life,
in my life you will live your life like art, intense and full
of passion, you will live your life like heartbreak, every word
you say will sound like smoke and wildflowers, every note
on your guitar will be an open door, a bone of truth.

Thank you for letting me have you
in the way that only I can have you.
Thank you for letting me listen.
Your music isn't your music after it plays
in my ears - your music forms shadowy
pieces of my fragmented life, angry at the
world and yet broken by its beauty.

Wildflower

Dingy rooms and beige window shades,
The ticking clock knocking against the silence.
Wrinkles carved on aged faces like ravines, riverbeds
emptied of the taut motion of hope and youth - whisky
in a glass you wouldn't touch, conversations in translation,
in transit. Fragments of lives offered to each other over
salted peanuts in shadowy bowls, and fried snacks -
the evening rises and falls on the shore of music,
voices piercing through darkness and time. I'm so far,

and a tumour blossoms in you like a wildflower.

Memories are suddenly bruises instead of roses,
Petals sticking to skin and bones in angry shades of red.
I'm afraid, and I don't know why. You were my understanding
of age, my hope and my dejection about time, my life wrapped
around a house and a family. You smell of home, of comfort
and cold cream, of perfume and carefully chosen nailpaint,
of the kitchen and the garden, of books and the upholstery
you got changed every month to match the furniture well.
I'm afraid,

because of you, because of me, because everything we knew
is tied in delicate threads to each other and to promises
that aren't as sacred as you believe them to be, and I swear,
the understanding leaves scars that shine like lightning
on rainy nights - do you know

because I know. I'm learning. I'm trying. I remember
the time I made you a card because I didn't know how else
to tell you I was angry, you had ruined a childish game and
I didn't know how to forgive you because I didn't understand.
I think it comes with time. I forgive you now.

I'm afraid of death. Forgive me. I'm afraid.