Venomous

Sometimes when K.

across from me in the dark

happens to ask, or even

before she does, or if not,

I wonder how faithful 

my memory is 

to the taut silver edges of

what really happened, if

the scorpion I saw once

on that windowsill, stilled,

really gleamed at the sting

with a vicious drop of

venom: did I see it

at all?

She tells me of snakes

in the field under darkened stalks, 

and I think to tell her of 

the creature that slithered past 

just this morning, 

a glimmer of light at my feet 

that vanished at sight. 

It left the faintest taste of 

green on my eye. She waits,

but I do not say, convinced

all at once of a bond I could not break

between that silver-green baby snake

and my curious, wondering gaze.

monsoon haikus

I sit alone in

dark library innards while

outside, monsoon light.

The slugs last night were

inching along in silver;

now, only dark stains

on the college road.

The air is full to bursting.

It must rain again.

wild loves

I keep slipping postcards and words

into the notebook I will never send you.

It is a thick purple, and has leaves hidden

inside the paper. I trace over them listlessly.

It was not as though I called you daily

when you were around. Somehow knowing

that you existed, in a kurta and bindi, wild hair

falling over your wild smile, was enough.

Love is never enough, that’s the thing.

I keep trying to slip you into boxes

you don’t understand and don’t need.

Your words are dim stars in my eyes.

I miss you wildly, but not desperately.

I do not need to call. You still exist, if

even farther than before. It should be 

enough. Love should be enough.

Dancing girl

My mother has taken to dancing

I mean she still stands straight
as a pole at evening parties
and full of poise at nightclubs

But recently in daily life
she has been wild

In the morning when I tell her
she looks like a vision
she does a little jig to celebrate

She must jump when she wears
a jumpsuit, of course

I read the words of another poet
(dance is a body’s refusal
to die) and think of her
over & over

She wants to see all the world
she pirouettes in bathroom chappals

When we drove through Scotland
she stopped the car where she liked
she couldn’t get enough of the sky
at Skye, it was too blue, too much
to hold in her body
She whirled like a dervish on the highway

And then at the Great Wall of China, she
couldn’t help herself, her joy spilled out
all over the countryside
She held out her arms till they
reached sun and giggled till she was red

Danced like the first girl at Mohenjodaro
toppled over onto ancient cobblestones

Reached home with two bruises
like continents on her knee
She is unfazed.

on shame

It comes easy
to me, for some reason,
that white hot ribbon
in the belly. A mistake,
or an ignored wave, or
an awkward gesture left
unfinished. But recently
I have been trying
to let go as easy —
let the cringe travel
up my spine, let my
abdomen clench itself,
face tighten in pained
expression, but then
let go, breathe in quick
and then breathe out
real slow, careful to expel
CO2 and also all
the other bad things,
the pellets of self-hate
that gather in the gut,
the fear that freezes,
the shame that burns
everything for a small
silly reason. Breathe it
out, remove it from
this body. Make space
for new mistakes.
Nobody was watching
anyway.

the dream

trying hard to work on so many things right now. and working mostly, but finding it so hard to focus sometimes, just flitting from thing to thing, finding myself in that terrible trap of scrolling scrolling scrolling

but stay          stay with it           follow the thought through

i am going back and working on the poetry, trying to shine its edges, empty its extra corners, arrange it well for a guest in the house, for all the new guests in the wordhouse of my poetry that i am hoping for. but it is hard, and sometimes i go back and worry that i am emptying the rooms of character, that i have polished too much and i do not feel a fire in the walls anymore. i am worrying the words coming out of my mouth these days are bare and suave but have no flame, no passion in the belly. i do not want to arrange words for the sake of it, for a music that does not char my ears, does not worry me hard and make me shiver in the nape of the neck.

i feel that poetry lives on the edge of experience; that you find it if you inhabit the margins of the moment. as if you are there and not there, very hard. either living right in the heart of what is happening to you/what you are doing/what exists, or watching it from a far distance, feeling things only through a membrane, a glass sheet. i balance between the two. i feel the moment most viscerally, in the red and slick of the body, in the bonewhite and long muscle of the body. but i also sometimes float in a white nothing, watching the body as if from afar, thinking slow floating thoughts. there is the moment, and then the words of it, the small rocks guarding the edges of what happened. i want to gather these rocks.

i worry that i become quiet in academia. i know what to do with sentences so they sound an easy ripple. (i want to learn how to make the sentences sound like a thunder rush and wild cavernous bellow sometimes too). i feel like i hide myself in a cupboard before i venture out to write an essay. i call back for advice often, but from the dark and narrow space. i want to write loudly, full of my self(s). i want to write my essays loudly, i want to write my poems inhabiting them with all my slim body, my angles of light and sound, my fierce feelingness.

to do this, i must be less afraid of the words, of the rules, of Knowledge and its gatekeepers. i know some, and i will never know most. i must trust my work (n.w.). i must write hard and big and then hold on to my wordrocks, must fight for them. i must watch the world; i must defend the windows' right to look at passersby (mahmoud darwish). i must believe that i can do something with words, that i am not trite irrelevant callous bland unimportant. i know some things about words. how, when they are put together, can change things, can make a thing taste or smell or feel different. how they are read on the page but swiftly they make their way into the body, how they are read in the flesh layers under skin, on the light edges of skin. words talk straight to the body. the body lives in a large aquarium of language, its colourful weeds swaying like stalks in the field. the body breathes and floats in language. the white nothing the mind visits is a white nothing made of words. i want to make these words do things for me. i want to do things to people armed just with my wordrocks: i do not mean thwacking them over the head with them, but rather laying them down and covering them with the wordrocks, gently, smooth edges and all. running a stream through the wordrocks, making somebody experience the ripples and white foam of my words on their body.

i hope i can find in me the courage. to try hard enough that failing would slice right through my skin, would be a far and wide pain. to give this work enough of myself that i feel myself writing from my throat, my spine, my skin. i hope i am true enough to this that i do not scroll scroll scroll or find myself lost, small, flitting. i must stay with the thoughts. i must put all of myself here.

notes from MFA research

I am convinced there is a right time for things. you can read an important book, but if you read it when it does not speak to you, you will hardly remember it. if you read it when you are meant to read it, when you have been waiting to read it and when it has been waiting to be read by you, it will shatter everything.

I am feeling like that about poetry in my life right now. everything seems to have been coming together for this time in my life -- all the poetry books that somehow found their way to my shelves, the half-hearted research on submissions last summer, the names of poets I have hidden away in notes, the poems I have bookmarked and never gone back to. right now is feeling like the right time. all the words are making sense, together and apart, in ways they never did. all of a sudden I can hear the music in different forms, see the historical connections, understand literary movements that escaped me until now.

it's always amazing to look back and see change, to see how much growth there is still left to do. I'm applying for MFA in Creative Writing programmes by the end of this year, in poetry. there is so much! to do!

(so much of ourselves needs to be tailored for the world, narrowed or widened in order to fit better into some kind of model, so that somebody far away wants to pay us for what we do. none of it makes any sense, but we do it anyway. we navigate this strange world in the best ways we can. professor A. told me with so much love in his heart -- to not be afraid to live the life I must live, to be less guilty, to live less in my head, to live.)

an apology for the lack of poetry in this little pond for many months! it is all being pruned, and gathered, and shined. wish me luck for all the big things.

questions in the dark

it was in a classroom 

that I was writing

a poem.

the light vanished

twice,

leaving the world 

a void. and once,

M. laughed

from behind me

like old times.

I could not understand

the questions

perhaps because I was

not listening.

I still think

M. knew, in her tender wisdom,

and that she was laughing

at me, or with me.

the thought makes me 

smile.

where is a poem?

I always thought a poem was in

the thick gold of afternoon sun

and how it fell briefly upon the world 

like a passing lover

I thought you could find a poem 

if you travelled outwards

or looked at the world

in the right

light

But recently I am coming 

to the conclusion that a poem

is a sturdy thing

it can survive all kinds of light

I think it lives 

in the fleshy heart of my mouth

the usual

the scent of you lingers on my skin for hours
after you leave. I have lain in bed with you so long
it feels like I am still there.

it is all about comfort, you assured me,
and we laughed a golden laughter
in a new room.

I am trying to write poetry that is wild
but well-contained, sharpened like a weapon,
extra metal all peeled off the sides
and scrubbed so well
I can see blue skies
reflected in silver.

love and poetry always find their place
on my tongue at the same time.

Rain Time

These days, the only measure
of time
is between when the rain stops
and starts again. My ear is always
waiting, it seems, for the murmur
of drizzle on mango leaves outside
my window, or the incessant gunshots
of hard rain thundering on the roof.

In the garden, the roses try not to drown.
The wind rushes through the bougainvillea,
the bottlebrush, the amaltas, the mango trees.
Plants fly off our terrace. The rain hits our house
like a war, and I cannot hear my parents talk.

The days are long and empty, and I never
wear a watch. Darkness gathers in all rooms.
A limp light fills and empties the house
as and when it wants. There is no measure
and no reason to measure, time collects
at the bottom of shallow pools on the road
and makes no demands. Time is off on
summer vacation, on monsoon break.

A strange freedom lines the air.
Sometimes the sun emerges suddenly
and everything outside becomes
muddy and gold

Defiant

It is strange to know that my grandmother

is still dead

even after all this time — just because

she died then. Like it is strange to know

that I will always

be woman

just because I am one.

It is not like I can imagine it any other way.

Yet sometimes it is hard to accept that this

is unending — this skin that is mined for meaning

until I am ready to shed it and hand it over

to the next man who looks.

If there is a wish, let it be this:

if I must be woman, let me

at least

be defiant.

Let me stand on the streets 

like a man — not graceless,

but with a swagger to

shake nations.

a quickie

as always, I write only
in desperate times.

when my literature teacher asks us
with a smirk - do you miss me
when I am not here? the right
answer (we learn partly) is that
we miss her even when she is
here. we miss each other all the time.

not in a purple or hazy or sentimental way,
although that too. she means it about words
and angles and reflections, how we look
to each other like flowers aching for sun,
but find nothing. no solace, no meaning.

another literature teacher from the past
was kinder. but she too told me, face
lined with compassion - no two people
are ever having the same conversation.
so i wonder - do we all always
just bounce off each other
like badly angled lighting
on a strange stage?

oh, words, words, words.
we hit and we miss, and hit again.
I give up trying to make sense
of conversations, and let my essay
breathe like a fresh puddle in rain,
all muddied and muddy. we are not
reaching anywhere today. nor tomorrow.

Sentences

After J. Estanislao Lopez

“All you can offer anyone suffering in the world is a sentence,
which is more often than not not enough” — of course, of course
this is true, but still it wrenches my gut every time, a rusted punch
right where it hurts. My mind is a strange ocean, and the more I learn
the deeper I swim. Language is the deep blue water I travel in:
there is no way of escaping it. This much I have learnt. My debts
to the world shall be paid in an economy of words, with sentences
I will build like monuments. It is all I have to my name, to my self.
The words create whole landscapes, and it is where I always return
to search for that most elusive dream in a human life: meaning.
The words are all I have to understand my small body and this
vast world, they are all I can offer to the small gods in prayer.
I want the words I write to be the shining lights of a harbour
for a stranger’s faltering boat, I want the words to carry me, to
save a drowning lover. The sentences I carve should be some kind
of solace, should be lamps of comfort for somebody, somewhere.
I have nothing else to give of myself but these strings of words.
O poet, do not tell me about my predestined failure in your words
sharpened like swords, do not reveal my helplessness to me
in the very language of my hope.

summer and a boy

the strange sound and light show of summer returning to the world: the sudden heat of sun on my arms, or a breeze that doesn't sting, or the rustling of new leaves, or the aching blue of the sky.

I think I am less afraid to write even if nobody is listening.

part of it has to do with smiling at strangers, and part of it has to do with the way I want to hold his hand when he trembles in his sleep. I am finding more and more poetry hidden in the lining of his skin, and something about his grace overwhelms me, like when he is driving so effortlessly, absentmindedly biting his lip, a faraway look in his ocean eyes.

he is listening even when he is not listening, and the beauty of it all makes me want to rejoice.

summer is coming, and winter did not choke me. I am running at the world with open arms, trying to love it harder and harder, trying to rediscover childish joy in whatever ways I can. the pebbles, the sunsets, the sea. it is all glorious.

a note after everything

the days are long and strange, and writing is strange because it sounds the same even though everything is different, the words are stale but the world is entirely new. it is a quieter world. joy is very quiet, like a mouse hiding somewhere in the house, its small and furry breath held. i think it is coming back though; i'd like to think i can hear its gentle scurryings in the walls sometimes.

i wrote a story in the second person so i could hold down my strange experience in my hands like a fluttering bird and pass it on to somebody else, so somebody else could keep the memory in their throats instead of me. although it does not bother me anymore, the memory has a silent existence in my life. i am trying to write fiction, and it is both new and very, very old: it feels as though i have always been writing fiction. as though the voice in my head is familiar with it, with creating from the images around me. does this mean i am a liar, a dreamer, or just confused?

theory threatens to bring down the house, yet U. and i manage somehow to keep this space of intimacy between us like a secret ball full of light, we are gentle with it and kind to it but we do not believe anymore that it will shatter like glass. perhaps it is thin and transparent, but it is not brittle. we whisper to each other in the mornings, and we are sad we cannot wake up next to each others shining backs and arms. yet the words make it okay, they travel through and sometimes we can meet, or even hear the silly lilt of each others voices on the phone, and it is enough. for some time. love is greedy, but it is so wise. i don't know if theory agrees; it scares me that theory cares only about breaking us but not about putting us back together. life must be, can only be, about putting us back together, about the vast project of tracing gold along our fractures and fissures and finding some way to stay whole despite all the breaking.

everything seems different, and some moments i find it hard to recognise myself, but also i have stopped trying. things are hurting less, but for some reason, right now, i am afraid of joy and joy is afraid of me (it skitters into holes in the ground, it falters at my footstep). i want to feel joy like a hurricane in the house rather than a secret presence. i do not want to be a ghost.

i think a lot, but i want also to privilege the mind of my body, i want to know what my ribs say to me when i am asleep. i want to feel the vast giddiness in my chest when i write poetry in the night, or read something glorious, or see a sunset of pink blossoms, or find a leaf the colour of sun. i am doing well after a workshop class on somatics and a talk by a fabulous trans activist about loving, hoping, growing, in ways that academics finds hard to say. i am trying to be less afraid of people, and smile at them widely, and think less, and talk more, and not hide. i think i am progressing. i am not a wonderful friend, but i am taking small steps: i am not stagnating.

perhaps everything will change again, a hundred times. i do not think i will remember this time sharply. it is a blurry time. my emotional landscape seems bland and unpredictable, not even very interesting to trace the curves of. perhaps i will be able to write good fiction. i hope i can write myself well.