The box (2010-01-03 01:59)

One enters the box of spiked gate To make clockwise oval circles Of familiar world views, at times, With strange incursions of thoughts Asking why a certain black cat Beside the rock and the sprinkler Exists in todays accomplished view. It is not the cat alone by the rock. Try changing it to anticlockwise To see strangely preoccupied faces That seemed to be thinking much In their burping stomachs and acid. Squeals of old laughter then greet Morning views of mist and rabbitsDisappeared rabbits that had merely Jumped out of the box and gone. There was no grass left in the box. We are making circular motions Dutifully in our own square boxes. We look up to see standing people In balconies of red-and-blue houses Bursting with morning men and lungis. They should be back in their box soon.

Pray (2010-01-12 23:20)

There on the mountain sits my waiting God As I am trying to mufe all fail-sounds And wipe three chalk lines of failed roads. Pray is the keyword of this dark night As my head rests on the frail pillow. Tomorrow morning I shall cup my right palm To take the sacred camphor water to lips And have that pig-tailed man touch my head To announce my ancestry to His presence While my owers shout in white fragrance And the ame of my lamp rises in prayer. *Three chalk lines refer to the Vaishnava ritualism in which Vishnu worshippers (as against Shiva worshippers) wear three vertical lines on their foreheads.

My mission is hers too (2010-01-19 08:14)

Here I want to have a word with the little bird Who makes a racket in my garden in shrill tones, Persistently, distracting me from my mission Of substantively changing the world, that is, If I can get in edgeways in the conversation. Failing language I try highly feeling poetry Incorporating a lot of sting and biting irony Who knows I may eventually silence her that way The trouble is she too wants to change the world.

The death of a communist (2010-01-21 02:04)

My mind overows the body Take my body- I dont need itAnd my bags in the corner. Give them to the medical student And to the Kolkata rag picker.

It does not add up on some days (2010-01-26 06:00)

The drone goes on tween the ears Existence is some heads bobbing up On the blue space beyond the spiked gate A mere serious girl clicking her shoes On the waking ground in oval motion And midnight crows piercing the night Waiting for tomorrows early dawn A seller man sitting under the lake trees Spilling beans on the red and blue bags It does not surely add up on some days.

Scatter (2010-02-08 04:34)

This jewel of a girl is not now girl Because she held the key to jewels. She needs Vishnu. She is scattered. (This is about the recent incident of murder of a ten year old girl, Vaishnavi ( literally the consort of Vishnu, the chief Hindu God) by her step-mothers brothers in the wake of fears of her father bequeathing all his property to her at the cost of her step-brothers)

11

The curtains (2010-02-08 04:44)

the curtains fall for you letting in just a few sunrays that hold swirling dust atoms. we are dust and swirling.

12

Break is not another morning (2010-02-18 23:57)

Break is what touches metal And nerves and mental state. Break is sound and disconnect From life and living and love. Break is midnight and strange Huge buses cutting down life. Break is not another morning.

13

Dreaming in white (2010-02-18 23:59)

White paint is no paint in dreams That is just a swift stream, with two Clear silver lines on both the banks, Bending sinuously like woman. Sometimes it is a silver plane in the sky Threatening to fall over the coconut And rooftops with kite-ying people. The kites strings are coloured and glassy; Their colours utter as in the world And we forget all about falling planes. As the dreams soar and turn white They will dissolve into a gray world.

14

My mothers brocades (2010-02-28 02:55)

This yellow saree she wore Just once in her life had wrapped A coy twenty-year-old bride Tentatively setting her dainty foot Into the hesitant bridal home . Somewhere in the backwoods Several industrious silkworms Had spun miles of salivary yarn In the foliage of the mulberry tree To make this gorgeous ve-yard saree . The rustle of the silk drowned The wails of the boiling cocoons These worms died that beauty would live In their plaintive cries lay bridal hopes . My mother, the coy bride of yesteryears, Is now as non-existent as the worms That had ceased to exist spinning The smooth silk for her bridal nery . Her bridal fragrance lives on among The delicate folds of these gossamer silks That the worms had died weaving Death is so fragrant and so memorable.

15

1.3

March

16

The moon (2010-03-04 14:24)

This season our backyard coconuts Hid it under their swinging fronds Behind our asbestos-sheeted shack, Its presence marked by the pale shadow Of our cow swishing tail on the insects In the backyards lonely darkness. The cow looked in the water trough Giving out a low plaintive moan. Her eyes shone through the night As the rope of the pail seemed to move. Actually it was a mere water snake That had made the well its home. Our hibiscus stood mute by the well; Its owers went gray by the moonlight. Tiny owers bloomed on the creeper That had climbed our red-tiled roof. Their fragrance lled the night air. It was as though it was the moon That smelled good in our backyard.

17

Blanks (2010-03-08 00:43)

Try to ll them with thingsSloping and corrugated. White, decent and uorescent Exceedingly blue and fading With patches of light green Mildew and moss, plastic And empty water bottles Floating in the water like Autumn leaves in the wind Scraps of memory and thought Ruined buildings of beggars With scraggy beards and Hanging towels on shoulder Crow-caws about midnight Hyacinths oating in the lake As though the city moved Smells of human excrement And boring pointlessness. The lake promenade is a promise. It is in their minds and our thought. Our beautiful birds are yet to come This winter will be harsh in Siberia Let us ll blanks with noise and verse.

18

Midnight music (2010-03-12 23:00)

Midnight music is the rising ocean Called by a reddening of the moon. Midnight music is thepipal leaves Playing the winds exotic hill music As its ngers touch their spiked ends. Midnight music is the invisible cricket Singing from the dark silences of the bush.

19

Turbulence (2010-03-17 01:56)

I ask that you be heard, tossed about and dreamed of. It is your thoughts, my upset energies, and nightly turbulence. Sleep provokes night and life and darkness prevailing in us. When we wake up we are gone as our night precedes dawn It is always the other way, bottom up and spaces spread. At times we hear the police vans shrieks, in nights iron grill. I ask that you be heard, tossed about and dreamed of. It is not always the stick beating the road in rhythmic silence And olive-green overcoat with apped pockets and heavy boots And six months old large-sized memories of a Himalayan home With black-lined large doves eyes itting among coal res Their smoke towering over the pines in snow-bound peaks. I ask that you be heard, tossed about and dreamed of. It is the turbulence we are speaking of, in the foggy sea we are Or on the peaks where everything is bound in fuzzy snow At the mountain passes where vehicles duly pass oiled by hot tea Or in the mist-lled airports where aircrafts do not take off Of politicians who decide mankinds future in the apocalypse. I ask that you be heard, tossed about and dreamed of. It is my dreams as they were and the neighbors dreams In the straw-roof, in the banyan trees with glints in their eyes And much ne-powdered dust on their thick coated leaves, In lonely watchmens houses on the bleak stony spaces And lonely watchmen keeping vigilant eyes on boulders Strewn in brown spaces and scraggy bushes with strange lizards. I ask that you be heard, tossed about and dreamed of. It is the towering tombs and the trees that enveloped them The children playing cricket in ying bats and stone stumps Outside the vaults where kings and queens lay dead for ages Their cold breath felt on the broken glass of Times windows. I ask that you, I and women play a game of kabaddi in the trees When it is still not dark enough in the minarets in the west And children are still hitting balls visible in the green of the trees.

20

Dying of love (2010-03-21 04:57)

You watch the celluloid horror Of a twelveyear-old girl Lying spreadeagled, shrieking As knowledge strikes as horror Played out in the suburban train Of three living-dead humans Watching a twelveyear-old Dying of love.

21

Choices (2010-03-21 05:03)

It is on a straight line that I exist . My hours and days become nights And dissolve into endless time. Clearly it was not my choice to exist. Remember, when I came into being My body actually started pulsating Outside of my own free volition. My birth was a cataclysmic accident Now that I exist and occupy space I cannot stop my heart from beating. Outside, the eagle swirled thrice In circular motions in the April sky And settled down on the ledge Of my nineteenth oor ofce room . He looked at me nervously , aware of me. His shrill eagle-call pierced the sky As he took off towards the vault of the sky. He swirled , once again, in circles And swooped on the lizard in the bush. Like me, neither of them had choices.

22

The man on the park bench (2010-03-22 23:50)

This man with careless carbon stubble and carbuncular eyes Was found sitting on the park bench with a towel on the shoulder. His mind made noises and his pearly eyes blinked at the sky Wondering how this kid on the swing had slid so fast from the sky. Her feet rst had touched the sky and then the brown earth In the blink of his eye she came down, to his nasty surprise, As though there was no brown earth apart from the blue sky. His mind made noises that drowned the tree- birds frenetic calls And the hoot of the travel-weary morning train entering the town The milkmans cans striking the bicycles mud-guard ding-dong. There were noises made by his mind, directly from morning papers, As if the world was crushed into so much bamboo pulp and forest. There were also noises of lifetime failures, midnight fears of death Clatter of bones and clay-pots of ashes and billowing smoke. The hum in his blood spoke of the vast silences that lay before him.

23

Ashes (2010-07-06 13:31)

Then the drama continued As the chants were spoken From the guttural depths Of a middlemans throat. The pursuit of silver went on In the waters in sound and words And chasing multitudes Of life and death shadows. The waters owed silently Over the rocks nurturing life And its golden-brown ashes. (As I watched the ritual of immersion of ashes of the dead being performed in a river in Karnataka)

25

Silences (2010-07-06 13:40)

I hear two old men on the park bench Speaking softly to each others silence. The mans son makes software and money; His keystrokes break nightly silence In distant America where dollars rain. The other mans son lives in this city. His kids school is on the other side. I write my own lyrics and you? I compose mine on the bathroom walls And some times, sing, in dulcet tunes, An exquisite duet with the night cricket. I love this real solo hum that comes From the vacant holes of my insides. I hear it in the silence between my ears. It sounds like the ocean wind that whispers In the needle- hairs of the tall casuarinas On Bhimili beach on some dark nights.

26

Morning walk thoughts (2010-07-06 23:29)

Home is at the center, the circle the extended home Woman is at the center, ha, man moves in her circle Another woman, another circle, another center, home. Tell me what makes us return to the same place in the evening And not move away and away into the vast spaces out there. Home becomes circular box, a balcony with iron grilles. Monologues occur in the inner space in morning walks The park walk in the oval round provokes thoughts, words It is words which provoke thoughts, thoughts provoke wordsA spiral of words triggering thoughts which trigger words. A dusky girl is sweeping the dead leaves before the gate. A woman is carrying a brown pitcher of water on the shoulder The water moves up and down at the rim threatening to spill. The water falls on the brown blouse turning it black, Making the water patch indistinguishable from her sweat. Man is carrying a brown plastic pitcher of water on the head And paint can in the hands, imagine his carrying a laptop Wrong imagination, you can only imagine what is possible. The mind ghts because a man can carry a laptop in hand With the brown pitcher of water on the head with a hand on it. Three children are walking, hand in hand, in morning glow Another is speaking to herself loud and talking to the sun My camera not in the pocket, the silhouettes remain in the mind.

27

The white wall (2010-07-07 11:21)

The man slept on the grass ,his face turned towards the park wall His head rested on the crook of his arm, his slippers some feet away He was dreaming of sleep so he can dream some beautiful dreams. Dreaming while still awake ,his eyelids attempted to utter While he had some pretty dreams still left under them. He turned to the wall shutting off the world from his eyes. There was this white park wall that stopped his world at ve feet To make a single white world that left him free with his dreams. Behind his eyelids was the innity of yet- undreamed starlit nights .

28

Death was a mere afternoon movie (2010-07-10 14:43)

In the meantime there is death in the air. A mere movie in the afternoon on the tellyWas that deep as death ? After him ? A mother grieves for a son After him Can the tragedy be replayed after him ? After him there is noon ,there is sleep And another waking up to death again As though there was no waking up In-between but an ontological continuity Between sleep, wakefulness and sleep.

29

Morning walk images (2010-07-10 15:03)

In the morning walk, images lled the pocket, To be emptied , on return, on to the home computer Two outlines of men sat on the middle of the path Hurling their feverishly shaking hands into the air. On the sidewalk chicken from far waited timelessly In the rusted coop of the van with death in the air. On the other side of the road shadows from trees Played kindly with the kitschy colors of storied buildings. Plastic pitchers of red and green waited at the roadside tap For their turn to ll water along with red polyester sarees. In the corner of the road burnt a heap of dead leaves , Their gray smoke ascending to the electric wires.

30

The game (2010-07-24 01:21)

Thinking is so much chemicalThe nasty smell of death Is in boat,earth-pot, and river It is all a game, my being Your being and the sky-being A simulation or something Mother-love remains and not. (Immersion of my mothers ashes in the Ganga in Varanasi)

31

The cherub in inverted spectacles (2010-07-27 04:38)

The portly gentleman looked at himself In the bathroom mirror and smirked. In the shrill voice of his childhood He made some really funny noises Which yuckily merged in cistern sounds. He will go out and pick some berriesBleeding berries from the red mountain But mother says Banti it is sleep-time Will you now lie on your back and sleep How can one lie on ones back and sleep ? It is fun to wear spectacles upside down The world looks so much different. Not for me the complicated transactions These grown-ups are terrible bores. I will now dig deep in uncles backyard I will nd several nuggets of gold there; These teachers are sometimes stupid They ask funny questions in their class. The big gentleman looked at his paunch This time the child is not coming back Everything is once again complicated The cherub in spectacles vanished In the mists of time , not to come back. (This is me and my cousins young son on the surface but it is actually me now and me then. Obviously the portly gentleman is me now and the cherub is my cousins son who was asking all those questions! The me then comes out now and then ,indistinguishable from my cousins son. Dont credit me with those bright questions but the bathroom sounds are mine!)

32

The window (2010-07-28 04:12)

The window existed in the opacity of my wall While blood owed in the body, dizzy and moving And words struck quickly, as in a morning breeze. On the morning was the jazz music owing freely And as the music went, the pipal leaves danced The breeze struck beauty in the suns ambiance Shadows owed in the trees exquisite motions The world danced, the tree danced , the wall danced On the wall the elephant danced with his tail high The kings of yesteryears rode on camels that laughed On the opposite wall yesterdays man and woman Joined the lifes chorus from across deaths borders Space merged with time, fragile images with solidity Water owed in the gardeners hose, silver and soft With a owing sound that smelled earth and water.

33

1.5

August

34

The squall took our poetry (2010-08-01 17:12)

I had to write the poem when the sky was fresh In the twilight the mystery deepened and frogs Croaked when they came out for a while to die The next day the frog carcasses squished under Our morning- walking feet , while looking at the sun The stories went on unendingly, the white clouds And the blue sky ,as the east reddened in the leaves. I was to write this poem and there was still mystery And the mind overowed on the eyes shut. Poetry was dead leaves that stirred under the breeze When there was hardly breeze, nothing, nothing. Later , in the day, the rakings of gossamer moth-wings Could be felt glistening near the window-glass The clay-gods in the human museum were laughing Outside the village the gods protected our honor Human history went on in a stream and conscious, Our shared conscious, that is. Fear and ghting. Love making in the cave on rainy days and ne Drawings of our animal friends with large horns. Poetry came in ts as the trees fell one by one The lightning struck power and we went windless The nights darkness had none of those liquid poems The squall took all our wind and our lovely poems.

35

Terrorist in a cafe (2010-08-13 05:47)

As in Rilkes falling autumn We believe somebody up there Is holding this earth up And the sky and the stars And all else from falling Except in the Leopold caf Where bodies fall from behind A young man with rucksack Has his view, other thoughts There is a gleam in his eye He likes bodies autumn-falling.

36

Pretending (2010-08-14 09:07)

A woman swept the morning sunlight off the Baptist church. There, near the rising brown boulder against bits of the blue sky, Three dogs buddy-sniffed one another around a mans pant-leg. A man caught the lungi-hem as though he was afraid the wind Would blow it away leaving him naked in the vast wild wastes. In the morning walk thoughts slosh in the mind like water in the coconut Some times, they sound like the clatter you hear from your worn out knee. There, off the stage, the Blue Roses calls out, her glass recently broken. There was nothing blue about her or roses, just pleurosis, wrongly spoken You know she is expecting her gentleman caller the warehouse prince. Her brother calls his mother a witch who is rising on a broomstick You know, she does not like his going to the movies all the night. BTW he is actually not going to the movies but is merely pretending. Blue Roses is not going to the business school but is pretending.* Actually nobody is going for a morning walk. We are just pretending. (*The Glass Menagerie by Tennesse Williams)

37

You,me and him (2010-08-14 23:54)

The last time we got together In my old moss-laden house We worked out a secret pact He would not , on his part, Awaken our bodies and minds In the depths of the night. We would patiently wait for him You know we are working hard On an extremely sensitive project Neither of us knows much about. Remember to ask him about it. You would wish to ask him why Our friends son has not returned From his bath in the Ganges . You cannot ask such questions. You can , of course , whisper them Softly into the misty morning air Standing on your toe on the railing In the dizzying heights of the Qutub . If and when you get your answers, Please whisper them into my ears Above the bazar din of Chandni Chowk .

38

The sleeping corpse (2010-08-16 08:53)

You matter to me this moment. I will come out of myself briey To look at you as I breathe heavily And hear my nostrils hiss in the night. But I am still at the tip of my nose I make quiet sounds to listen to them I am me alone quiet and listening Even as I am just a sleeping corpse.

39

Dream (2010-08-16 10:02)

When I live in the night I try to forget night At times I stand apart, on the rim of the night. It was in the night there was that time, deja vue, The big clutter of dreams and also happened. The night was when there was thought-and-dream Of blood owing from the head,a bleeding gash By somebodys stone which fell from the roof. Because dreams are real and actually happen. Dreams are not mere images,insubstantial things Every time dreams happen the real thing happens . We think and dream so we do not miss life

40

Our time is leaking (2010-08-16 12:21)

We are creatures of night and poetry We stand here on the brink of the night . On the other side we hear this green oil That is leaking ,drop by drop, into the ocean It is our time which is leaking into the night . (Concerning the disastrous oil leak in The Gulf of Mexico )

41

Perfect God (2010-08-16 16:35)

We had dreamed of a formless God But nally arrived at an approximate God. A wooden God from the deepest jungles is secure in a temple we had made him. That was when we were our ancestors. We had made a god without arms and feet And only with lidless saucer-like eyes With which he watched us all night,all day When we were sitting here, dreaming of him, Our heads awkwardly turned to the wall. We surely love him for the beauty of his form But we some times wonder if we can ever Abolish form and arrive at a perfect God.

42

Irony (2010-08-23 10:30)

We look for a certain pseudonym oating Luminously on the wild wastes of the web Stoking the res of our self-importance. We stage our mimes on the minds stage; From behind, an unspoken irony pops up Through these several stage enactments The irony that instantly takes away breaths And the continued reasons for breath. We wonder how we shut up this irony thing In the back-room so it continues to apply Make-up in the green room and forgets To enter the stage in the middle of our show So there is no "you ,me and this irony thing" On our happening stage here, all the time . This woman down there tells us about the Gita Discourses at her house playing her own mime Her invitation to us to listen to the discourses Was actually my own irony and hers playing out. The irony where I disdain a certain mechanistic Pursuit of truth as if thinking from a higher plane From where the woman looked like playing out An inconsequential small-town spiritual drama. There is this double think which says "higher ? And curls its lip in utterly savage humor I try to look away and into the far horizon When this lip-curling sarcasm is taking place But alas, my eyes come back soon enough From the distant mountains and their blue space To this room where my mimes are played out.

43

Dreams persist (2010-08-31 00:11)

In the Sunderbans the shadows were long And diaphanous reaching up to the skies Outside the huts the trees seemed crooked And leaess, bearing the burden of sins Against the childs shrieks at phantoms coming. In the city the nights are dreamt once again, In broad daylight among several stories; All the while, in the backwoods, a yellowed day Was witness to histry being enacted. Meanwhile there was fever rising in blood Strangers at midnight attacked us for secrets A little girl laughed at the dreams in our head, Outside the room from the fever of her blood.

44

Dream (2010-08-31 00:14)

When I live in the night I forget night On the rim of the night I stand apart. It was that time deja vue and a night, The big clutter of dreams hapned in heart. The night was when it was a poem, a dream Of blood coming from the forehead and hurt By somebodys stone from roof and beam Because dreams are real and in whole and part. Dreams are not just imsy unreal sleep things . When dreams happen real things happen in sleep. We think and dream and not miss what life brings Because knowledge slips and life slips and sleep. Life slips and sleep ,moments of wakefulness If we are not mindful, doing lifes business.

45

The lines (2010-08-31 18:00)

the lines speak for themselves as rapidly disappearing points of no mass,stretching,stretching. inside is emptying itself outsideoutside endlessly saying nothing.

46

That is how our web is woven (2010-08-31 18:03)

The ailing old man is alive and ticking in pulse He should stay that way through the rains,else His wife cannot come to do my houses dishes That is the tone and nuance of our wishes. That is how our web is woven across the bushes.

47

Love (2010-09-04 06:56)

Evenings were musical and mushy; Twilights accumulated unaware. She shimmered in white wine; A black night danced in my veins. It was a charade, this love thing. I woke up early on the next day With colored marbles of careful words That clattered against each other In the vacuum of my heavy head.

49

Failures (2010-09-16 09:01)

These fearful phantoms Knock at my midnights. Consciousness ows by And embedded in time, I stand on its banks Like a giant banyan With an immobile future. Then the rst scent Of the mango blossoms Whispers in my blood. An orange winter sun Crawls out of the coconut . The sky above my house Turns saffron , then white. Soon I give up guessing Where the roof ended And the white sky began.

50

This September (2010-09-16 09:04)

This air is still crisp and there is promise of Excitement on the leafy oor of the forest As the mongoose scurries among the yellow leaves. Tens of thousands of zany butteries of many hues Have burst out of the bushes on the Tirumala hills Striking the stunned panes of the passing cars .

51

The Titiya bird (2010-09-18 03:01)

When we were wee-boys, in knickers, We threw pebbles at the mango for fruits. Later, demons came into our young lives. In the morning, when white birds in the sky Whizzed past tall palm trees we called them out Shaking our little ngers at them thinking Little pieces of their milk-whiteness would Somehow enter behind our pink ngernails. We tried catching the water snake by its tail It swished the tail and mock-bit you angry Making you think that you would soon be dead. The tamarind hosted many suicide-ghosts. At night little ickering ames oated Out of the phosphorous bones of the dead. One day a bird ew over us, in our sky, With its mournful cry that shrieked titiya. Our dear cousin looked up, lying sprawled On the stretcher, with his eyeballs screwed up The whites of his eyes were opaque and pearls Nobody told us why he wouldnt come with us To hurl at-stones on those water surfaces.

52

Death of a woman (2010-09-18 08:08)

She stared at the roof beam, The wood that was once a tree. A tailless lizard came from Behind the beam to look At her for the umpteenth time. Kitta kitta , said the lizard She who had become it stared Unremittingly at the beam That was once a forest tree. The beam looked at the lizard. The continuum owed endlssly .

53

Memories of a dysaphic (2010-09-21 11:15)

The last time you met me I could just smell your hug The fragrance has endured. I raise my arms at times Towards the rain-laden sky But cant feel the raindrops On my extended tongue. On dewy winter mornings My feet dont feel cool. I try to feel the softness Of the just opend lotus With my unfeeling ngers. I sense the tngle of your ngers On the shadwy curve of my back Through after-fragrance and sheer. You ran your ngers on my belly I could hear their melliuous voice. I hear your carbon smell as the midday Burnt your crackling back when we lay On the Bhimili beach, oblivious of the Crustaceans crawling around us. (Experiencing loss of touch, the dysaphic compensates it through heightened awareness of the world through the other senses)

54

Faces (2010-09-23 05:11)

He drew faces on the citys billboards. His brush touched up cheekbones to heights. They cast nebulous shadows on lowr lips. His own eyes were large semicircular Sunowers awaiting their butteries That would emerge after the owers wilted. In the wee-hours of the city he pictured Time, well on the murky banks of Hooghly Waiting in the discarded jetties of Its several deceased jute factories. The faces were there jutting out obtrusivly Their cheeks swelled in their bony hardness. Their eyes were fetid sh-pools with a muddy Sediment of decayed sh long since dead. The faces were there, occupying his space There was no esh in them, but only bones.

55

Heart attack (2010-09-24 00:04)

There, dark portentous air lters Through hair-like leaves of the tree. Fear trembles with deathlike nalty Clenched sts cry quick vengeance On my blood-draining arteries Ghosts of people swirl around me; Claustrophobic walls are closing. These specters in white gowns Decide my future in whispers. Their smoky whiteness envelops me Their shadowy medical epithets falling Like feathers of a bird in ight. Just like it was at that time when I was muscling my helpless way Through your all-around mother-softness. I am growing into nonexistence Tell me what I should do with these Useless multi-colored shadows I have been chasing all these days.

56

Stillness (2010-09-24 05:28)

He stands on the othr shore. Beauty comes here in waves Up there, he rolls them with, Soft hypnotizing motions. The morning is gilded and mystical. There are now only gentle ripples. I sit in this hotel with my mind stilled After a few acts of inane tokensm. I fail to synchronize movement Of my cells with the music of waves.

57

Belong (2010-09-29 03:43)

Belong some where, a place or thought Otherwise you stand out, all eyes on youNone with you or your music or the wind. In the night those tiny parijat owers Actually belong to the dark neighbour Of the red and yellow house with a woman Hanging out of the white parapet like cloth. Their fragrance does not belong nor she. The parijat belongs to the wind and death. She of the parijat house parapet belongs To the evening and the blue sky of rain.

58

Tonight (2010-10-01 03:56)

Tonight you shall climb your roof To lick jellied moonlight and catch Flickering asteroids falling from the sky To put them one by one in shirt-pocket. When you walk in murky paddy elds You shall be taken for a willow-th-wisp. Along the mud tracks the thorny bushes Shall wear a black veil of moonless dark. You shall peep into the dark steep step-well And lower the metal pail tied to the rope To gather pieces of a spectral moon.

60

Our childhood (2010-10-01 05:28)

In those days, consciousness owed unbroken; What went on in minds stretched to the horizons. The mountains had no blue veil of secrecy And the lakes seemed pure and crystalline. The vegetable creeper bloomed in backyard In yellow owers that seemed like many moons. We knew there would soon be plump gourds On our thatched roof basking in the autumn sun We would watch them growing every morning. The afternoons were red-hot and weary. The smell of charcoal in our kitchen stove Somehow connected to our daily lives. We dug patches in our garden thro the day And when dusk fell we planted little beans Just under the skin of the soaked earth. We had not slept the whole night waiting For the miracle of the sprouted seeds. We had covered the tumescent guavas With white cloth against marauding squirrels. We watched them grow bigger and bigger Hour to hour , morning after morning At night when the jackals howled at the moon We lighted our winter res of dry twigs And stood with our cold palms against the re As giant shadows played on the compound wall.

61

The photographers poem (2010-10-04 02:56)

We were scouring the countryside For a piece of camera panning and action. We then chanced upon unnished verse That had cropped up from somewhere. Actually photographing is no poetry But a mere tiptoeing in the sloping hills With the danger of a hip- breaking slip Into the misty valley, leaf-changing tree. But that is mere words, not pictures. We wonder if words themselves become Surreal pictures on certain sunless days. In any case pictures are not behind hills But just behind eyelids and perked up ears. There are striking owers behind our ears Of the selective colour of deep red hibiscus. We raise our worship owers for morning In the plastic pots of our street-side balcony Because we do not have the brown earth. When we look down from our balcony We do see patches of the brown earth And dark creatures of the earth watering Delicate decorative plants in the sidewalk. The creatures stand there waiting with re In their hearts and on their bidis in mouth. They have to keep all their res burning Pressing peoples clothes with coal re. There on the road a man in coarse white shirt Is cat-walking with the phone behind ears As though it is a red hibiscus of worship. We looked for the gold of this mornings sun. In the far we saw buffalos with steel backs Crossing in groups calmly chewing the sun. On the side, pigtailed girls waited for the bus Their backs laden with algebra and cross-stitches. Not photography, just a little morning poetry. 62

Seeking the poetry of thought words (2010-10-06 02:14)

In early morning birds are yet to wake, Their wings utter in noises from trees. Crows in some trees blurt out from The disturbed sleep of a few of them. It is now the ambient dark of morning. One hears a motor sound that comes Piercing from sleep-weary basement For the water to ow in our bathrooms. This sort of darkness touches heart In a tender expectant way of rising sun. Sleep feels restless on creaking beds Of people for whom morning is night. Steeped in poetry, it is just that days death And dreams of nely bound poetry volumes That dened morning over soft keystrokes. One tries to explore poetry and death together. In the end death is poetry, when it is not real In the hospitals and lonely parks in left cities. Death is ne poetry as after-fact and bellyache. Later, in morning walk there will be spring in the air With the leaves ying on a breeze on the dusty road. That is when I shall seek the poetry of thought words .

63

Growing old in mirrors (2010-10-08 16:53)

I have grown old in diverse mirrors Except in the glassy grease-bubble At the gas station of rainy afternoons. There I am funny and fat in the face Like a little face making kid in mirror Standing in a resounding hall of mirrors.

64

Failure (2010-10-12 07:07)

You come across failure, in chunks and in bits, But you see poetry, sublimation and long waits Amid the amber hues of a Sunday afternoon, Like the poet Philip Schultz s fathers failures Which gave rise to exquisite poetry in death. My failure was my fathers to live, I to be born In the whir of an electric fan, a mollycoddling Father who wanted no ies to touch baby son. His failure was my resounding failure at birth As if I brought it about by my sweet babyhood. So my failure was born with me, a fetal failure To keep father lingering in longer love over me Like early Christians in smock who were born With ancestors failure to stick to Gods word As if that was a wooden spoon they were born with. There is a fecund father-son continuity of failure And failure to know where fathers end , sons begin. But like his dad ,we are failures, but not nobodys. (Reference is to the poem Failure by Philip Schultz)

65

Doubts (2010-10-15 10:10)

We began with doubts in the dark nightEverything that came under the sky of nightThe noiseless stars -that were just ickers In the crisp air of a deep night and crickets That creaked from dark and thorny bushes. We thought of sultry bears that came down From the hills for ripe sugarcane in elds On windy nights when we were sleeping On the river bank, with a long stick safely Sleeping beside us on a springy string cot. The dogs sculpted their own long protests At the howling wind and bush rats scrawl . There in the sketchy bushes of darkness The lizards slept tfully wary of night snakes. Outside, the reies tantalized the country. Our doubts persisted through the night , Going on unabated in sleep and dreams. At the cocks crow they dissolved in sleep.

66

Knots (2010-10-22 01:45)

A knot in the small intestines blocks lifes ow; With pain in the belly, thinking becomes silly When it starts down there puking and smelly. We sure know you have plastic in your heart You have grown old and brave and highly loving. But you have this thought deep in your heart: That plastic you buried in the heart last year Will it remain there when the snake in the belly Comes under the knife and dizzy chloroform? In the meantime the coconuts wave their fronds Helpfully in the late October ocean breeze As you dream on the table your sons geek job Daughters wedding knot and money thought The knots remain,whether in dreams or awake.

67

Morning walk (2010-10-27 05:09)

The night moon turned pale at the sight of a Signicant sun, rising after nights of low rain. There a car comes laden with rich ripe people. A heavy auto-rickshaw overows with body parts . With the winter round the corner, the monsoon Says goodbye from the dried up street puddles. We see the last of the frog carcasses on th road.

68

Poetry of felt words (2010-10-28 05:22)

The winters risen sun blazes from that Wall-less hole of an unnished house. The laborers wall-less house on the road Is not a house but a merely thought word. A house exists without walls but with roof. Only it has to rise from the earth, to the sky. The igloo rises without apparent walls But warm and white, on those icy wastes. Houses exist without roof but with walls But there is the sky-roof that sends down rain. Such as the God of phallus lives without roof So that the skys rain falls on Him always. Like houses that exist without built walls, Poetry is built without words but with felt words. A girl of large eyes is oating to th sun , As ponytail and bag ght for space on hr back. Those were felt words on her schoolgirl back.

69

My father (2010-10-31 03:15)

The light fell on him for some time And on the mountains over there. The light now falls on me and the mountains Later the light will not fall on me.

70

Alive in a train (2010-11-03 08:45)

It poured in bunches, quickening Acacias that needed no quickening. Once in the train I cogitate quietly On fevered awareness in my pores. A freckled youth talks over chickn-rice; Aliveness eats aliveness, recently dead. I withdraw in pretended disintrest And submit to forced sedation and Let eyelids fall smooth and unaware Followed by forcd ceasing of being Like that piece of once-aliveness Unkicking in alive stomach now there. A griping baby howls awareness here. Then thick curtains fall over the berth Today and I have both ceased and now.

72

Beauty-tokens (2010-11-04 13:42)

It had happened much too quickly As if it needed to happen that way. I remember the rst cataclysm When it had fortuitously happened In the vast green sea of nothingness When there were no words, no things And there was all-around green uid. My breathing was slow and rhythmic; My reaching out painfully tentative. Now again it is spasmodic, yelling I want to reach out, my both palms Cupped in poor clumsy supplication. Then I did not ask you to be born. I do not want now to cease to exist Merely as just another cosmic event Leaving a trail of uorescent words Tell me what I shall do this moment With pretty luminous astral pieces I have been garnering all these days .

73

A day at the training academy (2010-11-05 03:09)

The trouble arose out of self-knowledge One recoiled even on gentle pin-pricks. Here goggle-eyed girls touched tender spots A phallic water-tank towered, Shiva-like, Over the stony portals of vain knowledge. A shrill sea-gull-cry vaporized as rain-cloud Another morning bird fanned the garden air. My glass eye lost the bee in oral confusion. There was a smiling anaconda in the hall There were no beauty-tokens, just torn egos.

74

Words (2010-11-07 04:32)

Words hit you like many swarming Flies on a sticky summer afternoon. Words fester under your very skin Like wounds refusing to be healed. They enter your eyes like dust specs Filling them with lugubrious tears. You gather them like small sea-shells To empty the pocket and throw away When you reach home from the beach. Words grate like steel furniture being Dragged on a dusty oor in the noon. Words ll your tummy with nausea Like the guts of a chasing dog run over By a speeding truck on the highway. Words turn into a handful of dust.

75

Train journey through Kerala (2010-11-08 07:19)

There, in Gods country, the benign ruler Had promptly burst out of the earths bowels. A sea of coconuts smothered, sultrily, The most unwilling moss-painted houses The banyan raised its feet high enough For hundreds of creepy monsoon-creatures. The journey began in silver slanting rain Waiting for streaks of pure white sunshine To crawl through upright areca nut barks. As the telephone wires went up and down A oating bird quickly froze in the sky. First the coconut fronds ran to the hills Then the chilly plants , go red in the face Inside, they of the uncertain sex beat the wind Out of their joined palms in forced cadence. The oor-mopping boy under our large feet Looked with money-wetness in his brown eyes. The train went spluttering for lack of puff While gravel stones hit its forbidden parts.

76

Wounds (2010-11-10 10:31)

In the recent monsoon Our rivers felt as if The mountains had bled From fresh wounds. Their esh has gone Across the green seas, To the far off Chinaman To ll out his bones. (Iron ore exports to China in the wake of the pre-Olympics construction boom have left deep wounds on our mountainscape in the Hospet region)

77

The temple (2010-11-10 14:22)

Our thinking never felt so good. Beads of perspiration glistened; Luminous peace arrived in spurts. There was electricity of high voltge. Words owed steadily in thought In fast disappearing streamlets. There was the power of fragrance Of lighted camphor and owers. My peoples concentrated history Flowed through these archwaysStone people who lived on forever. These are my dearest kinsmen My own esh and bones are made Of the same powdered red rock. We worship the same granite god. (Worshipping at the Hazar Rama temple in Hampi)

78

Poetry of left words (2010-11-13 02:17)

The morning sounds came to us running Amid standing silences of tall coconuts . There was no gentle breeze in their shadows. A dark girl owed on the park walking track As if she was night gliding towards dawn. Walking thoughts were loosely strung images. My park walk became a sand of shore where I gathered several sea-shells of ne images. Back at home they stayed briey as thoughts, As semantic thoughts, a poetry of left words.

79

A girl of two pigtails (2010-11-17 01:46)

When we passed by her sisters house in shadows The girl of two pigtails came up in our thoughts. At fty she was not a then girl, who had giggled On way to school with pure hopscotch on mind And a schoolbag of pencil box and nuts on back. All this while she played hopscotch on one leg As she had grown a big body that rose in revolt Against the tyranny of the heart and despotism. The body must crumble at several strident protests And today she has no one- leg to play hopscotch.

80

Tears of laughter (2010-11-23 04:00)

Laughter welled up in the edgs of our eyes As our bodies heaved and heads fell to side We wanted no poetry but tears born of jokes One saw no long shadows where were bodies That owed ,by impromptu scripts,in costumes. These are nights of clarinet music and scent That ow in liquid syllables of frolic and fun. It is not the poetry of the night nor shadows That bring tears to laughing eyes but fun jokes At someones words taken out of their context Our tears are of derision ,not of stunning beauty.

81

The Benares of Borges (2010-11-26 05:45)

Men and women squat under the banyan Overlooking the Gangas sacred wet mud. Old aunties remember the Ganga of bodies Floating in the river in ickering ames. Now mechanized boats do not really Puke grease into the river which turns Golden yellow twice in the day through The raised arms of famished boatmen. All Benares boatmen do not tell stories When they do they also sing in lmy tones Of the greater glory of our Ganga mother. In the streets bodies in white sheets travel Towards the banks of the river , in marigolds. At the brown-red temple they lie among logs With which they will burn in curling smoke. In the temple Shiva wears the soot of the dead. Hence there shall be no discontinuity of bodies. The real things in Borges imagined Benares Are the rotting lips that feel the cold in teeth. Poplars do not wave their heads in Benares. The morning muezzins call is merely oriental. But the evening in the river is of steps and sleep. (Reference is to the poem "Benares" by J.L.Borges )

82

Creative block (2010-11-30 07:55)

Mornings draw blank as some evenings do And sleeping nights when one is ghost And others alive in memory and dream. My letters crawled like a long line of ants That headed slowly towards the corner wall Beyond the table leg and phone socket. Two little brown birds could not build Their leafy nest on the balcony A.C. unit Due to our failure to respect their privacy. The birds are not known now in balcony Their brown chicks will hatch elsewhere. Our house is brimming with music like drum Our hearts y in contests and photo- speak. It is poetry of the mind, here, in the wintry air. Notes come from above, from nightly silences. In the daylight their long shadows speak to us As though they are substantial men in cloaks.

83

1.9

December

84

Stories (2010-12-02 22:53)

Today our temple way had a spastic Girl that attempted to break in our space. Her overwhelming limbs softly touched us. An old widow in yellow fell prostrate Before the marble fakir with head-cloth That presided life from the tomb of death. We are here to make new lives in this temple For our children who have their fresh stories. We make a scroll of their living together Here duly witnessed by the monkey-God. It is just that some stories are getting over Some are in progress and new ones begin.

85

The power of knowledge (2010-12-05 05:41)

Yesterday evening, as on all days, The banyan briey dallied with river Its tiny fruits oated on the waters Glistening in the sunlight like rubies The woman-bather, while disentangling Flickering stars of pieces of driftwood From her oating amavasya-like hair , Took no notice of the fruity overtures. The last ferry did not bring him here Nor did the ve o clock circular train Which disgorged people in sweaty bush shirts Onto the dusty Bagh Bazar platform . The mongrel got up from its disturbed sleep Snifng at the coal-smell left by the train Went back to its sleep under the cement bench. The beggars on the river steps ate their Early dinner and retired for the day Somehow they had scintillating knowledge That nobody was actually expected On the train or by the ferry that day Or for that matter , on any other day. (amavasya in Sanskrit means the moonless night)

86

Dreams (2010-12-08 01:18)

Several imsy images are played In the opaqueness of heavy-liddd eyes . They are nothing, not even existence Just fragments of a fractured reality.

87

Blur (2010-12-11 05:03)

I always thought greatly about seeing blur From the sea-rock memorial in the sea Standing by a lone crow on the iron railing From where I saw the blur of a Cape city. There is now a blur caused by ne mist On the varilux glasses, a dot of vagueness On the round centers of our eye-glasses. Actually the blur is of age and lost space, And the dimension of space having changed. The same blur I saw under green patches Of villagers who waited on the sidewalk For the doctor to uncover their lmed eyes. The blur keeps increasing in wider rounds Of seeing imperfection, their edgy contours Getting irretrievably lost in the look-up sky. Blur is ne unless under the staircase Where there is accumulation of ne dustThe dank staircase or the service elevator That cuts sharply through smelly darkness Infested by cockroaches of a sea palace. The sea palace is not a palace, but a hotel Near the radio club where a boy-child sits On the parapet wall with the waves lapping. The sea-mist caused blur at the Gateway. Years later,young guests from across the sea, Came here with their rucksacks and guns And my, what a blur they would cause When strangers would lay in blood and dust Their minds in a whir, their eyes in a mist. Blur is wet and cold in the citys afternoon rain When we pick up bananas and catch sunsets In the corners of leaves, behind parked trucks. There is blur on our glasses,blur of cold rain Everything in a blur around the beggar there His battered blanket one big blur of bright hope.

88

Standing before God (2010-12-17 14:57)

In the inner space stood our beautiful wooden gods They smiled at us as though they were laughing Only their eyes refused to close when they laughed As their glances fell on us ,on our bodies and eyes.

89

My mother (2010-12-20 01:10)

I say she is defunct and why talk of her now. As you see she is not now in use or operation Like an old gramophone which is long since defunct That played ne music once but now is in th attic. Like buffalo bill*, who is eminently defunct, Whose eyes went blue, presently in the attic. (*Defunct -A poem by E.E.Cummings)

90

Remembering her birthday who is dead (2010-12-21 23:03)

My denial of time is not new; this moment is. This moment I am oblitrating the clay pot The holy river and the priests sonorous chants. This moment is of lazy afternoon, crow-caws Dull machine-whirs, the kids cries of play in the street Ardent wedding shopping in the cities of silks. Here I try to make it stretch its enormous feet Over the chasm of time tween now and her birth then. I deny the triing event of death in between. (Remembering my mothers birthday today)

91

Tree (2010-12-22 23:09)

It had stood there bare and brown and stone dead And waved in the breeze pretending to be alive. Evening birds had still been sitting on its branches. Yesterday it became a mere image in my mind Two axes did a ne job in the day and from balcony I now have uninterrupted view of the blue sky.

92

Rain-music (2010-12-25 06:50)

In that poem, rain was evening thing. When you read the poem it is here and now. My music ows like rain, its color n sky An image in dream, in a poem of future That remains to be written, cried out loud.

93

Insight (2010-12-26 00:13)

Borges when growing blind looked high at books Like his other, looking up high at books in wall. He was, in fact, none other than Borges, the other Who always existed, darkest among Gods gifts. We look for blinding insights in recondite things. Our study glasses slide on our scholars noses As we ip through notes and illustrations, ibid. Our insight is within ourselves, eyes pretending. Our letters crawl in the synapses of inner spaces When we are in the dark words come from nerves. (Reference is to the poem Gifts by J.L.Borges)

94

Poets (2010-12-27 02:49)

In their poetry there is misery, shadows in mauve As though they cant make it without bloody tears. Such is sadness they embrace and dark shadows That stretch endlessly on warm lazy summer daysA fatal attraction to the charms of the dark word Which has embedded deepest misery in its folds. It is this red moon that follows them on their side And dreams that swarm, as they ride into the night. These poets make big things out of mere events But their words are infused with angst and meaning. (After Louise Gluck ::Omens)

95

Prostate and ailing (2010-12-28 00:42)

One wonders what wakes you up in stomach When crickets rake in silences in dark bushes. There is this strawberry sac of juice that grows In honey cells unwontedly with nothing to createA sort of creation for creations sake, just like The other appendage which is a pointless pain, In the lower regions, lled with dark humor. We are trying to make jokes of our little sacs That overow with yellow melancholy juices. The doctor says dealing with the old is more art And less science and nobody wants your creations. Dealing with them is dealing with the old fart.

96

Returning from the Puri temple (2010-12-29 01:54)

Returning , we thought of you, we your journeymen As your big round eyes burned into our tired backs. The sea was calm, yielding but a little orange dusk. We had a talkative middleman and some owers To look into your eyes and ask all our questions. Our minds went blank, capturing your stone beauty. We forgot to ask why you had made these images Only to break them ,one by one, into ne powder.

97

One man and several men (2010-12-30 13:27)

In the morning we walk, as in imsy dreams And map our souls on to random personae Drawn from scattered images and chance talk. We are not we but many men fused together. You see we are of the Shakespearean stage Playing bit parts not germane to the plot. What are we then, among these autumn leaves, Fallen and in heap, with those ripe red fruits, Yet waiting for a gust of wind from the west?

98

Celebrating the New Year (2011) (2011-01-01 01:44)

Poetize we said, whatever prose there is. At twelve new night, little boy and girl jig In bleary-eyed parental compulsion, proud. They keep up with Joneses on cup and cake As wine sparkles between uncles and aunts. Our little cherub dances his steps so cutely, We are proud of him in his English school. But there is tension everywhere, tension On the wall, elephants get up and charge With their tails tucked in their taut behinds And a poet appears from cloud and rainWet behind the ears, the poet who forgets To wear iambic pentameter in his under. Poetize, we said this morning to the tree In the hills where village women trudge To work, with many-storied meal boxes.

101

Old age (2011-01-03 05:05)

Funny how we all begin in our old age. First we ignore it and then are afraid. The pain down there reduces us merely. Fairly farcical, our faces have lost all Their humanity, angelic glow, at a time. These our pills are tiny white universes. They vanish darkly in that vast chaos. We laugh deeply in hollow inwardnessA toothless attempt at biting sarcasm Whenever the phone does not truly ring But becomes a mere ringing possibility Uncomfortably vibrant for an old pocket. There is now not even pain there below But a dull ache in the lower mind and back. All our hellos trail off in the blue winter sky.

102

Height (2011-01-05 22:26)

When your face is situated quite high You look naturally down on the world Because that is where your eyes are and where Dramas are staged before sequined curtains. When you lie down on the ground with your eyes On the innity of the dark promontory You see tiny sh-worms swimming behind them As if they were swimming in your own blood. It is these swimming creatures that will do you in. You remember, you were once one of them.

103

Houses (2011-01-07 04:19)

Houses we think of, in sun and rainThose houses which live, cheek by jowl, With maternal mango trees of summer. Their shadows paint their white canvas. In monsoon the houses are painted green In delicate taffeta of luminous moss. The squirrels climb the tree looking Curiously into your bedroom window.

104

Pain (2011-01-08 01:53)

When we were being borne our idea began. Our limbs slowly formed making us a tadpole, Then a blind creature swimming in the aqua. Our idea is just once, living in the present Like the carriage wheel touching the earth Only once in a brief vertiginous movement. Those limbs we grew have to go in the end. The gills shall disappear as vestiges of then. Somewhere in the middle we grew some esh As succor for new life, new love and beauty. But we remained just an idea, a brief moment A eeting moment when beauty shall pass. All that will remain is mere esh and its pain. "Strictly speaking, the life of a being lasts as long as an idea. Just as a rolling carriage wheel touches earth at only one point, so life lasts as long as a single idea" (Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy I, 373). (re-blogged from The Floating Library) (Hearing of the discovery of breast cancer of a friends wife)

105

Trembling (2011-01-09 05:57)

First of all I dont believe I tremble At the thought of the dark night to come. My feet do not quake but shufe in walk. There is sweat on brow and fear in my eyes. I dont believe my trembling unbelief.

106

Cold (2011-01-10 05:45)

Here, in the cold of the nose you are transmogried: To become a little tranquil, like the sea in the morning With a hidden possibility of rise to the moon at mid- night. The white surf is quiet, lacking evening s orange passion. The hum in the ears is but an imitation of the dark night. But the sounds come to you like morning beach crows Landing on their whooshing feet near the gentle waves Looming largely as though they only exist in this world And none other, on the sand-earth or in the sea-air. For example we ignore the existence of jumping sh Or crawling snails in the wet sand in and around holes. Or plastic shnets in knotted heaps of red and blue Or strange old women selling sea-shells of rarest hue. Here these pills enter the swelling sea of my blood Trying to negative the existence of those tiny creatures That feverishly ride their red waves in gusto, up and down. The sea is everywhere around our dear earth and in us. Its hum is persistent, breaking only when bigger sounds Land on the shores of our tranquillity like beach crows.

107

Pilgrimage (2011-01-12 00:11)

Mother, what is now cooking, in your home? That once smelled of onion roast and fried potatoes? Where is the food you promised us the last time? You now talk of long distance yellow pilgrim buses Those will take you to the pristine hills of snow And the pearl-white temples nestling in them. The holy beads become weighty on your frail chest; Their mountain smells are truly overpowering. Up there shimmers a silver lake of frozen ice And pretty swans gracefully oat as in a dream. There under the looming shadow of a white rock Sits your three-eyed god who will dance destruction, When he will open his eyes from his deep thoughts. Mother, will you then cook lentils and rice for him?

108

Poems of the night (2011-01-13 00:45)

These poems appear at midnight with the shouts Of fearsome Alsatians with their echoing barks, That emerge daily ,from lonely houses on the hills Living behind electried fences of sleazy money. The barks come from their dark cavernous mouths Of soft sorrow, born inside, of gratitude and love. The poems come from the sleeping mouths of fury From where emerges the silence of a sleeping city Whose tautness will break at the rst crack of dawn.

109

Bored poet (2011-01-16 03:30)

The bored poet is not a sleep-deprived poet But a wanting- to- create poet with the leaves Yet to fall, and the golden autumn yet to arrive. A yawn or two at midnight is not pillow-sleep When warm musk thoughts steal from behind. Actually they have been there under the ground Waiting for the rst rains to bring them to life A summer breeze from the warm mountains Will surely quicken them in those uffy clouds To bring to the dust to sprout light and green. The poet loses his amber sleep in the afternoon Figuring out when autumn ends, spring begins.

110

The little dark one (2011-01-16 22:36)

At two this midnight the little dark one Became a poem, her all-knowing smile The rst stanza and her baby bird- glance Became the next one as she pranced there On the oor up and down like pendulum Swinging in the free air, a full fall of force, A pout of sarcasm from tiny baby lips. I at midnight wanted to round it off With a cool third stanza, of epigram A last line well said, to the deep night. But she wouldnt let me, the little one That squirmed in my hands like a worm Full of bones that pushed against mine In my withered palms and nger bones. It is life which pushed against my death. As the night creeps I once again go into My epigrammatic mode of the old poet With the bally irony thing barely broached. The curl on my lips that briey occurred Vanished without trace in my confusion As my eye followed her moving in circles. I thought I had seen the curl on her lips.

111

Epiphanies (2011-01-17 21:40)

There is utter helplessness about the world The existing built world when I keep saying Pch , pch, not much can be done ,you know, My life is too short under the present sky; There are other skies, other spaces of times. My buildings shoot up steadily into a blue sky But my clothes hang in the holes of balconies Their wet drops fall into masses of passers-by. Our epiphanies occur mostly in the ne gaps Between the existing built world and this me If only they would allow me to build it anew. Thinking means wondering if can get the hell Out of these various hell-holes I have built; The holes can only be expanded, not blown away. Ha, ha, I now chuckle at the warm thought Of blowing away all my holes, one by one. It is a nice thought to blow away all the holes. But there is a bigger hole in this midnight logic Because I cannot live under this open space. I am deeply afraid in the hole of my inner space And I need a ve feet ve canvas tent of a hole Between my frame and the glimmering stars.

112

The chain of being (2011-01-18 23:24)

At this time I wait for the big word, Rather for the bird of the deep night. It is this damn structure that prevents Its landing on the waste of the night. But it is now already moving on and out Of the limiting structure of beginning. The grasses wait in their levels of being As trees, animals and lesser creatures I wait in my assigned place in the chain Patiently to ascend to my higher plane. A confusing woman is in the forum Waiting for twenty years to ascend. In her confusion are epiphanies hidDark mystery insights of the midnight When her birds land as mere words. In my human anxiety I truly want to be Deeply vegetarian with no sharp blades Thrust against my sleeping conscience Into the vitals of a fellow living being Yet this is what I did, this nights dream That left me wondering about sinning If I kill in dream, will I go to a lower hell, Stopping my ascent up the being chain?

113

Remembering (2011-01-24 22:56)

Remembering is a morning and some thoughts That swarm like those buzzing locusts in the air Those have descended from the far off alien skies, Their wings light and apping to keep them alive. A childs stick brings them down one at a time. You had nothing against them who were our guests Guests from the plains of Siberia into our bushes That had brought their memories, their thoughts. They had brought memories of many green leaves At other places and other thoughts, other skies But you can only bring them down one at a time.

119

Matter (2011-01-26 23:28)

In the morning walk we thought of ourselves As mere matter, matter trying to coalesce With other matter in a compulsive fashion, Man matter merging with woman matterDestructible matter with destructible matter. The monk saw some bones and some esh An unusual matter that saw other matter In a decomposed fashion ahead of its time. All the time we are making matter in this Factory of the old matter merging to form New matter which will do the same thing. This matter wants to control other matter And some times hastens the process of matter Decomposing ahead of time like the monk, In a compulsive urge to decompose matter. The matter is the same, monk or murderer. The urchin who broke the dogs leg with a stone Was just breaking down matter to its essentials.

121

Guilty (2011-01-28 00:42)

When I went to sleep yesterday night I had to reckon this in my own failures. My sleepless thoughts were mainly of guilt. My long scroll stretched to the starlit sky. I tried to arch over the expanse of space To see where the record of my guilt ends. In the back of my mind I have a feelingBetween us two I cannot be blamed for this . I now lay the blame for this at your door.

122

Trust (2011-01-28 22:04)

You begin with a cloud of trust above you Your rubber house will not close in on you And when you come out to breathe fresh air There is no poisoned air and the dirty aqua Will not do you in or the long rubber hose Will not throttle you in your crying throat. Who is this one who had decided to give you A chance to exist ,borne out of a mere chance Collision of particles in a big bang of bodies Like the astral bodies singing the sky song? And now who is this another one ,years later, Who decided to give some one a chance to exist Out of a similar collision in her inner space And you a chance to join this game of trust?

123

Turning point (2011-01-29 23:25)

Somewhere on the journey, near the banyan tree I meet this perfect stranger in a colored headgear That sits heavily on his head, his legs swathed In silken dress-cloth, his torso decked in camphor. I see him come riding on a horse, sword in hand. I decide to join him aloft, in the journey beyond And now as I look back in the hoof-dust of his horse My village becomes a mere blur in the blue hills.

124

Milk (2011-01-31 01:24)

There is wind in the dry leaves on the oor. The busy red ants are crawling up to the bark. The sky looks like rain will come and hail. The water sound there seems as if falling On the slanting tin roof but it is the squirrel Or some love- pigeons shufing feet on it. Here I wait in the front porch of my house Afraid, deep within that the milk has boiled And is overowing whitely in the kitchen stove. Footsteps are easily drowned in dew- wet leaves And I am unable to go in to check the milk.

125

Belly-fear (2011-02-01 13:13)

We now remember those smells of nightfall, On the mud track lined with thorny bushes. As night falls the bushes become ominous. Several night ghosts reside in thorny bushes Those make their ghostly food in the night. As our bullock cart proceeds toward the night The bells tinkle in rhythm in bullocks necks Drowning the dreadful shrieks of the ghosts. When the stream appears, the bullocks bells Stop clanging for a while when pale ghosts Resume their shrieks from their bush homes. We, the kids in the cart, hug mummys belly Wondering how the bullock ghts its belly-fear When the bells stop clanging in the darkness.

127

We long for the night (2011-02-01 13:18)

We do not look all that pretty in this daylight. Our beauty emerges slowly as night creeps up On our houses and on our bodies, in starlight. Bright arc lights show us up as divine gures But without them, the stars do their job ne. It is the burning sun above our coiffured heads That makes us look pretty ordinary and human. The way warm rays fall on us makes us squirm In our clothed bodies, arms covered in gloves And our heads in scarves shielding from heat. We long for long silky nights that make us pretty.

128

Light (2011-02-01 22:48)

We talk here of light of everything Not merely of dispeller of darkness In the bat smelling ancestor cave But of lightness of being, bearable Because it does recur but may not. Our lightness becomes when the pill Reaches deep recesses to dent pain And lightness dawns in lower being. Our lightness happens in the mood Not in its several sing-song swings. Our lightness happens in the sun, When stone shines in its splendour. Our lightness oats in white beauty In the textures of weightless words. Our words are lightness of the spirit When they come out of being only To drift away in the sea of the night. (The faint allusion is to The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a novel by Milan Kundera)

129

Flashes (2011-02-03 01:53)

The cold seeps in our head. Our head echoes with a hum Of the trees in the sea wind, A mere silence of the mind. That is when we look for Flashes of light, in sound.

130

Hearing (2011-02-03 09:03)

I still hear the world in my ears. I hear the whoosh of the west wind, The noise of the empty word And clatter of senses rubbing Against the body of the wind As if they are my very bones That move lazily in my knee. As I walk in my defunct dreams I do not need the hearing aid.

131

Night thoughts (2011-02-03 22:56)

Night thoughts enter your body Like so much free-owing water And its top portion teems with Its many empty sounds, echoes. The body is your mind at night. The thoughts occur of living Under white sheets, iron cots A shut window for winter cold, Of living, under eyes of sleep, In pajamas of strings loosed While dirty goods get splashed On an old mans quiet dignity Under a pin-striped nightcap. In a prison uniform of thoughts The body is trapped in the mind. The night watchmans stick hits The asphalt and your existence Its tap accurately measures time On the asphalt of your existence.

132

Now (2011-02-04 07:51)

Now is a fragment of me in this space A fragment that lives and changes its shape Like the amoeba of light changing feet A piece of the self growing by the hour. Now are my sounds coming alive at dawn , The light that oats from the crack in my roof And drops of rain that texture my window, Dry leaves ying in the face of the wind. Now is fragment of time set in this me.

133

Mother (2011-02-05 17:08)

I thought he wouldnt come, surely Not with the body his mother has. Here, in her soul, there is quietness Of resignation and in body, tautness. Mothers body is yours, a fragment In the whole of your body, like mind, As you were a fragment once of her. If she dies, you die, in a piece of you. The rest of you will live with a hole.

134

Fait accompli (2011-02-06 16:36)

A gray and sullen sky is up there With no ying birds frozen in it. I cannot paint all those birds back Into a seeming blue sky, tiny dots On the painted canvas of the world. My freedom is indeed at stake As I sure want my birds there. But I have to maintain proximity With truth, with the real world, A kind of pretension of reality, In a verisimilitude of no birds When no sun, but white clouds. I wonder why in the name of God My facts always come accomplished.

135

The intersection (2011-02-06 23:03)

At the intersection of truth and poetry, It does not at all matter if we prevaricate. Words do interfere by beauty and noise. We are not here speaking the real truth But an almost truth, and if this is not it, Let the bodies speak, in their receding In their constant ux, movements away.

136

The owl (2011-02-10 12:29)

At midnight the conch blows in a new start, The start of two new lives together of future. The owl is eternally welcome at midnight. Several owl-hoots echo in the wedding hall Not to betoken evil on the withered stump But to bring on back a seated wealth goddess. We welcome our owls in our own hoots. (At a marriage ceremony, women make owl-like sounds in order to invite the Laxmi, the Goddess of Wealth who arrives on the back of an owl)

137

Place (2011-02-10 22:15)

In the rocking chair we are placed tightly Behind the newspaper of all about places. There on the park bench shadows fall on us Of our several absences from thinking bodies. Dry leaves crunch below of remembered places. We then sleep on soft pillows in running trains Of moving places and faster moving absences. Our desire for place is moving away from it.

138

Crazy (2011-02-12 00:08)

In the nights glittering wedding hall A crowd of sanity gave sidelong glances To this odd-ball of clothed craziness Who holed you up in her gray craziness. You held her against her cousins bones. There was no country laziness in them. O you cousin, tell me where my meal, Thanks you for the plate she wheedles Out of you .Excuse me sir, is she from Your wedding party? Yes of course. Crazy people are in our wedding party; Wouldnt I like her in the brides seat? (About a mentally challenged cousin of mine)

139

Voice (2011-02-13 02:41)

Actually there is nothing with voice. Here my mind was held up to scrutiny For my voice that needed to be raised. I can see the picture of minds knots In folded vicissitudes of inner space That resonated with shrill bird calls, Flashes of memory, failure thoughts That soon faded away in a foggy past, A fall from a fecund sky, a brick wall That returned all pharyngeal sound. Actually there is nothing with my voice It is just that I cannot scream loud enough To be heard on the other side of the river.

140

Shufe (2011-02-13 23:38)

Let me shufe them and see beach people In the rising waves of the sunset hour. My light falls on them, on pliant faces, On their hair in sea-ltered sunlight, Of the soft December skies of deep hue. On the beach they are just things, ne objects. Flooded in strange light, they lose their faces.

141

Visit to the Jagannath* temple (2011-02-14 13:14)

He ruled our puny minds and frail bodies. He smiled from a painted black wooden faceHe that made body things and airy souls. A mechanised drum beat its stick in rhythm And a yellow camphor ame lit his face. We duly took his sanctied water to lips And dabbed his holy sweet to closed eyes. We took a closer look at him while returning He was like one of us, with a doting wife by him And a loving brother standing in attention . (*Jagannath literally means the Lord of the Universe)

142

Cadences (2011-02-14 22:21)

Here I write, dipping quietly Into remote words, thoughts Of other people and other me. Words that spring from other Nightly minds, nightly bodies. Thoughts that form cadences In the smooth ow of the night.

143

Silence (2011-02-16 00:22)

There is hoar and frost in the leaess tree. An old man has wisps of snow on his beard. Church spires rise up to the white sky. Their bells tinkle in frosty silence there, In a silence of the art, of contemplation. There is silence here, of paper crackle. In the kitchen there is clatter of cups. There is the blare of an oncoming train, A distant dogs barks in mornings silence. Silence is in the wall, hung on a sound.

144

Father (2011-02-17 00:16)

Here strangers pass by, themselves alone. You try to nd a snake in the hole for effect And actually nd a snake but no effect. This snake is a water snake of summer. White clouds drift in the sky near the tree. You are alone, all the time, in your mind. You think of he who drifted away like a cloud, When you were still in swaddling-clothes. You had white clouds for swaddling-clothes.

145

Jokes (2011-02-17 22:30)

We are on the lookout for jokes, Not two-penny cell-phone jokes. They must tickle ribs, just in case. We mean if you feel itchy there. The macabre ones go in the wild. They do not strike you anywhere On the ribs or in the belly-button. They do not come on cell-phones Or ll shirt -pockets with splutter. They just happen in your stomach, In blood-stream, in the upper cage. As if they have dropped from above. You dont know it when they hit.

146

Ramble (2011-02-18 03:36)

Sticking to the point is so tiresome Like an old mans xation on wearing A woolen mufer in the evening walk, The one that shuts out all street noises Making him prisoner of the inward hum. You get into the streets and ramble on In the dusty labyrinthine town streets. I see absolutely no point in sticking. That makes you committed for life. In the end we come to the same thing. On the side street people sleep on cots Not to admire the moon but rest backs. Buffaloes stand there with vacant eyes Their udders full with reluctant milk. The old man is groaning in his blanket. He is still sticking to his point, his times. The train yells at people on the tracks Its anks burst with hanging men. The train sticks to its point, they to it. It is fun to ramble, when other people And other things stick to their points That way you are sticking to your point.

147

Her story (2011-02-19 01:26)

Her story has become a mere pain in the rear A sardonic statement on deaths smiling face A lecture-to, a curl on lips, a verbose dictum. A mere smear from her brought a smile on him In all that was going on, the white halogen lights The fragrance of silks, the whir of beauty-dance.

148

Memories of memories (2011-02-20 00:34)

In the evening we smelled talcum And tiny white queens of the night As we passed by the stairs of room. Once out we saw talcum-fresh girls Who giggled for nothing in the sun. Their eyes had memories of the noon When their books appeared too heavy And their eyelids dropped for sleep. Their eyes had memories of nights When they sat reading by the bulb. They had memories of rain-moths That had embraced dark death on it. Their faces had memories of soft mothers Waiting to cuddle them for the last time, Of noisy horse-carts that took them home To toddler brothers with running noses.

149

Disappear (2011-02-20 22:08)

Wonder if I can disappear from this space And feel my absence in things, in walls In the wall pictures, in the trees outside And in the blue sky that rises above them, Like a sparrow that pecks at the mirror And hops away into its silver innards. Here I stand before the computer tube And disappear into it sometimes, vaguely Touching the outer walls of the world But come back soon to its inner walls That have my absence etched on them.

150

Discover (2011-02-21 10:55)

We are discovering needless things gleefully, The hidden light behind things, under stones With unusual creeping-crawling creatures. All we love is the other ne things in our homes. We may eat them now or consume a little later. Our tongues will wrap around them softly in tip. That man under the tree has a halo around him. But he deals in violet light of an exquisite variety That shows up our bones as in an x-ray machine. Our esh erupts in goose-bumps if we hear him. All we want is light to show where our eats are.

151

Diminish (2011-02-21 22:25)

Inside we were afraid to diminish. The owers have come to bloom Tiny green mangoes are on the way It is now March and hot is less yet. Soon there will be a rain shower That will diminish their owers; There will be diminished fruits. There will be diminished images Their colours shall become shadows A few mere greys of March summer. Mist is migraine and fallen leaves, Unripe fruits helpless on the earth.

152

The helicopter (2011-02-22 16:45)

We see several hands stretching to the helicopter, Of dry mouths that quiver with hope at its whir. A mystery how bodies can pile to form a pagoda. And why some bodies are always found on the copter While other bodies rise from the dusty ground-earth, And bodies here have to reach out to bodies up there.

153

Black comedy (2011-02-22 23:35)

When we say a tennis ball it is a ping-pong We love hyperboles for their graphic quality. We know the tumor cant be so large inside, When the body believed it was a pin-head. We are playing our little dramas in our head That is how the thing plays out in our script. Our script is black comedy, a fun thing we play When we are desperate about people we love.

154

The past (2011-02-23 18:55)

The poet reiterates the past is a dream. Our body being of the past is but a dream A mere dream in somebody elses dream. His dream was part of my dream, being The grand dream of the cosmic scheme. I have come to know the past did not exist But I merely seemed to have dreamed it. We are such stuff our dreams are made of Not just in the bards sense or in spirit-talk. Our dreams are so much inter-connected. When spirits talk ,bodies vanish like spirits. Our bodies disappear in chloroform smell On the table under a green cloth of scalpel. Some times they just disappear in clay-pots Into owing rivers, melting snow-mountains. Our spirits are mere words, some tautology. Our bodies do not exist except in dreams.

155

Nights (2011-02-24 17:19)

We love nights because they cut out frills And get down to the bare bones very fast. They soften the contours to gray outlines. Like poetry they suppress needless details, Abolish borders; make a sky of the earth. The tree stands there brooding in the dark Forgetful of its death by last years lightning. They even put night birds on its branches. The night elds become a vast promontory Where the sky and the earth become one As if the paddy is actually grown in the sky. In the night the bushes behave like moving, As if they are lazy bears on the wait for food. The mountain in the distance stands abolished. God knows where the clouds went from its top. Everything is drowned in the night of the sky.

156

Meaning (2011-02-25 17:17)

In the bus a tiny girl suggested many levels, Layers of meaning ltering into a cosy bus From the information spread about in the bus Around the driver seeing in the rear view mirror And the passers-by who vaguely whizzed past him. It was for me to make my own meaning for me Synchronising my plane of existence with hers. At another level a fuzzy sun set on the still lake As if the collected lake had to speak for the day Without the orange sun blazing in its other side. We had to make meaning from the tree by the lake. On the sidewalk men sipped tea from a red kiosk. They made their personal meaning out of the time And the information in the trod dust of the road, In the bricks that piled to be built in a house wall In the stray dogs that sat listlessly on the road And in the dry leaves that fell on the parked car.

157

Remembered silence (2011-02-25 22:36)

I do not remember silence always In the midst of noises in my inside Except in the very brief interludes When a noise holds over to another. It is the silence at the edge of sound The brief highway of green paddy elds That occurs between town and town In a populous countryside where Noisy chickens often cross the road And men are found lying on the road In helpless pools of drunken silence. I remember more the awkward silence That rules when dialogue breaks down And the answers in her eyes do not Address the questions in your throat. I remember those awkward silences When words occur in sonorous sounds And meaning ceases to ow between men When expression loses its life function.

158

Pictures (2011-02-26 23:15)

In the night the pictures become clear Out of a shrill whistle piercing the dark. Words become thoughts, vivid pictures In the whir of an electric fan in the room. It is a sound that comes through a child A child of the earth and of a climbed wall, A tree with leaves plucked into pockets For worship of a stone god in vermilion And the yellow softness of a beginning god. It is my god nestled in a heap of yellow rice. It is my women of rustling silks of the air, A fragrance of worship owers and ame. It is the ame that dies in oral fragrance But re-lives to verify my continued living.

159

The table (2011-02-27 16:47)

The old table sat there gloomily With a checked cloth on its face. Poetry was far from its thoughts, Only a carpenter of wood to x The creakiness in one of its legs. The carpenter teases it from afar. He comes now and now, does not. He is not involved with our poetry. In the balcony our wet clothes hang Revealing tiny bits of the blue sky Their tantalizing shadows will enter, When the table will embrace them. But that is a story of the afternoon. The table cloth has a dusty history. Under it lie its innermost secrets. But poetry was not in its thoughts. All it wants is a carpenter of wood, Who will x the creak in its knee.

160

The rail -bridge (2011-02-28 03:18)

The train crossed the span against great ruckus. Miles before, we had thought of the coming bridge When the train would stop greeting dancing poles To enter sound, in a cacophony of steel and sound. The bridge would then disappear in forgot sound And the train would soon catch up with the world, In a victory of silence over sound, of sun over shadow. We knew soon there will be another clackety- clackety Crossing of water and wind, more sound and fury.

161

Looking for the word (2011-02-28 22:34)

The word eludes in the night; Pushes you into its blackness. Change the colour, putter about In the wild wastes of the night As though in a wandering garden Not to pluck owers and leaves But to think about far people In white hospitals, blue overalls. It is the white which outshines The black night in uorescence. And the blue falls in the night.

162

Patterns (2011-03-01 16:07)

On the beach sand were webbed feet patterns And unshod feet, one after the other, of walkers On a rising sea of memories on a moonlit night. A hum went on like the breath of a sleeping child. Its sound patterns were like those of shore palms, Largely specters of lonely trees with wind in hair. Behind them were abandoned customs warehouses Of old brick patterns visible through akes of time. A liquid moon stood at the centre of white clouds Their serrated patterns ruled out possibility of rain. Green sh nets formed a sea-like wave pattern With dark shermen who sat on their haunches Mending broken nets with honeycomb patterns.

164

Water (2011-03-01 23:27)

There are blue striped pipes bringing water To empty into intense human-made bogs Sitting on the roadside between future houses. There are here no crocodiles, only builders. There are no prole-born brothers in duress Only workers in torn tents under a blue sky Wedged between tall skeletons of houses. Houses are made replacing rocks in bushes Murdering rocks slowly by sharp knives And rhythmic pickaxes that fall heavily On their summer bodies petried in time. Often water softens rocks, makes them amenable To slow murder by persuasion and perseverance.

165

Mourning (2011-03-02 14:59)

Morning seems a good time for mourning In the breezy season of spring and March. That is when you have to mourn the dead In owing white garments, in vacant eyes. You wake up droopy-eyed, dream-fresh But your time is still ticking to the noon. When noon comes the day feels heavy In the warm weariness of a siesta time. Your eyes half-close with sleep in them. Your garments become sleep-crumbled And their creases wont hide black grief. In the evening loss becomes a far ghost Behind the coconut as the sun slowly sinks. As the night creeps in, sleep comes to eyes And absence feels like the only viable fact.

166

Sweat (2011-03-02 23:14)

Our sweaty anxiety is in fact a pre-historic thing, A primordial phenomenon of our ancestors Like single-horned or several-armed creatures Bestowing powers on dancers in the woods. Our bodies are now airy souls that feel free to y From svelte conference rooms, plush hotel lounges Into shredded clouds oating in the rareed air. We promptly put on our shields, on horsebacks And set out to conquer worlds that will conquer us Unless conquered, those lie beyond the mountains Those that will descend with armies of elephants Those that will bring about our decline and fall. We are anxious our thermostats will not function And we may yet sweat under our anxious armpits.

167

Wildcat (2011-03-03 22:25)

A wildcat purrs softly in the back of the car A random thing, a new geo-physical mapping. When material things like our esh are made Security checks will work on fur at the airport. Flesh and bones are white powder, brown ashes. When not thinking, thinking esh is mere bones Thinking about the eshy continuums of bones. A little esh, some powdered bones, colored uid Are all it takes to make us in plasma and chemistry. Our bones are adequate noises of disintegrating. We look for our nature cures in the black alley. Our bone powder is mere sound in the ankles. It is words that ooze in the esh of our throats Just like salt water that wells up in seeing holes.

168

Key (2011-03-04 21:58)

Her clean bill of health dees explanation. The skin holds the key to it, not the heart Which is a pump much like the water motor Recently started to air-cool her sleeping. Her nightmares generally describe states. Behind the dusty stairs, the water-cooler Lays her mingled past, in dark shadows. Her skin emits vapors, like a sun-drenched bog. As if it was moisture of the monsoon clouds Or the expectant sultriness of the east coast. She drinks ten litres of pure aqua by night. Was it okay to drink straight from the bottle? But doctor, in sleep it pours from her being!

169

Shadows in the evening (2011-03-05 17:20)

The old womans skin squeals tfully. She oozes water and fear now and then And gets agoraphobic nightly in skin. The thoughts in mind are submissions To shadows present in layers of water. There are layers of water in her old skin, In subcutaneous streams, one on the other. The vapors they emit are sulfur fumes. Her feet follow each other in a pageant. The professor said the mind made them Walk like an ancient petite Chinese girl With delicate feet not made for distances. She struts and frets in the hour and is more. These are high performances on lifes stage. We need appreciative audience for claps.

170

Moon beings (2011-03-05 22:42)

We live, a little on the other side of the moon, In a pallid half-disc of the moon in the day sky. We say a little consequently, but withdraw more. Our poems tantalise beings ,from outer ridge Their words tease from its marble concavity.

171

Waiting (2011-03-06 23:29)

I stand in the computer luminously waiting. I am looking for the ash, the glistening word Lying in wait in the dark folds of the night. On the other side of the world is a woman Her womanhood starkly waiting in a white room To be dispossessed by the cruelty of a body. A mature night is waiting for beauty-dawn From its orange memories of yesterdays dusk When over tea we were sitting on a string cot On the highway and waited for the sun to sink.

172

Heaps (2011-03-07 17:15)

From our ground levels we went on to heaps Of vehicular chaos, of racing men and cars Among heaps of crawling people on the road. Their eyes shone unduly wet with money. Some were anxious to reach dizzy money heaps In cars wedged between trucks of bearded drivers That spewed black smoke from their behinds. Government bosses looked tall on their paper heaps. Citizens walked like writhing bundles of caterpillars That were waiting for decisions to transform them Into full-edged butteries of the nest of colors.

173

Prayer (2011-03-07 22:26)

We stood in a whiff of fragrance Of him that stood behind the curtains. His water tasted sweet and fragrant When taken to the lips in a slurp. We thought of him in her destiny As it unfolded for her in white walls In a wilted ower within her esh Which once housed tiny beings. It was a mere thought, this fear for life An existential question, a silent prayer.

174

In situ (2011-03-08 23:26)

We reveal ourselves well, in the night. Our cell growth had taken place,in situ And mostly localized behind our tummy. We sure love words, Latin and medical. Our surgeons came in white and green Discussing the in situ growth in us as if It was a pretty Ming vase found in situ Where they dug up for ancient cultures. The surgeons use mostly medical epithets But their scalpels seem like sharp ints Discovered in their ancient excavations. We reveal ourselves mostly, in the night Our fears come from dug up ground levels Where they lie buried andin situ for years And threaten to turn invasive at night.

175

Snow (2011-03-09 22:19)

At sixty, it matters little if you have not slowly climbed The snow hills to look a frozen phallus god in the eye. You have now all the time for your thawed hypotheses Like had I or not become or done this and this, then. The snowy beard on your face ows in white clouds. But of little use is looking precipitously into the abyss Only to incur a plaster cast on legs like snow in akes. Had not my granddad happened then in hoar and frost Would be less awed in the vast frozen wastes of time.

176

Movement (2011-03-10 22:55)

We have come to movement at last. Actually our inertia was inherent in us In our present incarnations of tyres That have lost stomach for the road. Hung by a ber rope on the highway Our path remained where we were, As indicators to passing motorists Of tyre service available at the spot. A passing wind enables us to pretend Our continued lateral movements.

177

Soft (2011-03-12 07:52)

Soon we went about our poets business In the wooded paths of human history Trying to tread softly on delicate hearts In some ancient history of poetry kind. We saw some turquoise tourist bracelets Glass bangles that clinked in a poets story And the shadows they cast on brown faces. It was golden evening always and sun set. The mountains sat there immobile and blue Their egos went home in the white clouds. Even as we wrote poetry we had to laugh While not unduly muttering under breath. Our silken pajamas were yet to come back From the roof up where they were drying. In the meantime we had to whisper softly Our cumulative secrets into the winter air. Beyond the parapet the sparrows hopped And chirped incessantly in the morning sun As if they were ripe golden brown wheat That waved heads softly in the grass breeze. The sparrows here under the window heaved Their brown bodies as if they were playing Music, in our computer, from the snow hills And yellow pipal leaves fell softly on the wind. Our temples were soft in the outlines of pagodas Where they scraped the sky ignoring the wind. As we looked up at the top of Gods golden pillar We looked softly at the contours of our own life. Everything came home as if it was in our mother Where it had happened, in our beginnings in her.

178

Iconoclasts (2011-03-13 02:14)

The crowds fascinate us in their latent wisdom. Lately they have turned rebels for a cause. They are now our iconoclasts on the lake side. Our lake is now blooming heads like lotuses. The torsos they left behind recite rebel poetry. (Crowds have recently vandalised statues of historys great men of culture installed on the lakefront in our city)

179

The heat (2011-03-13 14:38)

This heat may be unwelcome on young skin But not on old eyes where it becomes pure silver, A home to dense shadows that emerge slowly From vaporous layers hovering on a hill stream. Here in the trees it is green and joy and twigs Quiet birds in the noon and their day-dreaming. In the temple, afternoons are heavy with sleep. Bare feet hop-skip from one hot tile to another As if they are doing a brisk trot of a re dance. The neem tree sheds owers of powdered heat Offering a bitter foretaste of its summer fruit.

180

Relative (2011-03-14 00:51)

She is not blood-relative but of esh In the dark night she is my dark esh And my bones and marrow of hunger. An ontology of her bones clearly places My own on top of her incumbent bones. Beyond the rail track her bones live. Her blood traces a trains light beam In the pitch dark of my own midnight. There I wait her outside for the creak Of a broken string cot that has sagged Of many heavy bodies and light pockets. Sorry I forget the name of the bones.

181

Shoe- laces (2011-03-14 23:01)

Each time he bends down to tie his shoe-laces He sees an inverted world, of a clumsy blue sky Supervalently fallen on a sprawling globe-earth So he does not know the blue sky from the earth. When he looks up he nds breasts looming Like a Pacic isle tsunami on the plains of cars Brown-mud and paper houses, people and otsam. His world-view gets distorted of caring mothers And nubile daughters with overowing breasts. The lace tying may have triggered such a view. But it is the girls eyes that stare at him of passing His fantasies played out daily in their noon shadows. His clumsiness does not lie in their overowingness But in the topsy-turvy of a dizzy earth-sky scene Largely drawn from the tube of the small screen.

182

Light (2011-03-15 23:19)

What came up was light, a mere tonal word We were searching for the real thing, you see, In the blind alley, making slow way for our eyes In the living bats that uttered against light. We had to make do with a mini-mobile light. A foul gutter loomed here in the corner of smell. Some grey rats could crop up there, their tails Tracing lines of black gutter water on the road And of the dead ones that smelled bad in the holes. These creatures smell bad when recently dead. Historys dead smell nice in their alleyways. Daylight lls their spaces in the foundations Of houses that once had people strutting about Among copper-red brick walls, with cold niches That had oil lamps burning late into the night. Their clothes smelt nicely of naphthalene balls When they had differently dressed men in them. Their walls are not here, nor the ickering lamps It is our space that has swallowed all their light. A pity it is only the smells that have remained.

183

Black leaves (2011-03-16 23:19)

Look out the window to see black leaves Of cold argument, in the middle of a road. Usually green they turn black at night In the blood coursing in your black veins, Wearing the silk-soft colour of a black night The inky back of a night, out of the moon Only this fortnight ago, held by the stars. Woman wears a black owing argument Of a black night, this night and this day. Her golden pendant ickers like the stars In the black night of argument, in white neck. In the train we ate ourselves a black forest Of night, that turned green leaves black As the train cut through the black night With a white surgeons light on its forehead. Tea leaves stayed black at the nights bottom.

184

Familiar (2011-03-17 06:15)

All that seems familiar on the golden beach Where the wind blows in the sand like mad And a wind child moves in waves, like water With fun people riding them up and down. There are shacks on the hot sands for people Anxious for experience, for historys sake, When history is the only future of a couple. Their gold coins glisten at the bottom of the sea. They bravely hang there in a glider in the sun. Other people go about in beery stomachs We are on the lookout for some sun and food A little honey on the side and some moon.

185

Smells (2011-03-17 22:18)

We were trying to re-create experiences in words Of our walks, balancing on narrow embankments, Through the standing paddy rice, in morning light. Our words are stated experiences created rst time Semantically but later by invoking smells of things. We remember sitting on a cloth chair in the shadow Of a vegetable creeper that had ung green snakes In our faces striking our noses with their green smell. We had grandmothers wet cloth drying in the sun That had smelt of grandmother and afternoon sun. When it was later hung on the wall peg in a bundle It had smelt of grandmother and the iron of the peg. In the sanctums anteroom, Gods clothes smelled Of camphor and wilted jasmines and burnt oil lamps. The priests smile smelled of holy water and camphor. His words spoken in high baritone smelled of God.

186

Lizards in dreams (2011-03-18 06:00)

Lizards often come in dreams at dawn As some snakes do in midnight dreams. Here I stand on the top of a black rock And drop a tiny pebble on the lizard That sways his head up and down at me From his perch in a recess of the rock. He seems calling me down from his sky. I am calling him down to my own earth. My pebble hits him but he ies toward me As lizards often do in our atavistic past, On the brown plains, dotted with shrubs In steppes that stretch to the green hills. That was my dream at dawn but I wonder What I was doing in the lizards dream.

187

Note-taking (2011-03-19 03:39)

When you take notes you are not you But a would-be gray non-conformist guy Wearing pantaloons into early seventies, The ones you reach way before the leg. You collect all your notes in the shirt pocket To discard them when you reach home. Or wear them like polka dots on your shirt To hide the existence of small holes under. When you take notes be adequately surreal You cannot make sense of life otherwise.

188

The super-moon (2011-03-20 00:57)

In the evening the moon quietly climbed our roof To peer in our skylight from his perch on the tiles. We almost thought he would jump into our kitchen And ood our mosaic oor with his dapper light. When we slurped our porridge with hungry tongues It sounded so different, this deep slurp from throat. The porridge tasted funny, a tad sweet on the side But somewhat like the broth we daily give our cows In their sheds with the moonlight sweetening its taste. Luckily we keep our bedroom windows shut upstairs One can imagine what he could do with our minds. (On 19th March, 2011(today) ,we witnessed the super-moon, closest to the earth in 18 years)

189

Spontaneous (2011-03-20 23:13)

We are now merely being spontaneous. We chance upon phosphorous volcanoes; Wear sunglasses at the burning on the fringe. These volcanoes combust spontaneously. Their lines form smooth monument steps Flowing from noon prayers in white shirts Descending in a series of steps to poverty And plastic bags ying about in the breeze. It is the dust in the air, the smooth powder Of the earth that ies in our face like leaves. We wear duly our sun-clothes on our faces As if we are girls riding to school on mopeds Spontaneously looking good for the marriage. We wear our nondescript masks that make us Look like others who wear nondescript masks Which hardly hide nondescript souls under. We are spontaneous in our poetry of the night. Our words burst like birds studded in night trees That suddenly erupt from them at distant gunshots Or mountain-breaking sounds of the nearby sky. Words are things we keep hidden for nights.

190

The edge (2011-03-21 22:25)

Contemplating quietly on the edge We may not now tip over nor do anything. Actually the breeze we are waiting for Will come only by the fall of our night When noisy crickets will wake up to make Their weird noises under the inky sky. We are now not on the edge of thought. The precise word we are looking for Does not come easily nor bring peace In a stomach upset with understanding. Our body is too full of understanding In the snake-folds of a sleeping hose Nestled safely in an almond-like case. The crank case breaks with winter frost But only when understanding vanishes Through the chinks in its woven plates. When our understanding vanishes we stare, In eyes of nothing, at the nothing of wall. We will then teeter on the edge of thought. Your words will then sound as soft poetry Like a breeze in our understanding tree Meaningless but high art in its bleakness. Their syllables will drop softly in our minds Like the midnight breeze in the pipal tree. We shall then hear you entirely by your lips And make poetry words directly from them.

191

Women in the morning (2011-03-23 00:58)

On the road before their houses are women In turquoise and blue, their heads and back Bent with earth- sweeping and water sprinkling The way elephants do in the morning forest. Their mothers-in-law had done it in their time. Like them the earth smelled of their bodies. And the children wait for school in uniforms For yellow buses to stop before wet patches Careful not to tread on rice powder designs Their mothers had made on their wet patches. Their designs are pretty but highly transient Only to be eaten by sparrows of the morning. The sparrows have become heavy in stomachs Of rice powder eating from beauty designs. But the sparrows are now not there in mirrors. In the afternoons they were pecking in mirrors At their sworn enemies in the mirrors of women When they combed oiled plaits for the evening. The birds have perhaps gone of morning sickness Or of far too many cell phone calls in their air. The women love their afternoon gossip ,you see. Luckily mothers-in-law are now gone for good, Like sparrows that have gone from the mirrors.

192

Sunset (2011-03-24 00:36)

Sunset comes hastily before volumes of trafc In the road of you-and-me st- ghts of chaos Where we ght pitched night battles in a war Such as in the confused Peloppenesian war . In the car the chilly fellow is hot on lm heroes In scraps of badly accented radio gags like ones The driver man will enjoy and you sure say no. Our drivers have eclectic tastes in lm music Where everyone seems to ow as if yesterday. This sun comes in their eyes like a dust particle. The driver makes noises from his nose to the road. His mobile phone rings to come home before sun. My monument must already be in its russet hues. But many cars and trafc policemen are in between. My sun has already sunk to the depths of belly.

193

Push (2011-03-25 00:05)

A little push is all we can think about. A little shove, friend, is all that is needed To push the leaky boat into blue waters. So a decrepit eighty year old poet says, In the margins, nicely to the night sky His pale moon remembering all night. The boat is on anchor in house balcony Having come adrift in the last seasons sea. The trees shadows love it in the balcony. The timbers are still there in sea-cracks With the wood scent of the forest intact. Their chambers have nice wooden planks That will make warm embers this winter. (Taking off on At Eighty by Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) , the Scottish poet whose boat got the push in the last season)

194

Synopsis (2011-03-26 03:18)

A running commentary examines my life In thread and bare, while it is going on live Within me, in this business of life, with none From outside peering in my curious window, So I have the satisfaction of an examined life. I am living my life entirely real-time, you see. I do not like visitors to look in the peep-hole When I am knitting eye-brows humorously Examining my life by extended commentary. Right now I fear others not worrying about me While I am grey in chair and crumpled sheets. I worry about paucity of metaphors for the day, As I think of others not peering in my window. I worry about the synopsis, my examined life.

195

The y (2011-03-27 00:35)

We do not know it when we lie dead in the grass As the spring breeze would gently play with our hair. Others do not know that they are dead from us Though they are alive, up and about on their feet. The y on our owers is perhaps alive on us too When it would buzz about us as if we are alive When our ears are now bright yellow marigolds. The y is blissfully unaware that it is dead from us.

196

Fear of ying (2011-03-28 03:33)

My ights must go on uninterrupted Past the white clouds and air pockets When the pilot announces turbulence. I make my worship of planet Saturn With a ring of blazing re in the sky. Back home, I worship the Saturn god In oil and owers, turmeric and milk. On the land my ights crash on houses But there is a near-chance they crash On slithering snakes of the deep forest. They can crash on real ying sky-birds Though it is too much of a coincidence. I make that happen when I choose to. It is my dream; I can make it realistic. My dreams are stories made in the pillow. They are made of bile, acid and belly-fear I have got them from her belly and his skull.

197

Dissolving (2011-03-29 00:27)

I look at the possibility seminally present In the current decay and body to dissolve Like an electric light-bulb that disappears In the bright sunlight as the day breaks. My bodys light shall dissolve in moments Into the general daylight of a sunny day And as the day burns I shall slowly dissolve With the pain of lights merger into light. You know the merger of light in the dark Is easy on our body and feels like a breeze But the merger of light in light feels like Getting back into the claustrophobic space From where we had all emerged years ago. We had come there from nothing and will Dissolve in the space of nothing from there.

198

Edit (2011-03-30 00:25)

This here picture I have produced In a visual of an early morning light When pain needed balm in the back Of nerve-ends tautness of the night And editing blues of much saturation. You and I were trying to edit detail Emotion that cut thinking at its back. The morning needlessly brought poetry. Poetry once produced cannot be edited Because it is there in your front lobe. But I cannot seem to edit all that detail From this night of life when it occurred. I cannot edit the colour of my dreams Nor change the depth of eld in them. My picture seems shorn of all depth As I am caught shing in the sh-eye. I want to know who is editing all this Before morning hand of night vision It is the time of happen, the horoscope The blazing Saturn planet that ruled life And many unexpected things happened In the belly at most hours in the day. It is in the belly again that it happened Of tiny cells that grew without permission In a splurge of the body, behind the back And an inside has to go of a bag of beings. Twenty ve times blue rays have to touch As if it is the morning sun on the patio. I cannot seem to edit the noise in the belly The fears rising in the depths of its blues The little blue powder, its magnicent rays.

199

The argument (2011-03-31 02:23)

The argument here seemed interminable. The blue hills were a mere haze in the trees, I mean each of them, the hills, and the trees Crow-caws at dawn, train-sounds from afar The wakeup song of God in early morning. A mere kitsch of a song will not release us From the tyranny of this gridlocked mind, The sport in the gallery, the dark glasses On pretty noses, bare shoulders against red A gaggle of crazy market men wild with joy At the pantomimes of other peoples play Giant projectors with phantoms of players Coming from the worlds end with red balls As if they run you run, and when they squirm In their pants, in your living rooms corner You squirm in your hot pants, red and dead. It is this thought, under our felt caps, fresh From the warm sunshine of other peoples time. The argument goes on endlessly in lled halls In play-grounds like a salivary thread owing From the silky spider-work in our home corners. In our argument we conquer the world in cup.

200

2.4

April

201

Alone (2011-04-01 00:19)

We went into the deep mountains alone Her gathered body luminous in absence , Clever words spoke invoking her presence Shutting off being alone under the eyes. We went into the deep mountains alone From the bags, the bags, where they live Where power of vacuum comes and goes During the day in electric lights burning In the day light when there is nothing to See by the light that falls on them, bounces Except off their bodies, their eyes of bags. It is their power game, of studied inanity Of bodies seated in cane chairs in shadows. We went into the deep mountains alone In tiger skin and ripples of water in a pot And a crooked wood stick on which to rest A sweaty armpit of eyes closed in bags. We have some words turning to ashes, Chants addressed to beings in the upper. We went into the deep mountains alone again In a canvas of splashed rainbows, rain and wind Oils and acrylics, poetry and images, ne music. And we open the eye-bag in sleeps early hour Our eyes are vacant; our bags are full of wind Our minds are occupied with body-thoughts.

202

Flesh (2011-04-02 00:41)

I quickly saved the word, this esh Which is a mere word turned to ashes Ashes in a brown clay-pot emptied Into a green river of sunrise boatmen And yellow marigold owers oating On the waters with oil lamps ickering Of the esh that turned ashes recently, The esh which gave rise to the esh That writes this esh poem in the wood. The wood there was esh of the tree When it turned leaess and bird-less It did not turn to ashes in the clay-pot But stood in the air and on the earth As if its esh would not turn to ashes Because there was no clay-pot for it. But I saved the word, this wood-esh So it would be a word turned to ashes.

203

Dying a little (2011-04-03 00:22)

At times we need the power to die a little When awareness of pain begins to throb In our nether world, in the tangled skein Of inside with no possibility of tiny pellets That could be drowned to the nerve-ends Which will bring their busy ticking to stop Whitely and in quiet water dissipation. But just enough dying that will willingly die A little later when the blue and the sky-birds Will return in beauty- plumes, to green of trees. Just enough dying to watch others comically Going about their lifes business under the sky In owing robes and we are but an audience Who will have a nice story to tell back home.

204

The little God of ute (2011-04-03 23:59)

This little God of ute, ours, stood there Waiting on the hill for us in orange sun A middleman had kept him there locked And it was when the sun decided to set He had set him free for us to eye-contact And listen in our eyes to his bamboo ute Of ne music played in dancing ngers As he plays it on the banks of the river When a primordial girl-friend closed eyes In moonlit rapture, as the moon up there Swept across the ripples of the night river. The hill was where the cows chewed their Soft rapturous cud under, the hill of cows As the ute played in softly closed cow-eyes And the milk owed from their udders softly. Then the little God lifted the hill on nger So the cows can safely chew their soft cud Safe from raining gods of thunder- lightning. The little God of ute played exquisite ute Behind our eye-lids as our little son with eyes That never grew to the man of world in pants And no chit of a girl took him away from us.

205

Understanding (2011-04-05 00:05)

Understanding begins with gorgeous stalactite caves With water and mineral dripping to turn pearl-drops On the walls of the earths cavernous womb, home to Ancestors stories of blue spirits and no -longer fathers. That was where we understood the vast promontory Of luminous dots sewed on the dark cloth of wonder. Understanding goes on when we become silly enough To go after each others throats for a piece of brown mud Descending from tall mountains in men and elephants, As if we could pluck a few ickering dots from the cloth And store them in our pockets near our beating hearts. Understanding goes on as one morning our lovely mother Does not get up to make our morning coffee and strangely Her eyes remain xed at the shining dots on the dark cloth. Understanding ends as the shining dots of the dark cloth No more icker in our skull-bones, but are broken and ying On the windy river bed, some miles away from the blue hills.

206

Presumptuous (2011-04-06 00:42)

When we took birth we were being presumptuous That was what one would think of occupying all space Kicking about, when inside, as though we owned it A brash brat with feet in the air , gurgles in the mouth Waiting for the air to explode them before strangers. We behaved with strangers as if they were expected To be at beck and call, cleaning our mess, our drool. We took perfect strangers as vassals to do our bidding , Our annoyance simply expressed in puckered up faces Clenched ngers, feet that kicked against the night air. We overcame helplessness by being presumptuous. Now again we are helpless in the feet and we kick them Against the night air and clench ngers in annoyance. Our sounds of annoyance strike the concrete roof slab Only to rebound as echoes like the night owls shrieks. There are now no strangers to clean our mess and listen To our meaningless prattle in the empty halls of echoes When we cry helpless tears we are merely presumptuous.

207

Gaps (2011-04-06 23:59)

The train fellow says mind your gaps, As we pass them between concrete slabs And blurred bits of blue sky whizzing past Like a gust of wind in autumn leaves. A strapping youth did not mind them In the trains night outside the cubicle. The gaps were in his total understanding And in the heady liquid in a coke bottle. Let the auntie pass, says he, at the door And as the auntie passes down he goes. I try to close gaps, of rusty door-jambs The gaps in doors are letting in cold air When I sleep in the train berth with feet Pulled in the blanket against the cold air, Cold like feet wrapped in a white sheet That moved by the swing of the stretcher. Yes, there are gaps in my understanding.

208

Melancholy (2011-04-08 00:56)

My card today being of melancholy I think promptly of the coffee woman, Who sorceress-like, says in numerals, Missing the frothy alpha in her coffee Seventy-thirty? asks she numerously To weigh fragrant coffee that will not Drive away her melancholy, but merely Will further her existence on the earth. Please do not mess with this my life, My bile is black, humors Elizabethan. I have gained immunity to happiness. No sons of ying larks in the blue sky Will ever make me bright and chirpy. God is there in heavens to send down Our just desserts for our manifold sins. Madame Sosostris of Eliot had a bad cold Nevertheless, the wisest woman on the earth. Her tarot card for today is yellow melancholy The dark coffee woman had no cold in nose But is the wisest woman this side of the lake. Her coffee is good for my souls melancholy When the sky is beset with needless clouds And the sun will emerge only late in the noon Making us wait in belly-hunger for our lunch. We cannot have our lunch without our sun But can have two-three sips of brown coffee To keep us in our melancholy, on stomachs. As I turned back from her shop towards home I re-visited her eyes, now no pools of sadness They had a hint of sarcasm, in coffee thoughts, Laughter at the sadness in my worn-out eyes That looked at the future in a near time-frame While her birds are gaily chirping in the sky.

209

Sleep (2011-04-09 02:00)

We daily live to die in the dark night Our death takes place under the hair When the wind ceases in the window And the eye-lids close softly in place. We live daily from moment to moment. Each moment dies like an orange sunset Elaborate and behind a grey building. Sometimes when the air-conditioner Does not hum, we hear events of ants Living in their holes in old monuments. They are busy living their lives in lines Like the tsunami-hit Japanese in lines To see near ones dead in their sheets. They live their deaths in white sheets And in the grey wrinkles of their old. Here we begin our moments afresh Like the ants bearing fresh foodstuff On their backs fty times their weight. Our moments weigh us down in the day So we die a little at night like the sun. In between we put down our stuff briey To catch our breaths for onward journey. We live our moments in hopes of death To come in the night when we no longer Put it down briey to catch our breaths. In the night we have no breaths to catch.

210

Clichs (2011-04-10 02:25)

We have always had a mortal fear of clichs In our continuing lives and others deaths So and so is dead sounded at and prosaic. Lately death is turning into a well-worn clich Even when we make it highly lyrical at night And really passionate in intensity of funeral. Funerals are intense affairs, in hot weather. Somber expressions only hide belly feelings. In April and May, an abundance of clichs Strikes like ies in monsoon on street garbage. They dene our degradation in esh so well Like ies sitting on that rotting babys face In the Pak ood pictures of last years news. Come to think of it, we love our little clichs Privately, as we look into the eyes of our dead. Their feet are bound together in a white sheet To enable them to nicely tide over lifes clichs. A swab in nose shuts off all clichd memories.

211

Mortality (2011-04-11 00:16)

We had looked for telltale marks in the wee hours And earlier, when the moon had stood in the hills They had been there much against inner wishes In our journey up in the hills, in its icy narratives. The narratives went on in the front of the car Of white ghosts resurrected from time to time In the icy wastes of time that opened before us Endless possibilities beyond the pale of snow. Then quickly everything came to a frozen silence And nothing mattered, only to hold our icy breath And wait for our moments to trickle like icicles. Our mortality cried behind the moon on the ice. We stopped to look for signs that did not appear They had not been there, much against our wishes. Our narratives held no brief for lack of substance Our ghosts were men of bodies, no specters in snow. Our narratives have turned snow-ghosts in the hills They would always shriek from the front of our car From an icy absence that cried out to our existence. Its words are ashes, its narratives powdered ice.

212

Stars (2011-04-12 00:14)

The stars are tired and are serenely twinkling In the night air, as the breeze has already gone. Of course they twinkle regardless of sky-clouds. Beyond them, our astral thoughts are clouded. On the rivers brown mud we see some of them Lying broken and shattered among the reeds Tired of too much of thinking in the dark sky. Our kids at times turn stars when deeply offended On the paternal laps of kings when step-queens try To eject them from paternal laps for their own sons.* These stars decide in their twinkles, our promotions Our foreign travel, enemies troubles, our sons jobs. Men in pigtails speak to them in Sanskrit to intercede On our behalf, to ward off troubles for us from the sky. When dead we become stars, crowding the sky-place With those before us, dead of weak hearts and sugar. There are so many of them, these our blood relatives, Just like in the Christian graveyards of colonial times. The writings on them are faded though epigraphical. Years of rain-moss has made them undecipherable. (*In mythology Dhruva ,the prince is ill-treated by his step-mother and is denied his fathers affections and as a result of his devotion to God he becomes the pole star eternally twinkling in the sky)

213

Men and the city (2011-04-13 02:01)

Our city astonishes by its love of water and mud. If there is too much silt in drains we use machines But only men if it is not too deep under the earth We love drains because we have no space for men On the earths surface or in the swift rivers of water When it ows in monsoon over pot-holed roads And sidewalks, fallen umbrellas, open manholes. They make such ne swirls in the rivers on roads. The men come because their land refuses to budge. The rain-clouds refuse to yield water from their hills. Greedy men of dark mustaches have taken their lands Over glasses of buttermilk made from well-fed buffaloes. They are now hung precariously on bamboo scaffolds. They glisten with drops of sweat on their dark bodies. Their women knead breads in canvas tents on the road. We build our city on the mangled remains of hills. Our lakes are the wet dreams of pot-bellied realtors. We now make ne holes in sky-space for our people So they can dry clothes in balconies high in the sky And they will utter like colorful ags in the wind.

214

Our words (2011-04-14 02:00)

Our words are very pretty, in their aura and sheen. In our cumulated arrears of time we become heroes Of almost done it, but not quite, as our re crackles But for the smoke that goes up silently over treetops In swirls against the increasing beat of the tom-tom. Our grandfathers ate two liters of claried butter And walked to the snow hills to meet a phallus God. They dug up their tomato patches in the back garden With spades in dull thuds that echoed on a clear sky On our childrens lazy afternoons of half closed eyes. They now look down in their moustaches from walls. We imagine our sons doing it, success largely in words. Their words are of boardroom success, of tall achievers. Their word graphs rise, in arrows that pierce the ceiling. They make their wealth in the grandiloquence of words Mostly derivative, nothing that makes things physical. We have moved away from words to these airy nothings. Our words are the nightly afrmations of our existence. As our words speak about the utter futility of all words They deny our existence holding us captive in their irony.

215

Memory (2011-04-15 00:36)

We guessed her memory had failed at night. She walked crying in pain into the dark night And green waters in a primeval forest, in ponds Surrounded by trees in circles, their shadows Wet with muddy waters sullied by crocodiles. Her head trembled with scraps of memories, Her memory was now a hole, a bottomless pit A crater which had only recently been mapped. The memory now had its otsam of Lewy bodies* Tiny protein particles that oated in dark blood. It was like then, years ago when she had come Into the new world and oated like a lazy tadpole In another primeval forest with crocodile ponds And memory had begun to tremble in the waters. Her memory is now a hole in the dark night A handful of ashes in a rivers owing memory. (* The onset of dementia of Lewy bodies is characterized by a rapid loss of memory and motor functions)

216

Cracks (2011-04-15 22:55)

In the white of my roof thin cracks have appeared Where the sun beat down on lack of tree shadows As the monsoon took time to come over the hills. There are black plastic tanks that responded gaily With glistening in the bright glare, their shadows Reecting their passion only in passing and slightly. The solar panels pulsated to their lord and master Sending down hot water in the veins of the house. The gul mohar developed cracks on its aged bark While its owers were live coals in the summer sky And they spread their red ashes on our white roof. In the evening the sky developed cracks in the east. We expected wind from the hills to feel in our bones But there were too many cracks in the parched hills; The clouds, already in tatters, zzled down by dusk.

217

Wanderings (2011-04-17 02:30)

I now let the mind wander, with the camera, In the fog-laden hillside, on to higher slopes. The noon trees are covering our eyes mostly. The sky is in the other- world of beyond- trees. My mind is in the essence of body, light in lens A curious mixture of old stone and early sun. It is in its endless seeing, in its streaks of light.

218

Making literature (2011-04-18 00:39)

We have made our life and now we have chosen To make literature in these small hours of day When the sun is still in the other sky of time. Luckily our windows are still banging the wind And small sounds of airbrushes move in cavities Making the hours small and somewhat surreal. Our literature is high sounding window-bangs In the summer wind that has come in the singing Of poet-laureate cuckoos on owering mangoes Dropping little hillocks of information in surprise. It is the music that ows in swiftly moving dots. Girls come into our literature in little air-spaces. Their pig-tails jostle with shadows on their backs But the tragi-comedies played out in their cheeks Touch more like cancers in lonely white hospitals When they will be stately women of grown up men. Since we have made our life we make our literature In its morning shadows, when they are the longest.

219

Scheme (2011-04-21 15:37)

We came in eye contact with God on the hills In clouds, as they whitely touched their anks. We imagined a time frame of ve- six years As a part of Gods scheme, for our existence On a graph tree on the celestial computer. We found it hard, a little breathless to think Of a longer time frame, as in younger days. We saw the crows, one two or three, on tree That always recalled rice balls on back wall To be fed in their memory to our ancient dead. It was their back in tree that brought death To the fore, even in fog-laden morning parks Where women still remember life and birth In undertones of textiles, in silky whispers. Their mother-softness and milky-white love Began the scheme years ago in their bellies . The crows somehow seemed to have a say In the whole scheme, towards its close-end.

220

Absence (2011-04-22 02:09)

Our likely absence was lately felt in us; It did not extend to other objects in sight. They did not feel their own likely absence But only their presence when the pea-cock At times cried out breaking the jungle sky As it raised its busy pecking head of crown From the invisible worms in the dry grass. The peacock has not felt its likely absence But is likely to get over its presence soon. The temple blares out its songs in its sky. We have not felt our presence in its songs. Its songs will go on in the sky regardless. It will not feel its presence or my absence When I am likely to get over my presence.

221

Womens secrets (2011-04-22 22:48)

If you want their secrets to be ferreted out Seek the roots of the tree and its anthill From where tired cobras will emerge on The annual day of the snakes to drink Milk poured from our womens shiny Steel vessels decorated with vermilion. Our own secrets are our womens snakes Hid under the shadows of their tired eyes. They come out for a brief while to drink Milk to loud recracker accompaniment By boisterous children minus their men. Actually these snakes do not drink milk Nor do they live in ant-hills of tree-roots. They live in our women in knots of beliefs Possessing minds like snake goddesses. Their bodies sway like the pipal in summer That shines in bright vermillion worship Its spiked leaves hissing like small snakes. Their secrets come out open in male-dreams As libidinous snakes that at once surprise us When we look under our pillows at night. But mostly they remain buried in ant-hills Those are no longer homes to cobra-snakes.

222

Abolishing the language of poetry (2011-04-22 23:18)

We want to abolish the language of poetry As it has reached perfection like a body That has already reached its adulthood On the evolutionary scale, ceasing to grow. Our poetry shall now be without language In a body that has mastered sorrow end to end That way we shall abolish language and sorrow That knocks against the walls of the body. Our poetry is tightly contained in the body. Like the body it shall die abolishing itself Just like the sorrow that bursts from bodies And overows in hospitals only to diffuse In the general din of a wailing humanity.

223

Sentence (2011-04-23 22:57)

Your sentence has to begin somewhere In the midnight darkness, always anew, Fresh from awakened sleep of bleary eyes. You do not have to break it in parenthesis To make it continuously true to meaning. Meaning accrues at the pit-head in shovels As thought mines meaning from old words With hidden meanings of another midnight, Of an old earth, before the sound of words.

224

The res (2011-04-25 00:21)

We still have res raging in our blood. We want to be on the edge of the world, Just to lean and look into its dizzy abyss, With our ancient blood racing against time Amid goose-bumps on belows of arms. We are in the middle of the country On the brown earth with broad trees That skirt our periphery of eye-vision And we feel impelled towards the edge Where there is no earth under our feet, Not even a sky, arching protectively. It is the re that impels us on, burning On the edge, its tongues visibly rising On the periphery, where our eyes end.

225

Attention (2011-04-25 23:32)

She wants attention like the night cricket In the thorny bush ,that pierces your silence But not because she has seen you passing by In the sunset hills, with the mountain breeze. She just needs attention to her living That she is not stone beside the mud track But a night creature with wind in her lungs. She is merely shouting from her existence.

226

Ordering a chaotic world (2011-04-27 00:30)

Now when the world will be no more She looks to order its chaos ever more As if she wants to collect tiny bits of it Lying about loosely in the morning sun And place them on cloth to make sense. Her commonsense is unordered jumble Of childhood images , unrealized dreams Of men and being wife to them strangely In nights of fantasy of undead husbands. And yet when they are dead in the clinic One would go hungry to resurrect them Only to joke with them like other wives Who still have their husbands in the hall. It is the men who are the necessary evil , Husbands one needed for the dark night. There has got to be something wrong In overwhelming lack of symmetry here With the clouds in rags that cannot be Stitched back into viable rain-clouds. The rooms are no longer square in shape But of polygonal shapes of changing walls Their newspapers protrude in our space With loose lettered papers going beyond The shadows of static furniture in shapes , Their stasis uncomfortable to her oating. Now when the world will be no more She has ordering to do with its morals Strange women who are bound to err In their feminine judgments, in men Who back them up against other women Who had brought them into the world In conspiracy with dark brooding men In the depths of the night that the owl Hoots for the umpteenth time in wisdom. Now when the world will be no more A piece of cloth will burn away from body Near the wall, a mere paper announcing Nothing ,nothing is responsible for her re, Just a few old women who merely laugh at Her futile attempts to obliterate existence, The re and water that do not care for her Whether she existed or not in these rooms.

227

Struggle (2011-04-27 23:46)

The struggle now goes on, inside of her With people, forces of nature, mind pitted Against an old body that rages in pallid fury. Food comes out as water in running car As we drive to people for reluctant homes. The struggle is against people who will Not cede ground for her in their space. Not well in the body, yet she struggles Like a desperate bear in the forest hole In a net of latticed shadows in the hole As it closes around her body with people Watching from the rim of the earth-hole. The struggle will go on till the desert-show Is nally over under the star-lit theater And men will get up and go to their homes With a few memories for night-dreams.

228

The systems (2011-04-29 00:18)

We cannot at all change the system, said The systems manager of our procedures. You had come here then in the wee hours In swaddle cloths of smelly piss and drool Much earlier, there was this rubber hose That stretched to the sky, to its ying birds, To man dealing with a shadow in the night In purely visceral system of blood and uid. There was in fact no love, only a system Of tight-screw effect owing from cause When she would become big with stomach In a midnight moment of coalescing bodies. You kicked tiny feet against its rubber walls. It was a system that you could not change. Later you thought you knew the system A matter of procedures where it happened. Then you were here, your lungs full of wind Your eyes lled with thin colored dreams. At times you wanted to change the system, To make all that happen as in baby-dreams. Your dreams were insubstantial snow-akes Of last winter season, that vanished in thin air, When your clenched baby-sts loosened grip And now you are no longer around to monitor If the systems are in place and working well.

229

People are meant to die (2011-04-29 23:39)

People are meant to die and why not, Duly unclothed and infused with cold air The air is full of music of a spring breeze That touches you as it softly sings lullaby Into your nonexistence and the birds cry And giant army vans carry your earth away On their backs, to remove your existence. People are meant to die and why not, Stripped of your voice in the power box When the squeak of your throat vanishes While lips continue to move and tremble As if you are mildly playing a pantomime Where lips shall tremble without words. People are meant to die and why not Your groaning bark bears the rings of time It is time they decided your age by them, And by birds that no longer live in you. That way we will crystallize your existence So you will be a ne story on moving lips.

230

2.5

May

231

Interrogate and discover (2011-05-01 00:42)

You must interrogate and discover thoughts Because on other days your mind is sleeping With thoughts under its sleep, in quiescence. Let poetry take your little nger in the woods Through the gyrating shadows of ancient trees On mud tracks of footprints and cartwheels. Interrogate and discover is one such footprint In the wooded depths of your poetrys history. Ask searchingly and historys mind must confess. It is so full of words that lead you to sand-dunes That have strange history-words buried in them Belonging to lives that were either sad or funny.

232

Dementia (2011-05-02 00:45)

When you merely squat there on the oor You cannot sleep on the high bed restfully In decent and wearable social clothes like Visitors could, in eyes, bear for company. In the eyes, your own, it matters little If the visitors wear clothes and you do not Because you are really going somewhere And the visitors will still be around when You are gone and lying, with eyes closed With tiny bits of the blue sky behind them. Their eyes may not blink and may not close In utter disbelief or may still be laughing With laugh-lines around their tired eyes, Like the tires around their stomachs shaking In absurd jiggles that have you in splits Inside your mind-laughter center, where Laughter takes place secretly in whispers. When lonely women do not stoop to pick up The shreds of their dignity lying on the oor They laugh in muted whispers barely audible From their within-laughter centre that sound Almost like crying in the middle of the night.

233

Moribund (2011-05-03 00:58)

Our gures mostly speak for themselves And soft white milestones seem to stay Where they are, with small black gures That are easily erasable, their old trees Being overhanging canopies, their shadows Remaining immobile on the windshield. The trees have their time-rings about them A few concentric circles that have forgotten Their centers, and their sap slowly emerges Floats towards the sky and vanishes there. Here the wind is still and not a leaf stirs. And not a leaf stirs without his ordaining. The process of ordaining is a big thought And big thoughts remain where they are In your time and in other peoples space. There is nobody, nobody here to ordain You know our ofcials are busy attending to Other more important ofcial businesses Notably royal weddings in the city streets On horse-drawn carriages with red-robed People pufng their cheeks with ne music. The barber asks looking at your time-rings How many rings do you have, sir, as he cuts, One two or three, and may be many more Many more years to your bark, many rings Like golden girdles around your fat stomach Actually the rings disappeared long ago, now Only a hard crust, home to the wood-pecker.

234

Anticipation (2011-05-04 00:49)

By evening the dust settles down on the road And the wet paint fresh on the walls has dried. A recent cinema poster stuck on them is still Sticking on the lime akes of the old city wall. The woman in it sits contemplating her navel. A scruffy dog looks for suitable pissing place. The lamppost is till some yards away, just near The ying polythene paper that has opened up Communication lines with a child of the wind. The evening clouds are yet to move to the west Away from the unnished building full of men Making gestures towards the sky meaningfully. Rain will no doubt come to splatter on our roof And slither like water snakes on its corrugations. Their drops will fall on the settled dust of the day Their alchemy will work wonders on the morose Boys sitting in windows with their paper boats That will be left in the swift street rivers to ow To other boys down the street waiting for them. There shall be snakes of rain between our houses. Our crows shall shake their feathers off the white Bodies under them and wait for the rain to stop. Your crows shall look across sheets of fuzzy rain At the outlines of their friends visible on our roof Wondering when the wet trees will stop shaking To let them have their usual evening get-together.

235

White (2011-05-05 00:32)

It seems we are always in a hurry to write Just because there is a white staring at us And we want to devour a few pieces of white In the slowly zzling black of a grey morning That is yet to begin formally in the depths Of a cuckoos throat and little golden girls. Yesterday we saw a white in the under-skin Of a crow drenched in rain in a shaking tree. We write because we are always in a hurry To ll black things in the vast white void That come slowly crawling from somewhere From the depths of a dark mind of the night. It is right now white, the color of all our colors That comes creeping from behind the window Its white newly stolen from the gold of the east As morning God-songs come in from the hills That have only recently lost their black robes.

236

Counter-point (2011-05-06 00:21)

There is this counterpoint to boy-girl love It is love for God for the singer of melodies The devout weaver-singer of the river bank. Do not be adamant that you will go away. In the folds of his medieval melody is death. A bodiless God who is just a contra-point Sits there with an elephant- head presiding Our fortunes without the rest of the body. Beside him is a God in body that had died. But my God does not die except in parts. If you cannot concentrate on formlessness Concentrate dead Gods sitting with beards. It is they who will explain why that woman Has to pretend illness in limbs to stay alive Why her lifes melody has failed to take off In the struggle of words as they surge in body Bound in saline tubes and oxygen masks That keep her body still but her mind ying To weave fresh stories to keep melody alive.

237

Sanchi (2011-05-07 00:12)

This is the time of the fallen leaf of our time To turn over a new leaf, when there are only Sharp needles of tree-stems, their bare arms Supplicating to the sky to utter camera delight. Beyond the undulating hills a fallen leaessness Pervades a monk-less silence, perfect in sky, An ancient absence of silently scurrying monks Of ochre robes in pursuit of white Buddha-peace. Buddha sits there, broken in piece, his eyes Fixed at the gnarled tree-back bursting with Brown skin eruptions of painful knowledge. (At the ruins of the ancient Sanchi Buddhist monastery situated 60 kilometers from Bhopal)

238

Poetry without thinking (2011-05-07 23:35)

We begin it from beginnings, from a chaos Of darkness where you had not even once Suspected existences, all that imsy matter. In the dark night it would end up roundly And as the east reddens it would begin again And several beginnings form in amoeba like Existences and word-shapes of free volition Their false feet, like lies to be spoken in the day, Wiggle to make our existences daily poems. We write without thinking, do not even write. When we think, our writing stops at our lips.

239

Wind (2011-05-08 23:33)

The wind brought the dead leaves of a new autumn And duly rattled our windows, in gaps of their hinges Through which eerie old ghosts shriek at midnights. In the bare hills the wind seemed still in sunny shrubs But the ancient caves echoed with the manacled wind Of history, within walls that bore many marks of men Who had brought their wind from the parched plains. Migratory birds brought their wind from the far lands A sticky wind that slowly settled on our drying puddles As they made themselves comfortable in the new homes . Our old tree ,failing to sprout leaves, pretended to sway To the wind as if it still tickled its funny bones in the day And made scary whoosh sounds in its leaves at night.

240

The window (2011-05-09 23:54)

You open the window only to smell wet dew On brown ant-earth covering a decayed bark. You better let in a bit of air-conditioned wind So you have time to forget the dew on tree-rot The days shufing of feet, the smells of decay. You know she will not live long, now talking Of pumping of water in an unreal background To thriving banana trees near the well hanging With banana bunches with ripe yellow in them. I see ants creeping on her bark, on shufing feet. I see an unreal rot in the sky, a poets thought Where poetry rots in an unreal green of the sky. I see a large conspiracy of rot in sky and earth. Behind our backs tiny creatures of decay work At night to bring about our rot in small pellets Of brown earth completely covering our barks.

241

Misconstrual (2011-05-11 22:51)

We then deliberated to impose a meaning on our world Afraid there was a setback in the matter of perfection. Deliberated misconstrual should enable better meaning. But in the end all that remained words, much semantics. Spherical perfection is a needless appendage we carried Through our lives, to our lonely years and dark nights When the worn smell of age, face-scowls of cussedness Would make even our misconstrual bereft of meaning. Well, we have lived our empty years and got nothing for it Not even once could we put a construction on its meaning.

242

The parapet (2011-05-12 00:03)

The moon climbed the sky in shreds of white clouds. The coconut tree dealt softly with our parapet wall. We saw bunches of coconuts sitting heavily in its bosom. Water sloshed in their shells shaking in the gentle wind Like in a babys head we shook with our both hands With tongue-clucking in mouth for the water sound And as the baby gurgled, we laughed in waters of love. At night the moon was badly caught in its branches And for a while we thought it was devouring it slowly Until we would see it back in the sky with a silver ring That would mean monsoon clouds later in the night.

243

Temporary (2011-05-13 00:42)

What is temporary in time is but a swallowing Of a little chunk of time by a cavernous hole A crater-hole formed by the collision of eternity With our eshly existence, in itself a tiny hole Formed by a chance collision in inner space. We are temporary existences, tents in the desert Erected for the night before moving the next day Their spaces quickly eaten up by an endless desert. The spaces of our people have all been eaten up By the deserts of time, temporary space-times That have all vanished in space leaving no trace, Except a beer-can, a tooth-paste tube, a rag doll That would now exist in their temporary spaces Only to be swallowed by the desert in the night .

244

Suffering in poetry (2011-05-14 00:31)

When in poetry, we willingly embrace suffering As we do at home, in the music of the television soap Where bongo drums sound as if someone is dead And there is suffering in belly, in dry eye-whites. Poetry happens at mid- night, in a whir of the fan In a shred of white cloud, in a spiked leaf-end, Where it must fall before season, in eyelids closed And staring at the sky operating above the basement. Poetry has to celebrate suffering under the navel.

245

The tunnel (2011-05-16 06:50)

Disjointed images crawled, in the minds wanderings, Recalling roadside snacks eaten near an old monument When the light was at its best and lifes misty shadows. A tunnel took shape ,again and again ,in musty pages And in other thinned out memories of a short story Of a certain Maxim Gorky who saw what happened In life when they dug the earthy mountain from both Sides of the mountain and they had not yet come to meet In the bowels of the mountain to say hello to other. He that dug the mountain is dead, his yellow hand Now jutting out of the white snow, waving in the cold As if it has conquered the mountain in its deep heart. When you meet, come tell me on my grave, it had said. Such things happened in literature, a maxim of Gorky. Such things happen in life too due to a design mistake Come and tell me over my grave, says the poor engineer Who has been ned one rupee for the design mistake And he then dies of a one rupee shame on white face There is not even his tragedy, but poetry of the unreal A farce that will leave us terribly crimson, in late hours An absurdity that will make Maxim Gorky turn in grave. (Reference is to the short story Tunnel by Maxim Gorky and to an unrelated real life incident of an engineer named Barog in British India who had committed suicide out of the shame of a one-rupee ne imposed upon him when the tunnel designed by him near Shimla turned out to be a disaster with the diggings from both sides of the mountain not aligned with each other)

246

Voices of innocence (2011-05-16 23:37)

Their words are spurious but most of innocent power, Of silky-white voices from soft wet drooling mouths From the corners of lips, shadows of unsaid meaning. But shadows fall on voices to make beauty- rhythms Like morning birds bleary-eyed from nights tree-sleep And voices that gurgle, from repeated toothless laughter Voices that crawl effortlessly with no defeat of hurt And no scraping on knee-caps of oor-dust and sand Above all voices that imperially take others for granted Those others who exist merely to attend to their comfort And their annoyances shall quickly bring about redress.

247

Mirrors (2011-05-18 00:06)

Our eyes are our own long- standing mirrors. There we preen our feathers and see through our daze. But our history brings lugubrious tears to them. Our eye-line denes our being and plots our soul In the vast promontory of a luminous night sky. Our faces are but extensions of their soft wetness. Our eyelids have dramas unfolding behind them As if there is a world out there hid in a silver back.

248

Torpor (2011-05-18 00:16)

Torpor is what we all begin with on some days When the pain of thinking percolates in the body With not even blue blood dancing in the wrist As when you stare , behind white enveloping sheets , At others in their slowly enveloping whiteness.

249

History (2011-05-19 00:00)

At this point we are largely concerned with the history Of our unmaking, not of what unmade us but of what We have unmade, in lifes freedoms, follies and foibles Which is, of course, the same thing as a private record Of our unmaking, some reverse engineering of bodies And pattern readings of free minds stuck in mere bodies The way our stomachs grumbled to hide comedy of age And our temples throbbed to a little love and some folly To run away from an overwhelming blandness of reality, Truths that overwhelmed souls like brittle autumn leaves That came in thousands and buried them in their color. It is a history of hypotheses, of had we been this and this.

250

Highway (2011-05-19 23:15)

The black asphalt goes broke in the sky Amid gray trees that vanish in a dense fog. Tea steams in mud cups, near a shack; A few fry-oil smells assault hungry noses. Man sends leisurely smoke swirls in the air. Urchins swarm around acrid old tire res Their palms held up to warm to their heat. A rickety bus kicks up dust in the distance. Right, said the old conductor to his skin bag Full of new currency notes and ticket stubs. The cleaner-boy stood on the foot-board, His tattered shirt ying like a windy ag. A man motions to slow down near the village. The man speaks steam into the winter air Of stale village politics, of women at home Of crops failing to suck vapor from the air Of babies that are yellow- wealth goddesses. Giant trees disappear into the red earth. Their bodies are now and then sprawled Across the roads of progress, their leaves Easy food for the passing herds of goats That will give white milk in the villages And warm red esh to hungry stomachs In the afternoon the bare hills breathe re Their trees stolen by greedy contractors They now stand naked to the sun, exposed At night their thorny shrubs are set on re Leaving black stubble on their bleak faces. Giant trucks rumble on the potholed road With Tata and Okay on their painted behinds Their stomachs are pregnant with overloads Those with an evil eye shall have black faces As their drivers stop for a bath in the canal.

251

The clouds (2011-05-22 00:11)

We went on from being lazy, inert crocodiles To broken white clouds that moved in our minds Amid poetrys bird-calls in the morning window. It was poetry again we tried in nature and men As red anger could not be worked out in nature. You know we have become friends, by a chance, With fellow-creatures like busy red ants in a line. They have lived as easy as ever, with vulnerabilities And tiny helplessness they are not worried about. The sky-clouds are helpless , crazily driven in there Impelled to rain plains, beyond the red mountains. The plains exist there in their broken watery minds In the thoughtlessness of a few tatters in the blue.

252

The dreamer (2011-05-22 03:18)

We are dreaming of the dreamer Of whose dreams we are gments. When the dreamer opens eyes after, We vanish in fragments, snowakes Those that y about in lazy thoughts. Silk, owing garments fall smoothly To heavens music as broken clouds. The trees shadows are transient till noon. At noon they slowly vanish in the tree. They were the trees dreams at dawn. The boulder-hills ow into each other Their paths quickly vanish in bushes, At the end of the world, near the sun. They are the suns dreams at dawn.

253

The button rose (2011-05-22 22:40)

It is a moments rose Just a button in leaves In a hole of memory. A button rose in a hole. Button it up, will you. It rose in a stair-space Of shufing feet of time, An idea of button-smell Like a new cloth smell. Before it reaches God As incense not offered As oil-lamp not lighted Button it up, will you?

254

Power of attorney (2011-05-24 00:22)

His deed is black in the dark of a hotel suite His words are white and violated her body. Here is a white moneybag with power to hurl Khaki food packets from whirring helicopters To black bodies of hunger and y-ridden disease A white body with much power of greenbacks. What is the big deal, ask white countrymen A man-woman thing, the story of a lowly clerk Willingly submitting her body to a higher use? Black bodies can always be used by white ones As those bodies deem t, for white pleasure. Their forebears had taken a power of attorney That authorized all such uses of black bodies By white bodies at all times and in all climes. (The Chief of the IMF has been arrested on charges of assaulting a hotel maid)

255

Metal (2011-05-24 04:28)

Our lips pressed on the window bars smelled iron. We heard bells that rang and rang in the far temple In brass domes that had fevered tongues in them. Gods tasty food went behind the red silk curtains As camphor ames illumined His black granite body. Many strung owers went in a thread for His beauty. A pigtailed man sent words up and up to the sky In a canopy that had hideous demons on the side. Gods water smelled of shining copper and owers. His food tasted delicious, of jaggery and cardamom.

256

Doubts (2011-05-24 23:46)

On a clear walking day, a gentle breeze trailed us softly Like a scruffy dog that sniffed our pant-leg in the slums And took us for genuine friends all the way to our home. We would shut our doors on it , afraid in our deep lungs. We had doubts about its friendship under a winter sky For the wetness of feelings, its moist love for our bodies. But we had no doubts about the white anti-histamine pill We would surely take to secure our throats against its love.

257

Coherence (2011-05-25 23:57)

We soon realized we had to be coherent With what we spoke in the night air, Shining words dropped in the thicket, Fireies that ickered on hill bushes. Our words have to cohere with history Our bodies and of our gone ancestors. We have to think in essential assonance In nature of things, under a nothing- sky, Tiny insects that bore witness to our deeds Their hum of ligreed wings in night air Twigs that fell on our silence in the wood The birds that spoke on a dark morning In the grays of a golden dawn spawning. We are not singing. But to our thoughts There is a scheme, an unsought cadence To our actions, alliteration of beginnings In ve iambs of meters, some blank verse Wrapped in scintillating speech rhythms. .

258

Murmurs (2011-05-27 05:57)

Often we hear a crowds soft murmurs Like a wind that arrives in the pipal leaves Through the hills, from the sea down there. On some days, at midnight, they sound Like the howl of a midnight wolf at the moon Like a plaintive cry from an atavistic past.

259

Shame (2011-05-27 23:58)

In a coma of sleeping, of ticking life of death, You have your fantasies of two eventful days Cut off from the world, like unwanted pages. Between then and now are two forgettable days Neatly cut off from its sheaf, its bound volume Of eighty years of lifes pages, dog-eared of use. But when you nally give account of yourself You have to explain two stubs in the epilogue.

260

The bullocks geometry (2011-05-28 02:47)

The bullock looked up from its creaky grinding. If only the grind-stone were square, less round Or the hole were not a circle, but a straight line That remained open-ended till the yonder hills Or the stone would go on a tangent of the groove And trundle on the high road to the green hills Where such ne cud is waiting ,such cool shadows.

261

Caricatures (2011-05-29 00:23)

The caricatures in our mind are we that roll, Roly-poly creatures, eating other peoples food For our bloated forms, far removed from life. The child is not father of man that is not man But an aesthetic disjunct between life and art. A child is life, father art, beguiling and artful. Our larger than life bodies eat largely from Larger than ve-story steel carriage boxes. Our hideous mane waves yes-no when asked, A yo-yo, between seminal, unformed views. We have our quick-thinking survival games. We have to live after all in our larger tummy. We shall ask our child to caricature our forms. He alone understands the immensity of our lives. (After watching a Hindi movie entitled Stanley-ka-Dabba)

262

Overwhelmed (2011-05-29 23:48)

I am overwhelmed by a golden morning When it comes with the sounds of cattle, In the distance, of dust from angular hoofs Overwhelming mud-tracks up to the sky. The cattle are overwhelmed by their time By milk overowing from their red udders In thin jet-streams that will overwhelm us In our faces behind mornings hind legs. The eas overwhelm them in hind legs Of a tail that seems the end of the world. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by words That ow smoother than milk streams From a cows udders of a recent calving. In the white halls, when I leave the world, I shall be overwhelmed by its milky images Clothed in no words, only derelict thoughts.

263

The road (2011-05-31 00:58)

In the road lies being, my essence. The leafy banyans on both sides Dictate the timbre of my words Where they bristle at their edges, In their leaf-ends mired in blue. A miasma in body affects my time And eye-sight of mind, in its purity. Like the illusion in a amingo land Where a boat is tucked in the bottom Of an afternoon bog when amingos Yawn in the sleep of distant lands. At times a bearded traveler arrives With no sheep, only ancient drums. His sheep will not nibble at our leaves, As time hangs heavy in the blue sky. I take words out for their meaning, And for examining minds contents. The road for my journey has its end Hanging in the loose sky, remaining Wherever it is, with its feet bound And extremely mired in memory.

264

Lamps (2011-06-01 02:15)

When lamps are lit in oil and ame They ood our smells in early morning With Gods jasmines, sweet cardamom, In offerings of fruit and leaf to pictures. Gods are smiling pictures that smell Of camphor fragrances, of lamps dying To be re-born as our next mornings. Our Gods are kings of bow and arrow Their wives anking them in blouses. When we do not smell our lamps dying We die like camphor with ames gone.

266

Abject (2011-06-02 01:09)

At what level does one become abject; That is our question for a mere asking In polite gatherings of people, with kids Cluck-clucking when asked if they care For history, of race, of future mankind. You see it becomes real hot in the collar When the child asks what is there in it For us, if you guys who have brought it All about, the re-clouds of destruction. You play silly child-games in adult world Of child-like white innocence, yoga-games In ochre robes on indecent rolls of stomachs Shaking as though innocence is restored. All you say is mere air-words, double puns Quickly thought up in musical bathrooms As you come under the shower thinking. We are abject, below poverty line, the line Below the navel where it eminently adds up Our poverty line is a few statistics of bread And some fry-oil, in the tents of non-work.

267

Poverty for poets (2011-06-03 00:16)

Actually there was no poverty in the beginning. Later innocence had begun and started to grow To be a ery youth with soft-gured girls in mind. Girls then took shape in sinuous bodies, oating, In diaphanous silks, chiffon and yards of length. Their pink bodies rustled like bougainvillea in breeze. And poverty happened because they needed to store Stuff for tomorrow use, to tell girls what they own. Poverty becomes less glamour below the hem line For poetry when body-cloth barely covers the body And grubby hands poke eyes at the trafc junction And their nose runs in to the mouth uninhibitedly.

268

Television (2011-06-04 04:19)

Sleep ows softly with the sun, eyes half-shut With thin fragments of dreams under the lids. Weary- and bleary-eyed, I look at the solid world Of furniture wood and wall television for space For a release of wall space from concrete pillars Into the air like tiny birds apping their wings Of avian freedom and heavenward ascent in sun As their puny bodies rise against his golden glory.

269

Monologue (2011-06-04 22:43)

Monologue is a threat to sleeping innocence, A revival of lost innocence like the cruel April Breeding lilacs out of inherently dead land Re-mixing memory and love of pretty words. You threaten the world all the time in lips. The world cringes before their pouted words As if Mount Etna will explode in orange re And the expectant sky rumbles it right now. Little birds speak about it from night trees Their monologue remains a nocturnal wail. Monologue comes in white froth at the mouth When a frail body speaks black words of death From a deep sigh, a rounded end of the word.

270

Fish (2011-06-05 22:57)

In the sh spa you have your foot nicely eaten By schools of sh, in the blue aqua- transparency Of the tiny creatures swimming around your feet. For a change they eat you instead of you them. In the sh eyes your foot is the whole of a whale, A foodstuff of alive -stomach lling dead cells. They tickle your under-feet to make them laugh. You have a foretaste of the spa of the maggots.

271

Stones (2011-06-06 23:29)

We were surrounded by stones, in steep steps, And taken by surprise, in their sun hues and sky Climbing the sky like birds to the sun in clouds, White uffy clouds that came from somewhere From beyond the west hills, for just a days rain. Rain spoiled them, blurring outlines luxuriously To make them glisten like silks, nery of wedding. Bush and tree towered over them stiing their souls As they sat cowering in dread of their aliveness. We were two, me and shadow, against their many. Beyond the bush and re, a black- ash stubble Shone on stones covered in last years dry grass.

272

Home-sickness (2011-06-07 23:05)

Now, as we lean on the parapet in rain We become home-sick, way beyond the line Where the pipal tree meets the blue sky. The trees hushed whispers at midnight In windy rain will catch us in the stomach Like dad who once slept on the veranda With his night growls of half-remembered Wisps of dreams about his children playing On the memory wall of a winter sunset. We become home-sick of him of years ago.

273

Humor (2011-06-08 22:48)

We remained alive to humor possibilities As we gurgled toothlessly in the cloth cradle. Later when we would piss in our half-pants We felt wet and were rather pissed off at life Looking for dry answers to wet questions. But we learnt to look at non-existence of pants On others bottoms to have a booming laugh. Our humor was black like night, at night. At times we looked at a mental possibility Of separating real pants from wet bottoms For their dark potential for night humor. Now, back in diapers, we are wet in bottoms. Our humor is smelly, our jokes are not funny. Our words now come with tongues held in cheek, As our eyes go blank, brows grotesquely knit.

274

Sorrow (2011-06-09 14:21)

One tends to culture a veil of sorrow in body On a cloudy day, as one would, in sericulture, Where boiling cocoons are cultured painfully For drape as laments in weddings and regalia. Garbage bells here keep chiming in with sorrow On a trailer, to which watchmen from basements Add their sorrows, one by one ,in fetid garbage. The silk that comes out of it is soft and smooth, Happy to touch but smells awful to a deep nose. On a cloudy day mankind turns deliberately sad Under a mournful banyan, sitting cross-legged To avoid the much deeper sadness of ancestors Who stood on one leg in the hills for soul-freedom.

275

Strangers (2011-06-09 23:25)

I nd my strangers are perfect almost always When one would meet them on the road at dusk. They become perfect strangers, perfect in words Picture perfect in white shirt and student tie. As their words issue ,strangely they are perfect Like the stranger I saw yesterday assaulting My space with words about a certain college Its location on a road at right angles with mine. My words strangely collided with him in street. His words were strangely at perfect right angles With my old mans life which was in a rectangle Of a closed space of vegetables and evening rain. When I intersect their brief spaces on a busy road The text is always empty but the templates remain And they become perfect strangers to memory.

276

Walking (2011-06-11 04:03)

The waters walked slowly, from the red mountains Entering the parched plains, with wind on their backs. Their forked snake tongues proceeded smoothly, Exploring, gently patting short grasses on their heads And feeling for living creatures, their thingy existences Under the sky and on the earth, brown with the sun. The mountains bled with muddy water in their hearts And renewed the lives of our rivers for one more year.

277

The bearded painter (2011-06-11 14:58)

It seems his bird went away in the early hours. The Goddess he had made naked with his beard Quickly got up and went her way to her Creator, Leaving sophisticated critics with a memory hole And with nothing that they could stop to conquer. He is now laughing behind his enormous beard. He would no more paint all those pretty pictures In pastels for society women of perfumed leisure. But the hole he made in art-space is a lasting one As white in the dark night of oblivion as his beard. (A tribute to the memory of M.F.Hussain, Indias famous painter who recently passed away in London at 95)

278

Dance (2011-06-11 22:50)

She was her mom in fullness of dance A color complement to her in space In wind and rainbow hues like those One would imagine in grease-bubbles On a rainy evening at the gas station. Ephemeral are her steps that owed Exactly as daughters, viscerally owing, The same way as her moms, to faces As lines of rain slanting to our faces in Closed eyes and sticking-out tongues. Together they poked our innocent eyes In the middle of space where inertia rests Our hair owed upwards as if Shivas. (About the Kuchipudi dance performance of a mother-daughter pair ,Vijayanti and Prateeksha Kashi I had witnessed in Bhopal some time ago)

279

Hands (2011-06-13 00:17)

We dance with both hands and grab space rapaciously. At the same time we kick space sideways into the dust; Our hands are supple ngers with sound tales to tell And ne colors to mix on white surfaces of silk nish. With our ngers we claw our way into blue sky space. We love our earth-space, brown and oozing with love. We love our earth and we dig it up and make scars on it And whomever we love we destroy them in quiet hours. We love women with our hands clawing into their bodies. Our hands are ngers that make music from their bodies But our ngers tear up their bodies leaving scars on them. We make surreal paintings of their scars for art auctions.

280

Frames (2011-06-13 13:46)

My frame is ephemeral, just an illusory screen That existed for a mere eye-blink on the road Like a miasma that shimmered in afternoon, As I walked past with my eyes set on the road. The mountains there rose above human heads That talked in phones to other human heads, Heads of hair with things to do, trivial events, Politics that provoked the laughter of history Of humankind, in sheets of crackling leaves They made out of palm and bamboo of jungle, In movie- tales, smelling of money and power That bought the comfort of tomorrows love. My frame is ephemeral that brought it all together Into a single world, a coconut, its shimmering lake, And the shadows of mountains, boats overowing With men in tucked lungis that harvested hyacinth The silent paddle-sounds in a lagoon, smug birds That sat cool on wooden poles in murky waters A white girl who chased the whiteness of a rabbit. My frame is ephemeral that brought it all together The tree in the temple that arched over its pagoda In clouds that oated above the sun-gold of its top A shirtless man who hung in the sky to y His ag The amorous couple who made love on the stone The Gods of wood who looked with lidless eyes At various follies done in the dark of our souls. My frames are ephemeral, just fog-screens of beauty That zzled down between dreams and wakefulness.

281

Passages (2011-06-14 23:52)

I hear these passages in my waking moments Of clicking shoes, hands on banisters, shadows On innitely white walls stained with lizards That seemed to know me so well all the time The way they wave their heads up and down. I have my eyes to look up to a hole of hot sky. Some times the rain is very angry in the stairs Like the cat that purred under the dusty stairs Tensing for the roaches from the kitchen sink. Here I am and now taut with the sounds of fear From the falls of cockroaches that defy death Not the scary ghost-creaks of old house-doors But doors that are never there but mere holes Where the wind hisses angrily as in a hill bush. I dread these very passages and this very page.

282

My mother (2011-06-15 00:04)

I have now managed to x my mother in soft silks And brocades of years ago, that smelled of mothballs There was nothing else in me to slot her absence with In the recesses of my own history in the minds folds Except a pallid gure, in pieces of bones and ashes In a clay-pot in waters that came from the snow hills, Yellow marigolds and ckle ames oating on waters A clay-pot that had overturned to the bottom of a boat In a watery sound that came as if from my drowning. It was now the rustling silks of her wedding, a clarinet Of silky tunes that owed sweetly in jasmines and scents. These now prevailed in my thoughts of her long absence. It did not matter I had not been present in her wedding.

283

On the night of the lunar eclipse (2011-06-16 05:02)

You have two faces, city, like Janus One on either side of the rail track The incoming train divides you in two The rain-breeze soothing your sorrow. But the smells of morning milk packets And the buffaloes waiting to be milked On either face speak the same story. The citys sorrow began in the night When the moon hid in earths shadow For no fault of the moon or the sun But our own, of our own green earth In our midnight wakefulness to clouds After an evening of togetherness in meal Disturbed by a threatening wet rain.

284

Making sense (2011-06-17 00:19)

We try to stitch together desultory fragments Of what have happened, on the tongue of now And nd a common thread with what existed In the airy minds of then of us and those others As if there is salivary consistency about them, A continuum of space in their holding together Where time and space hold hands in bodies. We try to make sense out of our mere being, Out of the sound of words and their ceremonies, Symbols that hold race memories like crucibles. We try to build corridors in the spaces of time. We then destroy bodies to make sense of it all.

285

The horizon (2011-06-17 23:16)

The train passes in the station without stopping. Its hanging men in blue cloth are a mere blotch. The woman talking on cell phone is now horizon. The horizon that had shifted this side a while ago Is back to the wall behind train with cinema posters Of a hairy- chested actor lying sprawled on boobs Not his, of a buxom heroine of dreamy shut eyes. The train comes again and stands, emptying people. The horizon is now bursting with people in color Their dresses hang out as a rainbow of many hues. (Looking at the Begumpet Railway Station from my roof)

286

The ceremony (2011-06-18 22:56)

We all went into a tedious little ceremony Of lost innocence, in our rainbows of wisdom. A man issued his words that touched souls And softly spoken in the smells of turmeric And a faint fragrance of innocence and ame. His words owed from his soft liquid eyes As though he was child entering knowledge Wild-eyed and with tiny bits of the blue sky The earth having lost its contours in space Water and re emerging in a litany of words. It was a child who sat in his lap, with ngers In a bed of rice grains that lled stomachs As though it was food that fuelled wisdom. He wrote his rst letters as if in a secret code To the treasure-trove of burning treasures Searing to the eye, hot on the painted brow A certain secret gold thread on the little chest That qualied him for the arduous journey. He then gurgled rst letters, word and song. (The initiation ceremony of a childs rst learning in which the Goddess of learning bestows her blessings on the child before his long and arduous journey in education)

287

Snakes and planes (2011-06-20 01:46)

We dream of snakes that hold top gods in their coils And the ones they stand on in green ponds spewing re. We love them all in our eye- sleep and white daylight. Snakes and planes, coiling and ying, green and blue Happen in libidinous dreams, in wet life and dry death. Our bearded professor called them from our inside, The dark cave where they all arose in their angry hoods And the planes, all of them, y about houses helplessly In three sorties, looking at us from their window-holes Only to crash on our pitiful houses of mud and earth. Some times we catch our snakes by tails in the plane And whir them in the air in childish triumph of power And the planes will go away catching their breath again These incidents are few and far between in our sleep.

288

Ear pain (2011-06-20 14:11)

Ear pain comes out of too much thought When thought contradicts logic in a maze Of words that strike you as so many moths From the rain seeking light in your patio. The doctor of the ears sees too much in nose. His obiter dictum says the nose, in its septum, Is deviated from its straight, primrose path. He is a doctor with a sharp nose for money. So if you have too much ear pain in the drum The nose is corrected from running astray. The tooth doctor sees fault with the gums. He will try to get to the root of their canals And both your ears will be made to behave. Surely money lies at the root of the canals. Actually ear pain comes of too little thought And far too many words striking eardrums Fired, at once, in excess parental enthusiasm.

289

The metrical memoranda (2011-06-21 01:51)

In meter and music we make our many memoranda. Our language is orchestrated, as in the green houses Waiting to accumulate green air, as they quietly grow. Our language is after-thought, mere shadow of reality. In enclosed space we enact shadow-plays, on cave walls Like Platos prisoners in the cave, confusing shadows With their reality, to imbue souls with aimless vapor. Our memoranda, like our words, are airy pretty-nothings, Mere echoes like the cuckoo-calls that do not bring rain But just document the existence of the bird on the branch.

290

The grandmothers narratives (2011-06-21 16:48)

Sitting luxuriously on a string cot in the moon A lovely grandmother spoke her long narratives To the little ones at her feet, as a soft liquid night Touched their baby cheeks through many holes In the moonlight that fell on the coconuts head. The night bristled with unanswered questions But that will be for later and in the meantime The ghosts cannot wait in the washer-mans ghat That had clay pots seething with village laundry And the black stone on which he had beat clothes Was in fact a ghost by night, living in the palm . There were of course kings who had seven sons And all of them went hunting and brought back Seven wet shes that refused to dry in the sun A probe revealed the tiny red ant to be the culprit. The narratives went on till the night owls hoot. The herons settled down in the trees darkness But their wings uttered intermittently in sleep.

291

The girls song (2011-06-22 00:26)

Her song begins abruptly, being born and raised In a forest of words that has not seen the blue sky. Her lyrics are stewed in myth and grandmas tales Where sh remain to dry for ever and they are seven And seven of kings sons brought them hunting. It is all in an icy tingle of magic words, ice cubes Of music- notes on the soft downy back of a girl Slipping through the unreal magic of girl-thought And now she is slowly riding on your back with hair Flowing in an autumn wind of ripe fruitfulness. Her song trails off just like her girls abrupt body That has oated into the room in a bottomless dance Her feet vanishing into the mosaic oor in its mist Her bodys contours merging in the morning sun.

292

Room (2011-06-23 00:08)

(Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up ones ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite rmly fastened to the wall.Kafka) Everyone has a room he carries about him, within him Surveyed vigorously, some times, by a friendly night insect On its white wall, a tiny friend from an unfathomed night That makes wing noises of friendship in a proposed death On the wall, its carcass to be untraceable under our cot. We then carry our room with us, about us, into the balcony For a free fall from the heights of vertigo into darkness. Everyone has this room in him and he carries it about him. Its whirring electric fan noises keep him from actively dying In the pool of darkness, in the vastness of nights anonymity. We only die in others rooms, like the friendly night insect, That had come to die, in its immensity, on our white wall.

293

Tautologies (2011-06-23 23:55)

The world eludes, sleep to sleep, in the deep night. Cobra-snakes writhe and ying planes from the sky Come crashing on house-roofs, the logical consistency Of images in serious doubt, their semantic context. Flowers open in pearl-white, their petals unfold, To golden sunlight from the hills, to water mirrors In early morning lotus fragrance from the pond. Women in colour return with plastic vessels of waters. The lotus stems in knots writhe like green snakes. Here the pillow turns upside down, its rectangle of rest Changing its sides, scraping the ears, rufing your hair. The mosquito buzzes nights happy mosquito song Enters the cave of your ear, restless on a thinking pillow The rectangle of rest, outlying on a square of the night. Our cobra-snakes are a tautology and our ying planes. Luckily the women images are not of widow women. Our dreams continue, sleep to sleep, in repeat images Their underlying vocabulary many times tautological.

294

The beggars (2011-06-24 23:15)

These beggars tug at your sleeve, smelling your money In thin sheets of small paper, lying in your leather wallets With decisions about their life, marriage and God inside. Their thoughts mainly look into a sitting plastic tumbler Of loose change, where water should have owed smoothly. They dream of scraps of music, sung in trains, with breeze That came in and went out, through a whir of train fans And a sad song could easily ow to a single wire of music. Outside the temple their cloth spreads like the night sky And the coins glisten in it, like stars on a moonless night Lying loosely with decisions about life, women and God.

295

Identity (2011-06-26 02:21)

In the evening some identity questions popped up In the tinkle of a few china cups of rising tea steam And stainless steel spoons of sugar in place of cubes Brought in by two whitely dressed men from Kolkata. Themselves plagued by identity in their white dress They inverted bed ,took out your air in the broadsheet. Their fathers have their unending tales to unwind Their wind fresh from the marshes of Sunderbans Where tiger tails deftly elude experienced hunters. Their uncles are government clerks in frayed red les Their brothers wives doting mothers of soft love With saree over heads, of wholly hidden identities. There are others in the room that do not have faces The ones that seem to speak out in clanking sounds From the corners, their spanners at work on the wall They may be spiders who have just woven their web They will climb the wall, their shadows on the roof Over the electric fan coaxing it to whir in its shadow. The taxi man to here was a communist with dreams His son painted slogans and politicians that stared From stately billboards rising above electric wires. A communist has no identity apart from the state The state just stares in empty space from its heights.

296

Free will, free fall (2011-06-27 02:47)

I land on my free will this eventful night Like the cat that lands softly on its rubber feet Before getting up to pick ght with another Screaming cat in the dark, as the night swells. Here I am doing things, falling on my own With no other sons of mothers in between Stopping my free fall, so I nicely land on feet. I get up and shake the dust off my clothes. I some times land on my two feet for nothing And the prospects of bound legs loom large. I am no feral cat from brooding jungle trees Just a hospital cat with high- slung legs in air. Free fall is not free, merely gravity-bound. Actually there is nothing free in rareed air Only a crashing fall that comes entirely free. We are bound to act according to free will.

297

Ghosts in our sleep (2011-06-27 16:58)

These ghosts make you deeply afraid on the pillow. Their torsos are human-like but bottoms taper off Like the blurbs they speak into, in cartoon stories. Our childhood ghosts are now dead in their trees But new ones from cinema pop up, in wind and rain, Under doors, in their creaky hinges, now and then. Our ghosts these days do not have tapering bodies Their bodies do not now laugh in tiled mortuaries In the outskirts of town, where they cut up bodies Nor live in tamarinds in shrieking street-corners Where suicide ghosts once lived with their families. They sleep quietly under our skull-plates till midnight When they come out in moonlight for a ghost-dance.

298

Scribbles (2011-06-28 01:34)

Between then and now is a mere scribble lost Into an indifferent writing, by a little nger On the night of time, some sand sculptures On beach of ephemeral gods, lost in waves, Some writings on waters, with wind on back Against waves that break only to be counted As fuzzy surf that will vanish in rising people. A scribble in the sun that would vanish soon In vapors of white clouds, above the blue hills Into ying white birds that drop their whites In calling ngers, sts raised, noses upturned. A scribble on the slate of learning in our village Behind shufing buffalo feet, in udders of milk On the silky brown sands of summer-hot rivers Staring at the far hills emptied of their green. Between now and then is a mere scribble lost On faces in pony-tails, in tiny brick-red owers Wedged in hair, that jostled with white fragrances On evanescent blouses, on backs smiling directly To celebrating trees that shed many a tear of joy In yellow leaves, on their own circles of shadows.

299

List (2011-06-29 00:28)

Let us list things of that evening when the dusk light Flooded, through the tree, this wiry man and his woman As they were winnowing for the day, sifting wheat of gold From its powdered chaff, against a light-powered wind In a muscular swing of the male arm, an upturned face Their bodies synchronized in an exquisite wheat-dance As happiness lay somewhere in this jumble, in this list.

300

Glass (2011-06-29 02:39)

Now I think of the crash of the body, its broken splinters Shining in the afternoon rain, like tiny mirrors for clouds. I think of birds that are glass pieces embedded in the wall Those were once airy souls living in bodies of glassy esh. I think of stfuls of birds that beat like mad in glass chests Their pace-makers, working overtime in solid plate glass.

301

Secret (2011-06-30 00:24)

We share our secret with the dead in their yellow leaves. We feel it softly touching our bones in the deep light Of the shopping mall where we go to pick up beams Of light that need to be colourfully knitted in our own Shadows at home, the ones we buried under our walls. In the urban glass-palaces we feel it in our vacant eyes, In our ears, when it touches their drums beating them To bring out their ne city music, in its singular rhythm. It is in the fever of its wood and glass, in its electric frost.

302

The idiot (2011-07-01 03:35)

A girl makes you the idiot you are , against The stone-pelting of children who will love you On your grave, their owers sprinkled as if rain You are the bright idiot weighed down by love A diamond pin you will sell for a little outcaste girl Who loved you in delicate hanging of ve minutes On a scaffold of death, the priest of a crucix Who will say absolutely nothing for your Christ Life comes to the idiot in ts, paroxysms of joy. (Reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky)

304

Morning in Begumpet (2011-07-02 04:45)

Behind the coconuts the train Arrives with a nights memories Hidden in its noisy under-belly. The clouds have come and gone. That seems another rainless day. The ies, expectant of fresh rain, Actively seek the nights refuse. The rst train is heard in arrival In a monotone of announcement. The wind rustles in the coconuts Quietly dropping a baby coconut on the roof with a crashing thud . Train commuters, fresh from nights, Descend station steps in a dream.

305

The temple god (2011-07-02 17:10)

It has rained behind the tree and the evening sun comes Intermittently in waves of laughter from clouds, splitting The vitreous evening sky into inconsistent blue and orange. The light from our bodies crosses its threshold rebelliously In a lightning of the world, like a click of the ash camera. All that we required was a god safe in his temple laughing At our fables, at our immature art in the shadows of light When we fail to create life, esh natural, bones breaking, The pure immanence of life, its glory on the lonely night And then we are answerable to none in our question hours. Quietly we cease to exist, with no words trailing behind us. As if we are stones of several insects breathing under us. Like him in the temple we wish to laugh anonymously.

306

The days truth (2011-07-03 02:41)

The truth seemed in the half-eaten guava of the parrots That ew away with their happy truth cracked halfway Their colors were not the truth, but their triing facts, Their petite nothingness, in the tree, they ran away from The wafe of their living reality in the tree they ew to. The fragrant guava that fell on the wet ground bleeding Formed the truth connected to the waving of coconuts And the rain that came from the other world on its clouds Bearing facts of the other time, other space in its droplets The night they had embraced ,in its amorphous darkness When the stars refused to come out yet in their deep sleep. The truth was the middling reality of a cobblers broken life In a leather bag he stitched in clumsy seams on a daydream, The cussedness of a sitting reality on the road of shufing feet. The yellow and red bags, like green parrots, were his truth Half cracked in the afternoon sun ,waiting for his dusk When all truth shall lie buried properly in drunken stupor. The truth was the broken reality of the six o clock train That had disgorged people like ants, from holes in its wall Their truth lay in the broken lives that would come to night From the aggregates of other peoples broken lives of the day Their truth lay half-cracked , in the train they just left behind Climbing yover steps to home truths of mamas and wives.

307

The messenger (2011-07-03 22:42)

Here I am stuck with the thought of a messenger Sans his message, my lifes meaning, sent to me Alone in this desert, by the mighty China emperor From the royal hall, written into unhearing ears, By a dying emperor on his imperial death-bed. The messenger had a rising eastern sun on chest Where froze the possibility of his ever reaching me Across the vast people in the expanding hallways. There is no writer between the emperor and him Only deaf ears and the quivering lips of a dead man I know the message is oncoming in the vast lands. Here in this window, I feel the wind in my bones. I smell the smell of a silky scroll as it softly opens And I can dream its contents as the evening comes. (Reading A message from the emperor by Franz Kafka)

308

Children in the afternoon (2011-07-04 23:51)

We played seven stones game, piled one on another Toppling them with ball that would y into bushes. The lazy afternoon heat beat on our sleeping trees. The birds had gone on to their own afternoon sleep. We entered the scrunching leaves sending the lizard Scurrying to the hole of its wall, its triangular head Popping out a while to hear our tiny feet in the leaves. Up on the mound we deeply looked into a dark hole To look for the slithering sound of the resident snake We would then run down fast, afraid of its unheard hiss And fall to the ground with coins of kneecaps bleeding. We then climbed the guava tree to its highest branch. We caught the squirrel eating the fruit of our ripeness. In the evening we played badminton with the marigold Smelling yellow petal shreds as they spread in the sky.

309

The hall of mirrors (2011-07-05 11:24)

Our faces appear funny in mirrors, looking clumsy, Bursting quickly into loud laughter without humor. On our way up, we hold our rusted banisters loosely Stooping, with a hand on our hips, as if in a dance. Here we have laughed, in hollow sounds, in spaces Below the stairs, full of dust and in obscure corners Filled with our dead skin cells and our stale memories Those have remained on the attic in our long history In cloth bundles that shrink like our faces in mirrors. Their knots on top stick out like pigtails on our faces When, at night, they enlarge in grotesque convexity.

310

Now (2011-07-05 23:37)

Your clothes balloon in the increasing wind. The brown hills look bloated with spring wind And now is merely in your future and my past As my eyes drift past the hills into a blue sky. A sky bird swoops upon the grass, on death Like the swirling plane that crashed on roofs In yesterdays dream and todays newspaper. The bird is in the now, in ballooning clothes With the wind that brought it down in circles To death in its putrefying smells on the earth. Your silken clothes balloon in a gust of wind. You look bigger in owers and fragrant love Like butteries in a fragmentariness of now In refusal to meet with past, its smelly death And set on y-wings of future in a sky of now.

311

Knots (2011-07-06 23:19)

A tiny insect is now taking a tour on my mouse pad. A machine whir heard in its wings apping sound Enters my conscious in the yellow light, in morning Sounds of the gray sky outside, its rain yet in pouring. My thoughts overow my ears, along ropes that knot In the middle of the air, in the blue spaces of sounds. These are silver ropes that glisten in the days sun. I have to pay their price in my family silver, my love.

312

Reality (2011-07-07 23:16)

He woke from sleep in order to experience reality, Waking being a reality when in a uid state of sleep Acknowledging sleep had been a greater reality, Immanence in body, a severe presence in mind. He had to listen to the whistle of the night guard The bark of a hoarse dog, in its throat of hill echo As if on the edge of the hills calling down the sky The stars having come to doze in nightly ickers. Reality begins as solidity, continuing its descent To the uid and thence to vapor and empty proof Of an existential fact, a shriek from night cricket. The phosphorous of our bones roams in the sky As night lights in the vastness of a cold desert.

313

The internet (2011-07-08 15:59)

The internet is a not a thingy but just mental stuff, A few electric charges ring up from so many spaces In assembly of plastic boxes and optic wires running Under sea, reaching our houses here via our balconies, Where we hang our wet clothes like many-colored ags Quietly announcing our identity near so and so tree. Simply, it is a skull-thing linked to several skulls From other places, other holes in air, their balconies. In the internet we speak to the vast oceans of people Those have no faces worth their names, their fathers. They move in waves, hair on brow, tails yet hanging. Their words are early promises, forgot by dusk time In an after-glow of pretty rhetoric and purple prose.

314

Stub (2011-07-09 00:17)

I see this stub, a broken thing from wind. A vertical thing, rising to the sky, de-frocked Sprawls on the earth, its mourning mother Staring at the sky, above the electric wires. Children dance on its body, in school uniform They have learned how to dance on short stubs In the school of lunch boxes, topied teachers With horn-rimmed spectacles on their noses. The trailer comes spluttering, this organic one, Separating windy things from inorganic stuff, The leaf from the wood and pick up living matter To grow new living matter, in large windy spaces. The stub remains in wind, still embracing mother.

315

Pieces (2011-07-10 00:38)

The morning went into many pieces A cuckoos call to rain, rain to come, Thinking of new ways to neighbor area Walking on mud to explore fresh skies In visible light of yet-to poetry, photo. A fan in room had a touch of the cold The cold death of the tree that has been, The sky spaces between the other trees Where birds will speak in parliament. In the streets are footfalls of mens walk A distant sing-song of morning to god And owers smelling from felled creepers. The lake that cried in our lthy waters To the machine that silently cleaned it. Beyond the lake are its borders of ats Where people sleep in lake mosquitoes Those have their history mixed with us. In the meantime women sweep streets Their broom-sounds assailing our ears In the liquid treatment of dusty roads. Their husbands have froth at mouths. Their kids get up bleary eyed for school.

316

Flamingos (2011-07-10 23:53)

What came to me was an ornament, mere. Its functionality extremely suspect in eyes A high role in its augustness, silk-bordered And amingo-like from the distant swamps, Little specs of whiteness, ying in the blue Flamingos that have no use for me, in bread. There was a light tree in the middle of the road. Our memory spoke of a cherubic kid on its crook And grandmother holding him aloft in the air. Memories are amingos, of no use in bread. Kid is no kid, now a larger pain in his big back And in our backs, laden with the silver of hair. Our memories are ornaments like amingos Those have gone back to their Siberian plains They have roosted and gone, vanished in blue The whites now in the blue are new amingos.

317

Collage (2011-07-12 00:15)

In our beginning there was this whole thing Of a face which loomed large, a large house Before everything happened, an empty air Blowing it inside out, in a comically funny act. The absurdity was our serious thing of heart The body was ludicrous imitation of an idea A funny caricature of living, a slowly dying act. The images were wholes, just shattered sounds And mere smells that struck an upturned nose In a mind-state that absorbed the largely funny. The critical mind dissected holes in wholes As desiccated bodies that lay on green tables. The naked blue bodies that lay on the oor Stared at the ceiling fan, in a nal love act Of science and poverty, among other funny Images of bodies, not yet blue, not yet naked. The grotesque faces then came laughing at you Without their torsos, in a view of the big picture When you saw funny patches of hairless heads Controlling the world, others in tiny fragments Their bodies quickly vanishing in vote machines. But fragments do not make sense, a collage may.

318

The silence (2011-07-12 23:47)

The silence strikes again like faint int sparks, That do not readily open up in res of dry sticks Of our old men, behind deer running for arrows From caves of early pictures, with a blazing sun In the day and a moon at night, in liquid silence. The silence of rain falls on the night, on crickets In corners of homes, along with silent brooms, Brooms that will play song with the road at dawn Of women whose eyes are limpid pools of silence. The silence of words strikes, their images silent In their fury, passions of a deep night, like waves That broke on lonely beaches with sleeping gulls, The silence of death on eyes closed, on seeing .

319

Rites (2011-07-13 13:07)

Among our thoughts are rites, following words Prescribed by pigtailed pundits of yore, talking, In the bombastic language of our ancient gods To airy spirits who had bodies in the olden days. They understood us mostly in difcult language. As words went, our hands went, our eyes went Our tongues moved, our bodies stirred slowly. Our thoughts remained on the dead, as if dying. We stared at the sky in its lifeless continuum And we took water to lips, thrice, thinking of her Among the ones who once had bodies like us.

320

Circles (2011-07-14 01:45)

We have come down to the earth, concentrically In our circles, ever decreasing, blazing in space. The circumference is always in view from center But the promontory remained outside our grasp With little dots that ickered unmindful of us. When we made circles we would run in them In ontology, our circles shrinking progressively In spherical perfection, their penciled geometry Implemented on our puzzled feet, never too far From the centre like the cow grazing in its tether.

321

Shapes (2011-07-15 01:39)

Newspapers jut out from spaces, their words Haranguing at noon, awaiting sleep in our eyes On stomachs well-fed, cutting the day in two. The rst part of the day is stored away, at noon. Some words loosely fall away in the daylight. The day soon changes to a misshapen evening Awaiting its night, beyond light, of a black sleep. The night will be round in shape, curtains drawn. My train will lose its shape in a curve of its line. The line will lose shape as the train cuts it in two Becoming two lines, two shapes, two phone lines. The birds on the phone lines will go up and down Losing shapes, every now and then, triangularly. The world will lose its shape, in the dark of sleep.

322

Arguments (2011-07-16 00:27)

The sky is dull gray, with rows of v-birds Stitched on it in round silken embroidery. Mountains sit there prettily, with a lone tree That stood at the curve, bending in the sky. The arguments went on a bit tediously In a boring persistence by some guests. Their chairs are now warm with victory This side of the table as the papers rustle. Their news emitted in the room to the roof Returning slowly to the other side of legs. On their laps are napkins wet with lips. The arguments wear thin like mouth-spit. Outside, the tree stood bare and naked. Frogs argued with the bog interminably. The tea ceremony has started in our eyes. The sky is still dull gray with three rows Of v-birds dotting its embroidered cloth Their wings stopped apping long ago.

323

Goats for goddess (2011-07-17 03:36)

We looked at our goddess closely in the mind. She was much in our step, on way up the hill. There were no snakes, no crowned peacocks With tails that danced oncoming rain-clouds. We only looked for our yellow-faced goddess That stood in stone niches in the ancient hills. We tied ags of red cloth towards loving mother Around gnarled trees , for our womens fertility. When cholera struck our village we had sought Her help in her stone temple of exquisite beauty. On this festival day we seek her maternal blessing As we take pots of food to her on womens heads Dancing our way to her heart in crowded streets. We wish our goats to join festivities, when alive.

324

The parcel (2011-07-18 01:42)

I had received a white parcel in my dream Yesterday from the bank at the street-corner Where my address was intact in ledger folios As a man in swivel chair, gold name on door. It will be delivered at home, when I am awake. They have to know their customer, you know. I have to know my balcony from where I look When the mans bicycle bell rings from below. My balcony has no number, in wind and rain. These days my name on the door is too faint.

325

Layers (2011-07-19 02:10)

As we had opened eyes we saw ourselves In the mirror, profoundly struck by the night Our faces serrated by layers of collected time. The holes there carried lightless rain water That went green in the lazy years of old sh, Tadpoles that, by morning, turn green frogs If only allowed their photosynthesis by day. We then peeled our white faces layer by layer. Our war paints then came off and snow cream, The layers that revealed our rst fears and gods And our demons that shrieked through the day, To be liberated from the good wishes of gods, And placentas of unborn kids that had carried Born sins of our fathers in their ugly plasticity. We saw the serrated sands of the Thar desert That had cumulated over the oceans drowning The sh, the tadpoles, the frogs and the oyster And all other aquatic creatures under its silica. We saw nights piling on nights, years and ages The grass that covered our millennia in layers On broken walls of our cities, the moss growing Silently on the trees, the hills covered in mist Their peaks entirely covered in forgetful snow.

326

Facts (2011-07-20 01:37)

These facts do not really speak for themselves In the cloud cover of this weather, on a rainy night Whose dome still sties us beyond mortal breath, While pursing our lips, brooding in blue thought Speaking musty history words, empty hypotheses. They do not hold in the crisp air of night dreams. Truth is our viscous reality in the lower abdomen, An open space where the breeze blows regardless. Beauty is a reality that lay beyond the bodys crooks In a niche where it all adds up under a petried bone.

327

A semblance (2011-07-21 01:15)

I have decided not to call on her in his death In order to create a mere semblance of as was. My ghost would continue to exist in this far, As a mere shadow of a reality, just a gment That would create a imsy semblance of fact. His death is now, for her, a mere semantic fact. Let the existence of my body be a semantic fact, Just like his lack of body in her drawing room, Till my lack of body is a similar semantic fact.

328

Morning at the Tirumala temple (2011-07-22 00:33)

The morning starts cawing in its throat in sleep And the silky song of Gods morning shall wait For worship owers to come in the ower train. Flower trains are full of milk cans and turbans And women in colorful costumes smelling milk. The pigtailed high-rise throats shall begin now In gods praises, he bleary-eyed from late nights Jumping across the night to wifes house below. The shepherd is tending sheep of yesterday evening. The morning shall begin when the clouds move away And stop threatening the shepherd with cloud-rain. In the meantime of morning, let rolling people roll Like waves in the midnight ocean, their wet bodies Making silent noises against the stones of the temple.

329

Skin (2011-07-22 23:44)

Here my life began in a belly- fear of the dark In a sky not visible, lled with fearful locusts That comes in swarms, across the snow hills. The swarms eat up all our grasses in the way. But woman-insects begin life in the same way, Afraid of the dark in their own womb houses. I now swim in this my pool, where I had come Not of my own, my dad being of different skin. When I come out of these waters into the sun My skin shall wear all those paints in the sun So it can please the leathery skins of dads class And I can build my own womb-house to host A tiny swimming tadpole, with a swaggering tail That shall never have belly-fears of the dark. But I only fear that my oxygen will be cut off Before I open my eyes to the sun in the hills. (Female feticide is practiced in some parts of India due to preference for the male offspring, ostensibly to carry on the family lineage)

330

The temple of shadows (2011-07-24 02:24)

Men and women live here with stones Their shadows live with them in daylight. The shadow phalluses of shadowy gods Live in the musty smells of kings in silks Their soldiers in attendance on swords. Women have their foreheads on red dots. Priests move throats up, down like birds. Their prayers y like shadows to the sky, Their hungry stomachs touch their backs Where they produce shrill incantations. Here god is crying inside, in the shadow. Beauty is hunger in distended stomachs Drunk with soft palm wine from the sky.

331

Bridge (2011-07-25 00:39)

We had passed the bridge spanning a river of sand At dawn, when our noisy train spoke to its emptiness. Once out of it, the train was bending like a centipede And we took a long backward glance to see the bridge Now smarting under noise injury on its deaf,deaf ears. The buffalos on its sand-bed looked up, unmindful Of the bridge, of the noisy train that passed, and of us In the train that saw them as mere globs on the sand. Their black bodies longed for green puddles of water. Their eyes seemed vacant, as their tails swished ies. We saw they had not even once met us in our eyes.

332

Children in the rain (2011-07-26 02:34)

We wanted clearly laid out paths Between thin strands of July rain. Our faces were drowned in hoods As the rain fell softly on our heads. Its sounds came as from the ocean. Our puny judgments took a beating In such a steady patter on our ears Where they seem to be beating us Like angry fathers, back from ofce. As we walked we made tiny circles In rain water, under our umbrellas That saved us from an angry sky. The houses were a blur in white. Our paths ended in green of trees. Rain-mud spattered on black coats Surprised by blurs of passing cars, Their wipers saying no to the rain. We had left our school in the street. Our home of angry smoking fathers And soft grannies in loving egg-heads Seemed to vanish in the fuzzy rain. A scruffy dog shook its body of rain. Back at home, we bath our wet bodies In eucalyptus steam, as its vapors rise Quickly to drown the rain in its smell.

333

Holes (2011-07-27 02:42)

We are talking of holes, mere lack of matter Subsisting in matter and surrounded by it Of words that exist in crevices of thoughts, Words making the worlds holes in whole. My dead are matter in lack of it, globe-earths Those spin in lack of space, in crisp night air. They spin in the space of time, holes in space, Phosphorus glow-worms roaming thin nights. They are holes in space, where they had lived. They are now words that will live in thoughts, Those remain in my mind, as images of reality Till I become a hole in space, a picture, a word.

334

Scream (2011-07-28 01:42)

In the bone house it would appear The lower mandibles were stretching And stretching to produce a scream That would fail to reach down to ears. Actually they were trying to bite sarcasm, Surely a futile endeavor, especially They do not have tongues in cheeks.

335

Phony vision (2011-07-29 02:53)

I do not know if the thing is phony Glass-like, with glistening dew-drops Of a morning vision on windshield, Pearl-glass that breaks in little coins On endless highways, on mild impact Of metallic bodies with drunk men. Some cars have steam on bonnets Like bees, in spring, on the stone. Our vision is partly crowded, you see With birds hiding dust in the east That has turned orange at sunrise A phony vision, it is partly clouded. On the highway there are no houses Only string cots for our dream sleep On glasses of buttermilk, hot breads. We have whites on our mustaches Of too much buttermilk in throats. You crinkle eyes enough and you will see Wet buffaloes calmly chewing their cud In tin sheds that jump out of green elds Their milk sloshing in their pink udders. Luckily their tail-ies and smells y away Into tree-tops, waking the morning birds, A phony vision indeed, partly clouded. The sunower beds have darker kids That smile nicely of a little alphabet, Like owers that turned deep inward When the sun went behind the hills. Their little bees have nowhere to go, Wait; let the sun come from the hills. The village school is closed for today In honor of the guests on the string cot The sunowers will open with the wind And the shadows will creep up slowly Behind the buffaloes, with eyes closed Their mandibles moving up and down. The vision is clouded, a phony vision Caused by much emotion in the eyes.

336

Metaphors (2011-07-30 01:23)

We are nowadays happy with our new door A membrane bathroom door that now sheds A certain mauve hue on baths, while in song, With the shower owering on our cool backs Streaming as if from a rock skirted by trees Its vapors swirling like their winter breaths. Our song is under breath, in some mutters. Our vapors are on glass that hides in smoke Our rather banal faces, their jejune laughter. We are, in fact, searching for our metaphors, Being upbeat about our recent turns of phrase.

337

Climate change (2011-07-31 02:40)

We spoke all our recent dialogues nicely Voicing apprehension of the big change. Our struggle had continued underneath. It was a monotone speech in a gray sky When the line of trees came to a freeze In their hostility, where they stood tall. The gentle summer breeze did not matter. The trees sniffed autumn and looked away. Emaciated street dogs barked incessantly, At hooded strangers coming at us from hills From the edge of the sky, in clouds of dust. Our dialogues went on in our dark robes As our culture bristled riskily in our back, The culture of reality, in our failed hearts Where several realities came up together Not as a single earth-reality in silk thread But a failed reality of a uid mind-state A sky of treeless vapour, sea of ake-salt.

338

Authenticity (2011-07-31 23:24)

I am often confronted by a feeling Of lack of authenticity, in this river, Of not feeling like a subject, spurious Against mountains that sit in the far With river waters beating on my ears. I am words from vaporous thoughts, A prose-poem thought in dark nooks Of the mind, mining word after word. The mountains belong to the earth. I, waving in breeze, am a mere baby A cry-baby in quick mountain wind, Flying words against its rock solidity In its owing wind and night silence. The mountains are authentic in space With river about me, in daily ripples. They had come here much before me With the waters from skies, daily sun. I exist here in the river, as a thought A passing thought of a real mountain, A thought in river, a temporary rock.

339

The sea of images (2011-08-01 23:28)

This crowd of images will not leave us in blood. Its voices ll our minds like morning squatters, As one din, rising to the sky ,when on the beach Among tall trees waving good bye across the seas. These trees crowd all our spaces near our feet And in the folds of our minds, musically owing When tall ships blow their steam-horns at them. It is one vast sea of images, in waters and brine. The boat goes up and down on the morning sky. A plastic rope holds it in place, its green strands Tying lives, in strange places, in shadow and light Of sh in men, re in women, smoke in old men. Black bodies rise high in froth at the seas mouth. Tiny tentacles burrow holes in its brown wet sand. They tickle your feet and question your foot space. The sea swallows us all, including our old shadows.

341

Figures of our speech (2011-08-02 17:21)

All the worlds layers are in our throats, Hoarse with words, spoken way too often With proper emphasis, some letters said With our teeth pressed and eyes closed. Our ngers are clenched for good effect. Our body is distorted with much emotion. Let us, for a change, feel the damn thing, Before words, without ourishes of writing. We say the cap on our head sports a knot That looks like a ruined temple on the hill, Specially when in silhouette against sunset. As if our saying makes it larger than seeing. The knot on cap is a mess of wool that bears Not even a imsy likeness to ruined temples.

342

Light (2011-08-03 01:40)

Morning is pure light, on coffee and paper A song in light raises head softly in the east On the high place where god sits with trees In his loin cloth and a xed stare at the wall. The rain ies shall begin lifes journey now As light rst reddens trees, makes them blush Of god on their leaves, in their golden splendor Their green then mixing in gold from the east. Light lls our chests, our sleeves, our hair, In loose strands of a girls hair on the road Where electricity owed at their ery tips, A song on her lips lacking, but felt in breeze. The girls hands owed as water from hills. Their music lled trees with leaves of blush.

343

Words for trees (2011-08-04 02:04)

I do not have any words for trees, in my throat I know them in throat, by astringency of fruit, By disgust on tongue of caterpillars on them In ironic glow as creatures of beauty of future Their projected buttery stature in the next sky, By leaves falling one by one in October wind Like snow in December of higher Himalayas. I call them trees, even if they stand there alone It is in their plurality they turn colored butteries When they are up and about, alone, in bunches, Their lady-like cackle heard from jungle peacocks As they raise blue heads from bushes under them.

344

The rst ower (2011-08-04 23:34)

The rst ower is xed in my sky, waving in wind. Its white fragrance is mine alone in its blue space, The wind I do not own, but here this balcony I own In bricks and cement, in sand from rivers holes. The ower is mine for claim to neighbors And the squirrel that passes by, whoever. When it dies and falls, I alone shall mourn.

345

Miracle (2011-08-06 00:32)

The sky is still gray, over the mountains, Trees still in their leaves, not a whistle. Our child shall be born anew, our miracle, The birth from a deep night, nights child. The folds of the hills held it in their wind, In haunting fragrance of thorny owers On the side of the mud-track, in furrows Of rice elds, with wet feet of our women. The hills waited expectantly and the cows In their return, in the dust of their hoofs. Let us get a peacock feather for his head A little blue of the sky for his over-wear. But the sky is still gray with shades of rain And the peacock is dizzy in its rain-dance Waiting for its own miracle on a gray sky.

346

Wall (2011-08-06 01:37)

A little white wall stood between us Of indifference, from our both sides. Only the tree knew our day, our lives, Comparing them meticulously above. We could nally break its whiteness Only to confront an indifferent wind.

347

Dust mites (2011-08-07 00:33)

They had come before us, in our heads of hair, Our at backs with or without bony vertebrae Dust they are and our future dust they embrace Under owers of our pillows, in sleep-softness When we turn at night they turn in dusty ways At us, in our bloodstream, in the fever of nights Our inside ghts, not knowing enemy within. Let us get them inside out, in bedroom antics, Carry on relentless pillow-ght, on way to dust.

348

Dark circles (2011-08-07 21:44)

Dark circles do not mean refusal to beauty-sleep Or long years of skin, into eternity of same place. The circles are ever expanding, from outer ring. The centre is holding contrarian views from eyes Not seeing eye to eye, they have circular runs to do. There are holes behind eyes, their circles hiding them. Fathers do not see them, when they rst sketch them And as the lines proceed apace,the circles take shape. When they are noticed it is always late, always late. The holes behind them are bottomless quarry-holes Where darkness rules like the night cricket in bush; A stones drop in it will not even be acknowledged.

349

Soliloquies (2011-08-08 16:57)

Evenings are good time for free frank talk When our mind is full and our tired body Echoes with incidents, days happenings With a belly down there, loudly cheering. Our soliloquies occur then, breaking silences In loud exclamations, puzzled question marks, Wild hand gestures, vague nger- pointings In vivid gures of speech, in pure blank verse. My own soliloquies clash with the sparrows And at times with the nodding wall lizards When it crouches in pure love for its insect And quickly darts back to safety of roof-light With the love-act smack on its happy lips. kitta, kitta, it soliloquizes, quite solemnly. That is when the sparrow too soliloquizes. Actually it is talking with its own alter ego In the mirror, alleging brazen plagiarizing Of its poise and beauty, its melody of song. There seems no reply from the mirrors side So its verbal outpourings remain soliloquies.

350

A childs birthday (2011-08-08 23:48)

The old poet looks from his thoughtful eyes At the blue and white baby birthday balloons Stuck like hearts to the roof, helpless on roof As they had gone up from childrens mouths. Then the children remember future birthdays Of white cream on knowingly smiling faces. Their parents are high on hot lentil soup among Rags of unprovoked conversations of no ends, Only tassels, shreds of silk, golden embroidered. They will, back at home, cull the gold from them In their sleep and melt them to increase riches.

351

Work (2011-08-10 01:59)

I have always work to do when I sit alone With the passions of neurons in high fever. Sometimes the blood runs up bloody tubes Sending waves that rise at midnight moons. There is serendipity, a fortuitous discovery A mere possibility of a chance stumble-upon By a machine perpetually in fear of stopping. I work on words for serendipity, discoveries In the random and derive existence from them. That is the way I keep the machine running.

352

Flowers that make my window glad (2011-08-10 23:44)

Three or four white owers in a window sky Demolishing curtains will surely gladden glass With a tiny button rose to button up experience Of a heaving chest, full of old age, death fears. Fears growl in the malfeasance of esh organs It is their dirty smell of decomposition in bones In the phenyl smell of a dying hospital, owers Smelling like formaldehyde, of sickening tubes Those carry dirty water to be emptied for money. But the white owers shall gladden my window yet. My clothes shall smell of wilted owers in pocket. I shall keep fears on hold, this side of the window Under a table light that reads nice smelling words Remembering parijat owers waiting on the earth, Their faces down , feet up, at the crack of dawn.

353

Prices (2011-08-11 23:48)

The sh are mostly in the lake Sometimes, found by the lake Lumped with random friends They do not set their own prices. Stomachs decide how much. They are later buried in them. Stomachs do not set own prices. They are later buried.

354

Naming the child (2011-08-12 03:27)

Name lling is after our pleasure taking And body giving, from a rubber umbilicus Strapped to a golden lotus, from where The Creator would spring with his wife Highly educated, feminist in approach. The lotus-seated god is duly hen-pecked By a goddess of learning, his own alphabet On our brows in disarray, in strange script Undecipherable in far too many words. The navel springing the lotus shall maintain The creation products with brilliant learning, Including femininity of luscious apple eating And why not, in a world of devious serpents. The lotus-springing god shall have his feet Pressed gently, for walking fatigue, by wife, Without his ever walking in the sky-clouds. He keeps the world going by wifes wealth And his own health on a serpent mattress With an arching serpent hood for umbrella.

355

Stone maidens of Ramappa temple (2011-08-14 05:44)

These stone maidens turn you to stone If you stare at them too long, in the sun. Their bodies are badly stuck in the wall, They lean forward in the sky of the day Seen by creatures that are still not dust. At night they come out of the moonlight For hopscotch in the chalk-lines of the sky. Then they come out in groups and dance To nobodys pleasure except god-husbands Who became stardust in the sky long ago. Their sculptor-father is a chisels dust, From the father sculptor of all-time sky. His dust is not seen by men, not yet dust. (About the exquisite sculptures of idealized female beauty on the temple walls of Ramappa Gudi ,near Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh)

356

Sleep comes (2011-08-14 08:02)

Sleep comes when things seem to be zzling down, Like late night line drawings, just over a soft pillow In a fuzz of thoughts, their outlines vaguely formed, As the air slowly turns heavy with cavernous yawns. Sleep is when a red of white forms in our glassy eyes Into a mess of capillaries supplying blood to seeing, To dreaming in a sleep of time, in a sleep of thought. Sleeping is body in a merger in the blue of the sky Into a sky of nothing that rises above the apartment, On the roof , by the water tank, listening to its water.

357

Seeing is dead (2011-08-14 22:50)

The master sculptor had made tonalities Stone upon stone, of women in dance Men in beards, servants removing thorns From the swollen feet of soft princesses. Their cloth caps towered over dainty feet. Nubile girls danced on slender midriffs Of black tonalities, ankles high in the air. A child gods ute was heard in soft stone. Gods lived in fading nights of a memory. The vandals seeing is death of immortality The death of artice, the death of beauty. (Several sculpted gures can be seen in deliberate disgurement by historys vandals on the exquisite temple walls of the Ramappa temple near Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh)

358

Particles (2011-08-14 23:53)

The night advanced in oating particles Of tiny owers that would fall at sun rise. Her memories oated as light particles Of sun dust on the earths fallen owers. We offer rice particles to keep her alive In our bellies, our throats, dusty minds. (On the fourth death anniversary of my mother)

359

Looking for a word (2011-08-16 00:28)

At this time, I am looking for a word And that is when I have found them When they come in as blood- cousins Twice removed, I mean, not literally. They turn sad all the time, all the time; Their sadness is for unknown people. At times they assume grinning faces. They turn sad as they come to a close. Actually they are not that important, Meaning those the words are sad for. It is the language that is sad in its words, The sad language we had made our own Coming from far, in sounds of bagpipes The bagpipes are sad, celebrating defeat. But their windy sounds are ne music. (About Indian writing in English)

360

The lake that was sea (2011-08-17 01:20)

The lake went unnecessarily emotional In the shadows of the banyan and men Sitting on the rails of its embankment Who looked like birds ying on the sea. Its ripples pretended to be ocean-waves. The trees waved knowingly on the rim Their green hairs eating up the blue sky. We shed for hidden grandma stories. An auntie lent her gold in a cloth bundle. You need jewels, you jewels of women? Come to the lake and ask the lake auntie Who will lend hers to you for wedding. Remember to return them when done. You, betrayer, have not returned them? She is no more a jewel lending auntie. You can hear her sad silence in ripples . (The myth relates to the Ramappa lake , a 800-year old lake near Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh that has remained a part of the collective conscious of the people through such interesting myths and folk lore in circulation in the area)

361

Meaning (2011-08-18 00:17)

Water has meaning when it overows Like god-sounds, pictures of lost color With white faced women in old clothes As they ow from sounds of old space. Meaning shall continue without break. The objects quickly lose a revised sense. Their sounds combine with their eyes, The seeing eyes of all objects in poems. Their meaning shall accrue as they see Behind senselessness, in fail interiority. Sounds have no meaning, when heard. Images are all meaning, when in letters. They weave meaning around our things, A mosquito in dark waters of steel glass, Light pouring from steel dome in a pool. Fan sounds feeling thoughts in its whir. A cloth bag had dark worries at bottom. A bird ew from our nest in a window. A person disappeared from glass-pane. The watchman belched from his hand. His pockets were full of night sounds. Our meaning jumps from thing to thing. Under a silken veil of soft uorescence. A rain that hides mud-houses in moths. Some twigs that bird-fall from branches A night with no sounds of song in wind A scooter that kicked its innards to life.

362

Story (2011-08-19 00:09)

It is raining lightly through the night On muddy streets and rain-puddles On cars under heavy veil, squatting As if dying to make story under trees. The trees sat there without brown birds. The brown birds will come later to us From a golden sun behind our house To make nest of straw in our A.C. outlet. In a room of silence I make my story Of a friend with heart that just rebelled Against too much edible oil and work, In a calm of death that had no foretaste On our tongues in the fragrant harbor. The brown birds have to make a story Behind the A.C. outlet in green straw And twigs that will not stay on clamps. The rain has made story of reluctance On muddy roads refusing reverse-ow Under trees that yawned in boredom As stories spread lazily around them.

363

The brick wall (2011-08-20 00:48)

What came to the mind was a brick wall In several squares of thought, a soft wind Buffeting the creepers ying on its holes And moss of history faded into black night. The busy brown ants were not left behind. If it was words of bricks we might build it In its brown brokenness,on music of thought. A bird visitor would come in brown stripes Its ckle screw-head moving in sky for worms. The creeper strutted in the sun its proud stuff Of owers of paper hanging in leaves in pink. It was not a mere brick wall, but a broken wall Of holes that hid childhood, my lost years.

364

Posthumous poetry (2011-08-20 23:29)

We are mostly writing posthumous poems In the corners of our souls, in the outer reaches Of our bodies, from the despair of ripe nights. A shrill midnight whistle causes such poems. Some poems come from lonely street corners Where heavy boots will arrive, on Himalayan Feet with large sized memories of kids and wife In a relight of warm coals in deep snow hills. The street dogs howls aggravate such poems. A bloody uprising in us triggers some poems In the unreal company of a Kafka in beard When humongous creatures ll front rooms Of overowings from pockets, book shelves Our windows closed from the inside of rain. Our literary agent has just died of our poems. He will sure publish our poems posthumously.

365

Brakes (2011-08-21 23:56)

Silent rain and rainbows of grease Trace on the road polygonal maps. The grease maps drop from squeals Of rained brakes in car undersides. Their brakes rebel against tyrant feet And trace line-maps of free countries As their throats shout hoarse slogans.

366

Sorority (2011-08-22 01:47)

The soap sisters drop their doe-eyes Too soon and pretty on the noses, The way they sniff at their sisters All in the race for big house power High-ceilinged and chandeliered. Creepy music is suited to villainy. As they pull female legs, in music, Around mustachioed landlordism. They are sisters up against sisters. They are now in plush boardrooms In their ght against their sorority All for sons, fathers and husbands Not against male tyranny, but for it. They would even check for stomachs Big with sorority, to nish it all off Much before it will scream in the air. (About woman stereotypes in Indian T.V. soaps)

367

Seminar (2011-08-22 23:51)

When a midnight dog had barked at the dark There came up a word seminar from the night In a hall of poets chasing truths widely known An electric fan stirring its hot air of repetitions. Supposing the seminar is shifted to a sit-stone Under the tree, with ant-holes brimming with views A passing fantasy from inside a sleeping mind. Here we have a seminar of e-poets with lulu books Behind the window curtains, to bypass brown ants Who vent strong acidic views on our under-legs. We will not miss hot air of higher reaches of hall. A man sits in the back row with a head in hands Dreaming of golden brown lunch with lentil soup . He has no rabid views about making verse blank In the forenoon sessions, after a biscuit break. Just when the speaker comes up with a rare gem The loo at the back beckons the high and the low The lulu poets stand in rows before lling pots. It is in these mini-seminars that inspiration ows.

368

Fractals (2011-08-24 00:23)

Six O clock and it is time to repeat On scale, joint walks, up and yonder. The overcast sky says much nothing. We understand life beside the tree. Repeat the tree and the old dusty car With the same old names washed off In yesterdays rain, waiting in new dust For the same names, heart and arrow. You looking for repeat arches in art? I have them plenty in my digital box In old tombs where angry sultans lie In endless repetitive arches of beauty Where men vanish in trees at the end. Our walks are repeat feet under shoes Occupying space, little by little, in sky. The feet shufe slowly, one behind one. Eight O clock is time to repeat on scale A bus of people on rods, lunch boxes Touching sweaty bodies tantalizingly.

369

Children (2011-08-24 17:25)

You children from our knees down Look upon the world as blue hills In a fuzzy grove of far, far trees. You play games in wood pillars Of eyes dreams, also-have-beens. You hide and we seek very eyes. Shout if you must, when the stone Does not tumble on the sixth one. You play cheat, ball a mere ower. A marigold tossed from cardboard. Your rules change like lifes rules With no notice, now this, now that. From knees up dont grow to sky. Make clay god out of a wet earth A funny god of an elephant-child Eating big balls of rice and sugar Into a stomach, rounded of eating. When you nish making clay god Please make us too, in river loam So just like him we can easily break In the swirling waters of monsoon.

370

Laugh (2011-08-24 23:35)

Laugh if you must, in your body shudders, Especially if it would hurt, in you of night. Pain or pleasure would vibrate in eardrum Lately suspected to hear less of own words That ring as though addressed to audience. You needlessly increase volume of speech Beyond the hearing distance in your room Or above the market din and bees buzzing. Otoliths may cause balance distortion in old. Nice word this, please remember to look up When the vibration comes in the dictionary. You want to sense meaning, you shall vibrate. The Buddha laughs on enormous stomach Not the one under our ancient wisdom tree But the yellow one, of a gurine in curio shop. Wisdom is when one laughs at rolls of pain Not of too much eating in moon of rice balls. He laughs because he cannot cry in the view. Under the circumstances, he vibrates of pain. You want to celebrate years in wax ames To vibrate to sounds of breaking birth walls. But take care of the all-around green uid, And a cord that has to be cut off from mamma. That is when you vibrate in lungful of laugh. When you cry, you laugh at the darkness left And the pain of light on new rolls of stomach.

371

Family (2011-08-25 23:55)

Just a few bodies live together in a hole, A burrow in a space of cement concrete. Pigeons that return on beaks of worms. Gophers in their holes of common space Exploring life, sharing its outer darkness, As the sky hangs in balance, tautly held. Our children eat porridge off our hands. We are their white walls, with nail-holes. Their clothes are hung in our blankness. Old men stare at ceilings, under the stairs. Sagging cots bring them closer to the earth Away from the overhanging sky of the roof. Just a few bodies that return to the earth, One by one, noting each others presence.

372

The table lamp (2011-08-26 11:10)

A clipped lamp poured its light on light Twice it went to sleep and on waking up Its sleep-weary eyes blinked in disbelief. A poem before dawn from knots of words On what rhymes with a green table light! Nothing rhymes with a table lamp right. Poetry of things comes from inner light. Its music is in the very nature of things, The way it trains its light on trite things.

373

The world has already begun (2011-08-27 00:56)

Look, I already hear the morning noises Of the bird parents to their new chicks Above the dripping A.C. unit in balcony. White owers have already broken out On the wire mesh as though they were My bath-wet clothes hanging in the sun. I look out the parapet for parijat dropping Its owers, their heads down and feet up. Looks like the world has already begun.

374

The cold wind (2011-08-27 17:30)

The window has let in a benignly cold air Between a promised rain and a buried rain Of yesterdays clouds dripping from trees. I close windows to formally remove a cloth Of needless wool warmth over old shoulders. A mountain arrived by a kind monkey god Who promptly consumed garlands of eats In his ample rolls of neck, a laughing matter In the foolishness of our pre-facto desires. The monkey who burnt an island with a tail Will surely bring us mountains of smugness, Our desires realized in solid gold and power. The cold wind shall cease only on our graves When our desires no more burn in temples And our gods turn silent in their sanctums And look away quickly from our burning eyes Entirely embarrassed, of promises not met.

375

Sufcient (2011-08-28 04:40)

We have never felt it sufcient in all this In blocks of time we had made quite early One after other, the latest one sticking out Earlier ones fading away in a dust of time. We have never felt it sufcient to work out The grand logic of it all, in a clear ontology A hierarchy of speed, a journey in the wild. A mere outcry, a walk in the wind alone Over dry leaves that hid a lizard, nothing. There emerged no poetry in this blind path Merely a fear of fears, of death and night. A piano solo concert, from a friends son A solar energy that owed from anothers Were benchmarks, a few lines in the sky, Ephemeral as eccentric son of other friend In a clink of bangles, of a gene gone awry. All is in a minds dark, in a together-guilt A sons failure in fathers life and thoughts. One does not feel sufcient, father of son.

376

Grandmothers (2011-08-29 02:21)

Our grandmother we remember vividly In the moon and sitting on a sagging cot Woven with old stories and waving trees Circulating the moon wind and princes. Coconuts join in stories of green lands lost On daughters weddings, gold shining less, Vegetables brought and cut, from groves. Men come in rain bearing wedding stuffs Between slippery eld boundaries of rice, Paddies with water snakes swimming early Women ankle deep in mud, their shoulders On level with the mountains of the horizon. Grandmothers cry from no salt in the eye. They cry softly from waters in the head Of memories of husbands lost in opium Of sons and grand-nieces lost to a moon. They laugh toothless laughter in ripples Over vegan jokes made specially for kids, Not on fart jokes in high demand by them. As they make hot evening snacks for kids They rub their eye-whites, of blue smoke.

377

The chair (2011-08-29 23:37)

The chairs memories go back to a sylvan past Of animals, trees and foliage, in caves of dark Men, women and kids in leaves of loin cover, Fire in twigs and bird calls and bees of honey. The ancestors might have sat on its wood Hopping from tree to tree, looking for chairs, When there were no chairs, only branches. You still see the ancestors seats delineated In the chair, as if they had once sat on them. (Think of the chair as Idea of chair, in a platonic sense of an object being copy of the Idea. Reect on the slight depression built in the chair anticipating how the sitters body will ll the chair)

378

The chair as object poem (2011-08-29 23:51)

I dislike the word chair just before dawn When I have to hit upon it when the wind Outside the window falls on nearby trees In a rhythm of rain, expected in daybreak. As a false positive I have to like the chair. Its contours are deeply etched in my mind As if they were from my very ancient man. Here I am talking about the chair as object While sitting in it as subject doing poems. The chair suddenly ceases to be the object, An object poem in my subjective thought. It becomes me in its pearl-white plasticity Not deigning to melt into my light letters Of poems materializing from air as objects. My words turn objects, ahead of the chair. They are now object poems like the chair.

379

Flowers, leaves and fruit (2011-08-30 22:29)

Our owers and leaves and fruit are here In silver-white plates of morning fragrance From burning incenses, ames of camphor. Our waters stream between lips and palms. Our owers shall be ung at framed pictures. Come face to face with the elephant head That laughs on a rounded stomach of sweets The head of a trunk from a severed north On a torso standing guard on mothers bath. A father is egotistical of a divine drum dance He that dances in snow hills of blue poison That cannot wait to see wife bathing in cave, He that smears his body with our death-wish. His prankster son has to eat in his stomach. Pock-marked moon laughs at his bloated stuff. We all love him the way he pats his stomach When he will pace up and down on our roof After a heavy meal of rice cakes and jaggery. (Tomorrow is the worship day of Ganesha, the elephant-god who visits us every year this day)

380

The hurricane (2011-08-31 13:57)

The earth had only slightly stirred there Leaving denizens remarkably disposed To funny jokes and light banter, between Wisecrack twitters of blue birds perched On the windowsills of frivolous jokesters. The visitor hurricane is a delicate thing A softer sister of earlier, who turned tough In her underpants, blowing it really hard On their lives in smug suburban houses. This one is soft-spoken, unlike prior sister, Only gently touching their lives and roofs And ever so soft on weekend getaway cars. Nature is not twitter stuff over fat pizzas By sedentary geeks behind smog screens. Mocking nature may be a happy pastime But remember there could be worse sisters That may not blow as softly in our faces.

381

The mobile (2011-08-31 23:53)

The mobile is now on the moving taxi seat. Speak into it, you eyes, its Latin ring is seen In the mauve of the taxi seat, quite agitated Of much pants comfort, less heart- warmth Of yesterday, in more cold of todays words. It is in the hot words of wax in a cold syntax Of a mobile talk between shoulder and head As the former comes close to a sneezing head. Its words are lthy, steeped in religious tunes In the kitschy lmy tradition of the back alley. Its tunes rhyme with the bodys foot tapping. The head is now leaning tower on motorcycle. Such heads, leaning on shoulders, warm cops In their pockets, their hearts, burning stoves. Its talk now walks on its feet on road like bird A non-ying bird of the wingless, its feet tied Together in the coop, in a joy ride to market. It will speak in hush from someones stomach.

382

2.9

September

383

Otherness of room (2011-09-02 01:29)

The wind blows in a light rain on the road In gentle leaves waving the dawn to break. Here I shall pass in the otherness of room When the sea howls child fears in pockets Filled with owers plucked early morning For worship, leaf by leaf, of gods in frames On words uttered on trembling lips of other. Rooms are demolished like they of the sea Lying in string cots as they stare at the roof With sea memories of shells on the beach Its snails walking slowly in crooked lines. The tea vendors of beach laugh like snails Offering paper cups for your lifes worries. Their footprints are demolished by waves As soon as they are made, their paper cups Swallowed by the sea in otherness of sea. A loving parijat tree drops shy love-owers On its utter defeat, right outside my room. Their death-smells enter holes of my room Re-dening my room, its walls reinstated.

384

Larvae (2011-09-03 05:38)

From trees, on a gentle wind from the hills A new light shall fall on the uff of marigold Its petals scattered for bees to tempt smells On antenna of viscous honey, pollen of love. The larvae are growing as luminescent dust In beams of light that travel down from the roof In chinks of old tiles, awaiting their change After the moss turns on them black in sun When new tiles will replace them, by workers Sitting on the roof as if they are sky-birds. The larvae are growing in white water- clouds Hoarding river and sea for tomorrows festival When they will be beating tin-roofs like drums Pushing dried owers down their corrugations And send down snakes of water to our ground. Of light dust and snowakes the larvae will grow Till evening when they will vanish in our pages.

385

Wife (2011-09-03 23:43)

Anne Bradstreet was the wife of a husband. If ever two were one, then surely we,said she. It is all in the things of the night uttered In an utter seventeenth century bleakness Of a New England straight from the ship. An earldom left in general vagueness of sea For a tableless living among erce Indians. Wifes importance lies in the other of life Not merely of the re, seven times, round As every year you think of the seven rounds, In gold, in textiles, in dim-wit restaurants. Wife-love is in the early day of a long night A pillow night of fears, ghosts and the dead As you turn to the left of belly fear in sleep You hear her sleeping, re-asserting your life.

386

Putting the cart before the horse (2011-09-04 17:45)

Horse- cart is women in laughter, A happiness image, a moving away From house, water tap, bitter tree A broken wall of never to return, A space lost on other side of wall Of womens heads peeping, with Eyes of laughter, wanting to know White dragons of surprised eyes Eyes crinkled in round disbelief. A guava tree of ripe fruit not theirs. Smells lost of owers on the roof By smells that overwhelm senses Of horse-turds on rhythmic hoofs. Loss of lm songs is felt in the air In loudspeakers over mango trees. The annual dragonies do not come This season of monsoon, from grass To lose their silly wings on the wall. Everything is in a blind daze of rain Its ies conspire to hide the world Beyond a tuft of tail, in busy swish. Horse cannot see green on other side, Nor the world beginning with tail But all the while, laughter goes on.

387

Dancing beauty (2011-09-05 01:17)

We have to think of beauty in our dance. Our camels look funny and quite risky For a fall from their humps, in climbing. But their colours make them soft in sky When they look up from their tall necks They really touch high-end palm trees. In the desert we have to move our feet Quickly, to not get scalded in hot sand. We have to dance our feet in blue sarees Holding their hems in both hands at back As indulgent camels watch in their mirth. In desert we are not our women but men. But we dance their dance remembering Their steps on the hot sand, as they would Back home, in kitchens and earth-stoves Where re dances its tongues on breads. Our womens eyes are of smoke and re. When they dance there is re in their eyes Melting their kohl in streams of black tears Flowing on soft cheeks like rivers at night.

388

Shape (2011-09-06 02:10)

The shape is in the night hidden from our view. You take to night to drown in delightful confusion Brewing in a freedom to take shape from a word When word is poem, a woman that comes to you With the freedom of shape, from your innerness. Then a crow caws in the dawn of a poem walk A walk postponed for a poem, a thought woman Who comes to you with your own shape of body, The mind shaping a body you love in all shapes A shapelessness of freedom, a release of mind An amoeba of no shapes, with false feet all sides Always exible, moving only to stay immobile With the possibility of disappearing as a shape To be a cloud of all shapes in the space of time. A patch of discoloration on a wall, a rain-moss Black of the summer sun, a soft morning sound Of wood against metal, a smell burning in milk, A death into the sky, a dark fear, a loss of shape.

389

We stymie you (2011-09-06 23:40)

Before holes, we shall stymie you In a global challenge of the earth Wiping deep red tears of currency Overowing holes, deep as night. The holes are bottomless of money. We mine ferrous sorrows of the earth And of trees suspended from the sky. Our holes are full of rain of the seas Trapped in a hot sun, in smaller seas. They mirror the darkness of our walls. (About the illegal mining of the iron ore in the Obulapuram belt that has caused large scale ecological damage)

390

The sock (2011-09-07 00:23)

A single cotton sock caresses the foot. Its other seems missing in the closet. It seems your leg pairs do not match, Except in their holes, similar-shaped At the toe, in its curve and asymptote Where the toe tends to a shoes curve But will meet it only at its dark innity. But the wind in their holes is the same In the way it tickles the toe in the hole.

391

Echoes (2011-09-08 00:02)

Well into music, you sound your note A jarring note, just an echo of harshness An electric fan that has lost its bearing A cane juice crusher that is spluttering Shortfall of sweetness in a mouth of echo, A gearbox dripping in thick black grease. Where echoes abound, the tree is bare Of spring leaves, roots bony in the earth Its birds de-feathered of love, of its chicks The eagle is on roof in echoes of tragedy. Unhappiness echoes in its wings of ight. Well into music the goat shouts in its skin. Its shouts are echoes from an alive skin. Its drum beat is a mere illusion of sound, An echo from the old sounds of mountains.

392

Tyranny of time (2011-09-08 00:11)

A new morning is opening in my window. A September wind is speaking in its trees Before customary rain of the elephant-god Who will drown in the pond later in shouts. The poet asks to please, please let go of him Of the stranglehold of time on his innards A rumble at four is hardly a photo-caption While some of our pictures do need a caption. Of course pictures are not made for captions. I live in the deep bowels where time rules My bearded rebellion gets calmly put down While body refuses to succumb to the wind As the tree there does in its body in the sky.

393

Gravel (2011-09-09 03:44)

We try to sleep off our daydreams. It is then dreams come and we try To sleep over dreams as in the night. We doze off on train seat, eyes shut. The train sleeps in its eyes wide open. Its sleep sounds come from its under With tiny gravel stones hitting the night. They are shattered dreams about hills.

394

Temple (2011-09-09 10:51)

Drowned in the temples noon shadows Man and tree turn phantoms, whose lips Hardly seem to move, except in the wind Bearing the fragrance of the smiling gods In incense, owers and camphor ames. The priest s pot-belly quivers as god-words Issue forth from his large lips, licking words As if they were sweets, delectable to tongue. The trees begin to speak their sibilant words As shadows ow on the mosaic of the oor Filling the cameras eyes with a mist of love.

395

Men in the photograph (2011-09-10 00:34)

These men are in shadows, all the time Trying to speak, to open their mouths In the temple, at the lake, on the road Their common destiny looks unfolding Bounded by their collective lip-sealing The ineptitude of their lives and bodies. If only they opened, shouted and forgot Their gaffes, their shame, common guilt The primeval guilt owing from bodies The guilt of colors, the inevitable doom Foreclosing of future options, the walls Built on their words, the burden of a past. They are there at the temple in the squares, Palms cupped to water, their heads hung To obeisance, their songs sung in unison Their hopes jumping from thing to thing. The camera would bring them out of light Their bodies dumped in squares of shade In limpid pools of thought, under the trees. Their water ows in thin shiny streamlets Their words frozen at lips, still trembling At their imagination, in a reality foregone.

396

Literature (2011-09-11 02:11)

You are quite a thing, as a black crow caws A big man vertically split by mind-thought In sky rings of white smoke, falling deeply In love, at times, with just being beautiful. Your everyman touches on your raw nerves, Street men that are not yet your real people. These are the phantoms that walk the edge Trying not to fall off with the hems of lungis In their hands, in walking in slippered feet. Their walking sleep evokes big time yawns. You have soft dreams of mirrors that show Big time visions of you, in the grand walk It is the lungis held by the hand in the street That makes the world, in the street corners And the mongrel that follows you by the lake. It is they who make your literature for you.

397

The immersion of Ganesh idol in the lake (2011-09-12 00:44)

The lake aunts plastics and oating gods With their eyes and feet in clay fragments Staring at the clouds, their dark acrylic hues Lighting dusk res on mildly smiling ripples. Their leaves and dead owers lie in a heap. Dark men meditate on colored gods of clay Their wobbling feet made of it, bottom up. Childrens gods fade into red, blue balloons And their stomachs ache for evening snacks, A few warm golden teeth, with hair on top As a golden ball, tossed in the lake, oats, At the shore, near the holes where men live. Men in the tall machines lift their clay gods, Their women red in faces, their hair in knots. The owers turn the lake into a yellow sea. They rst hoist their gods into the blue sky And hurl them into the waters, into a ripple.

398

Mirrors in mirrors (2011-09-12 23:45)

It came to you before night, before sleep The fact that watchmen dream of sleep While still drunk and dreaming, dreams Within dreams, like mirrors into mirrors Endlessly entering, never to turn back. You drink cool milk and chocolate to calm Your nerves before sleep, as there is a re In the belly, not the one they use to drive Up the north, in the mountains and pine Needles on oor, to collect a few in pockets. You are concerned with foam mattresses Left to dry in the sun by a drunk watchman Who has smelly dreams of own to dream. There is sunshine in his dreams, in his eyes Betrayed by a nose-smell of alcohol in air. Your mattresses are ready for your dreams. You have poems that begin afresh each day. Your dreams are in poems, poems in dreams And in eyes deeply red with forgetful liquids.

399

Who started the wind?

(2011-09-13 03:04)

In the river, you look up from the waters, And see the wind walking down calmly From the hills that have holes at the top. On your feet, if joined in a lotus posture At the rivers bottom, the wind will push Through currents smelling of the far hills. Your face can smell the wind in the river Where it touches your cheeks, in caress. Surely the trees have not started the wind. The trees just shake as though they did it. It is not even a sea of giant rolling waves. Those just pretend they brought it about. It seems the wind comes from upstream Riding down to the sea on the rivers back. The sea hosts the wind from all the hills. Who originated the wind is now answered Finally and without equivocation, after all.

400

Body (2011-09-13 23:44)

Body is the essence of night, a falling of owers A few particles of the night, on the way to dawn. The red of their stems is the feet up, faces down Quietly buried in the earth of the dust, leaf-swept By women of organic garbage, to greater dusk. Bodies are spoken of well in heaven, their seats Reserved where beauty is condemned to dance In tasseled silk blouses that are not quite there. The bodies exist till our minds permit, not there When our eyes become shut, on not intact skulls.

401

The earth-pot (2011-09-14 01:33)

This earth is a pot, full of light in its holes If not holding water for crows with pebbles. A mere wheel turns to give birth to it softly. In summer its earth smells nicely of water. Its shadows at bottom betray our emotions Of deep passion, thirst for hills, dark fears In deep down of belly, butteries for future. It is like our mom, silk-soft in belly for us.

402

It is Krishna who did it (2011-09-14 23:24)

I have not made the war or these enemies, Nor the clang of metal, nor the fall of dusk Nor blind men, love of sons, blindfold eyes Nor ivory dice with dots of ve, four, three Nor caves nor foreheads bleeding with truth. I look at the sh-eyes, ght for fair maidens Divide women into brothers, cry as they lose Clothes for honor, never ending as Krishna. My forehead is still bleeding for useless truth In uorescent letters, on the anks of the hills Their trees precariously perched, from where Women warriors jump on horses with babies. A bearded man fought for his useless truth In blazing skyscrapers with vaporous bodies In a fall of truth struck by planes of beards When in direct contact with a burning god And fair maidens dancing in re and water. I have not made the war or burning enemies. It is our Krishna who did it, blue as our sky.

403

The sun (2011-09-15 23:14)

This sun is your once Ravi and it is now his call The weaving of a ne heart that would stop later. The sun is dead usually, on its very slow daily act. Can we have a quick funeral in the head please? The least expensive and salt and tears not much. It was all in the system, in the streets of Hong Kong That winded down in back alley, among new men Of eyes that did not see you much but in earphones. His eyes were full of re, the rage of a funeral re But the way their eyes would bore you in the back They had said their piece but made peace with you. Ravis system is in place, now chairman of nothing. The sun must set for the day and it is all in system Where a logout has to be performed for every user. (Homage to Ravi Kaul, my former colleague and a dear friend who had passed away early this year-the name Ravi means the sun)

404

The window-sill (2011-09-16 23:57)

The window is lack of matter in matter, A hole that is wall against being alone An open invitation to the citys darkness. The sill is there to break abruptness To make landing softer and smoother. It is there as a transit point before fall. It is there to host rain-moths that die On the pane ,trying to embrace light.

405

The wooden pillar (2011-09-17 10:21)

The pillar is smoothly rounded by the girl As she swirled with hands holding it tight. Her eyes looked dizzily at the hot tin roof, Her face in slant, at forty degrees to pillar. She whirled around it holding it steadfast. The pillar is her friend, its shape smooth With her ngers wrapped around it in love. It is worn smooth with her love for years.

406

Fragments (2011-09-17 23:18)

It seems we cannot but be mere fragments If it would mean many parts coming together In re-assembly just like in a natural system Or in a novelspage, leaving action to guess In the snows of Kilimanjaro, a rich woman Content to watch gangrene dying in a snarl A Hemingway hero who forgot to put iodine On thorn wounds under a September sky. Here within walls, there is no further action Except dead silence, beyond dying gangrene Festering on foot in proud wails, in nasty snarls. We cannot be making up things all the time The way nature makes assembling parts easy In programmable sequence of parts to wholes. Now what ,asks itself against the wall up north When it comes to re-assembly of broken parts, Memories that had long since trailed off in dust Their drag marks collecting rain in their holes.

407

Rain (2011-09-18 16:43)

Rain in the afternoon makes less noise On a napping mind, more on a dulled skin The way it tickles it by the wind from trees And comes in instalments like crow-caws And rice poundings in neighbour houses. Half -awake eyes are shut in old thoughts As certain rain of day and sun on the side, Rain and sun married like dogs and foxes. It is at leaf-ends that rain-magic happens. The sun trains a ashing mirror into room Way past gaps in curtains, on to the wall.

408

Plastic bag (2011-09-19 00:01)

A plastic bag is roosting on the roadside bush Trying to y away, its wings apping nervously Flushed with wind, a color rag, a whiff of presence A temporary ally to temporary grass and its ies. It is yearning to degrade, die a permanent death To embrace mortality of long standing, to return To the dark coziness of a loving mothers womb. But there are no graves, only short-term abodes. There seems no way of nding way back to home.

409

Walks (2011-09-19 11:58)

Long are our walks, morning and evening, Some mental walks, hearty walks, city walks. There are walks, talk walks, like talk going on In waking limbs, body thinking under the skull. Body merely thinks as its mind which walks Like a hundred-footed worm, a goods train Of a hundred steel boxes on unending track The mountains walk unendingly to the horizon And the horizon walks unendingly to the sky. Words walk, spirit walks, our hands go up In the night air in vertical sky breaking walk. Chilly elds walk and up down with the train As also the blue bush birds on phone wires The bridge noisily walks away from the train.

410

The door (2011-09-19 23:05)

Plastic doors are much like ear membranes They last while you last, water not touching. The shower is effervescent in the bathroom But the door remains calm and wet to gills. A handle that does not go down to ngers? Use it to upside, when the urge in you is quick And the bathroom is getting ready for a song. You will need it, man, in the thick of the night As your bloody system comes to blinding stop And doors open together to let in cold draught.

411

Rash (2011-09-20 10:15)

Wife bursts into rash, as pink- hued as pollen From the plotted hibiscus ower on balcony, Petite, not liking birds, honey not dripping. Mother birds causing rashes are pure baloney. Birds do not bring allergy from A.C. outlets Being brown and stupid with little chick-lets Open-mouthed with wonder at mamas feats. Nor does the political grass from a green lake That smells of so many dirty uids and deeds. The lab says unpronounceable issues for rash. Little dots on wifes moonless sky are its cash. The rashes are bodys too much of a good thing Anti-bodies wiggling in the blood ready to sting. You must know which rascals they are ghting. Otherwise you are doing shadow-boxing thing.

412

The whistle (2011-09-20 21:56)

The whistle blares it is the inky night of 2O clock Marked by feet in old boots, in a Himalayan walk, With their stick tapping the earth to warn thieves. Another whistle, man and boy blew this morning Whose shrillness of blowing sounded quite hollow Across the bare earth and houses to friends down All in mirth, the boy in a snigger after the whistle. Their whistle is mere surrogate for nights cricket Since the latter has taken short leave from bushes. When our rice is ready for meal in pressure cooker The whistle sounds blowing the lid off afternoon nap. The pressure rises in vapor, pressing down the valve, A short whistle-blower on hunger pangs in our belly.

413

The broken moon (2011-09-21 22:30)

There is a broken moon on the housetop there Cold and soggy, snuggling to the breezy coconut. The elephant god is not looking for it for laughter After a heavy meal of sweets in his child-stomach. Our dear elephant-god lies now broken himself At the bottom of the lake, snuggling to the algae. Time for a many-armed mother, who shall bestow Our victory for this season, wealth for our devout. The mother maternal, eyes wet with love for sons And terror in tongue, trounces demons under foot. After the victory she too will go down to the lake To the drum beating of music and camphor ames. Our gods are like us, of soft clay and kitschy colors. They disappear from life after the season is over.

414

Another mother (2011-09-22 22:40)

Just as my own had gone out of the mind Another mother came to night in light words Spoken at the moon that hid still in clouds. The night generally prevailed on the road. A machine then kept whirring at the back The machine that churned out hard words In the nights vast wastes across a dark sea, A sea of words that surged in old thoughts Like the sea behind humming casuarinas In old custom houses sitting pretty morose As a white spit hurled at them in contempt. The night swallowed her too in its memories.

415

Bus dust (2011-09-23 11:10)

The bus shelter stands against a silhouette of bus dust. A newspaper half-read lies on a lap in its cement bench. A towel is spread on the seat, with an open-ended smile Hidden in beard growth, meant to forget hunger pangs. The face inside has no travel on mind, just a killer of time. Layers of ne bus dust have settled on it burying its years.

416

Moonlight (2011-09-23 23:51)

Yesterdays moon had slid behind the school To surface today at midnight, behind the shed. It is a struggle for the cow to reect on events Of the day, near the haystack, with tacky ies Needlessly bothering its tail, while the moon Is reecting thoughtfully on its water trough. The straw is all around its feet, stewed with urine And Bengal grams tastefully added to porridge. There at mountains all was peace and heaven. The grass was just ne, the ies less of a bother. A red bull came with dishonorable intentions But was promptly ignored, as if he did not exist. The moon is now directly above the asbestos roof. The night is quiet with the street dogs gone to sleep And the moonlight has become brighter and cooler. Somehow the cow is now less angry with the bull.

417

Granite (2011-09-25 00:02)

Granite is our stone, blue - black like Krishna, That provokes strong feelings, hard on ngers But soft and silky in its core, in hues like rain. It is like Krishnas belly, lled with ute music By a river of gentle ripples owing from trees. There is rain and wind in it, as in moonless sky. Feel it , play on it and sing its mountain tunes. The more you work on it the silkier it becomes.

418

River steps (2011-09-25 16:49)

River steps are wet with village womens baths. A golden sunlight oods their mornings in boats Leaving early for mountains on wrinkled rivers. Giant banyans greet them from the other bank Spreading their shadows of hair on the blue sky. Mornings are for sun, palms cupped with water Looking the sun in the eye, lips softly trembling With prayers, as white wet clothes cling to body. On the river bed, the buffaloes bath in shallows, Unperturbed by the sun ashing in vacant eyes, Like little rocks in the bed laid smooth and bare By a dried up river, after last years ash oods.

419

The bush shirt (2011-09-26 00:09)

That was a bush-shirt with big, big owers A soft windy silken shirt we wore to school To others envy, with pockets on both sides That had bulged with owery spaces and air. We were hurling ngers in air as if clawing it Not for any complaint, but just in boy-show. (We had not picked it up in the wayside bush We were not bush-men of arrows and bow) We had left our long shirt with horn buttons. We looked like erce Afghan men in turbans With moustaches that struck terror in shirts. Our buttons were two at the top, to our neck. When the bush shirt came our money changed Our annas went of four to a rupee, to easy paisa We now ate rice in shining stainless steel plates And we played in streets seven stones and ball. Our moustaches are silver over frayed collars. We now have pounding hearts under our shirts Weak of memory, but still love the big owers.

420

Forgetting (2011-09-26 22:45)

Forgetting is sound disappearing, bodys spasm In folds of death, minds entrails in a stomach As everything of you freezes in lifes green liquid An ice block of death, whose water of life melts The night when it happens in a death that stares And you collect lifes water in rags of wet clothes As body is a waiting rag torn off from your fabric. Forgetting is re and wood, in a crackling sound.

421

Decline and fall (2011-09-28 04:48)

It is September and you mark the decline of the sun Behind the long rows of buildings and listless trees. From the train its decline is noticeable in arid wastes That have straggling shepherds and their grazing sheep. The sun does not envelop their bodies in silhouettes. The orange of light shall wait at the mountains mouth Beyond the spartan colors of the lake, less its shimmer As clouds pass without event, giving rain a sabbatical. The decline will of course be followed by an exciting fall.

422

Poetry of ghosts (2011-09-28 22:57)

The poet brings up poetry from random words Powder-dried to make a street mosquito killer fog Enveloping ghosts of persons that never existed. Poetry is thus made from blurbs of apparitions Those have vaguely tapering tails in place of legs Like you draw them roundly in kids magazines Vanishing in trees, if you answer a ghosts riddle And if you dont answer, head will break in pieces. Somewhere in the head you have a thing growing That makes your head break, even if you answer As the ghost does not accept it as the right one Because there are no right answers to its riddles.

423

Register (2011-09-30 00:06)

Life goes on as frogs croak in the rain puddles And pretty little brown birds continue to make Mothering noises over the balcony A.C. outlet. My register is lled with the smallest of details. In the evening the car stops at the intersection With some human hands inserted in our eye-holes. The car has gaping holes inside, behind the glass. The music lls the register; our ears are full of it. The register lls, from time to time, with details. The buffaloes rise against buildings in the grass Their emotions in control, but their bowels open. Their milk overows, grass in abundant supply. Their milk is white, like the whites of our eyes The register is full from time to time with details. We heard about a boy who stared in the hospital Trying not to cry, when they were shaving his head. It is the uncertainty of what lies inside his skull That is what makes him cry, not just an egg-head. An egg-head is a joke, a laughing matter in mirror. But we are all egg-heads and we are in this together. Our register gets lled with details from time to time.

424

Birds (2011-09-30 23:14)

When I was a child birds gave me ideas, In their ights of rows, towards the lake When they looked white and glistening Against the autumn sky, my ngernails Clawing the air rhythmically and my lips Calling them to infuse whites in my nails. Those days birds could drop their whites Directly in the behind of our ngernails. Actually they were bringing these whites From the marshes of Siberia in the seas. A little drop of whites in childrens nails Would not diminish their white too much When they returned from our nesting trees. Birds gave me their ideas, from their wings And bones full of hollow air, silky feathers That would some times drop in our street Dancing down many layers of air playfully. We would catch and curate them in pages Of books, afraid to use them for homework.

425

2.10

October

426

State of affairs (2011-10-01 23:52)

In regard to the present state of affairs It is the objects here that make it, not me. The philosopher sees light on the wall A Wittgenstein (pp 120), in convolutions. Our own state of affairs is a mere state. A state exists in words but passes over. Objects are not unhappy, only subjects Only they have affairs, drawn from objects And not vice versa, or even virtue versa If I do not speak them, they are not there. In a vast glass wall a young woman opens The door inward, that should open out, A blonde, her thoughts open out, in a state. The color of hair is not her state of affairs. But no, she is not a blonde, nor do blondes Open their outward opening doors inside. A glass wall that shuts out most of her light A door that has no doorman in mustaches Opening a door to a cold night of reason. A body is embroiled in a state of affairs. A body that will one day be behind the glass Saying nothing in its pantomimic gestures.

427

Bed (2011-10-02 00:11)

Between this ceiling and the earth is my sleep Lying sprawled on a four-poster bed like a lizard Warm-blooded on roof, upside down, augmenting Knowledge and beauty, for its tiny insects waiting For death to liberate them and it from the need To hang upside down, to go about their business. Stealthy spiders trap them in their silk strands Glistening in corners among the falling shadows Their meaning found in insects wanting to die. My sleep hangs between the earth and the ceiling. My four posters are the four corners of the world That brought me to the world from the earth up. Now I am three feet away from the earth and soon There shall be no roof between sleep and the sky.

428

A petromax lamp (2011-10-02 17:31)

A lamp burned in white light, inside a soft rib cage Feeling like an exhausted star from the Milky Way. Its light curdled like white milk on the mud walls. The shadows of the rain moths swarming around it Were a massive mess of unreal gures on the wall, As the dots together became squares and polygons In the way they whirred around the petromax light. As the wind stirred in the leaves, the lamp danced Gently on the door frame, where it is hung by a nail Its shadow quickly responded on the wall in dance With the entire halo of rain-moths around its head.

429

Spaces (2011-10-03 02:32)

I think of spaces, holes made by space in a sky of space Holes in under-shirts like tiny stars on a stand-still night Pockets that had the air and sea of laughing childhoods, Villages visited, fairs that sold hair-bands, plastic owers Sweets of white sugar, that took the forms of noisy parrots Of dark men who had gobbled space behind those hills And harvesters of green elds, their feet of sinking space In muddy rice plantings, their female throats crying songs Of rain that sliced through space, in marriage with the sun Spaces contained in humongous mountains, like bubbles That issue slowly from a kid brothers running half-mouth. I think of space in this room that continues to the horizon Beyond curtains, houses, trees, vehicles, rivers, hills, seas Over heads of people, their thoughts, their sleeping dreams The blabber of kids, wails of old women, refusals to speak By dead men on the bamboo stretchers, the burning res That followed them in pitchers , rice-akes strewn around And yellow marigolds that celebrated their joy of dying. I think of spaces eaten by the buffalos in their slow mouths Their thoughts in their udders of owing milk, in their eyes That ickered in the blinding headlights of oncoming trucks With spaces that stretched from them on endless nights.

430

The list (2011-10-03 22:28)

The list is formidable, frayed in the corner Yellowed, crawly writing, corner to corner Like little ants in line that have lost the way To the edge of the wall, shouts lost in legs We have got to do these things, before dying. Our dying list is a bucket list, a corners list Where all is swept up to the angular edges And we make our ant-lines, lost in our ways Our little white stuff, on our backs all the time. So many legs, we have lost count, so many.

431

Death for dishonour (2011-10-04 00:44)

A crusty old boss causes death to girls dad And his dishonor weaving a swindling story. The fathers death is daughters beginning The glory of womanhood, a sweet revenge When sold body is deled for a sweet cause. A body has no purity when dead, in father. The gun is boss own phallus, waiting to die And wipe the dishonor on daughters father. (Reading a short story titled Emma Zunj By J.L.Borges)

432

Pensioners notebook (2011-10-05 00:33)

When the word comes, the ideas genesis occurs In the deep night, when idea happens in our eyes Open from sleep, having been quiet on sleeps bed Or in ghostly rapid eye moments of broken dreams. Body is thought, on a wrinkled face, deep in poems, Or on a furrowed brow, bearing daughters like Sita Who are destined to suffer as wives for bigger glory. Daughter has to prove her life and innocence by re All because she is someones wife in a deep jungle. A pensioners notebook has to record his existence He has to prove his aliveness to birds in the tree. The birds have to prove their aliveness to the wire. They have to hold a daily parliament on T.V. cable. So nobody will deny their existence in color plumes. A pensioner has to prove his existence to the world The world needs a viable proof of earthly existence. A body and its signed paper is proof of yearly aliveness. September poems are not recognized for the purpose.

433

The street with the wall at the end (2011-10-05 23:54)

In the morning, walking feet shufe in streets Listening to Gods song in the ears, the splatter Of water before houses, brooms on the streets Women making gurgling noises in nights throat Of water- cleaning of sleep, on tongues stretched. The men have tooth-paste foam at their mouths. Some days we reach the history of an old woman Walking the feet of yesterdays marriages, pickles Made, worship of deities, hospitals of childbirths Babies crying in lungs, dark nights spent on bodies Silk sarees in steel trunks, fragrant brides of sons Sweetmeats brought from gods, fears of violence. An unease occurs of slowly dawning futility of it all And the feet somehow end up at the wall at the end And have to trace the morning back to a side street Losing sight of the woman and her enacted history.

434

The giant wheel (2011-10-06 22:48)

When you land there briey with your ying feet Touching the hem of the sky, you will not live there With your treacherous blood coursing down dizzily. Mens heads and things turn into a milky path of stars A blur of feral nothingness, a tangled knot of history. You will return with a bit of the sky in your pockets.

435

Poetry of jobs (2011-10-06 23:35)

In the Book of Jobs God in thunder hated questions Directly addressed to Him from ashes of sons, wives Cattle , body, mind, prayers, rosaries of faith-all lost To an arrogant divine omni- desire to prove a point. Forget it if you mean to ask anything about apples. Apples do not mean anything, even when polished. A bite is sin when prompted by serpent of knowledge. Every Steve bites his apple, even the apple of eye. Every apple shall turn ashes, once the job is done. (remembering Steve Jobs of the Apple fame who passed this week)

436

Leaving a place (2011-10-07 23:40)

In the wild we never really leave a place We always walk into it, noses turned up The bears are always crawling some place A night place like bush in the darkness. Our white birds are always up in trees. The sea is swishing tail in the tall leaves In its wind application, white surf foam. The sounds are soft, tranquil on the ears. Midnight place disappears slowly in steps Gently sloping, hedged by a wall of trees. Our place is always midnight or morning Or some place else before or after death Or in going, looking back at going place. The market sounds are place we leave. The crowd is place over their still heads. From the sea memorial, a crow is place We leave looking at the shoreline in sea. Our light is place in the room we classify And ossify in memory, a memory place Bare of bones, eshly existence in place A bone marrow in a far someones place. Cells are place in bone, lumps in mind Mind is place we leave, we look back on Against the wall of trees, against steps That slope downward to fragrant trees. Our poems are place in the table light Near the soft window of Basel and rose Bird chicks are place in air-conditioner. Their mothers are place for grass blades We classify in the balcony sky of clothes. Our fathers leave our time on balcony Our longtime mothers are place in ice.

437

The temples (2011-10-08 22:58)

We shall recall a second life in vivid colors Within pillars of time, with little girls hands Stretching for eternity, in a rhythm of waking. A dance went on in little girls, in body bends. Their hands twisted the air as if it was a ower As the leaves went deep green on a sunless sky And temples stretched out in spires of gures Of men and women frozen in color in the sky. There were other gods in deep pits of dark time Ladies in laughing annoyances, men in struggling Farming lives, grains coming from earth-furrows, Priests chanting words to gods listening in smoke Kings hunting tigers, growling from stone gods Appearing in night dreams of temples for people. Others from far come rushing with crow-bars To dislodge stone gods from their stone corners There can be no gods in others stones or ponds Only gods of sand, over dunes and camel humps. Temple stones turn dust, beliefs dust, people dust. But there is thunder on crow-bars, voices booming. For temples to be dust esh hearts should be stone. For, in the end both temples and hearts are dust.

438

Shudder (2011-10-10 00:17)

Like you, Rilke, we want to shudder in our God As in a song, leaving much, before due parting Chasing lengthening shadows before our sunset In the smell of water in the temple, of old owers Camphor of ames, priests locking temples away Shuddering in their throats, stomachs of god food Stones that lay dead in centuries of time, in paint. Our gods are stones, dark in closed sanctums Of musty old air of owers, camphor and ames. We want to shudder in them in a plight of truth Of death possibility, carrying it on our shoulders Heavy under God of petried centuries on them. We want to shudder in God, all the while , dying.

439

October poem (2011-10-10 23:37)

I came to this October poem on a thinking night When it was dark under a future promise of dawn And a gentle wind blew on dry leaves in the street. Temples made it, in stone centuries of time, space That had trees to show for and old women praying Their eyes closed in meditation, on temple steps, When temples were yet to open for long time men. Girls danced in steps, their hands up beating space. October made the evening turn hugely on wheels As we went high up in the air and land, like birds. A bird chick had fallen from the nest in balcony, A question in my mind if it ew back to its mother Atop the air-conditioner unit, on its brown beauty. October rain needed to be caught in cupped palms In the minds eye, on electric screen, in silver lines. A mere camera of ephemeral fame could not do it. A poem in early dawn wet with soft rain may do it.

440

The old stool (2011-10-11 23:07)

It is a four-legged stool made years ago And got colored by her who is no more. The stool she had ercely guarded as own As a thing of the heart, next to the bird. The stool that would not be left behind In house relocations, giving us body-lift To the light-bulb, to a loft of empty things To airy things of the sky and earths sweet Water, the elixir of life, a support to logic. It is from it we shall reach higher worlds As it shall continue to leave us all behind.

441

The little girl (2011-10-11 23:41)

She was crawling like a oor lizard last year. Now erect, she smiles and ddles with things Puts them in Gods order, on dusty surfaces Setting them right like an airy angel from sky. In the corners of her eyes, she smiles a moon smile As if she has known these things and you all along And all the dark secrets behind your shirt-pockets.

442

Intervals (2011-10-13 00:17)

After a long interval I have come across her In dead face book pages, calling across time In a birthday greeting, a canvas lying frozen In time, in space between house and house. The intervals have to occur between times. Art is long but life is brief and has intervals. A naked female of books its across mind But promptly disappears in the dusty attic Where woman stays and looks lying indecent. My art too has intervals, hungry poetry art Raised in the early hours, just before dawn Just like the ne naked book females itting Across past canvasses in tribute to beauty. Beauty eludes the artists with fame-hunger. But a baby in arms enhances artists beauty. A man increases her beauty but not art-frame. Fame-hunger lls the artists eyes with gleam. Naked gures do not stay all that permanent All the space on the dusty attic of memories. It is delicious to guess what beauty ourished In the intervals between then and this now. (Recalling an association with a young edgling artist who has today come back to my attention after a ve year hiatus, through face book pages)

443

Summaries (2011-10-13 22:56)

My summaries are made hour to hour So I catch the ow that will go to the sea Like a check dam on the hills, stopping A little rain water on the ridge, for ow To the parched city, crying want of love. I recapitulate words said from the heart It is in the bottom, somewhere, at night. It is in its sound and music, some times, Paper-thin, crisp, spreading out in arms. Love is my summaries made of the night. Words are rain water, nding way to sea. I love to catch this loves ineluctable ow That comes this way to drown, a moment That would spread its arms wide in the sky, On nights edge, against the shrill whistle Of a brief cricket, a spider in golden sunrise A temporary lizard ticking love on the wall.

444

Colors (2011-10-15 02:59)

In the walk an extravagance of colors hits you At the end of the street, blazing red in its blue As though apartments are pretty sitting birds Of natural hues, waiting to y, matured wings In clipping, their thoughts caught up in clouds. These are holes in the air with colored clothes Fluttering in balconies, women brushing teeth Men out in the lower clothes hanging on knees. The only thing white about them is milk bags They bring from an early can-clattering shop And vans just in from a far off morning dust. The chickens, though white in their sitting coops In the chicken vans, are excited to be ofoading But colors are missing in their thoughts of death The shrieks inside the van are colors of violence, The colors of meat celebrating meat in its inside.

445

Horoscope (2011-10-16 04:25)

When we looked up the horoscope, from the shelf We thought of the body, divided into neat divisions Of time, as it went back, precision-cut in time phases Folded in deep shelves, as of smiling lm heroines Of yesterdays glory, their time nicely worn on lips. Horoscopes can be back-read, in ne phases of stars Ruling stars that seem to say bright things in night air Withdrawing love at a moments notice, in ickers. We have gone back to where it all began in the cloth, In the smell of placenta, a ickering lamp of midwife Highly unread, in fears of love, in the shrieks of a baby In oil, seeking oxygen in the stale wind of closed room. We then look out from the folds of our swaddle cloth Looking for her who was the cause celebre of our cry. She who brought us all about is serving her time In ickering stars, her existence just in thought. But our horoscope is somehow tied up with hers Only our time divisions slightly overlapping hers. The stars forsake their protgs in the last phase When it all ends up on the earth, in res at dawn Waters dried up in streams on the sandy river bed, Wind stoking the res of trees on its orange fringe. The horoscope is now just a crackling piece of paper Waiting to be archived in the stars along with hers.

446

Please give us back our wings (2011-10-17 00:53)

We live our inner lives, our words quietly dropping, Like the faucet dripping on a midnight bathroom. Our thinking comes to a head, in our young bodies. Our wise hair had gone in a ring through a window On to the side-walk, in company with a plastic bag. We are a cockroach that is lying curled up on the sill Waiting for a window of sun to quicken its wings. We are the 99 %, our wings being with the 1 % still We like to get our wings back on the window- sill.

447

Illusion (2011-10-17 21:26)

Four years after her, we see this paper now Written in a neat scroll, a plain white paper Crawling with several upward-looking words Of knowledge and its absence , lack of form A lack of God in form, refutation of all form A form that existed only in words and in sea. The wind has no form as the sea takes its form And the teachers , her form in white clothes, A ghost of a teacher, knowledge being illusion. The sea is illusion, the wind a ghost dancing in it. The ghost is a atness of form felt in form. The teacher is now a ghost riding the waves. The disciple is loss of form changed into re. The paper is ant- hole crawling with words About lack of matter in matter, about absence.

448

Friends (2011-10-17 21:53)

A bearded man sells white owing shirts Down in the street,near the four minars. There is a dazzling smile under his beard. Friends are made except in the fruit garden. The dog is barking this hour at its darkness In the hollow of its throat,that never had A regular leash, to tug at anybodys ngers. Dogs are our best friends snifng our leg. We not only move in our friends circles But never come back to where we began. We move in our friends circles slowly In liqueed somnolence, sleep resting On bellies of stale food ghting to stay. Our upper halls are ooded with friends Drowning together in the chemical process Of eyes turning pearls for sale to rich ladies Cauterized in their early eyes of wonder. We have our many friends in high places With their red eyes deep-set on blaring vans. Their rich wails sing of mens puny statures. We are waiting for our eyes to turn pearls.

449

Gossip (2011-10-18 13:28)

The two are on their phones about certain Woman dealing with boredom in marriage A wimp of husband stays behind curtain With no efforts but home he would manage. She is killer by words- arrows and slings Fire in eyes that burns long after cinders Her nightly yoga , head down, sprouts wings. Her volcanic word ow nothing hinders. Her poor cook, dumb of tongue, bears guilt. The undrdog bears the cross for silvers loss. But husbands do take tongues lashes to hilt The fall guy takes blame for infamy and loss . These women do their theater rather well. Their narratives are taut, worked to detail. ( A sonnet)

450

Not writing poems (2011-10-19 00:37)

A creepy thing, this business of not writing poems, Especially as the night is ticking away and the leaves Are not appearing to trees, as lightweight keywords Appearing autonomously on the silence of the night. Poetry words should come as spring leaves to trees. The men occupy whole streets, walls, spaces, horizon, Men who speak different languages,each for himself, So that language is not stolen, but patented for royalty. They keep shouting into space, in the dust of a war That should close at dusk as per the rule, before night. Not being Mahabharata ,the war will not close at dusk. They have powerful halogen lights in which to ght And because the language of closing is not understood. Each of them speak a different language for himself Protected by intellectual property rights, copyrights. A creepy thing, this business of our not writing poems Especially ,when each of them speaks his own language And poetry seems the only closing language at dusk.

451

Screws loose (2011-10-20 00:45)

Her screws loose and rusted she stands alone , Jabbing ngers at men in the air in a cloud Of cement like ghosts in scaffold, wind-blown Bearing wet cement up without beng loud. Men pass the cement pans up to top crews On bamboo stairs going up to sky dizzily Building dreams all the way up with no screws That,in rust and loose ,have come off easily. Up there in head there is no need for screws The skull plates will stay inter-locked in blank Like a footballs seams or temple stones rows Or lazing crocodiles jaws on river bank. Since her screws are loose shes never in blues Without screws she only has topmost views. (A sonnet)

452

Occupying wall street (2011-10-20 16:06)

We propose to occupy your minds now. Please give us back our cash, keeping All its derivatives with you, your swaps Under your soft silken collars and caps. Give us the cash on which you had made Your glitzy skyscrapers of sizzling money In tall trade centers, in the clipped accents Of portals of business schools constructing Mathematical models of money making On overblown market caps of imsy cash. We shall begin in the park, in cold tents Overowing to drown bankers, wizards, Who stole our money in bags of hot air. Our cash slipped through bony ngers While you made its structured products Creating debt, the mud that drowned us While you collected cash in your bags. Keep with you your structured products But give us our hard cash to pay our bills, Our student debt, our wives grocery bills. Please give us back our jobs, our money We had made making things in factories In real factories of sweat and salty tears.

453

1949 (2011-10-20 23:18)

That was when there were no shirts on the back Only glistening oils on body, anger bawling out Breath surmounting cloth, sweet sick baby smell. Wonder where it had been all along, a watery thing That had sprung as an idea in somebodys mind. Its anxious people laughed at the undue hurry To reach pink nipples, forget dark that had passed The green uid , the beginning of white memory As colors began, grays owed softly from the sky A summer of light pouring in shafts of sunlight . The idea might not have sprung in someones mind. The 1949 summer might have been like any summer.

454

Stories (2011-10-22 02:16)

In the night I read a little, by the starlight Gathering snippets from men on the side. It is like gleaning gold grains left on the road After the highway vehicles passed on them All through the day, till the sun would sink When the farmer would collect them in bags With his twirled mustaches on orange re. I it from page to page, reading the rst lines. My story is made quickly with inscrutable logic That is close to reality, to the nature of things They only make beginnings; I supply the story. All stories are the same, the way they draw out From the cave, through the wooded passages To the depths of trees, where the drums beat To reach a crescendo and a re burns the night As the stars disappear slowly in the grey skies Making way for a new story, a new beginning.

455

Sounds (2011-10-22 02:37)

Sounds come from drums and pipes From silence ,vacated by crickets Owls shrieks, cranes sleep-sounds Men turning in sleep, from dreams. These are wedding sounds , of joint sleep Of countless liquid nights and tear sounds From black-lined eyes, red noses of hurt. Sounds of two bodies sleeping and rising.

456

Risk (2011-10-23 03:38)

Our gods are thirty million, evenly spread in the sky. Their population is ever rising in our lonely dreams Highly incandescent, like ickering insects of light Roaming the mountains, giant trees and lonely crags. At night, from bus windows, we see res raging On mountains, lighting the sky alongside stars As eyes are half-shut from night videos showing Film heroes dealing with evil on one to one basis In punches of musical sounds, in full orchestra. We have covered every possible fear in our bellies Every possibility of snakes, ghosts, every danger In nook and corner, trees of canopies, glacial rivers Lives and deaths of ancestors, their spirits roaming The country, lonely washer mens ponds and pots Old tamarinds with hair shrieking in the night sky. Due to lurking dangers we are not taking chances. We have taken a census of gods of full thirty million Not a god less, in count, covering every possibility. A 2.5 % ratio to population seems a fair risk cover. (We are now 1200 million, but the gods of our pantheon have remained stable at 30 million)

457

Mothers Notes (2011-10-24 00:27)

I see historys pages from life and death, diary notes Brimming with a city left, thoughts of a garden swing In letters crawling like live ants out of them carrying Spirit messages of all things being nothings ,nothings That encompass us over time,in space of our house. Here is a window to noise of crackers bursting in light, Bottles that send sounds from their mouth in a dark sky Darkness that pervades the corners of the world, light In colored crackers,the festival of lights, a defeat of evil. It is all that is to it in earthen lamps, burning at the door Some powder sprinkled on ames , smelling nice incense Some fruit pieces going around celebrating light on earth. Her notes make out a hole in space, as a piece of time A hole in eternity, a hole in mind, a gaping hole in time. Her letters crawl, rounded like black ants, out of pages Flowing with life , with death, with my living , with hers.

458

The village (2011-10-24 23:17)

The village sat in the elds looking to the sea. A ribbon of road passed its hill that had a hole That looked as if it might spew smoke and re. But it was a knowledge hole, by monks of men With a few orange res that smoked to the skies In deep-throat chants, in owing orange robes That tempted away wealth in refuge of the Wise. But they are now broken stones, their res dust. The village sat on the sands of the river in summer. Its boats pretended to sail in the wind on dry bed The river refusing to touch their bottoms in love. The river bed had black charcoal spots on its brown Where men burned , in logs and ashes,orange once. The monsoon brought oating carcasses of cattle String cots of men in far off villages ,felled trees. The village oated water pitchers of shining metal On the swirling waters that smelled the mountains. They drank its waters ltered with the indup seed And ate rice and onions, buttermilk on mustaches. In winter the bears came down from the mountains Looking for lush sugar cane that waved in the breeze. The village slept on the elds ready with their sticks And shouts that rent the night air, echoing in the hills. The nights were so dark that bears turned bushes.

459

Worship (2011-10-25 23:54)

We mostly sit to worship, with the walls opposite to us Leaving us no room for getting up and crossing the streets. In the marble our gods listen, from the shelves of owers And fragrances, as if out in the garden ,in the early hours Plucking white owers from black darkness one by one. The walls face us with their hanging gods smiling below A hole that lets in morning sun and some pleasant wind. Many times we lie to worship, with a false roof above us Leaving no room for getting up and ying into space above. We mostly worship under closed eyelids, our lips muttering. In sleep our gods come dressed in vintage dresses and jewels Of exquisite beauty,their light blinding us in our closed eyes. We worship our gods in the dark caves, their bodies in stone Sprouting lotuses in navels ,where a master craftsman is born. It is he who chisels our foreheads, hiding our futures in them.

460

Symbols (2011-10-27 00:01)

Looking for symbols ,largely,in iterations of of night We chanced upon light that struck us in our small face Blinding a childs understanding, where everything Was predicative and unfailingly stood for a real thing. We now stand in rain with song on lips,in eyes of love. We stretch our palms to collect our raindrops of love. We look for life-size images, lifes burning ugliness Several times glossed over,in mortal fear of symbols Fading away to nothing, a grey sky stopping to rain. Our symbols are largely esh, without it and outside it. Our mornings do not stand for anything in the window. We have thrown a few rice-akes around from white vans In deathly silence, where even a ower drops in sound.

461

The undertow (2011-10-28 00:57)

The memory went all the way down thinking Of the sea, remembered from its undertow. The skin has an undertow, below the dermis Protesting much about nothing, about things Imagined like dogs running after cars in rain. The sea has an undertow like what I remember Of years ago , a t of passion, at the full moon When the pearl-white surf became almost blue. The skin blushes for nothing, no errors by bones. It is much like the sea, with a large undertow. You never know the sins lying unpunished inside.

462

The window-pane (2011-10-28 22:49)

The man sits in his shop with a pair of glassy eyes. He has no time to x a see-through window-glass That is deeply in love with the sun in our kitchen. The pane sits there tight ,basking in the suns glow . Our women love the sun but not when making tea. There are trees in the pane waving in the wind. Their birds chirp at dawn, their speckled throats Heaving up and down, as we calmly eat breakfast. It is not winter yet ; the fog is yet to blind its eyes. Later when the sun turns angry, he will beat it down On its smoothness of cheeks ,gate-crashing kitchen Invading our womens privacy as they make our tea And the gas-ame will lose its blue face in the glare. In the end the pane has to embrace its dark night.

463

The death of an English teacher (2011-10-29 05:29)

I came across his book on English recently The way it behaved lacking commonsense. This frail teacher pouting in thin mouse-lips Had taught us English leaving us in a daze While we had sat waiting for the bell to toll. His own bell nally tolled yesterday for him As it did then , for us , his hapless students. He had poked fun at English, spoke by a queen. Commonsense has never been its strong point. His book tickled many a funny bone, underside. His bones are dust but their laughter will rise.

464

Moon thoughts (2011-10-29 23:29)

At seven,we thought we had seen the moon From the roof, in the waving coconut leaves. Actually the chair we sat on was a blue moon Inciting these moon thoughts in early nights. In point of fact the moon was just a light bulb Lying on the distant roof, beyond the station. Every coconut has to have a moon in its fate. You see the moon happens as an appendage To our coconut trees, mostly, in early nights. On a rain less night the moon rises over them As a beauty-ower in their hair in a dark sky. At times moons are mere light bulbs hovering On rooftops,peacefully existing with coconuts. When they are moons, not dim-wit light bulbs They may be broken with some moon missing. But they always stand by the listless coconuts Encouraging them with a characteristic cool.

465

Word (2011-10-31 00:12)

If looking for the word in the night In tiny eruptions of sound on darkness A word or sound makes no difference To light or its absence ,a mere paper. Not even a paper but a thought one In deep recesses, when chest beats Under the skin ,in vague fear of revolt. A ruled paper makes a word perfect A sticky note led in memorys pages As a cough on darkness ,a soft throat, A splash of water on the earth, its air A powdered color of white on asphalt Flowers on earth dropped from a sky A word fallen from a passing pocket. If looking for other peoples words On a light screen ,from early ngers When ngers have thoughts on tips, Words ow from a music of ngers When ngers play on the keyboard Their sibilant notes on its dark nights As soft light pours from green domes On a slew of words , in yellow splash.

466

Gated community (2011-10-31 23:34)

A watchman sits at the high gate, checks pulse Before entry,all cars entering at their own risk. On the kerb, children are careful, playing ball. Sundays we play golf in unending green spaces. We see neighbors smile from swimming pool. We had lived in holes,crawling with people. We are now in bigger holes with smaller ones Inside them for morning ablutions and yoga. We have separate holes for individual men. Our holes smell nice with room fresheners Made from the private parts of civets in heat. We are a gated community, staring from gates At the passers-by and listless cattle dropping Their green feces on the wet road nonchalantly. Our lawns are manicured green like our minds. We buy all our cattle droppings by kilograms For our green plants that have arrived like us. Thank god we are suited ,booted and gated.

467

2.11

November

468

Room (2011-11-02 00:18)

The room hangs with books, licking The shadows from the sunlit window Their mouths some times wide open In wide-eyed wonder ,at white walls Where the trees dance in their wind And ies buzz about in nonchalance Their wings several times magnied. The corners sit pretty in light shadows. Their sounds refuse to come from hush, A splendor forgot in quietness of wall. The drawers are an old chest, heaving With pride of mahogany, their dark light Shut in an ancient time, their shadows Long forgot under lock and key of time. The curtains are saviors from thought. The people outside enter the window As ghosts that glide on their textures. They are some times puppet shows At night, men busy walking on asphalt Their feet shufing, their minds shut.

469

Facebook (2011-11-02 01:06)

There is no need to read books, as all that Comes inside of opening skull-plates wide Your brain operation done after head of hair Removed , synapses located and offending Thoughts ,where painful ,removed like ies From the cold milk tea, left waiting in sugar. We now enjoy playing our farmville games Expensive plots, sold in unreal real estate Where friends try to sell their kitchen garden Produce of cabbages , lettuce and sprouts Mind mushrooms waiting to be made soup. How we love losing faces in our facebook! Our wisdom comes mostly in mashed form In tiny nuggets of knowledge, nicely curated By shadows of friends, with chronic nger itch.

470

My moms stool (2011-11-03 00:18)

Stools are like ladies, in brown, of old wood. Their spirit endures, like that of past women Who live beyond their mortal coil and color In sons black and white memories in sleep. This one keeps awake on the cold balcony, Snifng night air spread by the fourth moon . When you open the door to the old balcony It makes odd affectionate sounds on the oor Like postmen pushing letters through the door. We stand on its soul to reach our light-bulbs , Our feet terribly wobbly , but our souls stable In an earth-sky chain that connects vast spaces And standing on it we often reach out to mom.

471

Self-portrait (2011-11-03 00:35)

On the canvas you sit languorously Like woman ,waiting for skin tones To appear , in a brown jute texture. You daub some paint to clear spaces. You now have a nose and some eyes. One two or three or more depending Whether you sit on haunches or stand With your back against the white wall So the body is two-dimensional frame. A nose denes you above ruby lips Wet with eating for navel and above, Its tightly packed contents inside sealed Hermetically, under minds guidance. Mind is jelly not coming on the canvas Yet you can see dirty hand everywhere. The eye-brows look on the eye-holes Vigilantly so eye-balls do not get up And go away when nobody is noticing . You capture them live with wet fear So they cannot deny their existence. You are now on the canvas ,yet outside. You do not agree with your sly smile, As you are not you but somebody else May be, a dog in the street or a lizard On the wall ,in its triumph over insect.

472

Train (2011-11-04 01:11)

In the train there is love ,friendship, eating And piling of bodies,in movement and wind The wind catching you off guard, with tales You will squirm in your deep stomach about. Down below there is somewhere green lust For passing by things, birds on phone wires A gentle breeze, that rufes a train kids hair As it presses its face against the iron bars Smelling deep iron on its face, its old paint. In train new married wife touches chords Steeped in smells of owers, smell of face As eyes speak owers, new friendship, faith. It is also live mother , eyes of love and rain A noisy train, wind, from sky of childhood. In the upper berth is overhanging lower sky A brown dome, hanging above with no stars But eyes, in body that cannot change sides, Body that sleeps in dreams, of running train With no brown earth below but an empty air And some bodies deeply drowned in dreams.

473

Storytime (2011-11-06 04:10)

Lawyers are eternal as their words hover Just above peoples heads, buzzing about Like creatures of the night, rudely woken From their deep slumber ,in a nasty shock. They tell their stories ,raising the specter Of thin people ghting their own shadows, Shadows ghting people, in orange light Under the tree,as its white birds have left For the distant plains,in reverse migration. Lawyers some times die ghting battles As justice looks imminent in taut stories Told among tiny people huddled together Warming their winter palms by the res. They are peoples stories piling on time.

474

Sea-stories (2011-11-07 14:39)

Nice to tell sea-stories , of cattle grazing in peace On a dipped sand beach, as a tranquil sea watches. A cluster of cactii rising in sand with a tigers face Seems a plaything by prankster kids of the beach As adults sip their Sunday beer in casuarina trees. The sea rises on both sides of sand where you stand. A ship or two looms on the horizon, with an idle boat On the beach ,its crook dipping into a luminous sea. This dead sh on the beach a bird has yet to pick up Looks like a drop from ying beak of a passing bird. Girls of many hues enter the beach in between palms Wanting a joyous time on the Sunday beach, their ears Swelling with tales of men from plots of latest movies . Their pig-tailed shadows shake like echoing laughter. (Walking the sea-beach at Kallepally, near Srikakulam (A.P.))

475

Sea-metaphors (2011-11-07 23:15)

We walked on the beach in the hot afternoon sun As the sea had reached its high point of receding With dead sh puked in disgust from its fat belly And a few brown mollusks, still sleeping in shells. The sea seemed to say nothing much in metaphor. The sands torched feet, yet opened a soft wetness To a mile-long series of footsteps sinking as prints Writing our history for erasing by the next wave. But still the sea did nothing to suggest metaphors. A shing boat in sight was not much of a metaphor Nor a ship lazing in its giant afternoon drowsiness, That stayed moored to the sky with a fat deep anchor. Looking for metaphors we were lost in a sea of words.

476

Crowd (2011-11-09 00:43)

The crowd is many bodies rising in numbers Under a coiffure that feels like a birds nest, Hatching a cute chick in winter, a bright idea That takes wings and ies away to far space. An idea is born ,a discovery, a tweak in time Whose author is not crowd but common mind A buzz in a disheveled hair, a clash of minds Not knowing ourselves, our ancestors in blood. A miracle this living, this giving up the ghost Watching television in a lonely village of birth. A crowd of voices rises over a herd of cattle To high above trees, the high years of men. A crowd of thoughts swarms in our minds alone, A crowd of moths found dead on the window-sill After a rainy night , hugging light in window glass.

477

Worship (2011-11-09 23:46)

Here I come face to face with my god That comes to my mind, as a mere word. I squat in this little marble room of gods With yellow rice in palms, a dot on brow. Outside the words I cannot think of him In a sky of vapor, oating about wearing Flower garlands, with music on the body . God is a word ringing in a marble corner Of fragrant smoke, of some white ames Smiling in ancient clothes, in long arms Owning bows and arrows, ready for evil. Lotuses bloom in milk ponds with ripples From folds of snake hood protecting him From rain and sun, from the winter cold. He is still a word from our wordy ancients. The words are images, pictures of things Sorrow and lightness, recalled in thought. The words are ancient, as gods are wood Stone and clay and paper,in some ne art. As we recall the words in the marble room We are lled with warm goodness in belly.

478

Debt (2011-11-11 07:26)

We all owe a debt of gratitude for this here. In our mid-nights we y away from bondage Crying in throats, hoarse with age and love. Money binds us, men to men, in our women. Women bind us in our men and in our doing. Our debt is a trap, a night happening thing That leaves us befuddled, in body and state. Debt makes us feel creepy in sleeping beds Like a thousand-legged worm of leg things. It makes our women cry leaving doors ajar, As doors will shut for the last time of night. Debt is mere words of men in vacant houses. Their hollow laughter sounds creepy by night. Debt is letters that crawl like wiggly worms From brittle paper, that is fast turning to dust.

479

The full moon (2011-11-11 22:34)

On this very day of full moon , long years ago, Oil lamps of earth had ickered before a basil In a backyard, their ames trying to reach trees, Among shadows of women with half-shut eyes . The woman who was my beginning had arrived Under this very moon, an oiled bundle of esh In a village house, among calm cows chewing cud At the full moon, their accid bodies shivering Their leather at ies , in moony nonchalance. I am now open-ended , where I had then begun. My series now broke, backwards to the green sea. Some day I shall be open-ended at the sky end . (Remembering my departed mother on her eightieth birthday on the full moon day of Kartik)

480

Houses (2011-11-13 00:45)

We make our houses in holes in the air So our kids are safe from wind and rain And we are not poorer by a large amount. Actually we make them for kids not born. We had come here as soft young brides In silks and fragrances, in jewels of gold In sandalwood oil and jasmines owing. We had done our computers ,on keyboards Where we had typed our dreams in silk. We have often waited outside on the bench In institutes where dreams are hard wired. Here , as our house is ready we enter it In mists of confusion, in semantics of loss In broken word pictures , our mirror images Borne on our mind, on blue screens of death. As the music ows we nd ourselves oating To the edge of the world, away from holes.

481

Eighty and ve (2011-11-13 23:48)

Eighty and ve springs in leaf-ends later She still nds her life a song , a number Not numeric, but mere music and matter. She can hear crickets music in lumber Frog-lets croaking in nights rain-puddle. In autumn years perhaps you imagine Her steeped in mixed aural sounds, in muddle A vague spectacle of death in a lifes din. In such music one hears yellow leaves crunch As if they are the dress one wears for lunch. (sonnet)

482

The water bottle (2011-11-14 23:07)

The water bottle has inner life of its own On the table, among the people of all ages On sunny mornings and old and young lips. Its lips are wet with a luminous passion born Of a serious relationship with morning light. The girl takes its blue mouth to maiden lips Soft and ruby-red, of unspoken mind-secrets And silver laughter ringing from natures alleys A love born ,a life begun,an idea taking wing. You woman, old and grey, over several suns Will need it for your own subliminal fantasies When a morning sun lights up your grey curls And a glass of table mirrors a glazed bottle Water dancing inside stomach to suns music. You the poet photographer will need it badly On your brown lips, that have gone bone dry Looking for pearl -drops on a morning grass, Stuff of dreams to scoop in an old glass box.

483

Rest (2011-11-15 21:20)

In between we rest , in our long dozing hours During which we manage to watch hot baths And tired steam, in stylish Jacuzzi some times To come back to money questions that bristle With answers, four at a time, in knowledge Games of old man and worshipful women Behind keyboard ,that make screech sounds. Old man is grandfather in lm stars stomach When not asking his four-optioned questions. We rest bodies on yellow sofas, guring out What our lady will make for lovers breakfast Her doe eyes in laughter make us want more. We then rest in eyes, on televisions of laughter Our comedies growing by the hour, our music. We rest minds on businessmen heroes in suits Horizontal in growth and story, love in brewing. Love is in the air as black Shakespearean villains Turn up in best suits to wreck loves happiness. ( A days television viewing)

484

In passing (2011-11-16 23:20)

Sound is of passion, as drums that beat briey For musical wedding at night, not morning yet. A certain tablet waits in the wings,without light. Two pups from nowhere ,balk at dark of no mum. Morning is in the waiting ,its birds still waking. The tablet is waiting for its wings, from balcony Under the proposed tiny owers,now just an idea. These will appear in later seasons, only hibiscus In the brewing in the treess minds now, on pot. All was said in parenthesis, in closed whiskers. I now say it ,in main agenda, of a life being lived In its main focus, its music a continuation raga A fusion of soft raga-jazz, as its strange words Come out in sweet music, in colors of the night.

485

Re-occupy (2011-11-17 23:27)

The cops like to occupy their minds. Like the cold that is now occupying My body, my mind ,my throaty words In morning under a nose of streaming Ideas and words , as in a steady hum Of tall casuarinas overlooking the sea, As a sea wind passes in their needles. We think the cops are afraid of them. They ood their senses, mute sounds. Lift bodies from emptiness into vans. They have their own emptiness of sky. They have to occupy the space below. The cops are afraid in their bodies. They want to evict ideas from minds. And re-occupy park spaces and tents They want to occupy emptied minds.

486

Noises (2011-11-18 21:26)

We were talking about noises in city Of motor cars with sounds of horns Buzzing about like halos of insects On a night of rain, on road to riches. Riches are high decibels ,your road Leading to nowhere, gold and jewels All lying in built-in cupboards waiting For cat burglars to make wall holes. When holes are made in egg-shape They do not look at prevailing moons. Men make holes like oval ears of caves With secret formula for their opening. So they keep wealth in foreign vaults Where they do not make wall holes. But at midnight you do hear noises On the wall street,from tents of occupy. Their noise is drowned out by batons And footfalls at midnight and clackety Of ying machines in an empty sky.

487

The reed (2011-11-19 21:47)

At rice grain dust and typha augustata Bodies would quickly burst into owers. When pin- pricked they would say that . We carry their river memories and pond And the slush of womens feet in January Under a blue sky of calm faces laughing In the water and mud, in a harvest song, And the river of typha in all its augustata, As the breeze makes its dance and oods The world with loves dust , in plenitude. In the meantime we go on to ght the air, As we would in the night when shadows Overwhelmed us in sleep, in our dreams. We cannot win surely against memories In blood, we have got from our old men.

488

A dolls house (2011-11-21 06:58)

Her dolls are cute and lively but fragile They are made of crystal glass and clay. Her house is decked with plastic owers And smiles made of societys approbation And legal scrutiny of documents , in case. You are a twittering skylark, says husband Lovingly, in strict legal terms of husbands Twittering skylarks nd life such a lark Forging signature for loves compulsions Never looked such a bad thing for love. Twittering larks know only love, no papers. What do husbands want but glass dolls In a house decorated for parties of honor? But wives are no dolls for safe keeping. When doors are shut their slam is heard Through the continent, across the oceans. (Reading a play A Dolls House by Henrik Ibsen)

489

Water (2011-11-21 23:27)

Of water, we shall speak into a dying night As water shall ll our cheeks, our temples And inate our bodies and our eshly face An aquatic thing of our beginning mother. Our mother was water , we emerald island. We owe our origin purely to her green aqua. The green water will soon be vaporous clouds, That shall move over the Western mountains. Marbles of words now clatter in puffed up cheeks. Our old memories guide talk in a predictive way, Like water sloshing in our cheeks, as if in parody.

490

Knowledge (2011-11-23 01:55)

I say beware of the Greeks bearing gifts Of knowledge,in a poetry of unspeakable Horrors that had lifted the veil of secrecy From our lack of humanity, bodies rotting Of cynics in churchyard, in the trees bare And smoky, in morning fog of early ghosts, Hellenism of word and thought, largeness of vision, mere words, pulsating with light. Beware of Greek poetry in early science. Beware of people ruling peoples minds, Of men who wear long robes of thought, Mixing religion and politics, marrying soul With intellect, science with exquisite art And barbarians masquerading as nobles. And beware of the shadows that now loom On the acropolis, of shrunk bodies of men Their paper monies growing in their shadows On trees brooding on a history of betrayals. (Greece is one of the largest shadow economies of the world.The oligarchs are becoming fatter by the day but the country is on the brink of bankruptcy)

491

Face (2011-11-23 22:51)

We pointed with index nger at the face, The face that fell silent in a room of faces. Cane chairs were all that were to be pulled But there seemed no music of the chairs That was playing ,only some more silence. Face is not the index of the mind, its index Being at the tips of eyes, where words had Frozen at some point of time in the bathroom Before chairs moved from place to place. We now sit and gawk in wonder at the face In wonder at a running face that once was, With eyes blinking behind glasses from life. We wonder at the life in eyeballs of glass its tender ego lurking in them as wet proof Of life , of animated love and responsibility For lifes events, under illusions of control. Our anxious chairs made no noises of faces. Their light movement betrayed no emotion, Only fear of index ngers stopping to point At the immobile face , bursting with the past.

492

Painting the windows (2011-11-26 14:14)

We are trying to paint a white window In a grey space, sort of hole in matter Highly apolitical and colorless in views Of the road, from a room of shadows. A large shadow looms on our present Of a brown painter in daub of off-white Its neutral shades owing from a body, A body that ows in a rounded female Of a mind recently dead of a husband. The body is framed in a window painted On blue sky, its essential leaves missing. A man paints a windows uorescence, As also a widows grey shades by night.

493

Hope (2011-11-26 14:59)

As we tried to work out hope we fumbled With a machine and airwaves of the night. A tiny weedy yellow ower was popping out, Not a ower that turned its face to the sun, Only spelled a throttled hope,a snufng out Of all we had thought, hoped for in breast. Hope ebbed away as the night thinned out. A ne nights sleep will surely re-generate it A dark tunnel that will obliterate all darkness A return to the womb to pick up lost threads.

494

Garbage (2011-11-26 23:49)

Three city women went missing Under a garbage being foraged. Their dusty death is suspected. A hand juts out in the camera Poking directly into your eyes. Death is not fragrant ashes of incense And mumbled prayers on tremulous lips . Death enters your eyes as a dust particle, As a hand that accuses, cries and sleeps.

495

Old age nonsense (2011-11-27 21:57)

We have tried to make sense of sounds Under the breath, the old lips trembling With light words , in running commentary On the world, reasoned out and heuristic, A verbal diarrhea they called, in laughter. We understand their force, their purport. They are time llers, masterly previews, Words that will dene their silence ahead As they catch their breath, trying to hold it.

496

The carpenter (2011-11-27 22:38)

The carpenter wants keenly to realize beauty From his bearded face wearing drops of liquor On the corners of lips, with a buddy on bench, Sunday not surely being a holiday from beauty. Wood is butter, to the knife and the hacksaw. But liquor is quicker, on the body, behold and lo. Beauty is not always dead wood imitating life. Beauty lies in a shack, a thatch and on a bench Frothing in brown at the top, to ies buzzing Around eyes , the world having lost its outline. The earth and the sky become a single mass.

497

The dogs bark (2011-11-29 00:31)

The dogs bark came late in the night Along with a motors whir and the hum Of my computer into a nights old age. The trees crackled in the fallen leaves On the oor with dog foot,a tail wagging In the wind, afraid of nights loneliness Its ies were yet to wake in smallness. Two wheels went about their business Spurred on by a station going for train. The bark will come back later in the day When the sun will go about its business And men will drink morning coffee to read Newspapers about deaths and politics Rice and bullion ,while emptying pockets Of the nights air , of a dogs lonely bark. The bark will then chase shadows of cars.

498

Vertigo (2011-11-29 22:43)

In the night your head would turn on the pillow And a few mountains would rumble in emptiness As your feet are sinking in space, from the ridge A corner is felt , an edge slips away into your sky, In the vestibule of your inner ear, in its dark cave. Suddenly you cease to feel accountable for all That will happen in your absence, to leave taking That will make the blood tranquil, a subterranean Stream quietly owing under tiny polished stones With your feet washed away to the distant forests.

499

Dogs in the night (2011-11-30 22:50)

Try guessing the time of the night By the tenor and texture of a bark. Dogs do not easily sleep at night, Like stick tapping Nepali watchmen Pacing up and down on the street Alerting of thieves in burgling holes. The dogs have a duty to do for night. They are of night, when not chasing Shadows of cars with silks in luxury Turning at the street corner at dusk. You can guess the time of the night By the depth barks pierce the night .

500

2.12

December

501

The camera stories (2011-12-02 06:21)

We ow here with nger music from the end of the hall In the shadows of some potted plants on a window glass As faces puff up with sound and ngers dance on drums And new lives are made and bound together in a silk cloth, With yellow rice on heads and red glow on a bride of saree. The camera sleeps in the bag, in deep-rooted skepticism About plucking stories from a hall of men in plastic chairs Only to weave them into a black night against a fans whir .

502

Words (2011-12-03 00:32)

It seems words do make up for life Whenever it lacks a sense of being As objects are lost in continuum. Words are mere thingies like bodies That vaporize to make other things That do not matter in the cosmos Where the other things roam freely As space clutter, as if they are gods Of ancestors, from culture history. Words do ow slowly sometimes Their own under-belly seething with Meaning, in new violence of thought, Fisticuffs into the air, several ghts All but sound-free, as if in vacuum, Only fury signifying nothing much. But words are crow-caws at dawn That serve to dene my own dawn.

503

The morning raga (2011-12-03 11:31)

The todi raga enfolds a benign oval face Recollected, with images from rice elds From where it went to the river of bears The bears that came nightly from hills For sugarcane , of a ceremony of death A banana leaf of rice, a jack fruits curry An oval face that laughed in black teeth A barber stubble on a two day old face. The todi now cries death, descent to river Of bears,as it quickens on a drum of skin. Quickly the face will clash with end-notes As raga dies for the next one, for evening. (Recollections through a todi raga , a morning raga being played )

504

Oblivion (2011-12-03 23:13)

Having written a note and your power vanishes It hurts much to see it go into oblivion, much . But you have a belly-feeling of clenched teeth When you know it is space debris condemned to Roam around for eternity in the vast wild wastes As some ungainly stubs of unnished word magic. English is not much for going to oblivion with. Or taking it home in the pockets like trinkets. English lets you remain suspended in time like Brass pieces ,taken out out for family reunions Perfectly useless for paying off long time debts. Oblivion is a nice touristy place like icy wastes Where you go to sled in winter with laughing men But may not return except as a chance discovery Years later ,as cryogenically preserved matter.

505

Morning was star news (2011-12-04 22:44)

As the winter sun had woke up to a reddened east The crow announced an unwanted guest at home. The bird brought some bad news, the fait accompli Of a death that had taken place as an extended sleep Just a dream the dreamer never woke up to recount. It was in early morning that death came knocking, The vanishing of a father and a son into the night A night of stars he had pointed to daughter, mother, As a bad astronomer who had got his Mars wrong In a cluster of stars ickering on a moonless night. Pointing to stars are the loving fathers of daughters. Their dreams shall go on uninterrupted in the stars.

506

The glass casket (2011-12-06 00:33)

He had risen in the air, to roof and the sky above From a lumpen body , a mind of crackling paper A sleeping giant of ego, make-believer of world Mother-dependent and woman- loved by a wife From a race whose ery ancestors had come From far off seas, in skull-caps, worshiping re. He lay sprawled in the hall in a glass casket Like historys old bodies ,under mummication He might have studied , in his younger days, Waiting to be unraveled for future mysteries. He will commune with crackling res under trees Following his wifes ancient custom of re-worship And would duly embrace it in deference and faith. His dust may or may not ow with his faiths river.

507

Three women and a man (2011-12-06 23:35)

One was his proximate cause, the other A mere co-cause for the yet other one. He a line that pierced the three circles Fades away at the high end of the wall Climbing to stay up all night in the tree. The three circles stay drawn in space But the line has already gone beyond. It was not a path through three circles Only a point that moved to the other side.

508

A joke (2011-12-08 00:15)

A joke is what we have come to, a body in a joke Full of subtle humor, engaging of mind and heart We shake of our jokes in splutters of our bodies. On Sunday evenings, as our Monday approaches, Our carnal humor turns a hard to crack punchline. Flesh on the evening , some hanging out bodies Do hardly provide humor to our sarcastic minds. Our stomachs are esh bags oating with ideas. So we lie in the hall in a glass casket of mourning; Wait for a last joke to be performed on our bodies.

509

Immortality (2011-12-08 02:55)

We were looking for a ne movie for our worn out minds Hanging selves, drooping shoulders, head held forward In our hands, tired of the music of esh and short years. Our stills were to be sweet sickly music of owing years. This man sings because he has to sing for our happiness The other man plays as he cannot but play a happy drum But they are driven out by villagers due to their bad music Together they would sing and play drum as listener turns A stone of esh, a standing stone with no moving ngers. Only ghosts do not turn into stone, being eerie in music. Nor crooked magicians who can make you twenty-younger But cannot become immortal due to their greed for stones If only one turned a stone by music and remained that way. (Watching a classic Bengali movie : Goopi Bagha Fire Elo (1991)

510

Haze (2011-12-09 01:06)

Half-awake from nap I look at a vitreous world Taking in its sun shades and quiet uorescence, Its shadows on the bathroom doors that sneaked Through windows,in fours and twos, in diagonals. The world is now a mirror that reects my sleep, A blue-white kitchen with golden outlines of cooks, A silver mirror of a dining table, reecting clothes Hanging, through tinted window glasses, in breeze, A light that reects my deep- within sounds of ears A steady hum of in-vertigo, waves lapping on walls.

511

My body (2011-12-10 01:03)

I empathized with my sleeping body in the night When at midnight a pup yowled on the blackness Of the world, from the cold of a winter basement. As my mind was my factotum for sundry work It had the onerous job of keeping the pup away. The factotum was unable to keep the pup away . I now had the burden of a mum that was absent That had left its pups to the dark of a midnight. But, sir, the mind is not mothers keeper nor pups. Come to think of it, it is not even my bodys keeper.

512

The hospital (2011-12-11 00:59)

The hospital is a warm space, a pearl-white place Of healed wounds, buzzing ies and white legs. The wounds come here for a warm breeze to blow From loving mouths, from hanging tails in necks From quick beating chests of knowledge and love. The hospital has turned a warm and a ery place Its white light now licked by purple tongues of re, Its efcient silence shattered by loud dying sounds. (Two days ago, in Kolkata, a massive re started by an electrical short circuit killed eighty ve patients of the Amri hospital)

513

Forgetfulness (2011-12-12 00:01)

A little forgetfulness will go a long way A frost-bound paradise is not far away. It is somewhere in the vast wild wastes Its tree birds buried under sheets of ice. A path will open up for cloaked strangers Looking back at the horizon for progress. Now let us forget where we are headed. Let us call a picture dirty and its women In eshy cleavages that fall over drapes. Let us forget their angst, their belly fears Of fetuses,of known genders of machines. Let us produce a wealth of wiggles, giggles, Addressed to the beast in our underarms Hid under rolls of perfumed forgetfulness. Our forgetting is a hole in our throbbing, A forgiveness ,a sandal paste on our throat In a throwback to more forgettable times When death ended up a hole in icy wastes And a December ice would cover its tracks.

514

I.C.U (2011-12-13 00:13)

It is surely a retro thing to begin with First in the nether of body and later In the text, a withdrawal , an absence That owed down from failure at top. As liquid tubes crawl freely all around It is nice to feel brown and retro about it. Being here in the ICU is a warm feeling A getting back to your mothers womb A regression to the emerald ocean-bed Where all seemed well that began well, As a tailed tadpole with no accountability For the damned world that was going on Behind your back where men walked As if they had it on their weighty backs, A vintage feel born of ancient wisdom. (I.C.U .is the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital where critical patients are kept under observation)

515

Pets (2011-12-13 23:43)

It is difcult to nd words for moist love They all stop at the underside of a throat Like a warm liquid moving like a caravan In a desert of inside, stopping for a drink. We have these six pets for our private love We return from our journeys to feed them And resume our journeys in wind and rain. Their throats come alive with echo sounds, Like big dogs tugging at morning leashes. Our pets rise early morning without the sun, After a night of barking at a black darkness In eerie sounds of wind and rain on the roof. We love them enough to come back to feed And stroke their manes in love like our kids. We sometimes wonder who will feed them When rain will intensify amid wind and gale And we will never be able to return to feed. (The six pets are the six passions- lust, anger, greed, pride, infatuation, jealousy, called arishadvargas in the Hindu theology, much like the Seven Deadly Sins of Christianity)

516

The rope of re (2011-12-14 13:50)

A man sits in a tiny kiosk like a bird chick Conned to a roosting nest, reaching out Only for worms in its triangular baby beak. A turban he wears and a red hue on his lips With the tongued accent of a riverside city Where you go to die to live for ever in heaven. A white stuff on leaves makes clients redder In dancing mouths with a gluey paste on leaf. All they need is a white stick of re in mouths To keep their business going, at constant debt. The man has a coconut rope with a ery end Tied to an electric pole, burning slowly like debt. Its re is enough to light white sticks all night. No need to see faces by the light of a match.

517

Embrace (2011-12-14 23:04)

Whenever we do not agree, we embrace Lack of agreement, like we do the night When we cannot agree on sleep of birds. The birds keep awake through the night Keeping an eye on our misdemeanors. We keep awake keeping an eye on theirs. We sleep embracing pillows in folded legs. Attention! we cry in our sheets, those days. We pretend we like them on their backs But in their embrace we make our faces Ugly enough to look in mirrors, noses up. We embrace smoke from the backs of cars. That way tear gas works perfectly in ducts. We embrace our evenings of empty chatter. We embrace rain, praising our god in death And bodies going up in a blue wood smoke. We embrace absence, bodies turning ideas.

518

The moment (2011-12-16 00:16)

The moment now seems difcult to color-code On an undistinguished night of gray monotony, As the eyes turned quickly away in pearl- whites. The moment now seems all that had happened Around the frothy waves of an unspoken truth A truth from nowhere,a chaos stirring in the wind A frozen mind zzling down like a tiny snow-ake . The doctor has put the time at about three a.m.

519

The inventory (2011-12-17 01:02)

This my stuff is all over my yard, in the hollows of mind Under an expanding sky, with the dusty trees nodding. In the train it is all over my seat, under it, and above me, As an inventory of stars twinkles from the sky to the train. A singing boy , his eyes blinking in blindness, has pearly Oyster shells for announcing his eye-wildness and music. His inventory is a whole repertoire of heart rending songs. I cannot keep inventory of the contents of the night sky, Only what I can pick up from the weekly bazaar and shop, And what numbers save up for me in a far off cheese land . But the many-digit numbers are so difcult to memorize I forget them on the foggy night , when I fuck off from here.

520

The haystack (2011-12-17 23:30)

We could make hay while our sun still shone But the needles of sun-rays are lost in the stack. Our body is not skin-deep, surely in this dermis. A syringe stuck in it will not easily nd a needle. Kandinsky found his needle at Monets Giverny* But not the yellow haystack spreading about it. His rising sun shone brightly on such needles. But the stacks were lost in indistinct impressions. Our body remains a haystack of cumulated sun Its needles lost in painterly state of impressions. The body could be a haystack or even a horse The horse is an illusion that has earlier bolted Into the savannas, into grasses that left no hay. Look, the sun seems already setting in the hills. The haystack would soon be gone like the horse. (Reference is to Wassily Kandinskys epiphany about Monets painting Haystacks at Giverny, he saw in a Moscow exhibition of the French impressionists paintings)

521

Beauty and the beast (2011-12-19 00:30)

In that city they have tamed all their lions And similar other beasts from their loins. They have here a wedding to make for son. The wedding shall be quiet and subdued A display of drape and some glitter of gold. The sons pick up resplendent Pacic brides With their moms of widowed sorrows in eyes. Sorrows are like our own, like oods in rivers. Their women make other womens happiness In several other islands with their own beasts. Here in this hall is our own local happiness. Our beasts are in check, cept on some days When they rise from dark lairs of quietude. The woman there has her blue beauty-rays Expertly trained on the volcano in stomach. Happiness is rounded off with apricot desert.

522

Rhetoric (2011-12-19 23:57)

We wanted our bodies to be more than stuff Certain airy things oating on uffy clouds With a stringed instrument slung on shoulders Chipping away at time, lling night with song. The bodies spoke rhetoric in the most retro way As if they were gods wearing unstitched clothes And marigolds on torsos, signifying something.. Are we not more than stuff, we rhetorically asked As the imaginary crowd shouted yes in their silence Amid claps of spiritual hands, in the way of birds Fluttering in sleep in the lonely trees of midnight. How are you ,they asked and ne, we are dying. So are you, we said rhetorically to empty space. Actually we do not wear anything in such space. These marigolds signify nothing , just rhetoric.

523

North (2011-12-20 23:03)

We would dream of the North when cold Icy and frozen around its tree and ower, The mountains aching with pure silver. Up there the men moved about in stoles. Old men in buckets on young shoulders Muttered god-god-god under icy breathes. It seemed God was made of ice in a cave. We had played with waves in childhood And sea-pebbles in teens like marbles. The waves came from a bottom of South And pebbles from storied monkey-soldiers Who oated them on choppy salt waters. We ate rice topped with grated coconuts. Our gods lay in stony slumber in owers. But we had always dreamed of the North Of rivers where corpses oated like stones And burnt in acrid blue smoke on the banks. The waters would ow with bright marigolds As life unfolded each day on a new death And we made ne rice balls for our dead.

524

Lamp (2011-12-21 22:50)

The lamp spoke softly to mild night Like an insect in a dusks soft light A paper light ,squirting in its onion Skinned paper, gold and breathing, Crackling softly in dancing breeze. The waiters wore tiny insects of lips. They brought brass pots for wash, Yellow receptacles of a lamp light. The yellow wall had a ushed lamp Embedded like mirror in deep wood. As we clicked girl stirred like a lamp A ickering lamp in the wind of river, A hand that vanished in its outlines Eyes that blinked like lamp in breeze A cloth that spilled on strands of hair. The lamp was old oil in metal black. A yellow wall took its falling shadow. The shadow smelled of a dying lamp Of a decayed night, a hair in temples Partly graying of a growing wisdom To a growing death in yellow leaves.

525

Buttons (2011-12-22 23:32)

I have wanted to wear the unworn shirt Always put behind, for a missing button. It seems the time has come to take it out Inspect and put it back again in the closet. The button is a mere rose, not appearing In early dawn, in rows of reds and yellows Pulsing like some tiny hearts, baby hearts Full of love and gurgle, saliva on wet lips. The button is a busy womans lady ngers Not appearing from a coffee not yet made, Its magic not woven on a shirt of buttons. The button is babys missing tooth of laugh. It is a missing son from the dark of a room, A missing dream from a crying moms sleep, A missing button from a long train journey A whole missing shirt of no missing buttons.

526

Wall (2011-12-23 22:36)

The wall is to the street of midnight, A bit of the night, a tiny world, a dog With a nightly bark in its loud throat. It is to scraps of men, to birds in sleep On the distant branches, their chicks Warm to the twigs, feathers in making. The wall is to real poetry of the night, Fears of decay, opening in a window Nothing but a hole in wall for escape. The wall exists because and for escape Because you cannot climb emptiness. The wall is curtain to dark from light A hole for escape, a climb with a leg A scrape of skin, escape from itself, A burst from body, its walls painted On the outer of inner rushing rivers . The wall contains a monsoon burst.

527

The Golconda fort (2011-12-24 23:20)

Stone is to heart as sun is to cloud Warm and golden in after-moments Gently touching, mere nger- feeling Softness of texture, hardness of sun. History is full with stones and clouds. Mens shadows in time, wives in tow With stones in hearts, soft and warm Flit about as historys ghosts at dusk. Silk dupattas y about as white clouds. The eyes were stones in their sorrows. The eyes were Golcondas diamonds Traded in heaps in historys markets Under rows of stones, arches of time. The sultans made mosques for them. When there was no beauty left at night There was a God in the Western sky. These stones are blood owing in hearts. Their sounds y across in space in claps. A matchstick is not a ame but a sound A sound in time, just a ame in thought .

528

Mud-pies (2011-12-26 01:37)

All the genuine, deep delight of life is in showing people the mud-pies you have made; and life is at its best when we condingly recommend our mud-pies to each others sympathetic consideration. J. M. Thorburn We made our mud-pies well before dawn. Our delight is in the very numbers of eyes Half-pie eyes turning in light from inside Their lids not falling yet , into the abyss. We make mud-pies for each others view. Their soft roundness is delight to our eyes And a deep joy to feel to our gnarled ngers. Your roundness of pies is a smooth joy too And is highly recommended for neighbors. After we go, please do not forget to view Our pies slapped on the citys broken walls Amid hurried grafti , bits of cinema posters Well before they ake off of excessive sun.

529

Woman (2011-12-26 23:07)

In my rhetoric I forgot the death In the throat, a vanishing death In the smallness of night hours As all is forgot, as not belonging, A bundle of clothes left behind A knot of a loin-string in the dark The death of life, slowly whistling From dusty trees of mountains. I forgot all the untouchable days Of passing by a houses side-lane With a bundle of clothes in arms To a well of waters in the backyard Under trees of concurrent shadows In a series as they went in the day. I forgot my squatting in the veranda While accosting everyones death On a passing road of sun and ash. Then my touch was death and love In the smallness of my girl-breasts. I quickly went woman-dead in shame. Later I forgot death in my stomach A bloody bundle of woman-shame, As a mere shriek that never came. In rhetoric I forget my dying shriek That has failed to rise from my throat As a vanishing death, a footfall away In the smallness of my night hours.

530

The spectacle case (2011-12-27 13:17)

A plastic with soft contours , it stares At my eyes ,balefully from its existence, Its pride, outcome of seeing too much. Eyes are love , drooping an egos fall On the pillar of a nose, with two extra Eyes seeming duplication but not so. Custodian of seeing ,often a little proud, It encases glasses roundly, just in case, Luckily not making a spectacle of itself.

531

Colors (2011-12-27 23:26)

We believed colors mainly made our life Such as the soft Asian paints of Royale Of a silky touch, all smudges wiped off. The tea was just great color on white shirt That could be wiped off by a daub of surf. The children played in mud, a great color But mother could do anything for colors. Mothers eyes can now see only a uni-color In the dusks shadows of dancing coconuts Waiting for her night to remove all smudges. Due to lack of color, her cheeks often burst With colorless marbles of clattering words. The kids expertly push marbles into holes Their index ngers aching like strung bows Below a window, with an overlooking uncle. Luckily no holes are missed, of color or no. Wordy marbles nally fall into their holes. Some points are missed in color confusion.

532

Light (2011-12-28 23:53)

This evening light is deeply intriguing In its speckles, on parapet walls at dusk. People seem stretched as long shadows Stuffed with emptiness, uni-dimensional And asking for a little glory on the oor. The parapet walls, set in rareed dusk air, Stand, stripped of the gone time, bit by bit, As yellow light deepens their historys hues . The rocks , duly red and dead, pay lip service To mothers of ancient discovery in kitschy Letters of round frames and square thought. Several suns ago ,when men were not shadows, Women in zenana came to pray in the mosques. Their shrouds looked like veils of light on rocks As their naked feet descended the stone steps. (An evening at the Golconda fort)

533

Green inspiration (2011-12-29 23:31)

You may ask what it is that breeds poetry From nocturnal thought, a green inspiration From decay, a smell of infestation and death As you now turn around , excessively aware Of a role soon coming to an end on the stage, While the green room there is still gaping open With dress-clothes, a paint drying in its tubes. Our scripted dialogues point to our roles end A green grease-paint never to be put on again A director and prompter dead in their tracks. We still have our green faces grotesquely moving. Their brows are still dancing of love and death. Can we come back to make one last show please, Before we can nally go back to our backwaters In our snake-boats of grotesquely paddling oars All asynchronously moving towards somewhere.

534

The year-end (2011-12-31 00:09)

Our change will happen not at the midnight Of cakes and candles,loud claps and crackers But in doorways, each time we pass them Like ghosts, room to room, under owers Delicately painted on their frames on yellow. The doorway is not inside nor there in space But just hanging on time, as we hop and skip Holding our hems from paint sticking to them. The year-end is a doorway that will disappear in the dusty lane and in the dust we cant recall What ghosts we were in the room left behind.

535

536

Chapter 3 2012

537

3.1

January

538

Celebrating the new year (2012-01-01 00:56)

In the basement some red curtains hang sideways As walls that enclose us in a new time, a new space Protecting us from ies, mosquitoes and infestations A thousand ills of war and pestilence, a stench of rot. The persona would be different now, cakes in mouth Their icing all over their mustaches like snow-akes. Let us ring in the bells , the bells of a new crispness Of sound in our silent mornings ,as clear as a brook. But our new year bursts in ames of crackling sounds Rising as in hills in layers of sound ,one on the other. These are sounds of crackers at midnight, idle fancies Of new rich crowd, hanging out from bulging pockets.

539

The long and short of it (2012-01-01 13:33)

A Gods priest , short in height, had to pray To reach a tall stone gods head to garland. The short priest was dear to the stone god Who out of love bent down for the garland Of marigolds heavy with the scent of a bee. All our myths are stones, our loves miracles. We are waiting for our miracle monkey gods To bend down to our shortness, our ve feet Of body and a few feet of shriveled up spirit That shall vanish in the ether of a smoky sky. A tall man may now look down for you to look Into his eyes in a diagonal vision of marriage By the relight, in the fragrance of jasmines. A white clothed man may turn his beatic eyes On you standing below the window on the kerb In a diagonal view from your body and eyes. But your bodys thoughts shall always remain Of its vanishing in the smoke of a dead tree.

540

Looking away (2012-01-02 00:56)

In the new year we will look away from ugliness Sore thumbs from riding on our mind, just a wafe. We do not exist as we look away and they do not. The images shall further a space of beauty- smells Away from our death, a rotting death in our bones. Our owers shall have child-bones, a esh of smell That drops away, its fragrance lingering for a while. (New year resolution)

541

Winter bliss (2012-01-03 00:13)

That is when a victory music comes in waves From boxes, in parallel and standing towers Their faces black and square and facing trees And clouds in sedation with solar necklaces On chests, breathing out rings of winter steam. That is when a river shivers on its silken sands On a cold morning under a train on the bridge With tiny ants of people crawling on its wet bed Around sand craters, along with toy buffaloes. That is when cloaked people huddle around res Fed on twigs and old tires burning in acrid smoke, When shadows from sun are pinioned on the wall And palms emerge from cloaks for re-assurance.

542

Winter sunshine (2012-01-03 23:24)

A sun of gold is set high on the promontory As the lake shivers like a winter trembling. The birds on the lake rise like goosebumps, Their shadows eaten by bigger tree shadows. A man phones with an orange lake behind Slowly turning a silhouette as dusk creeps in. A hooded sh woman has turned a silhouette Looking towards the road for last customers. Her sh in basket had seen this morning sun But their sun set quite early during the day.

543

The child (2012-01-04 21:03)

The child tumbles on the bed for his exploring, But for a residual hue of a picture in my mind. Slowly tumbling the child gravitates to a corner Of the bed , near the lamp, now dead of light. He turns to light in minds corner, a thrower Of things like tumblers, a lover of silk- touch On tablet computer to move shadows across, Mocking at my adult intelligence, perpetuating Innocence in a pair of beauty-eyes like dawn From behind the mountains in this early spring. The tablet catches him in its light-box rolling. He squats on the glass-top, rattles our spoons On the glass exploring steels contact with glass, A lover of knowledge, against the fragile fears Of adults who break quickly of glass and steel. He has glass and steel casting shadows in light, In minds corner, from a glass-top of innocence.

544

The wasp (2012-01-06 01:04)

The wasp was just a window to its state On the glass of my window, in struggling with transparency, with lack of freedom In battling wings, freedom lying inches Away, below the glass, through the grill. Trying to make its image was a mind-state From my to-be camera, in my inner space Its eyed vision projecting for story capture Of struggle against glass, with airy freedom Only some inches away, with not knowing it. Not knowing it is a wasp state, a luminosity Of ignorance, a lack of blue freedom to air A failure to lift its body to a state of motion Not knowing where glass ends,space begins. Not knowing when its glass will turn space And freedom will begin in the wings is state A failure state , state of emptiness of mind An unnished story that turns a mind-state.

545

Flower- seller (2012-01-06 19:59)

The ower seller sits cross-legged at the street corner Like darkness living under a dusty ancient staircase. Her owers for sale have turned colorless and gray In the dimly-lit street corner near a circular manhole . The owers on her black hair glisten like a white moon On her dark bloused back ,as she turns her head to us Jerking her hair before us, with its owers of fragrance.

546

Lines (2012-01-06 22:37)

We write these lines as remembrance Of our thoughts, for nobody in particular Of only some trees with birds or no birds. Birds die in due time with or without trees. Lines go on with or without trees or birds. They go on beyond paper, a tables edges Touching a windows rail and a dogs wail. In fact they touch the dogs wail so softly As if it were a dogs tail , wagging friendly. We write the lines for nobody in particular Only some mango tree ourishing in green With or without a memory of a poets mom, At times, as a soft wind whistling though it.

547

The retouched woman (2012-01-08 00:09)

The woman stands duly re-touched. Lack of eye-liner hides vacant eyes From wet fear welling up in corners. Heck , no eyes, only bare ngers Holding on to the insides of body, Just re-touching a womans body Lest it not go away from the dress. (A haunting photograph of an Afro- Carribean mental patient in Haiti by Eve Arnold , the famous Magnum photographer who passed away recently at the age of 99)

548

Outline (2012-01-08 00:21)

We are an outline of existence, a silhouette A body in unmaking, a life stripped of matter An airy nothing, an erasable outline of nobody, That began as mere idea born of some body. But our outline continues on sunsets of gold.

549

Flowers in the evening (2012-01-08 23:46)

The ower woman sits in the street corner with her owers of many colours lying about in heaps.The colors are not distinguishable in the night but their fragrances are. The winter evening breeze grosses them up as one entity, pleasant and gently skin-touching. The colors come from somewhere like the breeze, the smells of owers all aggregated like the cheesy smells of the other evening, as we do not look into the eyes of others on a birthday evening. Birthday evenings of sons raise hopes and expectations,like debit cards sprung out of pockets explaining all. In the end the colors get mixed up with the smells of pizzas, their waiters bearing evening smells of owers that are indistinguishable from Italian pasta and bread crumbs topped with vegetable pieces. Birthday cakes get put away for higher salaries. Girls come from out of the mists, future wives , for a mere Rs.20000 salary and a dark young man without a horse, girls willing to take on the role of mothers. We want a girl who will bake a cake for our future son. Future son when we are past fathers. The girl sits in the street corner like the ower woman with a dark back . Her owers glisten in their white fragrance on a hair pleat thrown at our face in a dark challenge.

550

Mothers (2012-01-09 01:10)

Mothers,stop grieving for sons now not yours Give them to othr women for their grieving. It takes a young womans grit to pass sons In the hall staring through glass, unconcerned , A single heart stopping act under a cold sky, After a night of pointing stars to daughters. There are other women, girls- to- turn moms. Theyll do the needful on this cold night.

551

Divorce (2012-01-10 00:19)

So we go on safe in our knowledge That it does not really matter if knot Or yes, in the annals of our history Or of future biography, a past sheaf Of a few wind-blown, crackling papers Except as an interruption, when one Wakes up purely, dream-fresh of logic An interruptus from productive love. We make agreement to sign at bottom Across a side page, on the three lions Watching from historys stone statues. We had got them typed on a footpath Where love waited to be interrupted. Order, order says the gavel in black coat Do not interrupt, it is serious business. But we have one hell of an interruption From a hot afternoon, a crows screech.

552

The sentence (2012-01-10 23:50)

We have got brevity , a wits soul in our souls Like the sea breeze ballooning in empty pocket Tickling a body, setting off ants of thought lines. A sentence is a luxury like the sea expanding On the horizon mindlessly, a freak of thought, Somewhere , where the boat meets high waves Touching the overhead sky, getting lost for ever. Words then catch up on thoughts but are lost When they turn thoughts, are promptly gobbled up By the sea. that kills thought , like days last mind Before sleep , when you become no longer viable And so is your sentence, lost on sleeps high seas.

553

Old (2012-01-11 23:26)

We are old and puffed up with silences. We do not want to hang for others money Let us be .We are used to long silences And we hang in on our higher language And sardonic laughter, not quite caught. So, do we see a jerk in the driver of awe A body with respect in eyes for the old? No, just money-hunger of seven rupees, From a body that carries other bodies A face not quite distinct, possible of puff With oldness , when once out of splutter. Knees shall laugh in due course of wobble. We are old ,not quite liking to be called aunt By an aunt in street with a cuckoo in throat Calling out , you gone for a walk recently? Yes, of course, our knees do not wobble yet. But we shall have our own cuckoos soon.

554

Dissembling (2012-01-13 00:04)

From the tiger country marshes we had come Here on the road to night, a lone policeman Whistling at lack of people at such an hour. Our scholarly tomes are on ecology conserving But we are more on ferreting out spy secrets Of skull-digging neighbor country spy outts For interior ministers who speak to us in secret. We looked at ourselves versus enemy spies Always after us in far off cities , to cause hurt To our body, afraid of its quietly spilling beans We knew when all those beans were to spill On the empty roads of night, with no crowds. All our life we believed we were some body else Not a history man, a doctor of letters from far . We dissembled a child who cried while laughing Fancying ourselves as keeper of state secrets. We therefore had to keep up several pretenses About our being a conservation man at night. It is so tiring to pretend you are somebody else. Now we know we are somebody else in the dark Back in the green room for donning a new role Where we no longer need to dissemble or dget Wearing rusted masks that do not t our face. (About a schizophrenic relative of mine who died recently when his dissembling had become too much to bear)

555

Motley (2012-01-14 01:45)

Our houses spring into our trees and our sky From land , of green grass and brown scrub. Its grass-hoppers turn our moneys butteries . Our money roundly spins in colors variegated Our houses rise among sub-warm tenements Holding sleeping men and sneezing children, Flesh of morning faces, heard early morning As lunchboxes clattering on checked backs. Our water pours from overhead cement tanks As our roads turn streaks of summer-dry rivers. We light our early bonres of twigs and lumber Old wood crackling in re-pits as children clap. Their shirts are motley colors clapping around Huge bonres of evil demons, their white smoke Rising to a sky to turn its blue to motley colors. Our houses are motley colors, our balconies Hang out with dripping clothes of motley colors. We are now in lean and slippered pantaloons A patchwork of colors ,a nightly entertainment In television soaps of many hues and fragrances. Our music is swan-songs of well rounded lives. ( Ref: Shakespeares As you Like It : A fool , a motley fool!)

556

Shadows in the cave (2012-01-15 00:58)

Old man Plato had cultivated shadows That constituted the truth of the cave And outside , a blinding sun of the sky His sky reveals truth owing from sun. Poetic magic unfurls an untruths ag A perspective of a banyan in blue sky And its lake of shadows; poetry words Are but ripples on its vast lake of truth. The banyan is not of the lake nor of sky Only an approximation to Platos reality. Poetry words release his cave prisoners From shadows of truth, from his allegory. (About Platos famous Allegory of Prisoners in the Cave)

557

Nine holes (2012-01-16 00:24)

We have now to play a nine hole golf On a spring morning under a blue sky With a smoking pipe in one of our holes. We thank God we have arrived nally. It is fun to play balls smoothly into holes. Our holes are just nine and fully open. Our tongues stick out, from their holes As propositions are made we click them We just have to purse lips to say "ptch". We have collected stuff through our holes And stashed them away into bigger holes On our attic, in its tiny niches of darkness We do not see these holes in our nights Can only feel them as tingling sensations. Our dark holes are nine and fully open For the breeze to whoosh through them. But we are afraid their time will soon come To disappear in the bottomless sink-hole Where all holes vanish without retrieve. (Nine holes in the Hindu philosophy are two eyes, two ears,two nostrils,two excretory organs, a mouth, the holes in the body through which we gather sensations)

558

Ruins (2012-01-17 01:10)

This man is reading from the ruins Of a computer panel, to gure out Where the deuced control switch is As he cannot access Google search. Or perhaps he is reading from ruins Figuring out lifes behind meaning With a snigger on child-like wet lips And it has nothing to do with ruins. Another man, a birth-idiot, has warts Found interesting by passionate girls And older women ,wet hens, crowing Unnecessarily from literatures tops On darkly clouded evenings over tea. Faced with too much beauty the idiot Goes promptly into epileptic ts of joy. For some strange reason the poor idiot Hardly realizes the gaping hole in roof And the ground slipping under his feet. (On reading "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky.The other image is from Steve Mccurrys photograph "Reading", in which a man is shown reading from the ruins of a bombed out control panel room)

559

Peculiar (2012-01-18 01:55)

A poet seemed slightly peculiar to die At 40000 feet ,while shitting in airplane As if poetry is to be taken and dropped From a height , so as to to be effective On post- generations and all those who Went under, that had not heard of him. The peculiar poet wanted to be heard From a ying shit-room, barely audible In a racket of propeller slicing the wind. The plane took him over many heads Of ants of people and when poetry-done, Pitted poet-head against a hard sky-roof That cruelly stilled a living throats voice. Surely there is nothing new about dying, But there is indeed something truly novel About dying at dizzy Olympian heights. Always self-absorbed, poets turn peculiar. They have to nd newer ways of dying.

560

Morning gloom (2012-01-19 00:57)

The only way is to look at oneself in the mirror When nobody is looking, as the fan is whirring And a y or two buzz about in the morning sun When window glass burns with it in gold and silk And tall shadows sprawl on yellow-owered beds As though they were men of your former selves. Then there are silhouettes of cooks in the kitchen And green cut vegetables getting ready to be fried Ofce children pulling up socks ,bent and frayed House maids deliciously applying golden brooms On nights weary marble oors to gently ick dust Off to golden pathways from kitchens windows. The way is not look into the eyes of needless men. Nor into future shapes of inert bodies under sleep Waiting for a larger sleep to devour smaller ones . A golden window , a yellow bed , dust in the sun Do cover bottoms better than those gloomy gures.

561

Catching the world by its words (2012-01-20 00:19)

I take an armful of words to the lake, in my breath As the sky seems still and is ranged over the trees Sonically in whispers ,with a breeze ever so gentle To the lake, smiling from enormous blue distances. Time to catch the world by its words, in the softness Of a silky evening, a passing thing of this very time Before it vanishes in a spoof of words, in a breeze. I return to spit freshly wet words into the wash-basin And look up thimble ,quotidian,high sounding words To catch the world in acoustic grasp, its emptiness Collected in porous canvas bags as a few sonic words This way I try to catch the world by its own words By the very sonic words that have made the world.

562

Spurious (2012-01-21 01:06)

I have sealed this here fate as spurious A name given to a poetry of non-feeling. Its words come from the depths of marrow. They are semantics, sounds semantically Linked, in an under-sea of bones and meat. Nakedness shall be in dreams, of a red meat White bones, holes to the sky, wind and rain Hissing through sooty eye-holes, a free jaw. Poems come from a missing lower mandible.

563

Three women (2012-01-22 00:27)

Between us three there is this he, a at piece of jelly That defeats us daily by the night, occupying our body, As fears spread in the belly like a jelly, these silly fears. He that wore a body till recently is now an idea mainly That spread from our sleeping body, between our sheets, In dreams, mainly, to a sky that arched over our body. Our light shadows coalesce with his absence of body Entering our common dreams in our separate sleeps. ( Three women are mother, wife and daughter of a dead man)

564

Tiger burning bright (2012-01-22 22:42)

Ten people in a picnic do not a man make Only a pagoda rising from the wet grass On a summer evening, a fresh wet spring The beginning of summer, a winters end, As a hose on the side gurgles grass water On soft summer shadows, wet shadows. A tiger burns bright on a green grass mound At a ash of photo-bewilderment in far eyes Looking over the shoulder, from a round head. The tiger burns whitely against a stones pink. Shadows walk past in black, rising against men. They eat ice-creams, pop-corns in large trees. Obstreperous kids shout at a Sundays silence. Some old men look over monkey gods in red. The tiger refuses to gawk at men that do not make A pagoda on a wet evening, eating their popcorn, All the strange creatures walking in their shadows. It has to burn bright for poets wet behind the ears.

565

Philosophy (2012-01-24 00:16)

Between us and our philosophy there is a stream Of people, slow-moving towards the blue horizon With their hands hurled into empty space in rhythm Their brass cuff-links glistening in the morning sun. There are overwhelming huge crowds milling about In railway trains , with water pots under their seats. They are the shadows of so many people in frenzy Of hearts suffering blockage, of minds gone crazy Bodies lying intestate, with ies buzzing about eyes. I have to rst understand where they are all going, Crossing the fords and rivers, dunes and beaches, Clutching fears in bellies, gods crying oral attention And water on their phallic stones, camphor ames Lighting ancient darkness, bats uttering in caves Old men and women blinking eyes to blinding light. I should understand their stones and nubile maidens Dancing in ancient moonlight, their utes softly singing From tree branches on the river banks, after stealing Butter from pots hung in kitchens darkness of mother.

566

Grass notes (2012-01-25 01:39)

On a morning of bedewed grass A bare walk hardly leaves notes Only bird notes from park trees. The grass cowers in wet silence, But raises its heads once a while Its wetness tingling the underfoot A painful thorn peeps sometimes From shadows hid in its self-respect. A noisy nose on the green bench Dumps a breath of fresh dirty air But takes much more of green air. A broken lawn-mower lies listless Throwing up its hands in despair Powerless to cut its pride to size. Winter-cold feet barely manage to squish In its bleary-eyed upper submissiveness Flying away before the sprinkler gets them.

567

Checking up (2012-01-25 23:31)

In checking up, a room of night grew on me On phone from hot windy plains, her dream As a woman of daughters beyond the ocean Talked of holiday in emerald island together By a mother-daughter, a son in childish glee Tipping over a balcony, in a minds slowness Hunger of mother, a dark anguish of mother A heart attacking the dark night of lone tree In a mix-up of time and space, night of day. A checking up is poetry of pursuit, a last training A sunshine at the hem of a garment in retirement As the sun diagonally pursues a womans walk. Checking up on a room of night grew on my sleep Seeking a conrmation of continued existence, Of each others continued existence, my own life, In its poetry of night and a box of light in the day.

568

Glory (2012-01-26 23:37)

We talked of Kolkatas garbage boys Scavenging on Indias poverty in glory Their cheeks gone pale with knowledge Amid Nobel prizes lost and not found, Their brown sugar level intact in blood From cigarettes puffed in silver rings. This morning we nd some Boston boys From yellow blogs scavenging in forties On mountains of putrid Western glory. Thank God we are level with those guys. Now we do not carry giant size hurt egos Any longer, on our drooping shoulders. http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/lewis-w-hine-child-scavenge rs.html

569

Fragmentary (2012-01-28 01:08)

It seems there is no single integral way Of grappling with the world , in its nights Of darkness hiding trees after their silent Manouevres in a day of their making stuff Plain green stuff in leaves of yellow light. Another leaf is my own fragmentariness. I am a leaf to be removed from its winter. Like this man severed from his leafy past Now earth and water in the sea of a sky Fragment of event that is not whole of life A broken life, from a winter of the past. My reading is fragmentary , wholly digital. My grasp of the wholeness of a wired life Is leaves from someone elses digital diary. My verse is leaves fallen of a winter of age. This life is fragmentary, a heap of images Like many-hued splinters in a kaleidoscope.

570

The burning torch (2012-01-29 00:57)

In the evening there was some exquisite music That owed smoothly on a silk-soft winter breeze With a burning torch ahead, duly abetted by oil. As God went out with his wives on the palanquin, A bamboo stick went musical in its circular holes And a goatskin went into fever long after its death. The pig-tailed men carried their God on shoulders. The torch burnt the night till it smelled like owers.

571

The sun is born (2012-01-30 07:39)

In the seven colors that make light The suns ery chariot swiftly moves Towards the equinox, our own thing In backyard, a cross-square of twigs That turns a chariot on a bean leaf . Our rice and milk ,stewed in smoke Tastes exquisite, like his warm gold Of morning rays on weathered bodies. We love our sun but cannot see him With our naked eyes ,except in smoke Or as he is fully eaten up by our earth. (Today is the Rath Saptami (a Hindu festival linked to sun-worship) , the seventh day following the Suns northerly movement of vernal equinox, starting from the Capricorn.-beginning of spring.The day is also believed to be the day on which the sun was born)

572

Free will (2012-01-30 23:47)

I thought I took this up of my free will, But a fat chance I thought it up myself From an obdurate sleep in nightly yawns It looks like a random thing picked up In a broken moon sky of billions of stars . A random thing is not a choice of will. I cant be proud of acting on such will. Free will is authority to refuse miracle Away from the night and time ticking Nearer the hot sun and a broken moon Flickering close to a new Jupiter star. Free will is our power to let miracles Not happen, so we can act in free will. Free will is the power to stave off words Falling like asteroids on a dark night.

573

3.2

February

574

Shopping (2012-02-01 01:02)

The doctor said up there is no room Right now and please wait for turn. We guffawed about the eighty year old Eager to go shopping in the afternoon, Her wobbly knees just not there below. The doctor said she had it coming With mounting pressure on vessels And a worn out heart pumping fast. Her body carried a hearts sure failure But just a sorbitrol under her tongue Calmed her body and a furious heart. A miracle saved her upward journey. But she still has plenty of shopping left. We hope upstairs will remain occupied With not enough space for new entrants.

575

A quick yellow note on words (2012-02-02 00:12)

There is some sleep pending in eyes . As a tube-light whines, a hidden word Escapes to night, slippery like the rim Of the well mossy after pails of water And a water snake passes in the night While there is for real a coconut rope. Words are at times snakes on the well Its stone crevices turning in green plants Jutting out as fresh forms of knowledge But hiding places for snakes , just ropes In a nights dark ,under stars ickering. The moon falls to the wells depths Trembling at the water pail in circles. Words are broken pieces of the moon Disappearing to the dark nights rim.

576

The "I"-pad (2012-02-03 01:13)

Listening to the soft breath of Gods song From a mornings darkness is happiness Beginning with a middle and a likely end. To that happy note we like to put a full stop But cant do so due to the furtive commas Looming ahead, semi- and full, with dots To a skull with lower jaws, free and droll. The skull plates display its seams loose And threads hanging in the cold night air Of much mountain breeze , waving trees. From out of love and invention and death An apple man speaks in a t of life- speech Carried away by the thoughts of the day , With no future skulls, of seams coming off. A calligraphy learnt in the undergrad lessons Spawned an invention and beauty of intellect. Crossing the dots couldnt keep plates intact. One cant follow basic calligraphy on the brow. (After listening to Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement address)

577

Deaths possibilities (2012-02-04 00:53)

Yesterday the poet Szymborska died in sleep Of heavily smoked lungs and yellowed age. Deaths possibilities are immense and other. Upstairs might not have had enough space And the moment was not for death to knock. Like death was not strong enough to swat a y In a death be not proud moment of triumph, When she was immortal, in the very moment. The business of dying in sleep makes it hard To pinpoint the very moment of deaths victory. Her immortality remains an open-ended matter. (Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska died at her home in Krakow yesterday. She was 88 years old. According to a New York Times obituary Szymborska, a heavy smoker, died in her sleep of lung cancer & surrounded by relatives and friends. "Possibilities" is one of her poems. Her other poem "On death, without exaggeration" is being referred to here)

578

Miracle (2012-02-04 23:33)

We never thought a moment at roads corner Would lead to going here, to seeing God there Driven around by a random man of some day. Miracles are such odd chances of one thing Leading to other , looking at a smile in the far. A three-wheeler rickshaw would sputter for us With no hangers-on, of some young body parts Flying in the air, zooming past dusty vehicles. Our body-less souls would hang out in throats, Thirsty for Gods love,a perennial beauty-quest . Our egos would be in old pockets, our hearts Safely behind them, sputtering with a rickshaw. So much depends upon a sputter of rickshaw.

579

After-fact (2012-02-06 02:29)

We know midnight poetry would not happen On re-regurgitation of stuff, imagining trouble In way out places, in body parts, as the clock Strikes ominously at midnight hours, one by one. Some salt of soda make cannot make food go. It is found food is the culprit, making noises And swirling like a typhoon, in the lower base. Funny to imagine we would possibly not get up. We cant possibly cross-check on this insight later Since we wouldnt know we are dead in the deep. No way of checking whether or not we are dead. Pity that we cant write a death poem as after-fact.

580

We do not have poems (2012-02-07 13:34)

All that was heard was a shrill sparrow-call Echoing in the balcony on mornings silence Touching mute trees and their sun-rich sky. Remembering night was the rst of morning In a bodys rumble , a memory of late night. Sleep was dreams of realitys broken pieces. On such a morning we cannot have poems.

581

Cold (2012-02-08 01:10)

She was blowing her nose On phone, not from a cold, While talking of this and that , Of her granddaughter, a girl In pigtails, on way to school. She was not talking of her son Or of his late ghost in the hall . When the girl goes to school She makes sounds in the hall Enough to scare away a ghost. Nose blowing might shoo it off.

582

The professors ladder (2012-02-09 16:12)

There is this your don of the drug cartel Your story has him walk into the horizon. Surely we cant have him kicking around. He has used the Profs ladder but kick it As soon as we climb up it, says our prof. We want our ladders safely on to the wall Just in case, as we get dizzy halfway down. Our ladders are for evening birds to perch For their idle prattle, after days business. "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them as steps to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)" (6.54) -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus The goal of the Tractatus, as Wittgenstein claims in his preface, is "to draw a limit & to the expression of thoughts." (http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/tractatus/quotes.html #explanation5)

583

Just write (2012-02-09 23:42)

Just write ,it would whisper , in black and in white,when it is still dark night. one must take in the night, its two roses sleeping in the night ,in waking yellow and crimson, rising from a little earth to higher reaches, where wind strikes and the sun strikes a ower into being. come to the balcony opening to streets night project to the street, a stream of silent people shufing feet in their absence, in their futures all the while a black increasing to only dissipate beyond the apartment, beyond the gnarled tree now in the room, before a curtain of sound a sound of marriage strikes a bamboo stick of holes in a music of two bodies , in a night of black as it turns orange beyond a dead standing tree, a wishful tree of old dreams, its old birds dreams, staring at its stumps.

584

hands (2012-02-10 15:49)

hands move forward and back into the air, in a ne symmetry one after other, when in parade they beat lots of air in between when not swatting ies, in air. in pockets they warm bodies in fear when they are not cold in the palms hands help bodies in their dire crisis by the sweat of their oozing palms. why are they lying limp on a chest?

585

bitter (2012-02-11 00:19)

they had been of the same home then at different times, from the same water they played hopscotch with raised leg And tamarind seeds on chalk squares. he of her womb has left her for ghost. she that had shared a home with her is not even a voice touching her eyes.

586

the fruit (2012-02-12 01:37)

this man raises his arms to the sky his other is head skewed to the right and then to the left, in two separate postures of grass walking morning wet under the feet, with garden hose on its top spewing noisy wet abuses hose is snake lying without Vishnu Or Krishna stamping on snake head grass eats water from its head under it. eyes wake up from grass eating hose turn to the orange fruit to be plucked behind the apartment before it ripens so it will not fall away of excess gravity mind turns to poetry making sense in words that are for readers eyeballs mind is rebel and says minds poetry is not for reader, but magic of words incandescent images ,with own status freed from a stiing readers mind. but wait, it is all coming back to sense to reader sense, on feet froze on grass what if poetry words are writ without a reader in mind but he will come to it like a leisurely cow foraging for food on a summer afternoon and nds this plastic paper and munches it anyway what if we exclude the reader altogether from poetry, mere poetry for poetrys sake poetry written because you cannot help it a poetry for writing, for merely writing. now,now, the fruit has fallen of gravity.

587

when park is hole (2012-02-12 03:38)

when in the park part is whole just a noise for apartment bloc a cry for a bird, a wind for tree a color of green for park bench a word for face, a smell for body park is circle,an attempt to close going thus far , rounding it down. its points lie under , move away they are in the circle and outside. the park connects words to things parts of wholes to wholes of parts park is pure semantics, connected loose wires hanging, fantasy links but they are somehow connecting.

588

lake (2012-02-13 01:33)

this side of lake is colors in evening of hordes of birds around the rocks rocks are their colors, birds colors paddling and resting before paddling ying away from them,and to them the ripple is colors of spinning sky tree shadows , green on blue, black and dense in the core, gray to ring rocks are birds ying low in the sky the sky is lake ,white as cotton cloud lake silent in tree like summer sky tree is stuck in the blue sky of lake lake is left holding the baby of tree the rocks paddle , y away as birds low ying birds of sky around birds of white hovering on trembling lake the lake trembles in blue of the sky On the other lake is an orange fruit trapped in the distant birds of rocks its skin peeled away as sheet of gold its birds y from rocks to apartments the houses fall into a trembling lake lake left holding the baby of houses. rocks rest and y to the other rocks birds paddle to rocks that do not y they y in lake that has turned sky the sky is now trembling in the lake the sky is eating up the orange fruit.

589

Tomorrow morning (2012-02-13 23:30)

There had been no tomorrow morning After the stars at midnight and the girl Tucked in bed and women went to sleep. Actually today went to sleep as usual. Today would later wake up to the girl And women ,who would wake up to nd Your tomorrow had gone from today. But that was that days today of night Of stars pointed, their positions stated In the dark sky of roof, over the roof, In sky-roof whose stars have since gone. Womens today is with your that days Today of stars, in their homes in sky. Girls today is still there but going away From that days today, to todays today, As new stars have come to the sky-roof.

590

Inter-changeable (2012-02-14 23:05)

The yoga man in his hissing nostrils Was raising a throat to a water bottle Summer is here but that was yesterday Not smoothly done, now rounded off. Fail better would seem a worse quotation To make Beckett turn in his absurd grave As we are waiting for our own Godot. You open the door and see the moon Sitting awake on top of a sleeping rose. It is 3 A.M. and let me hear buzzwords Of today, the night, a half-cooked night In internet of sinking world, Guernica Of geometric Picasso, gure in thought. The night watchmans stick plays music With the road, smelling of a black night A police van plays a saxophone of love. Yesterday we thought into a limited space As we walked up and down on park grass Making territorial home on a green bench Where all this seemed so inter-changeable. Each man in the park was an eye-spectacle A visual image for temporary safe-keeping A minds snapshot of a body posture led In a temporary folder, later to be deleted . But everything seems so inter-changeable. The stick watchman is now a famous cubist A policeman is drinking water into cheeks. The moon is smelling like the black night And a rose fails better in fetal petal-sleep. The yoga man is staking claim to clean air. The green bench is clear of gurgle sounds From men in throats of water going down . On a half-cooked night everything seems So inter-changeable, so easily replaceable. 591

Vertigo (2012-02-16 01:59)

In the midnight there was a brief hiatus Between sleep and waking up to poetry But we had to wait for the morning to rise Beyond the dead tree, standing as if alive Where birds will come for a morning show When they strut their own new aliveness. In the interregnum was a breath of noise And an old heart, laden with fearful logic When the logic would stare in the curtains As a dogs bark night-walks on the road Not a rhythmic stick tapping watchman. But head turning in a pillow posited a logic A new fearful logic of the night ,a blank wall A new green curtain with no street beyond it With no glowing sky, no dead tree with birds That pretended as if it is still alive in the sky. Poetry had to to wait for the morning to rise.

592

Sonnet (2012-02-17 03:13)

A stanza with all things small ,a birds cry For comma, machine whir for a full stop Tears on girls cheeks of crying child, a sigh Machine whir drowned in street noise, a drop. Rice cooker hisses sessions in colons Girls cold ows in shiny tears as pearl beads, Summer brings its lucky water melons; Melons open red laughter in black seeds. The sonnet is more a sentence than song No imagery, no poetry stuff , just rhyme And no reason, no feeling, it is wrong Iambs of pentameter are dozen a dime. Girls tears have to go, by laughing melons. The last line is a full stop, no semi- colons.

593

Dying early (2012-02-17 23:08)

We do not dispute a thinly veiled existence , His dying at early age , a tongue sticking out After a previous nights stars of many nger Pointings towards a sky-dome of ancient stars By a little nger spanning millennia of space Light years of endless time as vacant space Measured out in parcels of tiny square feet Like the little boy-god under a palm umbrella Whose smiling feet stretched to the innity On a softly egotistical underworld king-head. He had lived here on loosely strung nights. Who are we that will some day cease to be, To assert his existence under the ickering Stars he had pinpointed next to his own wall And who are we to pity him for an early death With some blue years yet left to his balance? We do not even know if the gods loved him.

594

Not used to eternity (2012-02-18 09:55)

It was the word go in the ears, a pulsating Drum, with variable sounds and thoughts, Inability to hear ones own words at volume . A touch of vertigo , as J.L.Borges would say When you confront the eternity of cloisters. This vertigo is ones head when turns to side On pillows heights, while in sleeps depths. Mere drum beats, from holes of dark caves, An old man becoming stone deaf in an ear That hangs its boots, or mind turns upwards? Or standing on tenth oor balcony on level With the swirling eagle you look down below And become dazed by a dizzying eternity As blood ows up against endless gravity? A touch of vertigo , as J.L.Borges would say When not used to a breath-taking eternity.

595

still life (2012-02-18 23:30)

thinking about men and materials an image comes of a new red rose turning blue in the light of the zero night bulb icked in a raw morning. I add the hum of the computer fan and the crisp new air biting into skin just beside a window of opportunity. still life has accumulated in the ears some drums vibrate, some in holes with wind passing in them as sound, a vertigo of the ears, a dizzy thought. a world passes through glassy opacity of window, ngers dance on keyboard birds notably missing in all their notes, men noticeably missing on the bicycles. still life goes back to a beach of sounds when the sea pretends nightly silence while all the time talking high in trees. still life remembers men in their eyes remembering moms in their stillness as if moms are materials lying about like wood logs waiting to turn houses as moms turn re in essential timber their stillness gone with August wind.

596

Red eye (2012-02-20 04:49)

Having already got a red eye I now have a yellow stomach Where there is an overowing milk ocean for churning A churning it does like a professional mountain churner In the ocean with a snake-rope embracing it for churning. On the night of Shiva there will come out from churning A blue poison only Shiva can swallow from the Himalayas. We pour water on his phallic head here to cool him down From the poison fumes he had frozen in his blue throat. I have a red eye, besides an era of trembling in its drums A vertigo of the mind, its thought autter like rose petals That have come off of old age on my balcony,in blue light. My beauty shall pass like the cremation ghat of Varanasi Where a sunrise beauty is swallowed by ames of death. My eyes have turned red behind glasses from keeping awake For Shiva who may yet open a third eye from a middle brow When he will dance destruction on the banks of a holy river Until pearl-like tears drop from his eyes full of death-smoke And cool the ery night with a fragrance of primordial love. (According to Hindu mythology Shiva drank poison emerging from the churning of the milk ocean and saved the cosmos from destruction. This night of Shiva we keep vigil for Shivas recovery from the harmful effects of the poison)

597

Mere fragment (2012-02-20 23:51)

Waking up in the morning we catch a mere fragment From a whole, clinging to tatters, to threads come off As we had dreamed it in the night, when their whole Came to be known, in the distinct sky of those trees That sway from their inside to their outside of the air. Our dreams are rags from a cloth, their wholes lost In a hopeless struggle against the wind of the trees. Our trees are fragments of a sky, torn from its wind. Our dreams are just trees from their inside to the sky.

598

Hindsight (2012-02-22 01:18)

And then when we had nally returned we found A new dispensation , new clouds in shreds oated And a soft breeze was blowing on the fallen leaves. Our eyes having failed ,our mind froze in its tracks. As we were going ,the sea was calm, lightly blown With not a single rocking boat seen on the far-line As if nothing needed to be more perfect at the time. A lone crow sat on a statue ,watching the city-line. Now all our stories have totally altered in our recall. We should not have looked back from the high seas. Our return should have left its hind quarters there.

599

Men are mere images (2012-02-22 23:30)

I had to open the window in a hurry Afraid that the night would go away Yesterday I had held to it for a while Only to see it melt away with the crow. The dog is barking in a low of throat At car-phantoms he sees in darkness With echoes of its barks for company. My pictures worked better with night When men could do their strange acts In the backstage, hurling their arms In air for nothing into a space of trees. In the morning the bare-armed man Would again utter limbs into the air And drink from his bottle triangularly. Yesterday ,when the park grass in dew Tingled underfoot ,by the green bench I saw a black shirt run as if chasing fear. I am wondering if it has since caught it. My images worked better with the night When men walked about as visual les Captured in the parks tender sunlight .

600

R (2012-02-23 23:23)
In the night, while it was getting lighter, The letter R appeared from somewhere A poem possibility, in curtained window Of just -write, inside to a dark thinning, Thinking that is, a mind is lled slowly With letter combinations of esh, fresh And spirit inclined to it from strong esh. A possibility yet not ripe, like the fruit Waiting in the rice jar, for the right heat To mature its limbs and make it softer And riper, succulent to eat, throw rind Into an organic bin waiting in the dark, A fruit that will mature brownly to gold Softer to touch , smell before it wrinkles Of too much heat, in a warm rice house. Now I look down and see below my chair A live R of not fresh and spirit but a roach That has somehow managed to keep alive In the deadly fumes of a herbal pesticide Stuffed in the house crevices a year ago, A roach matured as golden brown poem.

601

Wooden stairs (2012-02-24 21:46)

The stairs winded there quietly in dust Of ancient sap from forests of memory Whose skies have survived in our dreams Whose earths now belong to underbrush. Their darkness survived with old rope, A rope greasy with hundreds of hands. Some hands have not survived bodies. Ropes grease shines like a black snake Running down from its higher darkness. You and I look into each others light On the higher darkness you are a light On the lower,I am your light by the rope. Add your hands to the grease of history.

602

De ja vu (2012-02-26 00:05)
I have waited long enough for the keyword Breaking out from the minds of many others Their poems of nights, from colorful evenings Filled with banter, tea and snacks,small talk Now I see a diluted black in a window glass, Only a touch of orange behind the dead tree As always I look to others nights for words. A certain living poet looked to a book of men Whose letters formed rows of surging men Peeling the skin of the earth, layer after layer, And their sweat-smelling foreheads had blood Shining like a sun that would scatter in the sky. The letters came at you like many angry men As you opened page after page of your de ja vu, Of all the places and men you have been to Where men and letters bled constantly together On their sweaty brows, that shone with blood. A certain other poet rose from a black night Whose words were to be hanged into the sky In a black body that hanged by a white noose But in fact hoisted the hanger to a forgetful sky While the poets own pan came down to earth Planting an immortal seed in its akes of dust. Everything seemed de ja vu, has always been.

603

Black and white (2012-02-27 00:59)

Whether to write my black into white Or white into a black I will now decide. So I go out for a brief while and touch Darkness and smell it from the street Then a little rose of some falling petals Tugs at my owing shirt about its smell. The sounds are here from the trees And the rising temple loud speakers Returning from a white wall of trees. That is better with a white in black, Not having caught a single keyword From light words sleeping in wastes Of ber glass wires and glass tubes. My light is now white on black night. I can hear the crows from dead trees Now cawing their mornings to orange Slowly spreading behind the buildings. Their black will remain etched in greys Till they disappear again in the night.

604

It has come to this (2012-02-27 22:58)

Mother , I see now you are grieving. There is no compulsion for grieving A son lost and frozen on to an ice slab With eyes screwed on a whirring fan. He had just shown you and the girls All the stars he could of the dark night. Girls will not let you cry near phone And go away into the day till a night Descends upon a common grieving? It has come to this, these phone rings That do not come easily just because They think it will interrupt a crying? Or just because mothers are assumed To be crying in the dark corners away From phones, into the hem of sarees?

605

Confessional (2012-02-28 23:15)

Come to the darkness of the confessional Above the parapet wall, in the sky beyond The waving of trees , some rustling papers Below the basement of yesterdays school And touch the poets, between their words Between folds and smell their moth balls Where they had lain tucked in their sheets. Write chunks of white poetry on black night. Your poetry must be of your narcissistic self Morbidly touching the way the tree waves In your darkness, a schoolgirl laughs in sleep Over yesterdays homework in a waving paper Below a basement, between pictures of gods. Poetry is confessional, some redness in face Looking into crevices to let things not sleep. But sleep alone will deliver up your confession As you turn to your side to face a blank wall Where beginning , middle are not pictured And the end turns out to be a breath, a lack .

606

Losing hair (2012-02-29 18:46)

Sleep hardly arrives except in body-turns A tongue sticking out, a mouth wide open Like a vigilant dog on the middle of a road. Body cracks of winter gone, summer come. A diary is somewhat in the back of woods. I retrieve it from the wolves of night sleep, Entrusting sleep of fortune to a fans hiding , A chronicle of what went on about this lady. The cracks are there, visible in minds body. When she has too much of this good thing Like cells multiplying in a child bag of past Body cracks ,sticking its neck out at a risk. So she removes the bag, removes its handle What is left and arent they gone, those little Squiggly worms in the bag, all thrown out Along with bag ,safely into a doctors bin? Tell me where is the dyed hair from pate When everything is ne and bag duly gone. (Losing hair after chemo-therapy is some times more traumatic than cancer itself)

607

3.3

March

608

Camera missing (2012-03-01 01:08)

In the evening there arose a stack of stones And fragrant rangipani owers that smiled Behind yellow pictures in which you beamed Your soft smiles from human lips , bent palms That spread out on old kings diamond chest Lady-wife that sat in a precious stone heart A conch that shrilly blew a song of the world A disc that swirled at evil of all three worlds. The camera went missing in my hands for light That unied stones and owers, dusk sunlight Smells of camphor ames , fragrance of owers And water , sweetened Sanskrit word-chants Words that asked where we had all come from And our progeny, our daughter-in-laws names And the stars that brightly shone at their birth. Because cameras are forbid in devout temples Taken from us and placed in your money boxes, My camera was missing for its light that shone, The light that unied your smiling human lips The yellow border of a priests shoulder-towel The stones that piled in the temple compound The fragrant owers that rose from our prayers The sun that unied the world and us in dust. (Remembering Rilkes poem : The light shouts in your treetop and the face of all things becomes radiant and vain )

609

Big picture (2012-03-01 23:23)

This time I look down from my balcony And see men ,women and dogs and trees Pushcarts of knickknacks, bright sunshine, Colored plastic bags ying , broken toys And left out laughter of playing little girls On the erased street art of watchmans wife. I recall scraps of yesterdays night-smells That contained vaguely lying dog-forms White tarpaulin veils of the sleeping cars And a faint glimmer of a dark nights stars The street wore on a splendid night shirt. I also see a bald pate of old man smoking Bidi into a sun-shine world of shadows Its smoke curls emerge from behind closed Eye-holes , directly from hunger thoughts . I recall other days of jasmine strings lying Curled up in a basket on an old mans head Of white mustache , at two rupees an inch. I smell smells of fried onion and bread crust From houses that cooked in a world below. I still feel sounds of trash van spluttering From smoke from its tail, its stinking smell Rising to the heavens, its driver laughing At the remembered jokes of its trash man Walking behind with plastic bins of smell. I recall days of rain, pearl-drops from roof Kids play in wet roads,cars awash with sun From behind white clouds, emptied of rain Puddles of frogs that would turn carcasses In next days mornings walk, in rain-smells. I recall the bonres of watchmen and kids In the road, their white smoke hitting the tree That supplied twigs that were once the tree Their res slowly warming little winter palms. This time round I look down from my balcony That is where I manage to get my big picture.

610

Memos (2012-03-03 00:45)

When you wrote poems you had ofce memos You addressed to the other departments hoping Someday they would receive them and le them. You wrote all of them because you had to prove Later you had actually written them, just in case. You had sent some extra poems as reminders. But these departments understand only prose. Their policy is to shred all memos that nobody Understands because if led they might plant Destructive ideas and they have on their hands An idle paper shredder ,leading to frustration. But not to worry because you have ofce copies. No son of father can allege your failing to write.

611

Permanent transience (2012-03-03 01:07)

At night, I briey examine a remote possibility Of failing to wake up, to a green world of plants With bees prowling around on the opening petals The air turned crisp in lungs, heart fast beating The leaf fallen to the grass ,resting in its heads Soft- crunching as up and down of walking feet. Morning, nearer a possibility of sleeping night Happening to bees, to wind, to grass ,to dry feet I stare down at the frigid drying feet, on grass Now more open-ended and vague about closure.

612

Morning is growing too fast (2012-03-04 00:28)

At this time the morning is growing From a steady dilution of a dark night, That had a dogs barks and watchmen, A soft night queens fallen fragrance And some mutterings of kids in sleep Their bags silently hungry for books. It seems growing too fast for words To turn silences and smells to poetry.

613

Thermocole the dream blocker (2012-03-04 23:48)

We destroyed our birds dreams yesterday As thermocole had whitely sealed their fate While I sat here with guilt gnawing inside An intense heart beating with love for birds. I later heard their landing on internet wire To see their fate sealed by thermocole stuff. I imagined the bird script running as under : Look, the air-conditioning unit in the balcony Is blocked on all sides by strange white stuff. Yes ,we cannot now make this seasons nests. They have sealed our future and of our chicks. Our human reply ran as under, in English: It is now summer and I have to use the A.C. And sit here all day without guilt of killing Innocent birds in the heat of the A.C. blower Better to seal off the unit with thermocole. There was no human reply to birds riposte. Ha,Ha,your guilt is more about killing birds And less about maintaining their genetics. If you felt that guilty,could you not spend This summer without the racket of the A.C? Hadnt the old poet asked you to tread softly Because you were treading on our dreams?

614

Rhythm (2012-03-06 00:32)

Repetitive stresses is our rhythm A goatskin, long dead, shouting As life , yet in a stressed discord In roomed houses, in high seas Under the rising moon of waves. I say the same many times over A body part taps to another in mind On the table, under a table of feet. In weddings a reed makes stresses With two beating drums, the lungs Under a white shirt keeping pace In operation theater ,a glass machine Writes up and down to hearts music A liquid travels in splutter sounds In its grand repetition, stressed in And out , from a recumbent body. Rhythm is a bundle of new esh Crying from tiny lungs, a sucking Sound at a nipple, a staring at fan Tiny hands slapping at a new air Just from a dark of mothers cave. Rhythm is a forgetting of rhythm Life ebbing away against pounding A pounding lost from a bone cage Relentless pounding of life, death At space , in their eternal repetition.

615

Pottery (2012-03-06 23:37)

Poetry sounded and sometimes looked Like pottery, on potters wheel and off it Occupying space,one on other, in stack Like many 0s making it big on the night. The pots looked like onion rings in cafe But had many dark nights hid in them. Poet Wislawa was a potter par excellence With her pots stacked one upon the other That boasted of much darkness in them. But what is poetry many have asked her Many shaky answers have been given To this question, I dont know, dont know, But hold on to it like a sustaining railing, A shaky answer to a mere railing question. We hold on to our railing as we look down Dizzily into the eternity we have passed Or look up to the eternity we are to pass. Our potters wheel shall go on in our yard. Our own pots shall stack one on the other With dark air hid in them of a poets nights Until the long bamboo stick breaks the pots And turns them back to the earth they were. (Remembering Nobel Prize winner Polish Poet Wislawa Szymborska who passed away last month at the age of 88)

616

Book (2012-03-07 22:17)

The book came to me this morning Like other things, opening pages wide Like our mouths containing words From stomachs rumbling with food Night contained words in its stomach A better book than a luminous box Of letters ,with thoughts of somebody Beyond oceans, thoughts mixed up With the oceans , the air and the hills On the way the thoughts meshed with Light words , their sounds of ne fury Signifying much of nothing, like night Containing words that signied much Differently in different nights of day Book is ravenous hunger like a night Bustling with words ,signifying sounds Differently in different times of night The way they are coming to us through The oceans, hills and sweeping trees The way the trees sweep the night sky.

617

Television moments (2012-03-08 23:24)

At this moment I thought of moments When a man was mere body, clothes Merely lying on the muddy river bed Saying nothing to the sky, to the earth Except a live wiring, muddy earth now More in capture, horizontally, by sky Under glimmer of stars, from a night. A ash keeps him to the mud again And again, a liquid love in a hospital From a pair of slant eyes,falling to it A death , body on river bed, a breath A lovers music of faith against death Where the end is dead on river bed Grounded to a womans love to man Falling from slant eyes to smiling eyes That softy fell saving them for love. Television moments are not real ones But carbon copies of a nights dreams With same elements of life and death And no choices, as if it is ones real life.

618

Odd moments (2012-03-09 23:07)

You began yesterday with moments And went on to television moments Borrowed moments of imagined time That was ticking by, on a light screen. Now, this morning ,as a computer fan Battled passionately with a rising heat Suddenly an all-pervading drain smell Hits your nose without hitting eyes Leaving you to guess hard where behind The bushes the damn smell came from. Smells do not come hitting your eyes, Only reside secretly in factories sewers That bring them to your noses lovingly. We live this side or the other of sewer. A good reference point to tell others. On the upper side of the smelly sewer Is a nice address reference for keeps But we are chemically oriented people We just say where a malodorous sulpha Compound is found in large quantities That is a better reference for mapping Our homes into this big smelly world A scientic way of telling where live. We began with moments, but are now At odd moments, not the old moments Where a smell would bring on everything Spreading a mood, a ne ower weaving A soft morning breeze, a rain possibility A morning presaging a perfumed union A heart beat tremulous with expectancy. O, leave moments altogether,old or odd.

619

The water tanker (2012-03-10 23:52)

Where you begin with the water tanker A keyboard presses into repeated poetics But the sound of tanker soon drifts away Only a neighbors hole is lled to its brim. His water speaks softly to his wet dark. Our hole is still empty, holding the night. Morning fears dark silences in cisterns And much more, their empty air sounds. Only the waters from a distant hole can Transform their vacuum state to a uid . You only can open mornings skull-plates And pour poetry words into its dark hole Waiting for the sputter of the next tanker.

620

Curve (2012-03-12 00:44)

I see a curve in the hip, a swelling A dance, a love, a mock thought A swelling abruptly of sea by day Full of objects, but when will it do An act, a doing, a curve to object In a running away, a ash in face Hair ying in wind, a body existing. A body dies, ashes ying, rising in Waters from the hills, owing down A ower ,wilted and willing, a petal In sadness of blue, a winds doing An act , a curve to ower, to mind. I hear a word, a cold wind blowing Doing a curve to mind, a body dying A verb curving in adjective, a gerund Noun exists, noun does like object Doing a curve to a verb, turns verb Verb dies so noun lives,a preposition Hangs like air on the twig of a bird Bird hanging in tree, outside wings Folded, frozen in a painting beside A mountain, a cloud, road not taken An adverb doing curve to a noun. Coconut curves like woman alone Moon curves like cloud, like rain Like thought, like love, like sound Like stories, like a faery princess Like necklaces curving on her neck Like breasts cowering like sea-wave A fear ,a curve to object, a full circle. Curves are lines forgetting to full circle A lifting of pencil , an attention decit A half doing, a loss of interest in verbs After subjects and objects are gathered.

621

Window glass (2012-03-13 00:23)

I woke up to this window glass this morning As the tree , a tiny branch , waves on the glass A moving shadow made by tree+wind +glass Not a sleep dream but a waking word dream A beauty engendered by a tree+glass+wind Beauty came from this very tree+glass+wind+I Who had woken up, me and words, from a body That is a part, a string, a voice, an eye, a water Sloshing in it, in the eyes, raindrops of color, A fan whirring, a sound ,a beauty of mountain A rumbling, clouds wet touching, a silver river Just like the tree waving -a- creaking at wind Brown dog barking at dark, snout wet and dark. But I say, cut out this "I from window glass The body that woke up at dawn to the window Let the dream continue on the window glass.

622

Making a dust of the earth (2012-03-14 02:34)

The tube-well drill strikes ears early morning It has been there all through a sleeping night In a grating sound of tearing earths bowels And has been making a ne dust of the earth. A little dawn bird covers its sound like ne dust The digger spews from its underground mouth. The birds sound covers diggers bigger sound With a granulated noise, just like the tube well Dust covering sunlight in a layer on glass table. The digger has made a ne dust of a dark night. The bird makes a ne dust of the diggers sound. Diggers dust covers the sunlight on glass table. But the shaft of sunlight from kitchen window Uncovers all the little worms of dust ying in it.

623

She did not die much (2012-03-14 22:42)

With a ten year old mind she could not have died much And what little she had died caused just a little belly burn Over a park sitting in breeze- lips pursing poor thing- saying How good it was for her to die ,to old parents , to the world And to a forty ve year old body, with a wrinkled forehead And red anger ,dry love,silver laughter, killer love in street Little children running with stones of laughter behind her , A body that had the rich echoes of a ten year kids laughter Eyes that knocked against meaning , distorted the world. There was not much of a story and she did not die much.

624

Memory (2012-03-15 22:57)

It is now four in a late dark time For the memory of a girl who died Clutching a cloth bundle,ashing A childs eyes that had gone blank From a body deled anonymously By men with greedy body-hunger . On the rail track her cloth bundle Was left with a memory of cousin A cousin who had often felt a body Protruding from a cloth bundle As many hard bones ,some esh. When body is deled anonymously The re gets put out from the eyes Embers of body burning that will Quickly die out , the ash collected In a bundle, left on the river bed. This cousin wants to collect the re From the gray ashes, ll it silently In the deeper folds of his own cloth That will burn anonymously with it. Body burned all night with no mind That was found missing from the hole Good that way because they could save Fire wood, so expensive these days.

625

Absence (2012-03-17 00:25)

She belonged to us and now her absence Let us experience her absence with people Remembering her recent failure to laugh Arising from an absence of bones ringing And weeping in clothed body for everyone Who cannot weep for their own absence. We duly le away her absence in old les.

626

Tree (2012-03-18 23:29)

A girl of woman called from the mind of a child Beyond hay stacks on horizon rising like temples Mounds of golden straw for making little houses, And soft cud for ruminating cows in moonlight . Tall palms stood in lines on paddy eld hedges. A river snake slithered in the dry plains of gold. I ask where is girl, body and mind, minus body. When the mind merely existed the body laughed Now there is only laughter with no laughing body Now girl shall be a tree that will do the laughing Whenever there is a gentle breeze from the sea.

627

Pain (2012-03-21 00:34)

A pain in the temple rises like the wind Only to come down like in winnowing As grain goes into your eyes ,an oldness Disappears in a turban of orange light A woman of no winnowing consequence Turns instrument of ddling and turning Machine power to harvest wind ,to a few Shadows playing under a giant banyan , Vignettes of see, not all grand spectacles. At dusk the grain ies , orange sun ies And the banyan ies, and the pain ies As much has risen and fallen in temple A death of girl-woman-child is a stone Now a tree waving to the passing wind Pain ows like tree sap upwards to sky Arising in deep earth root and owing To the temples where it throbs like dusk And sets behind eyes to return next day.

628

Stone and tree (2012-03-21 00:42)

I see now a temporary stone at the house Where her bodys ashes lay in an earth pot To carry her down to owing river of time. Its waters have to break on a rock to swirl And ow onwards to the calm repository. May the stone turn a tree on its earth feet Like a rock but waving in the gentle breeze A mind that has diffused into child laughter A yellow ying leaf in wind, a stone body That carried no thought about the world Now turns a nodding tree to passing wind.

629

Seeing silence (2012-03-22 22:14)

In the minds eye is noise and eye-redness About the bodys silence, after much noise. Our fear is of nightly silence speaking quietly On top of a noise and pain in eye, electric fan In its whir within a warm room of white walls, Behind the silence of window to dark street. Fear is projected on to distant giant screens Of utter silence, of a world unbearably bright A pain of losing contrast of things in the way Light oods them, robbing their separateness.

630

Minds eye (2012-03-23 23:46)

The middle eye is now even larger With too many evils esh is heir to, Full with the little devils of cells that Swim cheerfully in a rainbow of light Hued with ne colors of knowledge. Such knowledge is evil and faustian An exchange of thought for passion. Devils horns are a result of dilemma Such as comes from death and love. A primordial liquid shall drive away The imps that cause unseeing stupor Toward a spectacle of exquisite vision Beyond the mountains, with the uff Of clouds at their tops, the soft liquid In clouds that will pour lightly on eyes, Softly dilating their vision to the world. (Uveitis is a condition of the eye,in which the middle of the eye called uvea gets inamed causing pain and possible damage to the eye,if left untreated)

631

Bones (2012-03-24 23:03)

We now hear phosphorous bones Standing in the wind on their own Their esh clinging to them in bits A thinking esh of beauty still left Of an exquisite music of tree wood Creaking in the wind, like crickets Recently absent from the tree roots. Bones jut out from stones in sun Of innite beauty, just like them Saying nothing but doing nothing A silence of song, a petried song Of morning to dawn, a soft night Not fully reassuring , seeming so Like a fakir of beard from a grave Beyond the grave ,making silence.

632

Cashew temptation (2012-03-25 11:32)

Under a cashew tree ,where the leafy branch Laden with fruit- nut leans lovingly on sand And its soft shadows spread a nice patterned Carpet on brown sand warm with a noon sun Sins take place in the very presence of a river Pleasantly barren with summer s windy sand. That is when a whiskered boy looks pretty god, Handsome and knightly , with bows and arrows And red temptation strikes girl like warm sand. Whiskered boys fall to temptation under trees But shall have no tender feelings for little girls Born to their temptation, just mamas dear girls Eating cashew fruit of somebodys temptation.

633

Continuum (2012-03-26 01:03)

In the concert one thought of the ne music Father and sons were making with their strings And their two drummer friends chasing sound Their ngers dancing on dead goat of years ago. Fathers string went after sons, their strings, With a behind girl of ne string to keep pace. If only throat could give life to strings of sons That will go on endlessly after throat vanishes But the strings would make noise for eternity, An unbroken racket in the wild wastes of time. (After listening to an exquisite music performance of a father and sons team on sarod ,a ne stringed instrument -Amjad Ali Khan and his sons,Amman and Ayaan)

634

Bringing home (2012-03-27 01:02)

Bringing home was what I had thought Instantly of a just opened sky of birds Froze in v-formations ,on the east side Buildings, where girl is walking jauntily. Sun water I shall mix with trees and girl And bird in the swamp pecking at plastic Bag ying in water hyacinth stuck to it Helplessly from actually ying away to Other hyacinth-ed waters of lazing ducks. I thought of the stray dog wagging tail On the edge of the lake at the rising sun But could not possibly take his tail home. Pockets were too full with other things.

635

Cricket stories (2012-03-27 22:08)

We are looking for our stories In the park ,under a thin tree On green bench ,thereabouts. A person coughs, wipes his face In a silhouette, drinking water To a raised throat, diagonally As sun strikes and a white wall Stays put in shadows of hedge. Cricket stories abound in there. Grass replicates the past words On bare feet to earth, cracked Like mind in a nothings duress. The body re-thinks own stories Physical stories mired in words. Stories are just words of things Behind , wiggling worms found Under long lying stones in sun. They are crickets creaking under Vague stones lying in the grass.

636

Shirt (2012-03-29 01:09)

Each morning, the poet says, is a new shirt We pick it up on waking, a self-woven shirt. Shirts are long and boring, as we stitch them All the same, the same stuff we are wearing Rather outsized to what we have worn earlier Since we are no shirt makers to new bodies. Our cleavages remain the same under shirt. We are man and woman on sofa watching Our television through the same ocular eyes And read our newspaper over the same nose Of thick-rimmed spectacles sliding to make Space for eyes to pass things of ugly sight Snifng nose up to same disagreeable smells. Kierkegards shirt is an innite resignation To an underlying mystery or an absurdity. We wear ours in the morning on old bodies Since we have stitched it ourselves all day. We have shirts but no bodies over bones.

637

Wood (2012-03-29 23:45)

The poets wood is not all that dead Poet is recently but wood remains But its map is gone from 2012 on. Wood is tree dead but just once dead And cant surely die again and again. Wood shall not die ,only map by poet As she would type her world in map. A world is gone but the wood stays Because it is dead and dreamwood. A dream dreamed cant die in wood Old maps are still out there frayed And folded, maps she once walked. ( a homage to poet Adrienne Rich on her recent passing)

638

Expectancy (2012-03-30 23:27)

A word that comes denes expectancy, An idea in underbrush, expectantly hid In its growth like plastic shining in color A plastic waiting to be picked up by kid. This plastic color came by itself into bush And underbrush, mere word under brush Like a bird sitting on bush expecting to y Its body waiting to y, an act of crouching. Now there is a kid expected to pick up Expecting plastic colors from underbrush. Plastic colors are colors of our expecting. Colorless plastic are not expected at all. Expecting stops as plastic gets picked up. Kid has gone, bird has crouched and gone. In comes train raising expectancy in words. Its bird goes up and down on phone wires Its lights are painting shadows on bushes, Bushes are expecting in crickets creaking But night is expecting things,not just trains. Night is expecting other nights, other days.

639

Art (2012-03-31 23:42)

In Renoirs Irene, girl sits with hands in lap Her long hair golden and dropped to waist, Her far away look betrayed no woman events No future possibility of a dark night striking Of offspring that would bite dust from a height And in stupid racial cleansing of human shame. Her far away was into Renoirs canvas space Stopping at golden borders of his and her time. Girls carry no woman , only tears of present, Not woman events present in a young body. In art , girls can look far away only thus far , A space limited by artists vision and her own. http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/pierre-auguste-renoir/mlle-irene-cah en-d-anvers-1880

640

Impressions (2012-04-01 23:01)

Arts solitude is mostly to ourselves Living in inner contradictions of hope And despair, a 3 A.M. behind window Of unnamed dogs yelping at midnight From bellies of hopelessness, dark trees A icker of lights in fog, broken walls With just impressions, forms receding In a black of writing when you are you Of the inside, with tiny worms of words Crawling in underbelly, a mere death With love briey touched, a body-soul In fruition, a haze of dust in its space Time in vague brush strokes avoiding The naming of a place, its atmosphere Of ambiguity of naming, an impression, How sunrises are created, their brevity. (Monets famous painting of sunrise)

642

The grand narrative (2012-04-02 23:56)

You sit down to write memoirs, what you did All these days,in ne fettle, demolishing space Borders ,entering world, getting out and back In vainglorious things of non-doing by a body A fury of signifying nothing, not even a sound. Writing is life in black and white,telling world You exist despite world telling you to fuck off To get the hell out of the place, scowl or thing On your face, obituary ready for evening news. It is essential to write from revenge motives For not taking note of your bawling existence Snifng diaper smells, feeling swaddle clothes With reverence, kissing the hem of your skirt. But world tells you to go and eat the golguppa The while , twenty four hours and seven days And sing wedding songs in a hip swinging dance And watch inane television of unending cricket So you do not have to write fucking memoirs. You can at least complain in concise nonction. If you cannot do a thing ,write it man and live it In what you grandiosely thought you had done, A ction written in strangely connected fashion Connecting grasses, yoga men, birds in trees Old men in white mustaches,unripe men dying Pointing stars, the pathetic fallacy of a blue sky And mute trees under it saying - doing things Occurring in acts of spontaneous combustion All in a stful of matter in a sub-cranial recess. The story turns now part of the grand narrative So you ignore worlds call and dont give a shit.

643

Voice (2012-04-03 21:53)

Just into the silent land of nature voices A thought comes if we can embalm a bird In its short clipped call from a vague tree Against another ones extended rain call. Since we do not see bird voices in trees We may as well look generally that side Into mix of laburnum and electric wires. Birds are so difcult to embalm in voices They are men in their sleeping midnights . Their voices are stuck in a nights foliage. You whose poem is stuck in night trees Are a clear voice in audio poem section Groping to nd its microphone in parks, A voice difcult to embalm, but not bird.

644

But (2012-04-05 00:55)

In this factory of our words the other Seems to be owing always ,from body And mind and soul but bird just cries In morning as meaning begins to form But rationality breaks down somewhere As in Tarkovskys poetic cinema where Dunes rise grandiosely in living rooms Rooms of thresholds to pain and poems. A poets left lobe begins to throb for ever. A tiny tumor makes words less meaning But more beauty in garden of blue birds. In morning grandeur of plumes and cries Tumor turns up larger at other, at beauty. But our beauty is near death and after it In the aftermath, where story is endless.

645

Bed (2012-04-05 22:49)

Sleeping alone in bed makes for views With or without persons under sheets Fingers not curled, stomach tucked in, Toes cleverly put out so as not look dead. Feet could be yellow and y -resistant (But there are ies under the hairs deep) And bed is lived in or loved in, innocently. Philosophy is made there like cauliower Deep fried and smelling of a late evening Proxima Causa being the evening itself Standing alone when it should be in bed. Evening should by now have been in bed With the quizzical sun orangely smiling And then there would be no cauliower. He would turn a cauliower behind hills. Bed is for sleeping alone with absences. And sleeping off the presences that hang. Between you and absences are their toes That stick out as if they are still not dead.

646

Not knowing (2012-04-06 23:07)

Not knowing is equivalent to fog and not night That still has a few vague outlines visible as white Smudges on plain black surfaces, blobs of liquid Lightly glistening in a nights spooky existence. Not knowing is irony that is a recipe for enjoyment Being a constant remainder of effeteness, a struggle To grapple with distances to a mute destiny at end. The fog collects behind your ears, always wet there, Under a monkey cap deliciously arching over them And slowly spreads into your interior of tympanum Till word is heard in series of undertones like drums That lose their essential message in ripples of sound A constant drone , a continuing whisper till no more.

647

Children (2012-04-07 22:23)

Children do come up from an unborn night Living in the owing night of a possibility Of being there , not yet, wiggling their toes In the smallness of hours,to the old mouths Of future grandmothers but they may die yet And not be born to their terrestrial existence. In case they are born they may suck at future Unconcerned by damage caused to beauty. They are beauty themselves the way they suck But their beauty shall disappear slowly in wind As their toes will outgrow their white sheets And we begin to feel they were not born at all. They may be born and not die in a grand logic Of a grandmothers mouth, red to her corners, May not be born and/or die by grandmothers The two events of birth and death not linked In a grandmothers grand logic of red corners. Into the dark night, outside the jurisdiction Of grandmothers,the children may be unborn But may yet die in a bizarre medico-legal way They wiggle toes at us but are not born at all.

648

Sketches (2012-04-08 23:49)

she sits there, dark and stark, in a vast undened promontory a gurine under pall of tragedy as her tragicomedy grows to dust around a cockroach avoiding the purgatory of the deep night, this two-legged thing of wings surrounded by all dark smells. a man undifferentiated by gender of mind, a man loosely pretending as a woman of skin, engendering dusty jokes of cumulated self-pity a wimp of uncertain woman-wife with re in eyes ,long since burnt but living in gray cinders of death she is not she or he, not even it just a thing of beauty like the sky blue in the face but not existing substantially,winter or summer night or day, in space or in time just a thought, a motion, a wind just a watchman not of the night with shifting eyes, scaling walls climbing terraces, drying pickles in roof terraces,in a brown froth of steel glasses overowing with forgetfulness and sleep and greed dark woman with words forming in the throat, a sweeper of touch a ier in the dust,a water that ows in a basement of no rain, no cars simulated ,as in forgetting sounds of ghost walking of mans burden the conqueror of the senses plays a ball on green table of white pong in egg-like scrunch sounds with bat as anger smiles in eyes to its victim while not making sense to real life only to its I in a failed bloat of pride a grog of self-love, in its dark circles.

649

Matchbox (2012-04-09 23:53)

Several images hover and then devolve On walks , in a walks thought on grass Away from creatures, men and buildings As dry leaves come ying, wiggly worms Emerge from the earth in its rst rain In its velvety softness lay a rain-breeze An index nger richness for feel at the tip Soft at the core, walking as in its dream A tiny four-footed red velvety creature That may laugh in new matchbox home. The thing has to exist in furrows of rain Amid columns of sleet ,dodging though Giant pillars to sky, whose stony selves Fizzle down to clouds as our eyes look up A white killer hail falls like pearl-drops On their soft rich redness, their velvety Bodies may lose their backs to the pearls Their ruby existence wiped off to dreams. A childs matchbox is a much safer home.

650

Free fall (2012-04-11 00:55)

In our music there shall be a free fall A defeat of thought, a soft sweetness Born in a dew of grass raising its head A belly fear of depths from a balcony. Our music shall open cities to nights To daub them with a gray sky-paint Its breeze shall ow with the owers Creeping gently upon our new leaves Their colors ying to the sky upwards In our music the dog shall sing of fear From early morning snouts of victory Snifng pant-legs of sweaty belly song A faery song , an act of soft celebration A scratching of paw in its carnal space A defeat of reason,a breakdown of logic A cause of no effect, effect of no cause A breakdown of sound, a fear of silence. Our book shall wonder open mouthed Its brittle spine owing in silver worms Its words dripping from its sticky edges Like a babys saliva from its earliest lips In a drool of free fall , a music of hunger A cry into the empty room of no mother A free fall of pudgy baby hands in piss. There shall be a free fall of sound from The cuckoo to its babies of early rain In crows nests and a free fall of chicks Open hungry mouths in early wonder . Books remain open with their wonder As shadows from windows soft- touch Their souls ,as their music is free falling From the side of a broken summer sky.

651

Place (2012-04-11 23:10)

Place is its loose dust and red powder All over the road with iron ,for shipping To far lands in deadweight for money Place is blood money, revenge on hills. Place weighs down ships by its redness And looseness of soil, a rubble of body Granulated and pouring in bag chinks. A shrub blinks at redness and is covered In eyes at the opposite hill, entirely nude As hill competes in redness with sunset Sun is not place ,only time for bleeding. Place is man-altered landscape of color When green changes to red, red to gray Water changes to land boiling for men To change their dresses, to eat breakfast And fuck their women in shades of gray.

652

Word (2012-04-12 23:47)

The word took time in coming From the dark nights depths A gentle poke will bring it on Amid a dark nights concerns Of power, of squealing machine Against a picture, a white sky A owered wall, a dark beauty. Words lie hidden in the night Scoop them up from the bottom Take a poet or two, a painting An Icarus dropping from the sky Of plastic wings melting of sun.

653

Trivial (2012-04-13 23:45)

It all seems to be a made up cause As you perform your age as age says The body ceases to think like mind In art of picture making, a light box To catch a hibiscus in its deep red To understand the nature of things Or the art of word making from night A factory of words, from an early sun A sun making gold leaves of clouds A skin rising to a goose of cold wind Just making light of things and airy. It is not all that important the game Mothers have devised to keep alive The babies bawling from their lungs Not important to hold heads high On sliding beauty glasses of smiles On noses softly oozing labor drops Not important for hands to clap air Making noises , as if of noses feeling A sudden gush of water from above. This word making is a trivial thing Like babies bawling,mothers crying To the hem of sarees, in a dusk light Like mothers crying near the phones As if of recent head colds, their noses Making many trivial running sounds About absences of sons in the hall.

654

Trivial (2012-04-14 10:44)

It all seems to be a made up cause As you perform your age as age says The body ceases to think like mind In art of picture making, a light box To catch a hibiscus in its deep red To understand the nature of things Or the art of word making from night A factory of words, from an early sun A sun making gold leaves of clouds A skin rising to a goose of cold wind Just making light of things and airy. It is not all that important the game Mothers have devised to keep alive The babies bawling from their lungs Not important to hold heads high On sliding beauty glasses of smiles On noses softly oozing labor drops Not important for hands to clap air Making noises , as if of noses feeling A sudden gush of water from above. Word making is surely a trivial thing Like babies bawling,mothers crying To the hem of sarees, in a dusk light Like mothers crying near the phones As if of severe head colds, their noses Making many trivial running sounds About the absences of sons in the hall.

655

Morning music (2012-04-15 00:40)

The music began in the wedding sharply, A long progress of silk women ling past With their pots on their heads, the music Well before them, and trees looked on In their dusty leaves and dense shadows The shadows went everywhere they went The trees remained there, only shadows. The birds went their bit, an extra furlong Than yesterday from trees shadows went The trees stayed green, their shadows went And they stayed where they were with birds. The tree here did not stay wherever it was Its shadow would go away never to come.

656

Schoolgirl (2012-04-16 00:03)

She gazes at her new clothes To misty thirteen, from a girl Swathed in a new pinch smell . School boys loom in whiskers Pimpled of face, with pin holes Their hands disgusting, smell Reminding frogs with freckles On backs, their under throats Coming up and down to rain. Somehow one now felt to feel Their swampy backs in ngers.

657

Patterns (2012-04-16 23:47)

There are patterns in our behavior Science, observing and postulating Experts we being in guessing game. Holes of footprints on a wet beach Tell us the bullock cart that went by The way the bullocks shivered their Skins of busybody ies of morning. The menstrual periods of women Who cried in light hours of brutality The way they formed tiny red maps On humanitys cloth of useless love. There are patterns they have found To the way the little owery spiral Works and replicates in our bodies And to the way new bodies are born But not to the way they die breaking New mothers hearts in old bodies.

658

Mirrors (2012-04-17 22:39)

The way they shine from the silver They tell us a lot about our others Our own failure in others success Their hands being full to shoulders Of gold earned in white countries Of night work on sweaty computers Of houses and cars they aunt here On green paper they make in cold. This our paper shows a bald man Against their one of shoulder hair, Breeches on tight legs and corset. Our bald man is naked in the chest. Our paper buys so much less that. We live in two bedrooms and drive Two-wheeled sputtering machines. The way they shine from the silver They tell us a lot about our others Those of sons with their mirrors Held up to the others ,our horns Turn green on the silvered backs. Their paper seems less grass green On the other side and not all that In the lonely lands across the sea. The green paper shimmers green Only in the country of heat and dust.

659

Small res (2012-04-18 23:59)

Before sleep small res rage, Their tiny tongues reach out To sleep, some times burn it To icking ash, with dreams. Small res rage in a tummy Of food and emotions, love And anger and daft thoughts In a stful of soft gray jelly. Small res make big ashes When the holes shall vanish We have made in this space Into an endless dark night.

660

Waiting (2012-04-20 01:59)

Having exhausted all avenues I have to write a ve line poem. I see a toddler moving to edge And a dawn forming from night. The toddler moves to beds edge Dawn is still forming from a night Sorry, sixth is night waiting to go.

661

Gestures (2012-04-20 23:40)

Lean and mean gestures we make In the dark so that no one can see The blush on our cheeks and God On lips of defeat and ambivalence. The treetops come alive with birds Against the faint glow of a dying dusk. That is when we make our gestures Complete with a pair of vacant eyes Of knowledge not taking in account An ignorant past, a stuttering faith A faltering love ,a science of comfort. Our senses cry like ignorant crickets In raining dark with many new frogs Raising throats to night in orchestra. Our faces are duly contorted with love Like exaggerated gestures of dancers. Our eyes turn up in repeated brows But in the end they sound as of air Like a breeze rustling in yellow leaves Dealing with a dead past of the trees.

662

Right eye (2012-04-22 00:32)

I give my right eye for nothing Fight them tooth and nail, little Moppets swimming in its waters Their dance unseen in mirrors But in eyes of doctors machines. A little afraid in anterior of eye I quell rebellion by water canon And tear gas but ght back tears With pearly tear drops and hope. In the interior is fear of darkness.

663

Confusion (2012-04-22 21:38)

In the midnight was a confusion Of the windows,in the rain breeze That came past us in our deep sleep And they went wavering in the dark A silk smooth softness of woman Wrapping you around in arms, as if. Woman confusion was in the mind Of man abetted by much male ego. Windows hammered rain in night In the utter confusion of midnight. When wind came they surrendered Their egos to the rising wind anger. Such nights it is better to surrender To slightly clearer woman confusion.

664

Wall owers (2012-04-24 00:22)

Now I have the wall owers blooming In rooms graden stretching to my roof That look like they have been smelling All my night in silence, emerging from Stems of two - three leaves with twists Like a fresh school girl would make in her Saturday drawing book for authenticity. The air is not heavy with their fragrance But could have been into the late night When we had gone to sleep over them. Their fragrance spreads only after sleep And some time enters our sleep quietly As if they are blooming in nights garden. They are wall owers that can be smelt Only in the higher reaches of the night.

665

Frame (2012-04-24 22:48)

They gave me a frame this day of new dawn To work inside of , I have no choice about. Images are language and frames drowned In them in a way only a wind can raise them Bringing about upheaval to midnight waves . Out of waves are poems made and discarded As wind is no more to a still moon in clouds. A breeze is a breeze in leaves, a whirl in dust. A frame lasts a nanosecond, an inch of space , A ash in the mind, a word, a twitch of body. Old frames drown in the sea of new language Their wood lies at bottom for scrap salvagers.

666

Stream (2012-04-26 00:04)

Thoughts went on in a mess of no meaning But no meaning would mean some meaning Even if we slurped tea at the roadside kiosk And looked on at the lake of green hyacinth And our consciousness remained a puddle As we counted cups of drunk tea in waste bin. From where we stood we saw the river of life Flow quietly by the scraggly rocks of Golconda Our peoples consciousness came down to us As so many words spoke in the small hours And textile pictures on our sarees that felt like Half formed country maps of new islands. Our consciousness went on below our skin Touching our bones ,and would go on again In other tea-slurping bodies by decayed lakes In a steady stream of decaying bones and esh. Their stories will ow like mountain streams.

667

Bird (2012-04-26 23:54)

What came ying in was bird before log in I logged in as a bird as I forgot I was man. Bird sound had brought a morning sweet Straight from the night of its restless sleep. I have to make this y to ve lines poem. The sixth waits with a tale of bird wound. But let me not think about wounded wings Of just one pigeon the girl had brought in Fitting quietly into girl st space like nest. Rather girl tted in the pigeons girl space Girl and pigeon tted in my stful of esh Where many birds and girls y unhindered.

668

Sounds (2012-04-28 01:30)

The sounds had come in before dawn From a glimmer over buildings, spread Hiding some distinctive cuckoo throats Trying to break free, from future and rain. There was breeze , mostly from darkness That seems to have come from the vapors Of a few ghosts of clouds in a tainted sky. As the hours grew large to sounds of fury I am turned to a Brechts stone sherman Holding this stone up a banner of triumph To less fortunate hours of no sh or stone. (Reference is to Brechts poem about old Stone Fisherman who displays his prized catch of a stone each time his net comes up with another stone to the less fortunate ones)

669

Camels and buffaloes (2012-04-29 22:11)

Can we cut out death and its somber thoughts Across the seas a word comes on the internet Through a night of unnished sleep and pillow. But sleep is death with rights reserved to get up Let us be positive and will ourselves strongly To write poetry to dead mules and live camels. The camels look really funny up in their faces As we stretch our necks to look them in the eyes It makes more sense to laugh with them in desert And less with our dead mules on a somber note When we wish to paint the western skies light. Back home we have buffaloes in their comical Interludes between their chewing and shivering Their leather of ies, their tails y up and down Their backs covered by egrets on private agenda. We take no chances these days, morals being low We cannot not trust our buffaloes with tap water. We therefore have them be milked right before us So that milk ows into our steel vessels undiluted.

670

Girl topic (2012-04-30 23:27)

Through the dark night a girl topic emerges Our sadness slowly being taken out of verse And of death forcefully ejected out of memory. The feeling bones of a girl are but a laughter Of an evening wedding function, a girl laughter About own wedding and Spanish prociency Why not marry a swashbuckling Spaniard A swash buckled by Kannada of a back alley We ask facetiously to silver peals of laughter. We are of the upper caste with preferences For sour lentils soup and a lungi clad forehead with three horizontal lines of Shiva afliation But girl is not worried about the lentils soup But about English proper and Oxford grammar. Girl topics eventually turn women in the fag end As if they are maturing in their bones to women Over lentils soup with jackfruits served in weddings Their girl stomachs will be peopled in due course Their necks shine with black beads of husbands From their aliveness in ofces behind computers . We wish girl topics not proceed beyond this point. There are other topics that do not grow so fast.

671

Eye of storm (2012-05-01 23:58)

I hope I am not now in the eye of a storm For a change let me talk yellow in lines In place of white on a night black board Convinced this passes behind the eyes Of a liquidity gently touching the inner eye How I wish the bird soon enters its sound A mixture of sound in soft eyes, a redness Bristling like a leaf-end in a gentle breeze Of a yet to arrive rain from hills, to the plains Its tingle yet in the imagination of the skin, A fragrant earth promised, a cloud hanging.

673

Walls (2012-05-03 01:36)

From the viewpoint of poetry we may think Of doing away with walls, trees bordering, Their leaves already shed from last winter Tree will look down on the walls other side A lateral view of the sky, a birds eye view As if we are birds in the evenings of twitter As the sun sets after a days erce burning. And why not a wire fence leaving sky open Hemming in our insubstantial living this side As barbs will not pierce ghostly existences And borders are porous except to humans Wind makes no needless whoosh sounds And rain makes it a point to call some times.

674

Finishing (2012-05-03 23:32)

What you begin you must nish at earliest It is the loose wires that hang on your eyes Like a tangle of capillary veins in eye-whites I have never seen the trees stopping to grow Once a seed has decided to be born to earth. But you are stuck with this thing half done And it is such a boring thing on your sleeve? When you begin, leave mind in a half- state Where end remains open and disconnected From the things seminal beginning as if this Your birth did not carry a bucket to be kicked. Your birth is somebody elses unnished job This way you are not burdened with conscience.

675

Paper bag (2012-05-04 22:18)

The paper bag collects pieces of poems Like no one else does, through this April That is when its spring arrives without Knocking once, as once knocked enters Ceremoniously with complicated images Leaving you gaping and hair wind blown And bringing yellow leaves from quite far. Plastic cousin banned till twenty microns. A polyethylene bag loves your tomatoes But cannot be trusted for your kids health Abandoned it rustles protest in the bush Waving like old diaphragm at wind sound . We prefer paper cousin from bamboo land That is murdered , revived without hassle. The tomatoes mourn it with own blood.

676

Dangerous (2012-05-06 00:21)

The fat man has a slight leaning tower That looks cross-eyed, creates situations And marks you down from your mirror. Fat man smiles as a dear friend who likes To make your stomach laughing on beer Through a white smoke of hard rock cafe Where it is hard and rock to keep senses And for you to laugh at his sarcastic jibes That pull others weight down and yours The way his many chins dance in samba. Mirror is a mean cupboard of teddy bears Of daughters lovely, their dads dangerous As daughters return in buses with bruises Inside their bodies,unknown to innocence. Mirror is nighttime burglars that steal gold Not all fat mans but something crooked Easily cooked nice, stewed in large day light. Fat mirrors stare down at your lean mirrors Gobble them up , their shadows so endlessly Going into wall as a sparrow pecks at them Confusing image as another of own kind.

677

Moon in jasmines (2012-05-06 23:48)

The new red moon is our own super moon With a pancake face, half burnt and red Already worried about the three jasmines In my pocket,laughing their fragrance off. Last time around she had turned jasmine When she was closer by 285 miles from us From earth mother of jasmine sweetness Almost smelling like jasmines in our pocket. This time around the camera saw her naked And cloudless, for a while over the ladder Amid clothes hanging ,with their own moons. Another seemed broken on the water tank A tiny dot in a ash of darkness,halos gone. We want halos back of likely rain and hope. (Yesterday the moon came back to us closer than ever,except a year ago when she had come even closer.)

678

Flamingo (2012-05-07 03:02)

Flamingo was an iridescent feather A whoosh of wind over lake rocks Smelling of Siberia in lost thoughts Lost lovers en route on Himalayas Frozen feathers rustling in blizzard. Flamingo is no longer ice but wind Frozen in the lake air,as in a painting Flapping wings of futility, in despair About Siberian lover lost to steppes Now taking a local lover in the lake. A bastard amingo will he be local Or will there be a reverse migration Spunk enough to cross Himalayas?

679

Hurt (2012-05-07 22:56)

It hurts pretensions from deep inside Trying to save soul for a bodys sake But a rejection is not an untrue poem Nor a cold truth waiting to be laid bare. A room or a stone is no atmosphere For the reddest moon of twelve years That will sit pretty by a ladders edge. Water tank holds air in water of moon The latter tossing about as china break Splinters dancing about to the breeze. Flowers icker as moons star servants In the fragrance of its liquid soft light Hurting love in the very esh of heart The moon hurts and is hurt by clouds But temporarily and this too shall pass.

680

Walking (2012-05-09 01:37)

Out there the dawn cracks in a ne Wet grass with gures stooping low Their caps slightly askew for a heat That will happen much later of day When water bottles tend to throats. Come down fast for a creature preview Of men and animals ,birds and insects From a poetry chapbook of indigo-rising Joining in a class of yogic mathematics Of alphabet , one lined Sanskrit poems Their lines abutting bird calls of dawn. Our walls rise of bramble, prickly wires A shattered glass of bleeding bottoms Of whiskey bottles drunk in night hills Monkeys stealing coconuts from a car. Keep walking unafraid of the two-legged Creatures on motor cycles from behind Snatch gold from absent-minded necks, Of three monkeys of exposed manhood Their stone genitalia left in street middle. We want our walking to mix the earth With the sky wonder, its earth-to rain Toward forming alchemy of a soft dawn Not harsh on the lmy eyes of wet fear A fear of not being there with monkeys To dance with them in their stone world Only a colored bow to the western sky Empty of rain but lled with soft hues.

681

Pilgrimage (2012-05-10 00:07)

We had left early morning for sight of the phallus stone Dragging our feet through the stones of ice mountains Our horses plodded on with us some times and without, Our behinds aching with their bony backs in contact. Old men sat hunched up in two feet long wooden boxes On young mens shoulders , latter feet dragging stones The boxes felt like our old mens journey of no return To a stone phallus to be bathed in tears in the snow hills Where they will join a mountain stream and ow as river To return to plains and land in the seas of their villages. The mountains were cruel and beautiful to our tired feet The horses zigzagged their way up with their droppings Filling the cold air with a warm smell mixed with bodies Their tails swished unending imaginary ies in behinds As they were lost to their green dreams of the mountains. Old men paddled all the way up in their wooden boxes Crouched as in their mothers stomachs,with eyes shut From their lips came muttering sounds like buzzing bees That lled the empty silence of the hills in the morning. It felt as if it was a return to where they had started out Where this thing had begun, the sea of their rst oating.

682

Dogs (2012-05-10 23:46)

Dogs Tail wagging His tails wagging is no barking Balking at wind, at passing car Just body friends of wet snifng Two pant legs to be followed Only to be shaken off in a vile Basement of dark shadows And sleeping cars in their veils. Pant legs have no steel in them And a soft bite is afraid of pain By four pricks just below navel Here love ferments but festers. Lame dogs Plenty of action is in the street A dog leg is gone to childs pleasure By a boys stone at its whelping But three legged dogs still bark At passing cars, their shadows. You cannot straighten his tail His tail is like a crescent moon Its ies like stars buzzing around Or like a scythe the farmer uses To bring his crop under control And cannot be straightened ever Like a crescent moon or a scythe.

683

Mother (2012-05-13 04:03)

We began with nothing, we men Only a song or a moment, a tug On a swinging cloth, a motion set By a hand from a kitchen, a face Cupped by hands, lines traced Fingers passed in spikes of hair. Our shrieks bring kitchen running From milk smells burnt, stomachs Swell with cries, sunny fart sounds We hear cuckoos throats of rain Gentle songs from a kitchen wind. Our stomachs are rolls of talcum Gurgles gibberish of a baby love. We are nothing if not kitchen song. (On Mothers day)

684

A sonnet about pure thoughts (2012-05-14 03:16)

Our thoughts are pure without any body Or clothes hiding one, in the trees or sky Or by wall peg to hang its tale thereby. Our body is cloth cast off and away. No tail hangs by this body perfect pure. Its meaning burns as food in intestine Its light envelops trees and hills for sure But in the end, is just sloughed off skin. Beyond hills of clouds we wear another To hide nakedness of skin from our thoughts There we emerge from all-knowing mother, Entangled in philosophical knots. Our body is earth of dust seeking sky Looking for soul that leaves it high and dry.

685

Stone (2012-05-16 00:21)

Whenever our cups, we mean, runneth over, Full or half full at times, then his eyes turn red Bloodshot and much water oozes from kindness, Stone clothes in pleats, a sloping torso in waters As the morning sun light marks their lines from Side to side, their stone ersatz for ancient body Standing in eternal presence with its xed stare At a city of glimmering lights in its black fever. Drop your clothes to stop cups of running over. Flap your limbs about to morning birds chirps. Eye contact stone eyes at their stare of kindness And drop bodys fears to turn your mind to stone. (A 18-meter monolithic statue of Buddha stands tall in our citys Hussainsagar lake)

686

Salvation (2012-05-16 00:28)

We are waiting for our souls salvation Especially at night , as sleep vanishes From the corners of pillows, their soft Textures turn hard in silk and cotton, As resident dreams turn stale and old. Then there are moths come to eat sleep From a powdered body under our skin. They seem to appear by windows frost In search of their light ghting windows Staging phantom dances of people in bed. We are the people who cannot sleep Only dance with our vigorous limbs Touching backs, clothes peeled off So we present really pretty shadows . We grow our heads right into clouds Not knowing the lizard and the rat That scurry past our tiny feet below Lost in rustling dry leaves and scrub But a mild tickling sensation to feet Is felt in heads even at such heights.

687

Stone (2012-05-16 01:27)

Whenever our cups, we mean, runneth over, Full or half full at times, then his eyes turn red Bloodshot and much water oozes from kindness, Stone clothes in pleats, a sloping torso in waters As the morning sun light marks their lines from Side to side, their stone ersatz for an ancient body Standing in eternal presence with its xed stare At a city of glimmering lights in its black fever. Drop your clothes to stop cups of running over. Flap your limbs about to morning birds chirps. Eye contact stone eyes at their stare of kindness And drop bodys fears to turn your mind to stone. (A 18-meter monolithic statue of Buddha stands tall in our citys Hussainsagar lake)

688

Reminding (2012-05-16 23:38)

Just now I am reminded of a top First spinning on the childs palm And ung down to spin on ground Till it stops tired and falls to a side . Reminding is a top act of spinning A brief spinning on the palm tickling Like the red velvety creature crawling On your palm reminding rain season And ung to the ground it reminds its Vanishing in grass hairs of the earth, The earth that is spinning after ung From a big childs palm slowing to stop. Kafkas top spins on my palm briey Only to stop a little later ,when ung To the ground after reminding is over.

689

Bricks (2012-05-18 00:11)

Bricks came rst and then the lime. We like their color and of the pan That they sit in on womans head As a warm sky stretches innitely From the sun-kissed hem of her cloth. Old bricks make way for new ones That contrast so well with old cloth. The bricks have burnt to perfection Outside city where they spew fumes As earth burns slowly towards sky. Woman and boy cut smooth cakes Burn them to perfection like hell. Their hell burns ercely in red face. Once they are out from the inferno They sit in pans on womans heads For a joy ride to house skeletons . Then they are laid, end to end, to hide Men from the sky and its erce sun.

690

breath (2012-05-18 23:48)

for now you hold it against tree bird waiting, guessing, imagining liquid shapes ow windward, gone now now back from leaves, a poets mind of words, of origins lost, ends open begin now ,whir, fashion your things out of sounds, through missing light a center , a circle position on a ring a stirring in leaves, a bark of ants line a story that begins in day to a night now you hold it in your hands, chest congested in thought, a pain littoral a sea holding wind, a weave constant a moon-tide, a salt unmade , a man in trees searching, an emptied bottle for now hold it and leave it but hold between now and then space , hold so it will not go away ,not come back

691

Rattle (2012-05-19 21:56)

the wind at midnight fuses night with sound and sleep sitting up at the window ledge in the nights apron the fan belts the wind to May heat of poems unrealized ,skies dead to their potential cloud come June the hills will get up from stupor down at maps feet and then hurl buckets from the seas vapor the streets will rattle with wind from the hills and cry saltless tears from the distant seas

692

green bench (2012-05-20 23:02)

from the green bench a pair of glass eyes looks for phantoms coming from park gates his eyes clutch visions perhaps he is thinking of all of them gone far, his mates from womb nephew tells his elbow raise your feet will you there is a road bump an elevation for raising foot to unknown space he walks living in sleep a television of gods story a sleep between stories of god-king deserting wife there is darkness coming from east, he tells nephew let us reach before dusk.

693

Newspaper (2012-05-22 00:18)

Newspaper spreads On pant-legs in park Hiding ugly scowls, Disgusts at country Its deaths and inanity Green bench witnesses Some brand new dramas Unfold from shirt pockets Daughter-in-law peeves Are hurts in old pockets. Buttons open to waist, Their jokes come out Like kids after school Like farts in company. Newspaper hides faces And also hides pockets.

694

you begin with nothing (2012-05-22 23:31)

you begin with nothing just a plain glass of water some baby cries to sleep a night paling to morning with some dogs absent and barking at the wind water enters cold and wet dousing res,orange in blues a sweet thought,a cold wind a heat in granules vanishes on a white parapet to night the night crumbles darkly as a tree dies, a fruit ripens a ower falls its red feet up an earth shivers in a tree a sky falls ,a cloud breaks a color ies , a wind wavers an orange creeps up gently a hill fattens,a tree turns blue a lake streaks in pure silver and you end up with nothing just a ball of re in the east

695

desire (2012-05-25 23:56)

desire is doing eleven rounds with knots of men around God seeking a visa paper fulllment of a far off cold white country where a green currency rains please do not close your eyes but see effulgence for a trice a pig-tailed man forewarns to a mechanical piety of rounds under a tree that looks down with baleful eyes of summer desire is not only a mere body of body, to sweaty late night discovery of a fear in windows desire is a poem recognition claps in cross-country portals a jingle of money in pal of pay desire is a miracle to happen a suspension of physical laws nature going contra,a turnabout.

696

moment (2012-05-28 00:31)

when it slid from the top it was a bird cry, a wind a sound missing, a word. re of woman is waters pouring on a son grief a husband grief , a mind in death, a fear of loss a crying voice on waves but it is just a bird cry before an orange sun poets habit in thinking not a woman moment

697

unhappy star (2012-05-29 00:42)

a three kilo new kid bawls across miles of rail track what is the star that ickers right above him in the sky as he emerges from cave the moment that will decide his lifes script on forehead grandpa looks up papers for its luminescence in sky nds the sky star not happy but if stars are not happy sometimes war mongering our pig-tailed man will utter words over milk and honey bananas , camphor ames his scintillating words ght astral malecence so well for a few hundred rupees.

698

stone (2012-05-30 07:05)

a big stone smell grows to noon and to the night to a int of ancient re of bearded men , breasted women roasting deer re their ngers scrawl stone with red and brown horned bison, goddesses adorned the hills grow laterally from ancients, to futures as trees break , skies break bills break, clouds break all our phones are stone the sparrow calls are stone our bodies stones of earth grow to magnicent hills snowed in white oblivion

699

Mud (2012-05-31 03:50)

Our mud rises from our water These are our wet faces of packs Made from ancient river loam A soft earth for pot, a wet earth Of slow esh in vapors of words. We are our mud growing to dust.

700

Maze (2012-06-01 23:40)

Wondering the meaning of the maze I willingly think myself into it, enter To get lost, pound away, disintegrate As dying slowly is deliciously aware . Even the smell is , the eyes turn red Welling with waves of cold lubricating A subject turns object, verb doing lost Somewhere of thinking in its recesses. For a change let us not ask purpose Getting lost is process of granulating A subject aware of turning to object Something ddled around with neatly. We are but words, in a maze of words Bodies are no longer subject-things. Once we enter we granulate to a sky. We are left to thought , poems in white Helvetica on top, to a beauty of maze. The maze is beautiful like innite sky The stars are the granules we turn into In strange milky ways of star granules At midnight, just above our sleeping. Our breath is dust,our poems embryos Lost before sleeping, into the innity Of a sleep of never waking, a never sky.

702

The lost house (2012-06-03 02:31)

A lost house talks quietly to the lake In a tender morning light of its birds Birds that are in no hurry for shadows Of a camera not opening quite to trees But its shadows tail buildings fallen Headlong into a morning lake of gold The lake laps up against a parapet wall Of nobody leaning against it for view. Absences are ghosts with no prior bodies Absences that could have turned men If the house had stood erect to the lake The lake for company on moonlit nights With a moon falling across the parapet To the ripples of a soft wind in the lake The lakes trees make a luminous frame To the shadows of birds, the buildings Fallen into its shimmer, a moonlight Of the previous night still cherished By the lost house as a tender memory Of leaves fallen to the moon of the lake, Not its absences near the parapet wall.

703

Mind and body (2012-06-04 02:04)

A sticky head remained rmly glued To a body that thought like another And acted as one, in peals of laughter. Suppose it were born a few secs later When breeze was softer and purpler As midwife played truant drinking tea It might have been a quantum physicist With a quivering beard in Royal society. The eyes would have no stretch lines About them, only swift brush strokes. There would be nobody running after With murder on mind, no unborn kid To the wet eyes of mothers pure love. The stars might have shone on a mom Or on a real bearded quantum physicist Not one the sticky head thought it was.

704

Transgression (2012-06-05 01:38)

The cashew temptation is casual and sandy. Under the cashew you lie down on the hot river sand and let the sand singe your skin .Grains of sand that enter your holes where you dislodge by a blow of your breath. Blowing does not bring babies. But the sands are everywhere, They cannot be dislodged in some nooks. Babies are afraid of your breath when you blow into their eyes. They shrink away from you ,from your talcum in the rolls of their baby fat, like the sand that had singed your bare naked skin and entered your nine holes. . The cashews are yellow, fragrant and succulent. But when you eat them they catch your throat. The sand burns sin off your skin. The sun rains his heat on your love. You burn from its purity. But the ripe cashews catch at your throat later. And you cannot dislodge sand from the nooks.

705

Distances (2012-06-08 11:52)

The camera spans the lake and the hillock And a tiny gure hunched amid the boulders With black-brown creatures gently oating As black silence of presence hung over him. Their woolly silence had come from the hills Its wings apping, noises feeling like night. The camera shies away from their shadows Feeling their overwhelming presence in him.

706

Distances (2012-06-08 14:48)

The camera spans the lake and the hillock And a tiny gure hunched amid the boulders With black-brown creatures gently oating As black silence of presence hung over him. Their woolly silence had come from the hills Its wings apping, noises feeling like night. The camera shies away from their shadows Feeling their overwhelming presence in him.

707

Quiver (2012-06-08 16:25)

The teacher omits to instruct pupil In the way of sending a nal arrow. His own teacher hadnt told him As he had forgot to ask his teacher. The teachers pigtail quivers sadly In guilt and shame,as the arrow Does not leave the quiver in time And death does not forget to leave The king of deaths quiver in time. The teachers teachers pigtail Quivers sadly, in compound guilt. Teachers pigtail quivers simply. But deaths pigtail does not quiver.

708

Alive and smoking (2012-06-09 22:43)

Now he is dead and not smoking His wife is alive and not smoking And his daughter and the stars He had pointed to her that night. Mom had spawned all the stars When he had come out from her. The stars are alive and smoking. Venus was brightest the other day Across the blazing sun of the sky A tiny black dot on its ery redness Alive and smoking across the sun. It is better you are dead and ne too So you turn a star alive and smoking Among many mother had spawned When you had just come out of her.

709

Body beautiful (2012-06-11 04:57)

You see your body with a bodys eyes That do not go far outside of your self. The beauty of shadows a sun knows. The corners are lit up only in the noon When the spiders take to a quiet nap. These eyes do not come out to look From the edge of touch, like my ngers That are tiny ants crawling up nowhere But into the dip of the hills, their craters Let down by a primeval god of thunder A noise, a cracker from a night of love.

710

The garbage snake (2012-06-12 02:30)

In the beginning there was darkness, just nothing, Only a cry from depths , from a despair of tiny lungs. A snake coiled around me at the core of my being. Cut off the snake, let it slither away to street garbage Someone said, who was dealing with such snakes. They let it slink away from me , on way to garbage, The very snake that comes to me even now in sleep.

711

Pitchers (2012-06-13 19:21)

This is our wealth, these plastic pitchers Colored and vain, on our heads of hair With jasmines smelling from our backs. The way waters pour in them is beauty. Our bodies are full of water, as it sloshes In them just like in the green coconut That fell from a monkey man up there. Our water dilutes our husbands mostly Filled with viscous liquids and gray smoke. Our jasmine smells are drowned in them And they make mostly diluted love to us. Our pitchers are our wealth, red and blue. Ere the cock crows we are up and about With red and blue pitchers on our heads.

712

Book (2012-06-14 23:30)

About my dark nights, gray afternoons And my crows not yet arrived on the fringe, The book is indeed fat , redolent with sound And creaks at seams, like a rusty door hinge. Its pages are doors sidestepping to a backyard Filled with trees that look down into the well For their shadows eaten up at its bottom. Shadows fell there by accident, not design. The water is neutral, in its mossy brick steps Shadowy , moss-green and gray towards dusk But generally unresponsive to frogs jumping From crevices where lay entire frog colonies Deeply brooding in their own crevice shadows. It looks like the book is not about dark nights Nor about crows not yet arrived nor shadows Recumbent at the bottom where the pail fails To reach, touch and shiver waters in ripples. It is not even about frogs libidinously waiting To be written about, stroked on slimy backs. As the book is written it is mostly about itself.

713

Random (2012-06-16 23:12)

Random is a word of averageness With a gluey comfort sticking out On a poets rmament, on a night Of dark mystery as his words shine Against a sky of beauty, a ne ower That would utter like a bird about it Uninvited tiny beak poking mystery Inside of a sweetness,a ower dust Like rice our of star dust sprinkled On the marbled oor of a night sky In all this is color of magenta, soft rich Folds of cottony clutter,not belonging. When we have single petals of rebellion We do not have layers of settled being A thought exploring beauty of unbeing Absence of a never presence, a death Of presence, a hologram of thing else Taking place elsewhere, to another sky A breath with a mouth of uttered song A soft death in a sky of happenstance A window that will open to an innity Of a night that will never ip to a dawn.

714

Hibiscus (2012-06-16 23:17)

A little bird came and froze Into a hibiscus, deep into its Folds, soft towards outer sky. A sky raged beyond its petals Its wings apping like fever Hibiscus stayed eyes closed Bird came to and the ower, Its eyes open, the bird gone.

715

The rain stopped in the morning (2012-06-18 01:29)

The morning begins with rain bird Cuckoo trying to sing for more rain Wet rain on morning roads bringing A few fallen leaves, mirrors of puddles A dead nights moths lying sprawled On the window sills remembering Brief lives of fewer regrets, forgotten Death events, a sun looking away. Birds are up and about, competing In their throaty songs with crickets The last vestiges of a just closed night. They go into a huddle, their music Touching the hem of the sky softly In silks treasured in blushing clouds. Now there is silence in white clouds The sun gently peeping out making Clouds blush more, for alleged failure. There is no rain, a sun goes crimson Much promise but little performance . Thunder went quickly dead, lightning All a swagger, nothing much to show Only a few chalk lines behind the hills.

716

The abstract moon (2012-06-19 05:56)

At midnight the moon failed to illumine the lake. A girl and two boys entered the lakes darkness . They paddled the boat to nd an abstract moon. They feared their moon had fallen to the bottom . Girl could not swim but one of the boys could. The other went to the lakes bottom to learn. And he is still learning the perfect way to swim Remembering the way he had learnt to swim As when his life had begun in murky waters. Girl forgot how to wake up from the paddle boat. She was lost in a reverie about an abstract moon. Then real waters snakily entered her warm lap. But she hardly felt their cold against her stomach. The story only he can tell who knows swimming.

717

Loss (2012-06-20 12:39)

We need not drag bodies in sand grains To count stars that ickered for counting. We feel exempted from the star- counting Like the soldiers-to -be with lesser chests . Chests heaved with unnecessary pride As night climbed over heads under trees Full of stars above them ,in danger of falling. We have lost count of their broken pieces That have turned reies in earlier counting. We lie under a dark cloth of promontory Thinking of the many stars lost to the night There is nobody to count them this night.

718

Lullaby (2012-06-21 00:13)

A little ower lay dead here From night, yet to be sung to Its fragrance is history, body A map on my computer table. Children are to be sung to In their innocence of sleep For their lapse of memories About their womb-homes. Green arms y away in dance To a burning roof for dying. They crawl to a sky for dream Their rain-wet white fragrance A memory of a song, a lullaby In the nights throat, a scent That remained there unsmelt.

719

Impermanence (2012-06-21 22:25)

Before morning the dogs would raise snouts To our sleep, in dreams whenever we turn dark And philosophically conscious of a short tether And we cant go very far, beyond the immediate. To the mountains is a stretching of song and god From a sea that raged alternately in wind of trees. September or October will be a snow mountain Because we want to do something then to ll Our vast spaces between now and a mountain. A whistle in the night brings mountains nearer. A dogs snout of cry to the wind, a stick tapping The earth for stories, between now and mountains Fills our impermanence with vast windy stretches. We wouldnt know where night ends, space begins.

720

Loneliness (2012-06-23 00:08)

I had taken mobile phone to my sleep. My head went talking to the shoulder On a motor cycle, my feet screeching A halt to a speed-breaker at school A kid in schoolbag on the road-sign. My loneliness sang ditties of my space As it rode a motorbike to another space Eating up crumbs of married loneliness In a storied meal-box hanging to side. I turned to the wall, to the left of sleep And the phone rang and the head leaned To my shoulder to listen to its whispers.

721

Not to write (2012-06-24 00:07)

Not to write was a broken dream Cut off from eye sockets, two stars On the low, a budding of hibiscus. The birds had come from the dark Their cries parodies of rain falling In Vishnu hills, in forest trekking. We look down from a black granite On watchmans life, a liquid in veins And on our life, when it would burn Among stacks of plastic garbage When water turned smoke in hills. Not to write was a poem of smoke Curling in the low hills of two stars.

722

Rain at night (2012-06-25 18:41)

Rain at night grew out of the days dust heaps Of poems ,hiding, incubating and lying tangled In clouds of dust not settled on sleeping heads. Pillows search imagery in major street corners Of the mind, when you cease to exist in sound, Your quietness mistaken for eyes closed to life. Rain is dancing in drain pipe in a steady pouring From the roof , its snakes slithering in streams On the metal road, towards the rain water pits Where they enter the burrows to sleep in rocks. Not sleeping, they join the other snakes there. Rain has surprised the moths still buried in holes Their wings still in the making, their bodies itching To die on the cream of light on our window glass. They will come out slowly to embrace their deaths And tomorrow there will be a rich raking of wings.

723

Pace-maker (2012-06-27 03:05)

In the rhythm of a hearts beat A fear is holding belly together In the green womb of an I.C.U. A rib cage is all we think about, A pain licking ,a esh in owing A jaded plastic , a gutter stuff A mesh of words that turn ash A smoke in eyes curling to sky.

724

Poetry of the broad daylight (2012-06-29 06:57)

The night we had hung our boots And wanted to be asked to explain Nobody asked poetry with mind. Now is poetry less mind, a mind Of mere bird calls, a lonely cuckoo Calling to rain from a leaess twig Unusually enlarged to our vision Consequently dissipated in a sky. Cuckoo went hoarse with no rain . Freshly wet with poetry less mind, We went hoarse with construction. Our poems go down their throats.

725

The anti- poem (2012-07-02 00:37)

A sleeping poem comes late and bleary-eyed. A bird repeatedly pecks at our thought space Its staccato call mistaken for a loud rain call Anti- call, the thesis of which is in the making. You cannot have anti- without its rst being. Luckily there are large gaps in understanding . More rain- puddle jumping is done in thought When the vehicle passes hurling its rst mud. There are some rainbows that vanish in a trice So we hold our skirts and practice our jumping Our anti- is formed even before thought is made.

727

Places (2012-07-03 00:44)

We had these places, their topography Ideal for dying, for disappearing quickly Mainly as images between impressions Like disappearing among streaks of rain. Rain will disappear to remain a memory. The memory will disappear ,only a sound A picture frame at the top of a glass shelf. The place will translate as a music record And as smell of disinfectant and two feet Shufing in the soft layers of the earth-air Levitating as ghost without feet,only a tail . The ghost is a mere illustration for children. Their magazines smell of kings and ghosts As deep forest animals are talking morals. We then turn ghosts with ghost memories Our places turn ghosts in nightly quiescence. Our places are ghosts that have turned dust.

728

June (2012-07-03 23:39)

My June is here because it was her October Immediately preceding,with wind in the trees. It was one madam Gluck who did the talking. I hear her voice in the trees as night dilutes To a wind without water from the seas below, Avernus to a kings empire of a humbled head A dwarf God had trampled down into the earth. My letters are soft by the hour like her sounds As the wind in the trees slowly rises to a death To a not being there that does not matter to life And the living as the wind rises against the bird. It always happens when a wind rises to death, A vapor that is a wind in the trees, a dead poet. (Remembering Averno by Louise Gluck)

729

Blur bird (2012-07-06 23:38)

Blur bird came out of a blue blur An imagined blue kurunji ower Of twelve years in the western hills That was when we went looking For chained elephants in the forest That went mad in mountain heads With love for female of the species That had smelt from far off eucaliptii But the blue bird was not a bird But a ower of rare appearance But in the blur it became a bird This elephant trumpets its glory Just opposite the temple blessing Your head for a ten rupee bribe You see our elephants no more Love sugar cane in the outcrop Or go mad in passions in fat heads They bless bald heads for ten rupees. Near the windmill is a young sun Playing hide and seek with clouds But their windmill is carrying on With its reluctant rotors stirring The wind is just a blur in the hill Just like the sun and the blue bird And elephants that see females As a mere blur to elephant noses In the end this whole thing is a blur Beautiful minds are in a state of blur. Our blue birds are owers in their blurs As our clothes are caught in the burr The sun slowly turns a blur in the hills.

730

Names (2012-07-08 23:46)

At the crook of the mountain The shadows stretch of water Trickling to the road from names Of gone people with memories In white left on the mountain And their names keep dropping While the mountains breathe And the owners are gone for ever.

731

The little girl on the temple steps (2012-07-09 04:14)

On the stone steps towards God A girl strains her eyes to look up Through fuzzy shadows ,as the steps Are hazily oating away from her. The temple is miles up and away. Will they return to her from her sky In a fragrant presence on the hills?

732

Hollow Sounds (2012-07-10 00:05)

In the ripe night one began just to write Merely because one had to just prevent Others from writing, with the night still Remaining undone and its stars ickering In nal counting, before we close bags. That is when it turns just write and Moses Of Saul Below writes his unread letters. Here we read his unread letters to write Poems that disappear before the last line. We then go into the night to sniff it deeply. Our minds are full and stuffed with words. Our yellow paper in the computer bristles With capital rst lines crawling all the way. We keep writing our letters for not reading. Our poems are not novellas for train reading. Our poems are unread letters to a hollow god In whom we are contained, like Herzog Moses. We manage to make hollow sounds in him. (Reference is to Saul Bellows novel Herzog)

733

Exclusions (2012-07-10 23:42)

There in the night we think of exclusions In our joint fates , our common destinies As odd sounds issued from creaky souls On top of a workaday, as strange dreams Of our ancestors looking past their bodies. It is not they but the rising tide of decay. Bodies are not theirs but of time and night. Our own bodies lay sprawled under trees Beside temples of red and mesh in a day. Their eyes look through trees and beyond Solving the mystery of our bodies in stones Turning to stones , water, wind and dust. Their sadness is their exclusion, their joy Contained in the hollowness of their gods.

734

Shout (2012-07-12 00:47)

This morning a cuckoo shouts Instead of the customary cock. Dawns voice rises from a tree Not a throat on a broken wall. Its shout goes, silence after silence, To an imaginary rain in the hills. The sun rises quietly against birds. The birds shout to a reddening sky. A temple shouts a dead voice to sky. We wonder why in such a silence They all have to shout to be heard.

735

Blind Curves (2012-07-13 04:54)

A at self you are, of springing cactus and sand The sky meets the sand of earth in the distance. You see a curve of a sand dune and a gray camel Its hump delicately poised on the earth-sky line. That is where the parched water is stored for you In journey to carry your atness through curves. A curve dangerously close to heart, springs from A body ,soft in contours of midsummer madness And turns a pain in knuckles, a lump in the throat. These are dunes with no eyelashes that save you From a sandstorm, from their sandy distortions. They feel like contortions of a body racked in pain Rooted as you are in the physicality of existence.

736

Coffee stain (2012-07-15 01:02)

Somebodys brothers coffee dregs Made me think of my coffee stain That would disappear with a look And wipe with own industriousness And no mused maths on the table. That is how their stories are made Now mine, including my coffee stain On a table that would go with water. Our stories are made not by stains Left by coffees that hold memories But by brothers now gone for good.

737

A major marital matter (2012-07-15 18:19)

He took the cell phone to his sleep To the left of sleep the phone rang Head leaned to shoulder to listen To its silence and hushed whispers As the conversation owed its way. Head belonged to man whose wife Wrote on other mens army wives Who are not just Swiss army knives. She is the one head says,in whispers, The saint had ordered it to marry. The head whispers in all its silences. Its dreams lie scattered in army wives Prim and proper, in clipped English. Her own dreams are black and white Against the army khakhi of barracks. She a poet, like a werewolf is married To a khakhi gentleman, a major moon Not a minor marital matter,the latter.

738

Gossip (2012-07-18 00:45)

A word makes our story like music. We are looking for big story-words Flung at us in windows of eagerness Our ears prick for more, our phones Stopping to ring expectantly, in hush Of bigger , higher volumes,undertones Eating each others ears under hair. Give us our word, line of progression. Our story is made, so he comes alive. We want underdog , just a protagonist Not proved , hauled on coals of words Words touch him like a buzz of ies. We are desperate for words to take off.

739

Boy (2012-07-18 12:18)

We came away as we found a boy missing From a motor cycle on a hill road racing With a train ,chug- chugging to his song. A saffron shirt was all we know of the boy Who brought eyes down for love in snows Setting hearts autter in many a blouse. (On the passing of Rajesh Khanna ,yesteryears superstar today)

740

Beacon (2012-07-19 00:41)

I cannot escape the tyranny of the word A false beacon or at times a mere image When I see none on the sea I look for it A word that is a beacon, false it may be Then I drop my anchor and land myself On unfathomable boredom , a decrepit sky Of nothing, in a sea of purposeless faces, A noise that takes me to nowheres beyond Being others beacons, others beckoning. But then I have to go somewhere from here.

741

Detritus (2012-07-20 01:23)

A lot has come out of the detritus A morning wet with the nights rain Birds pecking at sky for more rain. Like on the next day of lights festival The kids look for unlighted crackers And it is such fun to set them off Near many windows ,to scare ghosts Sleeping under their winter blankets. Birds are kids looking for some fun. They forget the loss of the loved ones That went last year not to come back, The detritus of last years warm nest Feathers strewn around on a cats visit Screaming ghosts from a warm stomach. They forgive the cat and the detritus. They forgive the unyielding July sky. Their beaks peck at the sky for more rain.

742

Incomplete dream (2012-07-20 23:24)

From the window the rain fell on the road Devoid of a dogs barks, a trees brooding. A nights rain fell in a dark well of no frogs. A dream remains incomplete,a mere scrap Of memory, a stuffed creature, a grotesque Parody of a poets dream, of a stuffed tiger. Tigers do not exist being words from the far. Dreams of tigers do exist in blind poets living As stuffed poets of our dreams, in our words. (Thinking of Borges Dreamtigers)

743

Salt (2012-07-23 04:45)

Instead of a man we now have a little salt In the pans of the lagoon there somewhere Remembering the dunes they had made For scooping spoonfuls of salt into hearts. In the darkest wastes of the night the salt Took this man unaware, blinking at the stars. They were salt grains on the sea of the sky.

744

The marriage (2012-07-24 02:38)

The child is still sleeping in a ood of light. Words,spoken out, poke darkness in eyes As it grays to birds climbing a reddening sky The voices zzle down in a vanishing night. A car door is slammed, only to be opened. The lists are still in the making, the silks still In the wearing, their fragrances still sleeping . The steel chairs are dragging on a dusty oor. But the owers are ready in a fragrant thread. You can smell their fragrance and much later As girl is woman, feel them, a touch for touch A curve , a lowering of eyes, a fragrant dream.

745

Simulacrum (2012-07-25 11:43)

In a rhythm, please speak up now with us As rain- moths are pulling out their music From puffed up cheeks and painted hearts The cuckoo sings a rain song from a gnarl. Its rhythm will go on till morning and sun. Crack a burst sound from the almond shell Of morning hid in kernel on nights branches The tip of a tongue testifying its early rising. The adrenaline had wildly gone up the night. Girls, hold your skirts and swirl like earth-ball Kick the blue of the airy balloon to a yellow sun The sun has tied his horses to swirl around it It will now be your fate to move in simulacrum. The sun has tied Earth and other planets through attraction and moves them around itself as if a trainer moves newly trained horses around itself holding their reins. Rigveda 10.149.1

746

Nose (2012-07-26 10:47)

At the start of the walk the y Danced around a pugilist nose In clear geography of a gray sky With no rain, only a promise. It seems raining in the other sky. Will the clouds turn rain like ies? In the sky is a swarm of doubts That will soon turn ies, only ies Buzzing around a walking nose. But now the sky is the other sky. And as I reach the end of the walk The nose is ghting rain like ies.

747

The sister (2012-07-27 02:05)

This day we welcome the wealth goddess Asking her favors, new clothes and gold Husbands love, life and joy, job and kids. We do not need brooms and bath room Slippers with a bit of darkness skewered On a golden day of wealth and happiness. A dark sister of the wealth goddess waits On the staircase , with a bare neck devoid Of the golden hues of wealth, her loose hair In full disarray, on a bareback of poverty. Behind ,she stands sadly on a door frame Gaily decked with painted owers, brooding On her heavy deprivation, a sibling rivalry. The marigolds sing in their heavenly beauty. Their dust ies in our face in soft fragrance. The stories told make us rich, our husbands Long living, loving and liveraging their wallets. Let us slam the door shut in the sisters face. (Lakshmi the goddess of wealth is welcome in the homes but her sister Jyesta who comes riding on an owl, represents ugliness and squalor and is turned away at the door)

748

Always (2012-07-28 02:18)

There is powdered always in the mind Slightly granulated, dispersed in blood A thought made, a word said , a de ja vu. A cliche this thing is , always, nauseating Repeat, a television serial of time music Everything happens always , as always.

749

Variations (2012-07-29 12:17)

I have now moved on from my remnants To a night of variations, of subtle textures. The variations are a poem in the making With exquisite textures of a soft language Like the inscrutable night, silky and smooth And lined with sleeping trees in a dark sky. The remnants are a poet in fever that likes To see his own remnants on the ground Ticking away in an aliveness of art form Some sort of a soul divine, a shred of light, A body moving from itself, an aesthetic.

750

Bridges of existing (2012-07-30 08:20)

I remember my bridge- sitting in the evening Hair blown, smells indistinct, kids playing On the sand below, buffaloes on way home. There was another bridge but I was not there Above the water and the speedy cars passing Like nobodys business but it was like that. Bridges existed and one had better be there. The beautiful bridge did exist and so did she. A beautiful woman, her hair blown, her body Turned nonexistent, but the mind continued In sheaves of random prose , tattered verse . There are bridges of existing, hers and mine.

751

Keep (2012-07-31 22:05)

She has now come to keep the night In a state of rumble, a peace unkept A remember of a day that stretched Like days in no hurry of denouement When nothing would nally happen. The old lady went away of malignancy Leaving a high and hiccuping husband With a dancing throat in the kitchen In male egotism and paternal rights. The lady has since embraced her re Leaving her man entirely unembraced. She whose eyes have long gone wild In her sons sleep, is looking for stars In the night at their last count by him. She has forgot the count in the melee Of she who went away to embrace re Leaving husband highly unembraced.

752

Kasim the corpenter (2012-08-02 02:43)

Walking on the lakeside and much later, Reading of an old ship of seasoned timber Made from the ancient Russian pinewood The matter of a carpenter in the computer Turns out corepenter, not a printers devil. Kasim has got to be a terrible carpenter On lakeside not t enough for a door job. His hurried signboard declares a corepenter In large white letters on a gray steel box. He cant be a good carpenter ,the blighter. He cannot even be a proud door-painter.

754

Monsoon raga (2012-08-03 00:31)

There at the bottom of the India-map A sneeze had begun and a handkerchief Came up to our noses through the hills As rain began pouring on slippery mud Of tire treads, sins spread and stinking Refuse home for the seasons new ies. The clouds multiplied like ies in clinics Of doctors heavy with tails in their necks. Your heads swelled with loss of dignity And your nose quickly forgot the owers. You looked funny under a monkey cap. The rivers owed fervently in side-gutters Bringing our lth back to the very noses That had just sent it away to other noses. You missed your slum pigs that explored All piles of lth, bringing their insides out. We shall now bring out our sitar to play A ne rain raga if the fucking ies let us.

755

Meme (2012-08-03 22:59)

It is a bit of cold , ve years and a little less So many years, translated as so many hours And days ,this riding back the arrow of time. Mum is a meme, turned green as a mango The day a throat went parched singing from A laughter that trailed off in a no-sense sky. I shall open the door and let the dark come in With the wind in the trees, like a cold of death. Death is meme , its cold now a warm memory This day in balls of rice, a feeding of memory. (Remembering mom on her fth death anniversary)

756

The black dog and the pink rose (2012-08-05 00:13)

You see a beautiful rose slinking away from the wall. A black dog barks at other dogs in their white light Stray dogs multiply in light,in a one-to-four equation. The rose expands laterally in its pink folds of beauty. Here we are,straight from a meal, from a white light, A rice grain and sounds of purity uttered gutturally. We have come from white light, in rice and sounds. The rose hid under the leaves bobbing head up shyly For us to look its pink face ,discover beauty and life. It barks at other nonexistent roses just like our bodies Barking at the bodiless ones, as sounds in a vacuum . Bodies are just sounds , a few grass leaves and water. They are roses near the wall, dogs growing by a light.

757

Light love (2012-08-06 00:59)

No matter what poetry word I look for in light In its rich aural sounds or a cuckoo rain-song While morning is night , a light breeze blows In green trees ringing in light love, from a poet To whom it came down uting by summer sea. Our poet-friend is long gone and is lying dead And lightly ,I believe, after that lightness of love. By the sea there is lightness of all in our being. Let us lie lightly like love by the summer sea. In love death sits lightly on lightness of being. (Remembering the poem Beside The Idle Summer Sea by William Earnest Henley)

758

Table fan (2012-08-07 00:46)

We shall now go out to collect our stories From a night lled with hollow dog barks Against wind chimes from standing trees. A table fan comes our way in the carousel On top of the dark stories of our making. Stories are from inside as we confer value On vacant things, a few holes in memory. Like this woman who had kicked a table fan In diffused russet hues of a tiny beauty-dot As if it is a bucket women routinely kicked, In stories of kickety table fans and women. We do not blame the table fan for ofciating The role of a bucket an old woman kicked. The table fan has views on sundry subjects. It cannot surely be blamed for higher views. Our own table fan shakes off its wind as if It makes the wind trees are shivering with.

759

Morning train (2012-08-08 01:25)

The city would swell in the morning sounds of a train As it reaches ,from an outer waiting, the inner yard With station birds scaring the train away by shrieks. The auto-rickshaws splutter with suitcases dragging On their castors, their owners female shoes clicking On asphalt ,a sleep hunger yawning in their mouths. Here there are no buzz-bee bags hanging on the side Or kaleidoscopic glass on the wall in a morning light And dark buffaloes on calm rounds of cud chewing. The milk is not of kindness and has a rich fat content. The trees sleep in the day duly drugged with gasses. By evening their throats are lined with diesel fumes. Bleary eyes open their doors to sleeping milk packets And a roll of newspaper ung expertly by a paper boy. The paper roll says on top that the train did not arrive Even in the outer yard and rickshaws did not splutter. Female shoes did not click on the asphalt or in yawns.

760

Ripe (2012-08-09 01:10)

We really combine things, when ripe Like a mango smelling to be eaten. A soft fragrance lls the air like ies Tickling a nose to make it come alive. The room is now open for ripeness With another old man fresh to poetry, A conspiratorial silence by the world, As he will turn a golden fruit in the air Tantalizingly hung on a windy night. Open the door , will you, and close it For Gods sake, feel a rooms ripening As a fruit gathers ripeness in the box. The room will ripen to a golden silence Filled with fruitful discovery and joy.

761

The sentences (2012-08-10 02:41)

Let us not be too sententious As behind a princes curtains. There it stops in no comma. The curtains have shadows Death and murder,treachery Mothers love, fathers ghost. We borrow all our sentences For a common mans stories We duly make up the curtains. Let us husband our sentences. We need them when in sofas In our morning tea meetings, The comedies of our daily life.

762

The oil lamp (2012-08-11 01:01)

The oil lamp is not a light thing but an oil Just a body that is not life but a stillness Seeking its intermittent glory up and down. The oil is our darkness eating itself to light A whiff of breath that imbues a darkling night A climbing of wall to lose oneself in the sky. The lamp is a dying ower smelling of God. The lamp is death dying to make a little life.

763

Blue shirt (2012-08-12 02:48)

His blue shirt harks back to ordinary days Of walks in eld borders to triangular hills Fragrant rivers and mystery ower bushes, An ordinary shirt our men wore in the times When an ordinary life had still existed and The bush shirt had not yet come into being. The gardener wears the shirt of the sixties When shirts owed with detachable buttons. His blue shirt is a tell-tale tatter of the times Ordinarily found on stick-and-pot scarecrows With birds painting the stupid potheads white.

764

Virtual crows (2012-08-13 02:42)

The crows caw denes my dawn I got this thing again this morning An itch to scratch into light words From many incoming bird sounds As if they all had started from here. There are no crows in the internet Only crow-words they lustily caw . The breeze blows on them virtually, I mean, semantically linking birds. But a crow dening dawn is for real And for a change I hear a real crow That sits primly on an internet cable With light leanings towards the road Suggesting a hiatus from light words. The crows are not for virtual people Sitting in dense foliage like cuckoos That lazily call down rain, waiting for Crows to make nests for their chicks. They are ancestors from our vintage When internet was palm leaf scrolls They come down yearly for rice balls.

765

Claps (2012-08-14 00:20)

You may please decide whether you want Loud claps or standing ovations or merely Silent admiration for a sterling performance. Personally I prefer claps because of the air. The air makes a funny noise in the palms. The eyes seem to be on you ,so many pairs With admiration shining in their tears owing In the room, ooding the crevices of furniture. Their balls make such a ne splashing sound Like the silent fruits of a banyan on the pond. The music is great and the plastic chairs pretty. These claps are meant for you as you half-squat With your behind in the air in precarious music.

766

A hole in the asbestos (2012-08-15 04:48)

I am circumscribed by rocks and owers In a bowl where you saw a surprised hare And now a peacock on top, its blue head Outside eyes, my glass eye fails to touch. The rocks are not yet warm with a days sun Squatted in a wilderness like brown gures Smelling grass owers with upturned noses. I look farther to see the lake rising to the sky And endless asbestos fence beyond the lake That has a chink for people to snake through.

767

Flowers for T.V. (2012-08-16 02:50)

At night I opened the door to tiny owers Dropping from a fragrant piece of the sky Amid my television trials and tribulations. They were my birds, chicks their fragrance. In the morning they would granulate my air. They were moons broken from a housetop. With the sun up they are gone with the wind. It is eye-care time and open the window Says a computer near a window of owers. The fallen owers lie scattered on the oor. An arching creeper is waiting for the night For a repeat act in my tonights T.V. woes.

768

Drizzle (2012-08-17 00:12)

Drizzle happened when we were away In rain, catching it in our palms and hair. We would go through its falling snakes We went inside , much afraid of snakes. They would slip though our eye-lashes And fall right into our pockets and stain Our surf-washed clothes with round coins. The coins would fall plop into our shirts In our undershirts ,in their star-like holes And tickle our cold bodies to the marrow. Drizzle happened raising hair Medusa-like And its hair- snakes went all over our faces. In the end , eyes had little pearls clinging. When in rain they did not shine to the sun.

769

Bird drama (2012-08-18 00:32)

The chick is a ball of esh ,from a proud mamas love, In the wind of the wire , a home away from some trees. The birds are mama and lover ,accountable to the chick On the A.C. unit where they had brought it into being. Chick waits throbbing in a plastic shovel ,dropped there Into a new space of gravity, but a shovel is not a home Home is up there where bird chick is franchised citizen. A dropped chick is a throbbing mass of no ying wings. A sweeping maid has her duty toward homeless chicks. No wings , no y but to die ? Maid drops the chick high. O conscience beating in my bird, guilt at not doing thing. A heart beating like a wingless chick in a cage of bones. Why no cooing ,only high and ighty shrieks ,wing-ghts Above the A.C. unit , why this drama of feather-apping Finally why this silky silence in balconys higher reaches. Here ngers y on keyboard but soon doubts take wings If the fucking mom has taken it in or has chick left its bird. But I am not thy birds keeper, ngers say, keeper of own.

770

Empty feet (2012-08-19 00:51)

The feet, now empty, crawl in ants With blood pressure in systolic low Here is red-blue heart in a rib cage. A rubber snake now crawls on its bars Hearing its dancing with its no- ears. As snakes have no ears but silence Of the earth trembling softly to feet. The snake raises its hissing hood . The ants crawl is but a night dream An early dream prematurely arrived In a noon pillow, after a heavy meal. At night is a dream of a mind in mind Of a mind that lost cells to emptiness A fear for father in son, a fearful night A fear of empty feet, of shufing feet Of empty eyes, of loss to empty space.

771

The poet and the albatross (2012-08-20 01:04)

The sea bird of Baudelaire is truly vast In the bird ,not in the sea , the sea-birds Elongated sea vowel fueling imagination Aided by a mere hyphen in proper place. It is albatross not around a poets neck But in it , with total lack of walking grace Like a squawking woman , loquacious And spacious, with a tinge of the tragic In a ships comedy of wingless walking. The poet has his comedies in the boudoir. Here he walks privately ,his restless arms Flung in the air, beating the air comically As if swatting many mosquitoes of words. He better stay there ,not come to the aft Where the sailors are waiting to prod him With their pipe-stems or stage a mimicry As laughter explodes after him on the deck.. (Reference is to the French poet Charles Baudelaires poem "The Albatross")

772

The years (2012-08-20 23:51)

The years cascade like the ninety feet dip From Gondwana plains around sixty of age A steep fall with a few rainbows and truth. See the moon hung in a branch on the tree That is a sad moon-face, pie-face in cloud That used to jump each time a new wave came. You are reading from years, with their big holes Eaten in by silver worms, that eat them So nice and in such a round perfection. It is they that have eaten bits off your moon.

773

Sleep is a dream (2012-08-22 10:57)

Many times, sleep is a heavy thing Lying at at the bottom of our night A muddy brown thing crawling with Several sleazy sleeping creatures. Other times it oats away like clouds Around an airplane, scraps of songs Set to melodies of eternal memories.

774

Pipe (2012-08-23 00:41)

Yesterdays sleep was but a dream In and around a pipe, just nothing Not a smoke in curls, only nothing, Nothing that is not content, a form With nothing as content in the pipe. A shout from a milkman is nothing In the dark of a basement in sleep. A dogs bark is nothing in its sleep And away from a dogs tail wagging To milkmans pants in morning call. The poem is vacuum living in a pipe Sucking in vacuum ,from air of space. A stars nothing touches a roof-slab Like the tree in vacuum, its leaves Touching its nothing from the past. The poem is a pipe with nothing in it A vacuum sucked in from air of space.

775

The gs (2012-08-24 01:23)

Remembering mom dead years ago We tried to picture great grandmother. We did not know who our g.g.m. was But would dream her in a holy thread On a shirtless chest, a lump in throat. Our sacred thread runs left to right , And is reversed on chest right to left And we have placed three rice balls On a banana leaf with sesame seeds For g.g.m g.m. and m. in that order. As lineage grows , gs go from them.

776

Clarity (2012-08-24 23:28)

In diluting dark of the night like this There is Kierkegaard type of clarity Of either/or, before and/or after death When clarity shines like clear water And words do not obfuscate sound And/ or sight, but are mere smells From a night, like its dew on grass. It is nights dreams that wake you up Their words do not smell like a night. They choke you in your deep throat Colorless like water , neutral to nose. Up there they will ask what about clarity They ask Kierkegaard-like and you say Except for dreams that have no smells.

777

Twig upon twig (2012-08-26 00:05)

Wind is upon wind, twig upon twig Twig upon wind and leaves in wind. A star roosts on buildings roof-slab. A broken dog barks, a mind breaks To a clearing in a jungle of morass. Time to clear eyes of light for a min. Forget kitsch, forget the need to die To acquiesce, to surrender, to sing To stretch throat not coming of poet A poets mediumistic art , no matter. Poets existence is a mere whimper A howl of protest just before his dawn About a moon-face and a dead man Who walked there in his strong arms. (Neil Armstrong the rst moon-walker passed away in todays news)

778

Word chain (2012-08-27 00:50)

Sleeps word chain is manifestation Of stored change ,a transmutation A self motion, a radio talking to night Scrap of song that starts in its sleep A rapid moment in sleeps eye- face. In the stillness of a night the objects Cry out, dance mature nature to life Singing human songs mostly of esh . A esh sets the word chain to music A milky way of endless light sounds. Like a breeze blowing in tree clusters Flesh is object in a cluster of sounds A song without its literature, a sound Of a subject that is at once the object A song that sings itself to object-hood.

779

Vague mountains (2012-08-28 00:11)

In the evening there was this vague talk About mountains shrouded in August ice Mixed with pearly ice and vague poplars That lose their clear outlines to a vague sky. Vaguely we would have our ginger and tea In earth of cups, handed by Himalayan men In overcoats as their mouths steamed words As if they were the peaks that spewed vapor Vaguely in the higher reaches of Himalayas. We would vaguely dream the mountains In our pillows and patience came to an end As the dark reinstated behind shifting eyes. And later, as we opened our eyes we saw us In deeply held holes made of real concrete. There was nothing vague about a clothesline And a balcony that dened our real borders.

780

Playing with solitude (2012-08-29 00:09)

In your early hours you would dally playfully With your solitude, speaking in second person As uorescent words crawled in minds depths That meant nothing to your body or your ghost Words that are your solitude,the very shadow That followed your little boy in a trail of doubts Of whether it was this or that, shadow or dust. There is no shadow of dust, only a shadow in dust Afternoon rising shadow that rises to a horizon To disappear into the hills as a picture in frame In mind that will be dust, steeped in mere words That will soon be dust in the shadows of words.

781

The toy train (2012-08-30 02:52)

I dream of a blue train bending at the curve The coal-eater train, through the green hills As if it were a Gir lion one would see walk in At the bend where a brown hill fell in the sky And is distorted by an overbearing blue dome. The train chugs in with men hanging from it As if they are eas hanging on the lions eyes Its eyes closing in on a patient understanding. I like its leisurely pipe smokes in a winter sky And roars of annoyance as men come its way. It is not a train to take me to the worlds end Where mountains lose their peaks to the sky. With only a tiny re in its belly it is just a toy. (The train is the Darjeeling- Himalayan railway between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling, nick named "toy train")

782

Strain (2012-08-31 01:52)

The strain is of living green in a gray beard Through a dark tunnel of staring at end dead And making a strain from it, to light music As money lives on in mobile phones, in a joke Of wife carrying, if you can ,humorously said. In a strain you live to die ,to cease to exist. Crows are born but essentially cease to exist. Their caws cease to exist even as they are born. Crows caw in trees of praying temples to remind People dead , their strains dead to their wind. In strain , chicks are born to cease to exist Their bird cries cease to exist as light music In an air-conditioners silence in their homes. Mother birds mournful cries drop dead on chicks. They duly cease to exist even as they are born.

783

Strain (2012-08-31 02:22)

The strain is of living green in a gray beard Through a dark tunnel of staring at end dead And making a strain from it, to light music As money lives on in mobile phones, in a joke Of wife carrying, if you can ,humorously said. In a strain you live to die ,to cease to exist. Crows are born but essentially cease to exist. Their caws cease to exist even as they are born. Crows caw in trees of praying temples to remind People dead , their strains dead to their wind. In strain , chicks are born to cease to exist Their bird cries cease to exist as light music In an air-conditioners silence in their homes. Mother birds mournful cries drop dead on chicks. They duly cease to exist even as they are born.

784

Borders (2012-09-01 01:26)

The mystery is how all this fecund matter is contained In closed wood-cut faces, in their free-wheeling shells With free views from inside, ercely bent upon removal Of borders,their faint outlines rmly to be destroyed As the faces blithely join spaces of their feral nothings In fatal dances attacking lled spaces and their verses. Men have their borders , their loves violating free space Other spaces , as in their foolish wars that would kill, The wars that would breed literature, music and religion Science and society and all other transnational endeavors, Their intemperate loves for women, their children pointing Stubby primal ngers at their grown up love and nonsense. They draw borders like hanging balconies for street views With clutched bellies,their insides itching to break space And remove borders and destroy their ugly wood-cut faces.

786

The coal stories (2012-09-03 00:34)

In the afternoon of a vehicle,our talk would run About a coal belt ,a small talk about its maa Of black diamonds glistening in a morning fog. The talk runs alongside a scrapped axle yard Of dismembered army vehicles on loose sale Many axles, many gearboxes and dead parts That could be transplanted to alive vehicles As parts of wholes or as holes of their parts. A hot coal wall at times caves in to swallow People ,like giant lizards in the primordium Because the empty coal holes resound with air And a hot sand refuses to come from the river To ll their holes emptied by a greedy coal. A little girl named smile gathers black diamonds From the pithead, pitted against a big government In its khakhi authority , for two attened breads For a familys stomach, engulfed by big coal res. Local coal stories are black and greedy narratives That leave you sick in the coal pit of a stomach.

787

False memory (2012-09-04 00:58)

The closing line would seem the same In a paramnesia of I have seen it all As memory plays ducks and drakes With good sense , for beauty of diction As girls playing softly in the moonlight As if they were parijat owers dropped To the fragrant earth in the nights dew Their faces down, their feet up in prayer. Do we plant parijats in the earths skin So we have fragrant houses risen on it Balconies where we feel their fragrance We confabulate always,where they are The mountain-eyed girls with sal trees Gently waving in the mirrors of their eyes. The closing line would seem the same. We have seen it all, in the imagined Sadness of thought behind closed eyes The closing line has happened as always.

788

Grass owers (2012-09-06 04:22)

The grass owers A little girl from yesterdays cute celluloid art Returned from a dreamers cinematography Along a river bank of high uffy grass owers. The owers were blobs of pearl-white plasticity On autumns sedated evening by a muddy river A view that would betray a gradual train coming With the girl reviewing a relentless growing up In the clackety of a train, a childs eye-wonder That is in sum beauty, passion, pain in stomach A sorrow of a childs innocence by passing train. Here grass owers stand by a musical fountain That sang colorful grass songs, its waters raised To the sky in utmost devotion, behind tall grass. The music was colors that set our minds soaring Sitting high on cement galleries,to view its dance. A certain bird of an airplane lay there in the grass Stricken by somnolence, sulking in glorious ruins.

789

The minds eyes (2012-09-07 19:53)

At once I see this tiny woman big with A potential being, eyes set in her mind Searching the night stars , her potential Rounded and bursting,while calm and ripe. My eyes underneath will tell me the way In a noise, a wagon passing, a new train Negotiating a red railroad bridge in rain On a factory road, with its cycles stopped. Woman is but a girl, her woman a thing, A crow caw, a breeze, a child in making. An old mans egotistical dream laid out A death hid in life, a thought for searching.

790

Negation (2012-09-08 01:11)

We went on calmly with sleeping nights. A train sound closes in on our tranquility. Three red arches of imperial construction Sat there morosely with their nay sayings. Where are they that had said we would do it And disappeared with no to their resolves Ghosts that they are, not even whimpers. The train comes in ,iterating our existence Mine and of the red railway bridge that sat Under the train ,under the weight of history. Down there there is this coal under our feet A black coal of negation, a fear in the belly In our existence, gathered in hollow pits That a river fails to fulll with its lazy sand.

791

A portrait (2012-09-09 01:56)

A smooth ball of a face has deep furroughs Of hair-like memories and looks at the wall Proving it all wrong, the way the world behind Seems to be moving on its rotor, as if there is Another way, as if stars are born differently When there is no moon, only a sun after rain And a train relentlessly ows on its tracks The smoothness of moons face slips away A smile vanishing all the time behind the hill. A sketch would only be a concept ,an outline With no deathlike nality of the gure lling it A hollow will ll it eminently,we hollow men Like a pot-head stuffed stick man in the crop Shooing away his birds shitting on pot-head His over-sized shirt balloons with much wind.

792

The bridge (2012-09-09 23:37)

Before dark the bridge may be asked to span The distances, unaided by support systems Only by a sun going ,going and gone below. A slightly ocher and yellow thing hangs there To somewhat of disappointment,but the curve There is surely a womans curve ,of the river At eyes end view with another bridge taking The horizons place, in many words and now There is a click in your throat and sun gone. Where is the bridge light of your old waters In the shimmer of a suns smooth dalliances With trees shadows tingling breezed ripples? Come another day, another dusk,with pure light In your cameras eyes and a heart closely held In throat and love gathered in wondering eyes . ( On a visit to the Coronation bridge in Siliguri for sunset)

793

History is a man (2012-09-11 00:12)

Trying to work out this business of our history We came upon him behind our closed eyes . Peace prevailed in a state of rising shoulders Not refraining from ghting but looking straight Into dark spaces,through his white absences. Peace passed understanding in lack of words. The son was not father crying in mothers lap, Just a moon that softly smiled at a dark space A tree that promised an entire lack of space From a leaf that made food of the blazing sun And white peace in nightly dance in a breeze. History is womb empty of men, a gaping space That linked us all in his enormous lack of space. (buddham, saranam, gachchami)

794

Vacuum (2012-09-12 01:03)

What came to is the vacuum of our bottle With a lid to protect an unlled space A smoke from a re of nothing that burns A ame of unswept parings, a wordy duel A hollow water sound in puffed up cheeks Like a dog-snout raised to a moon in sky. The hills resounded with unspoken words Clouds that barely touched the windy anks. A pink amboyance abridged a time space Over waters owing to a seas capillaries To diffuse its salt water in a tiger territory The silence of a dead-end, of not speaking. The colors were a mixture of all or nothing. The shades of gray turned brown and white A white skin dead, a brown one supplicating.

795

The dial (2012-09-13 00:56)

From what I see the dial seems inevitable word, An outpouring based on a morning impression As two sand vehicles mark morning on the river In a ash of dazzling luminosity of a sunlight And their sand is making in holes of river bed While a second stream overhangs on its sky. The dial has a sweet face, a right angled feature The softness of a morning sun, a slant in its eyes So shining in mens faces, their eyes crinkling In their Buddhism of a middle path of compassion. The dial never stops, mornings always turn days To endless nights of bellyaches or pillow-turns A plain reminder of time inexorably closing space.

796

Hermit (2012-09-14 01:33)

This hermit spoke at last in his closed lips From a few soft silences crushed under breath. He is a certain middle path wayfarer catching A ight making sorties over the airport failing To land for lack of visibility in rain and fog. He waves eshy arms about him swathed in ocher In the hotel restaurant ordering soup and dinner. He will go up tomorrow morning after the rain When the confusion of rain and fog is cleared. Does a hermit who meets you in your eye contact Wear a day-old trimmed mustache on a white face? You can see I wear the same buttery on my face Thinking through rain and fog, in the general din Of a hotel restaurant, my eyes failing to stay wet My tears tucked away in a corner of another city.

797

Hotel (2012-09-15 00:54)

Hotel is language of thinking, a cream wall With rain behind it, words still in its sleep. Words are dreams in pillows, white of shape, Centipedes getting up to go on their business Legs moving in parts of body,in slow motion. There is rain inside its pockets like pebbles It had collected in tourist season of last year. It chimes in wind at the window as rain pauses And thinks in curtains near the wind, in light. Its shadows are insects waiting to be gobbled By lizards thinking in a language of the hotel. It is a time corridor with ickering roof lights Walking the ghostly silences of several pasts.

798

Fear of landslide (2012-09-16 00:16)

On this Sunday ,we fear the rain may happen And loosen the earth under the trees feet. The hills may tumble as the rain will loosen The trees feet from the mothers oorboard. And she will be sleeping on the crook of her arm Brooding on the blue sky deprived of its sun. Our snake of a road may not fork out tongue And the rain wipers may say their decisive nos To our proposed journey to the worlds edge. The windows may not open to the dark nights And our blinds may be put up to rain-moths For fear of their dying by our ickering lamps. But now it looks the hills may not lose bearings . And they may still hold the trees in their lap And wipers may yet whisper yes to a windshield. A toy train may still puff in small bursts of smoke Along a snake of our road forking tongue calmly Towards a piece of blue sky glued to the earth.

799

Kanchengunga (2012-09-17 01:20)

Our mountain dreams lay behind rain and fog A soft silken curtain holding golden dreams Of a new sun painting its peaks end to end. Now looming clouds hide suns gold from eyes Drowned by raindrops dripping from umbrellas. We open umbrellas to endless rain in bridges That are walking people hid in their umbrellas. Our umbrellas do not close to icking buttons. Between us and Kanchengunga is impenetrable rain.

800

Earthquake (2012-09-18 23:47)

A sudden fear quakes in esh on a market bench In deep mountains wet with soft rain and beauty Amid lovely red owers and tea-fragrant slopes And boys in red recluse in lonely monasteries. Fear is like it was a year ago, when the world Tumbled in the hills and its houses turned dust With their men, their esh a piece of brown mud. Fear turns you mud, a cowards ight from beauty. (Experiencing an earthquake in Gangtok on 18/09/2012. A similar one struck Sikkim exactly a year ago causing untold damage to life and property )

801

Later (2012-09-20 15:54)

It seems fate has preserved us for another death As debris was deferred to fall from house dance Even as a market bench was shivering intensely On an evening of shoe purchases in the hill city. Beautiful people cried in phone to kids in big eyes From frightened moms love away in market place Wondering if it meant good bye to world , kid love Husband ghts, boss harangues, pretty clothes. Shoes might click away on tarmac and airplane ying And falling to another death was a remote possibility If the earth rumbled a second time in its after-anger. But later ,fate said, preserving us for another death.

802

Strangers (2012-09-21 23:11)

They were not really strangers except of the visage When they slipped into my questioning afternoons Intercepting my brief circle, touching tangentially Like a soft mountain wind, now arrived , now gone. They were ghosts of their existences in my space. They sauntered in and out of room , pallid ghosts From the mountains, the plains, deep dark forests The atavistic memories in their eyes tallied notes With my own, their eye contacts brief butteries Resting on me,scraping poetry off minor collisions. We asked questions of the ghosts, they raised them. Together we raised questions,existential questions That we had always asked,in our chance encounters For the poetry of their asking, open-ended questions That raised endless spiral of unanswered questions.

803

Tea (2012-09-23 01:18)

There was a general vagueness to our camera A fog of the rain, a fuzzy smoke in green valleys Where woman and mountain merged in each other. We had tea on the slopes, where women hung At the skys edge , about two leaves and a bud A basket where they hurled their green pickings. Our tea was spread in plastic bag, in green light Not a tea in cup that warmed stomachs in smoke.

804

Clouds in Darjeeling (2012-09-24 00:42)

Bits of the clouds are not big enough for hills To obscure and eliminate but enough vapor As though they spoke white words of passion. If it rains they shall disappear in tea bushes. They are self-destructive,you see,in the hills. They come in your bed rooms,to the replace. But the re got put out during the British days And there are some cinders and charred logs. There is no danger of re singeing their anks. They therefore freely move about in the room Touching cold cheeks to remind their lost youth. In the mall they spit vapor to make ghosts of men In long overcoats, their cell phones placed in ears To prevent from singing needless songs in them. If they enter ears they turn into a buzz like bees.

805

Leap of faith (2012-09-25 00:24)

The elephant God nally leaps into the waters From being mud in color and sound, to blue sky. A September sky stops to be wet and emotional As the owers sat there in a heap with plastics. The sky is back with overhanging tree branches Gently waving to the mountain breeze in trance. A smoke arose from behind highly littered hills Of fetid garbage caught in a blue re of match. The crane sits on its haunches on the lake shore From its glory of personally hurling several Gods Into ripples of the lake, their marigolds oating On the ridges, plastic bags behaving like birds. The crane is not a bird meditating on its one leg.

806

Place (2012-09-25 23:09)

We were not in a place, feeling needlessly Alienated, as ever, our nocturnal nostalgia Being for a place that existed in thoughts. The mountains were kings that rose in blue With no place about them even in thoughts. They had slopes that interminably grew tea. The mountains had tea women in rain clouds. They hung precariously on the gardens end. Some hung in improvised tents at the edge; Sold green tea in tiny bags for rainy times. The place made women in the white clouds. They sold steaming momos in cold hill places And warm black tea to go with the white stuff . The momos warmed stomachs and lost souls To make us feel less alienated from the place. They rendered geography entirely irrelevant.

807

Cow on the road divider (2012-09-26 08:02)

It is now the monsoon time of a ne grass With our tails chasing the ies off the road On leisurely afternoons of soft cud chewing. The road divider promises a heavenly place For us cows, with a ne breeze from passing Vehicles gently kissing our shivering hides. At times we wonder where they are all going. They whiz past our luxuriously recumbent bodies. The breeze from their speed perks up our skins Enhancing the monsoon mood in swinging tails. Our squatting bodies spring surprises on trafc And the screech of its brakes spoils our moods But we quickly forget and forgive human follies.

808

The boy monks of Gangtok (2012-09-27 00:49)

In these hills they spoke mostly Of frank-innocence, myrrh ,camphor A white smoke curling to heavens A hollow echo in layers of hills Like rumble of the rst thunder. Boys are not boys,not even men Just tiny gods scampering on hills In search of Big God, in sacrice. A red apparel is like the sun god Intensely burning in standing trees. Innocence is at stake, in cricket And ludo,a game of dice and chance A icker of smile, a wave of mirth Surging in the hills like a stream, Freshness traded for Big Knowledge.

809

Ash (2012-09-29 22:58)

The memory of ash in bag is gray and water-borne Like the Wise Ones memory for twenty four years Against a disciples memory of twenty four hours. Hours are but years, with days like shadows of hills That come and go , each morning and each evening. We only ick the ash of our days into the ash tray Full of smoked cigarette stubs to moms annoyance. We have elephants of ashes , ash-like pachyderms. All our elephants are ash, re smoldering beneath. Duly caparisoned,they pass in magnicent doorways With queenly eminences on mounts, haughty in air. Easier for them to pass through as so much gray ash.

810

3.10

October

811

The sun betrayed us (2012-10-01 01:01)

In the hills we could take no pictures Of snow ,of women rising halfway to grass With sun not showing up behind clouds. We waited for the sun behind red ags Politely ,not dissuaded by rain and fog. Silver peaks teased us behind the pines. On the dotted line is a silver mountain That could be mistaken for a cloud line . Our tragedy was the attitude of our sun Who must be shining beyond those hills Among strangers,red-cheeked and smiling. He who shone to us brightly in our homes Refuses to shine the peaks for us there Making us feel betrayed and embittered.

812

Image (2012-10-02 00:55)

We have read of an image ,of a certain woman Who had swum with the poet as girl in a beach With girl breasts, now a whore in Oxford street. Images are visible, hard and tangible in rain. At once visual and tactile, these images rise As abrupt dunes on plain-speak,bush and sand. It would not matter the girl was what and when Her space notwithstanding, time in her pocket. That is where it is ticking away, in a blind curve Like the river in eternal bind in the mountains Curving away in a bend under the sleeping trees. Our images are real, belonging to this very space. (Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language and was described as the most inuential movement in English poetry since the activity of the Pre-Raphaelites. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry:Wikipedia)

813

Becoming (2012-10-03 02:06)

The morning rain grows on wet crows In white bodies under their nights Their feathers a thing of the night. Becoming is a larval thing between. By noon they will surely outgrow it. Then they will be a thick dark foliage And shadows, part of a big picture. The noon turns them to black crows. In the noon they wave their heads In the branch,on their screwy necks. They walk into our several siestas, Their wings apping on our eyelids. At times they pick up our soap cakes And our princesses jewels in bathing. They drop thirsty stones in water pots. They peck goddesss breasts for fruit. By evening they are ancestors on walls Come to peck our rice balls,one by one.

814

Light and camera (2012-10-04 02:04)

Lakes brown is mush and green algae The shadows a high point near the boats With men rowing time, a noon in clouds Plain white stuff lolling along in blue sky. Those algae lie peacefully with an ibis Its one leg on a rock, its white double In waters, doing penance for the day. The boatman scoops up algae into boat From a ripple breaking him in pieces. A dappled lake is all that we are looking for. Smoke curls beyond shore are not a thing Not a high point when a sun plays hooky Shore trees look inward,their eyes closed.

815

September (2012-10-05 02:50)

There waved tiny ags on vast unutterable silences Of the mountains, in rain and fog and vague gures That hung heavily in clothed heads,in monkeys glory Whose eyes went over silky layers of a September sky Surrounded by thin mists of confusion and intellect. There sat a monkey god, himself a victim of confusion In a frosty silence ,abetted by a stony lack of clarity. Should I or should I not, kill demons and/or restore Life to Gods swooning brother,by a medicinal mountain Or smear myself in ocher, my eyes closed in a prayer As god- wifes pearls turn rosary for prayer counting. The ags uttered in confusion on our many desires Cancelling each other,the mountains rising over them. The gods now turned to quiet prayers as frosts zzled down Now and then,to a splendid sun emerging from the pines.

816

God (2012-10-06 00:01)

One poets God exists because it is just inconceivable A bird number tween one and nine, not one and nine As he closed his blind eyes to an imagined bird number. Anothers because death exists to neatly round a life With a pennant , a kettledrum and a boom of cannon. But for me he exists because I have to make a choice Between a slurp of holy water or of watery milk in palm Before a God that existed as a bull, a bird and a stone And at times, a monkey or air aming from a crevice. More because he is a word that creeps into my morning A reason for a night to fall gently away from my eyes.

817

Bundling time away (2012-10-06 23:21)

On the balcony ,now seeing into rain We will like to bundle our time away As some street dogs of multiplication Cry in their vowels, the upward snouts Long addressed to a times awakening And we gather it up in a piece cloth. A rag we may call it ,such as we use In those times common to our women In a few maps, of blood clots, tissue Of a gender curse, of children unborn Of tireless efforts to make them born. We now put our time away to forget it On the wall peg, in a needless honour Of a timeless body, a claypot hanging With holes of light pouring like rain. (Bundling time away is W.B.Yeats in his poem "That the night come")

818

Coal (2012-10-08 04:27)

This mornings fog has coal smelling memories Of several coking res burning in a goddess city With their low smokes rising like clouds in the hills As a little steam emerges from speaking mouths And tongues loll over sleazy expletives for the day. The trains honk has no special coal memories Except of ancestor coal trains, their mustaches Smelling of buttermilk and their eyes gone smoky With gray memories ,coal rising from the bottom Of an earth that dug deep into greed and misery. Smoke is the earth burning its ancient memories.

819

Collect (2012-10-09 00:20)

All the time we try to collect ourselves The very skin cells that have aked off In our daily destruction and our hair Struggles hard like a decaying pagoda In the desert, an earth- plate gleaming In the sun about a boys Buddha years. Let the sh eat them off our scaly feet To where we go and sleep in the night Shedding bodies,our minds in the bush. At night we collect our gods, our pieces. We make them wholes ,dreams in nights Silky laments made of fuzzy thoughts.

820

Conversation (2012-10-10 00:14)

A morning moon has opened the door To endless conversation in the room. A friend there never went to a beach Laid up with lumbar pain and slip disc In an old citys backstreets, the beach Conjured up by a cruel face book error. The conversation went on without words With listeners, who only looked at lips. Moving lips seemed to say a thing or two And the lip readers promptly looked away From pain presumed by friendly concern. It is the silence of this conversation With a great lip reading that has stirred The morning moon, preparatory to crows, But just a transient thing in the balcony Before the crows start a day with the sun.

821

Habit (2012-10-10 23:12)

I shall now wait for not being there To become a habit, a ship for the land Standing in the sea to hold my secret When I will turn just other to others An epitome of my secret life in death A ship for a land, a haven for a ship. My not being there shall turn a habit As death will turn a habit, a red sun On the broad plains of eternity, a night That has ed time, a habit of my death To the world, to stars that will icker Softly in not being there, to the moon. (Echoing Rilke in "You are the future the great sunrise red" from the Book of Hours)

822

Intensity (2012-10-12 00:46)

Intensity is a imsy surrender to night And dreams, to airy things opening up To your body, to an existence in doubt. It is gray bats cross-ying on the roof Before rain has made its mossy maps And eagles low- y like gray paper kites Out in blank sky well before their time As an early breeze fails to utter color. Touch a body to make sure it is there. Smell early dew like you would a snake In bush by a movement you suspected. Feel the jerk in the birds puny body As your sudden eyes fall on its existence. Intensity is the birds acknowledgement Of your existence, of your being there.

823

Kash ower (2012-10-12 23:00)

Kash ower is once again in bloom On the river bank and in leisure park With a stricken plane nestled in trees Amid owery fountains in a twilight. The train is yet to chug in to a boy With a clackety echo in the mountains. The train is making in steel factory By white engineer ghosts that burned In their uorescent time as martins. We wait till they nish a blueprint. The little boy waits in grass owers. A tongued goddess is here in marigolds. Like every year we wait for the train. (Referring to a scene in Satyajit Rays lm pather panchali where the little boy Apu runs between grass owers to see a train)

824

The liminal moment (2012-10-13 23:11)

The boy is a sweet from a foggy space. The girl always yawns herself to death. His moment is her threshold, her train To get into and get off from, a sweet. He has his own imsy yawns to sleep by To push sleep aside for permanent death. His liminal moments are mountain trains To get off from, to get into, idiot girls With their own pushing yawns of death. His birth was a radio moment of a girl When a radio ad is on and a mom is off. The ad girl has her nger on her lips Her liminal moment, a frozen sugar-sweet. (Watching a Hindi movie entitled Bar)

825

Books (2012-10-15 00:20)

Nice things to feel in their spines, I run my nger through their minds. Their smell feels like inside caves Of dead people, their bodies in pots Their thoughts embalmed in silks. They better be there in the wall. There they feel secure and warm Not in the electric words crawling In mens boxy minds across oceans. Oceans have waves that submerge Their delicate papers recycling them Back to atavistic states, old dreams. Our books are seams of old dreams. The worms are the rarest of species Of a biological universe, sh worms That are silver and eat whole words. But they play the meanest of tricks On blind poets right up to their sky.

826

The pill (2012-10-15 23:27)

The pill wakes you to orange sleep In fetal positions of a sleep-dance. Here you quickly freeze your eyes That turn glacial waiting for a sun To fashion their river to a down sea. Grief turns icicles on the eyelashes When phone comes near the stairs. They really scintillate to a rising sun After a night of stars moves away From pointing to clenched ngers.

827

Stones (2012-10-17 00:03)

We have no limestone to whiten Our water in bubbles,as in boiling Nor is there a mud wall of brown For whitening with broom ngers Loosely lying about in pure white. There is black granite for temples. We make gods and their houses. We cant lay them under our feet Even when they hurt in blisters. We have art and poetry to make Our pretty gods with buttery feel. We use stones for restful sleep. Some times we do turn them over To nd several creepy creatures. After the sun rises they make us Feel warm in our tattered shirts.

828

The inside of words (2012-10-17 23:34)

We look in some times behind the skin, Their insides ripped open ,end to end. Their bombast leaves us abbergasted, Our eyes smoky and gray and our ears Long and hoary, complementing years. Thousands of years ago we bore them Under a wise tree as its windy leaves Did the same dance, in their needle tips, Our lips sealed to a light struck in eyes. The light is still missing from their insides, Only some hollow sounds of dark caves Of times when mouths were cave bats With a diurnal vision entirely upside down.

829

The eyes (2012-10-19 11:09)

The eyes were too much to go into With waves of dawn, presaging pain A fear of not seeing, as day is night. Wonder if can dim them to see light Or dumb a stful of esh behind them Down to sleep , to barest essentials To streets of gray, with their gures Of walking- crawling men like ghosts. What about the electric words turning Poems to ngers, before my sunrise? I now look out from a balcony of night. Its smells have all the inside poems.

830

Living room (2012-10-19 23:41)

I begin to write in the living room From a turbid lake of water in eyes Full of red pain, its tiny capillaries Extending down as in the sea mouth As a mapped knot of tidal estuaries. I like the pretty forests loose threads Of salt and brine with gnarled trees And a royal tiger growling in swamp. My living room is this, my writing. I draw my borders,the line of a note A boundary wall collapsing each time. I enclose myself in a nights smells The beauty of a word, a phrase ringing In the chimes of a wind in a balcony. Surrounding myself with fear of night I await a sun outside the living room.

831

Our boy (2012-10-20 23:21)

Our boy who is sleepy, beating his drum under his eyes ,comes home late at night. It is Sylvia who calls him and friend Sexton In a proud tripartite agreement in a cab . They do not say be not proud to the boy A reluctant messenger at night knocking With sts, as the women are stretched out In their stones and spoons, their laughter They wear routinely on their skinny breasts As an insignia for closure, a nal festival. Our boy is outside the cupboard, our heart. A reluctant shadow at noon, sprawled out On a stretching wall eating a lizards insect. Deantly we tell him death be not proud. (Referring to Anne Sextons poem"Sylvias death")

832

Write (2012-10-21 23:58)

Early before dawn we write with tears in eyes Swelling with a red pride of sleep from dreams As if we write in our water from another water. We take a glass of water to ll our gaping holes. And drop some water in eyes for tears to swell. Why I write, writes the author, of not knowing. Not knowing what lay there in the folds of esh. It is there,this and so much else,like the stars In a moonlit night, their outlines visible as wind, Like the pale moon in a sunlit early morning sky. The eyes write on paper brought up electrically. Their words ow like ant ows connecting space Filling crevices with homes, with tiny presences Building bridges on our tiny cross-country streams . Write to make the world a bloody consistent whole.

833

Dance (2012-10-22 23:37)

You may stand and claw the air ,your ngers Opened from palms of air, eyes of water In dance of beauty, grasping bits of truth. Truth lies in the hair, disheveled, wind-blown With feet in the air, destroying boundaries. In your blindness you jump to touch beauty As slender bird wings take off the rst time. Your dance behind eyes,grows to nger tips To instep, to blur of hem, to vague sounds.

834

Archival (2012-10-24 00:50)

We have created a memory of years. Our body is now our natures snapshot A memo lane parading our memories. Its wrinkles are a days streams dried up With memories of beauty that owed. We cannot see beauty but feel its cold On the bones, scrunching dead leaves, Incorporating living smells of bird chicks White owers with faces down , feet up. We are blind among groups of dancers But we claw their air with them gracefully. Our ngers around their waists are birds Taking off, to a constantly changing sky. (Remembering Helen Keller.After reading Dance is like thought in Brainpickings, here http://goo.gl/p8MKx)

835

Confessional (2012-10-24 23:49)

Our photographs are still born from light, Shadows like of the Corinthian woman Who would trace her husbands shadow On the wall before body vanished in war. Photographs were born to keep shadows. Words are also shadows of things of the air And pictures in the fog of a death or its sky. Words are pictures of shadows of things. They are confessions of a nights shame Bringing pink blushes to our dark nights. They are camera clicks to capture shadows Of bodies that have vanished in the war.

836

Old times (2012-10-25 23:50)

The wind breaks in the chimes As chunks of silence in the night With occasional cricket creaking And in the chimes once in a while From times when all was same. It is color combination of before. A pink of the iris, a black bead From beads falling on a bosom A white light bursting on corners Knowledge of the eyes in beads, The way beads slide on bosoms. Old times are sounds of beads As they slide in eye knowledge In eyes of experience and beauty Remembering old times of eyes That burst with tears of beauty In waves from corners to pupils Slow beauty held in receptacles. Their tears are a pearl-white froth Loving and salty like the old times. Eyes are strings of beads, falling Like the blue sky on beach trees. In sockets ,they are empty like sky.

837

Daddy (2012-10-27 00:49)

A mustachioed vampire dad dies To the poets oppressed girl self Of bare ten years, now in eighty No, no, only an imagined thought. Not a smiling brooding hero dad . One she would have killed at ten And beyond if he had lived after. At thirty suicide was not a thought But a pleasurable revenge on dad And being one up on death and dad. Death was her dad in the gas oven Who gave breath now takes away. (Sylvia Plath would have turned eighty today had she not committed suicide at thirty)

838

Pollen (2012-10-28 00:08)

News strikes of a baby beyond the bay In distant basement, her atoms in diffusion. The news is pollen from an alien ower That is enemy to blood, from our blood. News strikes us like grass pollen by the lake As its stalks wave in wind, in water congress. Dollars are pollen that cause blood revolt. Baby dies turning to dust atoms like pollen. Murder turns to news dust ,to blood revolt Tears in many dusty eyes , of a moist lust That is for some other dust and dollar dust. Lust is pollen that raises our midnight tides. (A family friend hoped to hold a baby girl hostage to get $50,000 from her software-engineer parents but instead killed her and her grandmother in a botched kidnapping, according to police in a Philadelphia suburb.)

839

Crystal (2012-10-28 23:39)

Much before one attempted to ignore it And pass on to the next , it clearly stuck In crystal transparency as just a dream Born in a sleeping head turned to right. Dream takes breath in every which way. Suffocation slowly rises as blood pouring In the right brain hemisphere, that seems Transparent enough in its mangled tissue, Ideas that seem clear like an ice crystal Cold in a logic of death, in daily existence. We will not be there in our crystal gazing As we go away after selling our crystal. But we will be crystal for others to gaze In the pristine purity of symmetrical planes Forming our existence ,while we are here.

840

Pale moon (2012-10-29 23:36)

A pale moon is dimmed by a new sun An early morning one with dogs barks. An actuality of history coming through In the screech of truck, a hum in ears. Sensations make an actuality of history. We offer candle light marches to a baby. Prayers are darkly silent to an actuality. A slight stir in chair is what we had felt When the earth shivered to re in belly. Everything in room is born and ripens To a light around a lamp, its head bent. Room is actuality of history from space, An insect exploring wall in its ripeness. Everything in space is born and ripens To a pale moon in a pair of sticky eyes An insect ripening the wall in its space A lamp tilting its head to a few shadows.

841

Scenery (2012-10-30 22:40)

We continue to pit two tiny hillocks Against the innity of a sky bending Dangerously on the brown bushes With loud explosions in their rear And a gray smoke in the elevation. We have a man and a woman near, Two faceless gures for a scenery. They have no faces but cheekbones. A rock gets angry with a loud bang With machines making it look small In the bigness of the blue scenery. Woman bathes in emptiness of rock. Rock falls into emptiness of morning. As smaller holes bath in bigger holes. Brown bushes bath in their shadows. Holes have shadows in themselves. Shadows have no holes in a scenery. There are tiny eruptions in shadows Like lizards in holes quickly catching Tiny eruptions to eat their emptiness. We are in a hurry to pit two tiny hills Against the innity of a breathless sky Before it eats them into its emptiness.

842

3.11

November

843

Texture (2012-11-01 03:02)

This the morning has the texture of plastic In a world of hues, of longevity, of a breath A corrugation, a tilt to a side, a new sound Of a world upside down, a feel of thinginess. Shapes are chairs in their silence of sitting, A sound of looking, a skin feel of winter air A palm occupying wind with water in throat A form in formlessness, a door shutting out Winter, a buttery failing to land on ower. Morning is rain in its falling softly into light. It is rain mired in the half light of open sky, Plants in earth pots dreaming spring leaves On branches scraping the blue off a new sky.

844

The blue cyclone (2012-11-02 01:24)

The morning rain continues from a night Cold coming through bird chicks cries And now light gently falls on wet plants Their personalities glowing by the hour. Our dying rose may yet wake up and go From the company of hibiscus partying In its wet splendor, a late night partying After the nights thoughts went berserk Like a sea urchin ,in violent wind - water. The urchin may not come this way of sky. But his looks killed many an upright tree Like its distant American cousin ,in coast And brought a ship to its sandy knees. (Cyclone Neelam (blue), struck the Southern coast yesterday bringing about large scale devastation to the coastal areas)

845

Watercolor (2012-11-03 02:49)

We came upon the waters, in themselves, That ran deep, under rain drops on rocks Their music falling softly on the morning As birds ran counter to embedded trees. It was the music of the bodies from a mind. The leaves fell gently from rain and clouds, Their textures collected most of the ecstacy From a sound of meaning, their sensations On the skin perking up as if to a rst rain . The textures of the rocks broke their skies. The hues in them wavered as cotton- white Corrugations ,with birds caught in the folds Like tiny vs from Gods free hand drawings . Rocks merged in the sky and water owed Like the music of the birds caught in clouds That were birds not yet caught in the trees.

846

Dirt (2012-11-04 00:49)

Not nding dirt we went on to nd only Chunks of butter that itted before eyes. Where is the dirt was then carefully asked To move away from our dirt, in isolation Behind the nger nails, where we all go. Not nding dirt in the little gods mouth Its mother saw a whole universe of dirt. Dirt owed from excess butter in veins From buffaloes calmly chewing their cud Over troughs of sticky rice husk porridge. Their lower mandibles moved on to night. Below them was rain dirt feet squished in. Excuse me ,we talked of dirt against dust As if there was difference in biblical terms. Dry dirt can be dust we are a handful of. We collected it under varnished ngernails After carefully ling them, with tiny whites Now visible from under them like old stars Emerging from a oodlit night sky festival. While we were still awake ,the nail whites Were softly ying birds from Siberia seen In the eastern sky over houses and trees, They would drop down under our ngers As we waved little ngers at their wings They went back soon after their nesting .

847

Solitude (2012-11-05 00:54)

We have burst upon Thoreaus solitude When no visitor arrives in the eventide From all those towns in the distant haze As they sit in their prime , beyond elds. All the while, milking of cow takes place. Milch cows are a solitude to themselves Before their milk ows to morning coffee Their feet shufe in slush, the eyes vacant. Only a tiny moon hangs above a tin roof . Solitude is not away from bodys music More in the windy creak of dead wood As strange words spring in a white space From the vast wild wastes of our nights As we sit alone, away from milking cows Linking their remote existence to solitude. (There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest. I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the town.-Thoreaus Walden)

848

Husk (2012-11-06 00:13)

We went on from a confessional to husk On a yellow paper, devoid of inner stuff. We somehow aspired to be bird-like free At the end of season, our inner thoughts Away from it, from the latency of a night. Our words were better off without the night. We infused them from the dark of a soul . The women took turns with the shoulders As they went in and went out in the hole. The afternoon resounded with their thuds As we closed our eyes in pretended nap. Where we sat there was hardly a difference. All our husk turned out to be lifes content. "Language accepts the writer as its host, it feeds off the writer, it makes him a husk. There is something uncanny about good writing uncanny the singing that comes from certain husks. The writer is never nourished by his own work, it is never satisfying to him." -Joy Williams "From Uncanny singing that comes from certain husks" -quoted from Brain Pickings

849

Empty time (2012-11-07 00:11)

Between us lies this empty time Resounding with our spent words A fog-lled sky of eye stuff seen In topography of maps in the air Lines drawn in water of bridges. Words pop up from time to time. Between words is our empty time Nested in a topography of space. Time is space crumbs in between Thrown randomly from a balcony. You who always stand in balcony Look down on us in the empty time Surrounding our bodies as words. We are made of your empty time.

850

The money plant (2012-11-08 00:21)

The money plant sat there primly In morning light below the curtain. Outside in a balcony, plants leaned On one another, sharing their rain And a blue space of birds on wire. The birds came and fell on hibiscus Now on the oor, folded in shame As if it was dust the ower fell to. The plant grows no money for us Except a green touch to our eyes That have all the money in our tears. One yellow leaf is historys shekel A gold coin that fell to oor too soon. The plant has its dreams of balcony Its rain in the plants and bird space. We cannot do anything about them Since it cant look the sun in the eye.

851

The winged moth (2012-11-08 23:44)

In a soft pool of my table light Lay a moth of light green wing Rising like a leaf come to life In forest oor, part of decolam Of computer table, long dead Vitreous and smooth as a sky Free of stars. irregular shapes Fractals we are of everywhere. She is a fractal , a winged moth Of another fractal, worlds wings Light green, irregular like words, Of a world that gets up and goes From a vitreous sky, free of stars. She is now here, now not there. Her wings are a female gender, Births softness on way to death A owing amoeba to all our sides Like where are all born and die, A smell like ower in the gutter A touch silky as nights half light, A breakaway from our own life.

852

The poets God (2012-11-10 00:02)

The poet would make his God from smoke In a certain foothills , a smoke in gutter throat, A white stick burning insides, to re-assemble A mangled self in camphor smell and owers And in rareed air, in sounds of His language. He would craft Him from curls of old smoke Far away from foothills, in the vast reaches Of broken hills, a rock-scape of concrete air In a ower dust of uorescent words dropping From deep nights, in a couple of watery eyes. He would slurp from a palmful of holy water And daub the ower dust to his closed eyelids Where fancy dress balls go on, hour to hour.

853

The lift inspector (2012-11-10 23:27)

At times a lifts existence goes down In its deep pit, following the strict lift Inspector,like kicking bucket or a pail Of water that makes gurgles in a well The sound of morning silence, a ood. The lift is certied for ve years of run Up and down on the darkness of rope. It has inside lights of pit roof and wall And a fan questioning need for faces. The roof is dialectical argument with it. The somber lift inspector looks down. His face has eyes that dip downward. It has gurgles like water in a deep pit. The lifts darkness is water in quarry pit His eyes take bath in it, in the leaning. The lift mimics silence of mine in ood Around faces in excruciating black coal As they die of rushing waters of silence. They gurgle in waters in rising bubbles. Mining its silence as inspector looks on.

854

Doubt (2012-11-12 02:25)

Our poem remains in doubt, a thing From a state of chaos, a confusion From John Keats negative capability A premature death to stay in doubt. Doubts are hopes, skips and jumps Over gaps of thought, feet stretching Over stones of words, lightly visible. Around them is mush that hides frogs Potential for swallowing by snakes. Green frogs are waiting to be eaten As they jump into water muddying it To a ripple of unresolved questions. We live with just a snake possibility Making peace with muddy ambiguity.

855

The lie (2012-11-13 00:31)

It grandly lies abroad like ambassador Coming out for ceremony, in bird plumes Of carnival, moving away from a warlike Situation, creating your night, for you And for me and all other night creatures That lie on pillows of spent lies weeping . Ambassador comes home for holidays Creates a shindig for who lie on old lies Creepy-crawly insects lying under stone. An ambassador is one who lies abroad For the welfare of country, lying mostly In the purest white smoke of ofcial lies. Our white lie speaks mostly in the dark In nightly orescence on lonely balconies As we move away from our soft pillows. When it will speak we cannot telephone Nor reach out for the nearest newspaper. (Echoing the Dylan Thomas poem "I have longed to move away")

856

Potsherds (2012-11-13 23:50)

Potsherds In ancient Lothal ,a combination could be lethal. Here combinatorial creativity embraced a pool A pretending jetty for far off ships of merchandise. Ghosts had done their bit in their broken plinths Their ghostly footprints disappeared in shrubs. They had streets with dirty water running under And houses of brick and mortar,with living dreams. The potsherds were all gathered up in a museum. The ghosts were potsherds , standing on one leg. Their thin insubstantialness went up to a hot sun Showing up in cowherd clothes, waiting for a bus. The then cowherds along with cows turned souls Standing on ,among the potsherds of the then mud. Mud comes in its combinations of things and men. We break to reinvent them afresh all through time Under the same sky, with a blazing sun studded in it. The next time you visiit an archaeology site look for Potsherds of our earthy existence among its pottery.

857

The museum (2012-11-15 00:56)

Childhood was largely a museum for the poet Of winding lanes , where they go up in the air At the end ,at their conversation s dead end. Men were at the end of conversations loosely Hanging in thin air by their owing white clothes Those were ghosts of earlier colored clothes, Monkey caps against the biting cold of the hills. The caps they donned were of monkeys in nose, In absurd monkey movement, from tree to tree Looking for fruit in the cold space of blue winter. They quickly reached the end of conversation. At the end of conversation hung a monkey cap. The child wore monkey cap on moms shoulder. As moms went in the hills there were dead ends To every conversation, dead ends to every mom.

858

Walking the town (2012-11-16 01:10)

Early in morning we walk the roads Through wet maps of night cleaning By excess of water over its foot dust To a gluey paste of mud and leaves. Those are dewy tokens of fallen nights That at times stick to our undersides. Wetness does not drop from the skies But from plastic buckets in violent acts Of house cleanings duly dirtying roads. No dripping dew from drenched trees, Just white foam from morning mouths And dropped milk making white maps Giving a foretaste of morning coffee.

859

Doorsill (2012-11-16 23:30)

A yellow wood sported bright red suns That witnessed the goings and comings Of ghosts of yesterdays livings in bodies Waving on the doorsill like ower garlands . They were garlands in somebodys necks Ululating as the earth moved to the hills And beyond ,in space and the big bright Door through which they passed like wind. When at night the door is closed you hear The whoosh of the wind as if it is these men Passing through the doorsill at midnight.

860

Next (2012-11-18 00:15)

The morning went silent with blood carcass On the road , fresh from a death in the night. The penultimate is itself dead to keep alive Existence of a smiling banker of years ago In gods kingdom ,near the seas beginning. When the penultimate was blissfully dead One hoped the ultimate would escape death Since everything was connected to all things. But there is an ultimate to every penultimate. In this continuum the ultimate is penultimate.

861

Winter bird (2012-11-19 00:58)

Winter begins with cricket sound in the loft From the outer darkness of an empty shell. It is in body hair perking under sheeps wool, The body paint of a sheep dead to the hills. Winter is annual bird nesting in old bodies. It steadily pecks at old faces lonely warmth Behind woolen mufers shutting out sounds. The old eyes eagerly look forward to its return To the white wild wastes of its Siberian home.

862

Elegies (2012-11-20 00:01)

Lest we should see our elegy on a stone With awkward spelling mistakes we live on Under the gray sky till we close our shop But we so scare away ghosts from minds That they turn tiny white dots in our eyes. They are mad mistakes making musty words With gray funeral humor elegizing our death. Bodies chuckle to themselves in fun humor Taking a sneak peak at the elegies in making. Elegies are gray named after English poets But there can be shades in funeral fashion. Like ies that swarm eyes quite unpoetically. Gold nches are back or some such things. Death is something we do slightly unusual But our elegies are usual and gray repeats With some fatal errors leading to dead ends. ( Reading Poets Mourning poets :Paris Review Daily http://goo.gl/755jb )

863

Mobs (2012-11-21 02:06)

We oated all our red and blue balloons Colored kites that chirruped like sky birds Scraping the blue off our childhood skies. We daubed yellow paint on dancing bodies Pretending to be tigers in their jungle race. We lit huge wood res at the roads center To burn demon kidnappers of Gods wives And later saw them in the evening laughing In pain from the blue sky of their ten heads. We burnt monsters only to bring new ones That we would need to burn the next year. Our sounds have all the complex patterns Nuanced like the goat skins of our dreams That are goats that would die in stomachs For the larger stomachs of erce goddesses And for our ears for their aural complexity . Our meaning comes from our mobs of time.

864

Yellow (2012-11-22 00:30)

I now write into a yellow colored paper A mass of yellow of an electric sheet Of many crawling letters,coming to life As my another night moves on to decay Spurred on by a fading crickets noise. A blind poet wrote yellow before his dark Who wanted to remember the last world As a yellow world that stood out in fog. A fog can only be gray like a frog visible Only by its leap across the rain puddle. A yellow sun that stands out in the dark Stays in eyes as before they are closed. Words are little frogs in this yellow sheet Visible only by sudden jerky movements Across long stretches of accruing meaning.

865

Let the wailing dogs lie (2012-11-23 03:02)

We wonder why the dogs have to bark at nights With mournful snouts pointing fuzzy possibilities Of other things, of pale moons hanging by trees, Of wind whistling in the rush of a sleeping lizard, Of a car past our lengthening shadows dragging Our day times to the other spaces,the other times. Wonder why dogs have to shout at our bellyaches. In the wee hours, before another ne dawn breaks On our missing people rubbing their eyes at dawn. And why we do not put up our snouts to the night Before a dawn breaks on missing dogs crinkling Rheumy eyes at the incoming suns of our window.

866

Living in irony (2012-11-24 02:14)

We wake up from our afternoon nap, That is an ironic re-living of nostalgia A dream broken by a ringing phone. The phone stirs you to wakefulness To the unbroken ironies of our lives Including our sleep that is also living An exquisite irony ,from birth to death. He watches us ironically with a smirk., A puckered up face from an alien sky, One oated in with no sense of place. He watches us from the black granite Of two white chalk columns and red. His smirk hovers over us like a buzz Near ears, when we are dead in sleep In the ironic warmth of winter blankets, Leaving noses to breath continued life.

867

Cricket (2012-11-24 22:34)

The cricket has just opened its window, In my ears, to darkness on the other side. Crickets open their sounds to our ears And are sole windows to night sounds. Their song imparts motion to dark sound As happens in the leaves around a bird. That wakes up at midnight to utter wings And gets back to its old Siberian dreams. Darkness is sound from a crickets throat And vanishes as its throat is vanquished By the soft light sound of the morning crow.

868

Holes (2012-11-26 00:10)

A poetess whines about love, Four letters being the shortest Cliff-hanger hole, grip or leave Or merely gripe about the holes, Shun love to plug damn holes. You hang on the cliff by holes Since if you let it go , the holes Shall gape at you in all your life Like black holes of empty space. Love is word that is just a hole In lexicon ,pp 123, as you ip Page after page for the letter . All ngers shall disappear in it. With a funny sound they go in. Your mouth is the biggest hole That stays gaping in vast space.

869

Half told tales (2012-11-27 00:18)

There is this morning you stay ahead of For words to remain within your grasp. The winged chariot steals just behind you In a moments program of words ,a quest For meaning , a context from the universal. And you do not have the years for words. He the reader of words has all the years. In his mornings of darkness he shall read Meaning in half told tales, impose contexts And craftily make beauty in their assembly. If he moves away from truth, let him do so Because he is making his beauty on the sly.

870

Homesick (2012-11-27 22:29)

Soon he would become homesick Sick of a home away from a home Where coconuts danced all night. He would go to bed and not get up. To a big bank of numbers and notes. Small numbers crawl up to big ones Where they swallow the small ones Into a big sky of a billion numbers Where light is distance , not sound. You keep a day book of numbers But your red ledger is quickly lled Their gures enter steel cupboards Where they would live for the night. You forget to take them out next day. (upon the passing of a senior colleague in my bank)

871

Face (2012-11-29 01:28)

We hear the deep throat voice of a girl Made faceless by unwanted acid love As it slept on the roof under a full moon. Face book cannot resolve her moon-face But screams are heard across our roofs. (An 18 year girl of Dhanbad, Sonali Mukherjee has lost her face to a vicious acid attack by a spurned suitor)

872

Quiet poems (2012-11-30 00:46)

Early mans dream promises truth Early man is late man of morning. With quiet poems at beck and call Like the poet who saw coins settle At the oceans oor in a loud sun. Be Frank,O Hara, coins shall vanish In the sinking esh of a soft twilight. A birth did not take place in March Because parents delayed marriage. There is no stopping a dune buggy On the ocean beach ,its date certain And timing a devastating frankness. (Frank O Haras life and poetry)

873

Stream (2012-11-30 23:52)

It is there all the time quietly owing Making a strange liminal hum inside. You wake up to your abrupt dreams. You hear a midnight ocean of sound Before morning and the cars begin. When the unnamed dog stops to yelp, The machine whir of computer is soft And the cricket goes home to its sleep You wish suspended animation stays, You do not have to ee down the mount With cryptic messages about a stream.

874

3.12

December

875

Curtains (2012-12-01 23:10)

They keep you away from a ne dust Of diamond needle pricking the earth In great fanfare, to bring out its waters. In ongoing journey from water to dust The suns ne powder pours in them Through their large owers ,stretching Like ones that smell nice in the balcony Of a midnight, from its dark vagueness. They shut you off from mens crawling Their images in a nights walking sleep Their dreams shut in the private rooms In muted conversations of private bodies.

876

Drops (2012-12-03 00:29)

From out of its impotent quietude The night drops into a washbasin In a series of quick short sounds, A plumbers delight for Monday. His shadow drops on our Monday Like a big banyan tree in the night Slowly comprehending darkness. Drops are like a bodys plumbing Of our slowly comprehending life.

877

Sliver (2012-12-03 23:29)

The dogs bark is a pillar of the night Wrest it away and night may crumble Like a scaffold holding the creeper. A petite mosquito buzzes near the ears Singing its poetry of the unreal kind A sliver from my own smoke of burning Where we all burn in our daily smoke. The sleeping lizard on the roof is a sliver From my own smoking life, from a roof That tumbles without a sleeping lizard. Words are a sliver from smoking nights .

878

Fictive (2012-12-04 23:40)

What you write in the smallness of hours Under the inverted light is a ctive thing An excision of reality from your dark night A hard to feel thing,a texture of the night Just the way medicine spreads in the back A liquid calamine to soften angry ames Of passion rebelling in your layered veins. The soft old poet calls it supreme ction A rebel song rising to haunted heavens From an open book in converted palms. What you sing will not last to the far end. But an echo of being there somewhere Parallel to a world that is someone elses Fictive universe that closes with your eyes.

879

Spaces (2012-12-06 00:19)

Here I stand now to receive blessings From a fathers thin air ,now felt at The balconys falling off into a night My night poetry being of many spaces This very room shall afford a window Of opportunity, the curtains a glimpse. Lest I forget the sill I bring the moths Out of season,out of rain,their embraces To the glass of death,their glassy wings Shall bring a re-generation of leaves And the owers ,heads down in shame Their feet put up to the sky of surrender. I forget the lake of my liquid space Its waters jutting out from the rocks, A white smoke behind a garbage dune Killing a soft wet poets innocent verse. I forget the road of the hanging trees The pollution van standing to abolish Poverty and pollution in a round plaque The crows hanging in trees with worms To early sun sleepily rising like always. Lest I forget I hear the drum beating Of a train picking up gravel hitting speed In a rising crescendo of the drum stick By a bearded player who changes tracks And drum beat shamelessly mimicking The train while it is away on nightly rounds With people tucked away in a dark womb.

880

Examined life (2012-12-07 00:26)

This morning you will examine life As a document from the archives While looking into a balconys dark Extension, its trees secretly living Unexamined lives in a dark breeze. Socrates is not an unsociable jerk But is only nding a worth living life Of a bearded philosopher of a wife Who is about to sprinkle dirty water On a beard,quivering for meaning. We are not to nd meaning in pigs Going in ham sandwiches, forming Lumps in the throats of philosophical Inquiry, nding meaning in pigs life Nor in our life history of eating pigs With its justication rooted in nature In a convoluted evolutionary theory. We only wonder if the examined life Is worth all this time,and what we do Finally with the overwhelming sarcasm Behind all this, with the smelly bones At the bottom end of such inquiries.

881

The moment (2012-12-08 00:36)

We add or deduct a moment here. Will it make a holographic difference To the worlds moments elsewhere Like a butterys wings uttering to An earthquake in the remote world? In the bodys archived sensations Wrinkles are summer-dried streams Of moments that once owed in it. They shall be dried of the moments. They will be in the jungles out there.

882

The Chinese sherman (2012-12-08 23:40)

On the wooden cupboard there he stands With a slung shoulder pole of sh baskets In a bearded continuum from an ancient sea Sharing his porcelain immortality with them. These are things we live among and eat with. We some times stare at him in a lm of dust. His sh is eternally dead in bamboo baskets Like his wispy beard, white as the sea-surf. Mostly we feel his gaze in our back as we eat.

883

cul de sac (2012-12-09 23:14)

We went into our eating ( by way of a cul de sac Where we reach the bottom end with the ngers Scraping the darkness there), in chillies and garlic With a touch of millet and sweet solid cane sugar In a blind alley in a car that can take only a u-turn From a wall staring at our going away after a belch With a lips- reddening leaf with a white stuff in it. The ngers touch the bottom darkness that tickles , Quickly come out to light, a wave length stretching And return to where you all began, to bags handle, An entry into the cars little space, a medicinal talk That went over to little cul de sacs in our bodies on A journey to largest of them, to their deadest end .

884

Passage (2012-12-10 22:27)

Everything would pass in the snow hills Even the hordes who would climb them And run down ancestors with their cows Along rivers snaking down from the hills Much like elephant foot soldiers elsewhere Who had brought about a civilizations fall. There, down, in western hills a erce wind Would blow in the pass on temples beauty Now stirring wind mills for pure tax prots. There is no pass but a well worn passage A message to the world to give a passage A passport to gold riches that side of sea. Among us is a grave passage that runs quietly In vast spaces, lling the debris of our nights A narrow pass that vanishes in the vague hills.

885

Stranded (2012-12-11 21:56)

The child in falling knickers looks at sleepers And feels stranded ,beside snoring sleepers Their sleeping mouths open like deaths caves. The child is stranded in a sea of sleeping men In the mausoleum, as its pillars rise to the fans That stir afternoon air, stranded in a hot roof. The child is stranded beside sleeping parents Themselves stranded in a sleep of mausoleum, Over sleepers of ancient deaths in royal nery.

886

Who we are (2012-12-13 01:35)

That we will all know in the morning After the birds wake up to the song The left over of yesterdays tree music Day before yesterdays and other bird. Other who we are, we come to hear. And other who they are ,we will know. Primarily we shall wake up to birdsong And the god-song of east reddening And if we are still found short of breath We resort to the nery of a birds nest Atop the air-conditioner unit,the chicks Lying dead on a mornings potted plant After the nights music was lately over. We then go over to the fringes of birds Assembled on internet wire for music.

887

The light grew less in his eyes (2012-12-14 01:02)

We hear a bodys fall steeped in a melody With exquisite sound gone from its ngers. The eyes fell of broken strings , their music Lost in the winter of its time, in its nightfall. The glass spread quickly in its stringing eyes. The big black eyes were strung to a ne song, The song of a lifetime, the ow of a generation. The sound is now ashes, the eyes just beads. (Remembering the big black eyes of music maestro Ravi Shankar who passed this week-)

888

Rust (2012-12-14 22:10)

Can moss oxidate is our question hanging In the cliff, as a hanger is mid-air and against Streaks of water, dropping from higher rocks And a shirt color or two emerges at bottom Among rising food carts for colored sweaters. Seems we have lichen in oxide color of rock Or moss that gathers no green but brown. Imagine rocks rusting like our good old iron. Their ancient sun does not make chlorophyll But brown tiny leaves, in pearl-drops of rain The sun may be rusting of old age in the hills. It is not the sun alone who is rusting , in case. The monks are doing the same thing in ocher. Their child presences are smoking in laughter. As white curls emerge from their rust brown Clothes with Buddha peace prevailing in folds. As they run peace prevails in higher echelons.

889

Broom (2012-12-15 22:13)

Having just cleaned the oor, the broom rests Behind the door, in a soft sibilant silence there In the slightly open arms of the door, triangularly Marking lines of shadows enclosing a darkness, A darkness that is a creaking silence, a soft purr. It has eaten a rooms lines in one large scoop Lines formed in a half light of curtained sunlight, Writ in the waters of a windows ascending sun. The lines are ights of birds white to our ngers. And they will soon y to temporary night rests As little blobs of white in the darkness of trees. But the broom has scooped up the dusty light And the light is now ying feverishly as soft dust Particles towards higher reaches of the room. After creating the storm the broom safely rests In the shadow of the doors triangle with the wall.

890

Books (2012-12-17 00:14)

Into the yellow of light we enter at the sunset And open page after page of the written word. The sun shines brightly outside a green carpet Against the phonetic drone of a mans words. Wisdom binds parallel two-dimensional planes Together here ,joining them in a common light. Yesterday we had a bundle of lines cleaning up A room of straight lines, its light catching them And scooping them up behind a doors triangle After kicking up a storm in cross luminous lines And ying light dust particles as in a dust storm. Light was dust ying in our face, towards roof. Light is no longer lines nor is broom a bundle Resting in a triangular door corner , chang light. There are light points from rooms broken lines. The points now lie in parallel planes of existence Held together and a common light thread runs In them across vast recesses of a human mind.

891

Baby (2012-12-18 00:29)

Child cry is the beginning of war and night A sadness enveloping , irony growing lives Stupidity, not nature red in tooth and claw, Snufng out optimism from kids and news. Bird baby falls dead from an air-conditioner. A mother bird pecks at the angry sky space On the internet wire , playing out its irony. We play irony in our news as a fresh narrative As a drama on gun control or mental health Thinking which is which, about babys mouth. A baby bawls in the basement of a darkness.

892

Walking city (2012-12-18 23:48)

Water spreads growing maps from houses And feet advance to more and more people As their brooms cleanse outsides of houses. Some of them have white foam at mouths As city walks glowingly with new winter sky In noises of kids eyes opening to school day And school girls glowing with talcum smells. City walks in confused memories of dreams On old biryani stomachs growling distantly, Puppies keep snifng at stranger feet pants And sad ladies do their things with brooms. City walks with scraps of poems under hair Soon they are lost from citys thinning pate.

893

The moment (2012-12-20 10:13)

The moment was just then a word In the nights early life with a moon And its ne pointy stars confabulating In a breath-taking geometrical shape Closely resembling a forest beast And stars like its honey food of bees. We open the balcony door to a night And the moment is now going behind In the creaky silence of a night insect That is traceable to a sleeping bush. Balconys night queens spread a moon All about the night in a dizzy fragrance Like owers in a womans blouse back. We turn to sky and wait for our moment In a cosmic dome of dizzily whirring stars.

894

Worlds end (2012-12-21 01:46)

Vague we are, we have made the choice Of leaving the door ajar, a fat choice that With the cold wind entering living room. We intend to escape choices, ask questions Leaving answers open, cold and nagging. We are sucked into the eternity of a koan. We sit cross-legged to hurl our questions At the big question mindfully set in music To a perfumed stick turning our smells up. Our world will suitably end at the precipice A civilizations ruins, a close-ended calendar. All this while we are awaiting a headless man To ring doorbell in the small hours of sound.

895

Cry (2012-12-21 22:47)

Words are cry babys laughing waters Streaming from its eyes without its salt . You do not remember when the last Laugh occurred and a cry turned about In syllables, like glistening pearl-drops Of words slow -forming like night dew. The eyes will laugh at your cry primally In the deep belly where it will hurt softly In a sense making effort, of your world Dying gradually from a ludicrous effort. Cry from stomach was a wasted effort At collecting lung air, at making sense Of a chaotic world, of a mother to die To cry for and about, to mourn in early.

896

Tarpaulin (2012-12-22 23:45)

It was a substitute for the vault of a sky That had risen indenitely up and up With two kid brothers playing ball on it. The prankster sky had earlier annoyed The grandmothers head in her chores. They have turned sun and moon in sky. We now have a tarpaulin over our libidos Besides running buses of lusts to perform. Under the tarpaulin, while it is not raining We have cocoons of married togetherness That are spinning shiny silks of nine yards In long musical yarns of Hindi lm dance. But it is raining here in wind and storm. We have to return tarpaulin to tent maker. Soon we are naked under sun and moon. (A 23 year old girl who was gang-raped in a running bus in Delhi is battling for her life in a hospital)

897

Room (2012-12-23 23:07)

I carry from sleep this very room dened By a clipped table light, an indistinct moth A chair plastic in its back and sitting whitely. I like to be dened by a tree back to the sun And sitting wisely on drops of words in light. The chair likes to be dened by a warm bum And aching back of history, from shadows Of night after night sleeping, stomach silent From poems emerging to ngers on letters Table light is dened by the room of shadow But would like to be dened by a pair of eyes And the soft touch of a body where it curves On the wall ,with a moth walking in shadow. The moth carries its room with it on the wall A room of light to embrace a result of death. The chair carries a room with it of warm bum Bristling with possibility of not being in time.

898

Needle (2012-12-25 00:06)

The tailor had an eye for his needle That went in and out a cotton hole As if it was his very own heart - lung Furiously beating in an old rib cage. His needle had an eye for the thread That went in like it was a Bible camel. Diwali is closing in with his customers For new dupattas amid light crackers. The needle has its catching up to do. This side, old spinster is at her needle For unnished dupattas, long owing For many Diwalis that went in and out Riding out a prince on a white horse. Her needle is now spinning long yarns In endless story, from Diwali to Diwali That will go on like a failed wet cracker.

899

Father (2012-12-26 01:02)

Father would stare from his corner Of space in time from an old trunk That smelt of iron in old moth-balls. He looked like my own school self A bit lost in space, in shirt-sleeves Tucked to elbow, not much in eyes. He would stay there stuck in a corner With no knowledge that I was coming With a future that meant his going. There was space only for one of us. He stays wedged between old heads Still staring at old space unremittingly.

900

Images (2012-12-27 02:17)

A crow cawed at dawn suggesting A picture of idolatry, a woman gone To wall for decorating a living room. The crow cannot be mom to eat rice. Our images cannot eat rice in words. Images cannot eat rice, only words. We have other images of ourselves Hollow men, eshed out of our bones Poor nightly creatures of uorescence Roaming the empty wastes of minds. We have other men with rolled shirts Staring from ancient space, not yet Knowing my own coming, that meant His own going from all space in time. There was space only for one of us. All our images are shadows from past That are cast on our space even after Real things are gone except in sleep.

901

Buddha in the lake (2012-12-28 01:01)

Buddha has stood in the middle of our path Away from our cleverness and a swirling boat A felicity of word, a beauty of image, a thing. In the green waters he had waited for us men To lift concrete goodness and politicians fame Of an actor petried in the histrionics of time. Buddha stands in his stone pleats in the lake. His dazzling smile of a middle path beckons us From our own concrete holes, to a golden dusk That glories the lake, with all its dirty contents Flowing from our shames in our concrete holes.

902

Afterwards (2012-12-28 22:11)

Read now or later is a question settled. Afterwards is comfortable with enough Provision for sleeping conscience now Waking up and now back in the annals Of recent past history, lull you sure can. In the night is a light pouring on words Pouring by the dozens from alien spaces. In Singapore certain meat keeps crying. But not right now , I will read this later In readability companion of light words. It is a long read for later in the evening And I go to sleep with conscience at rest.

903

Evidence (2012-12-30 02:17)

I cannot go to sleep for lack of evidence. The world is alive in a dogs bark tonight. A Dawkins daughter-to letter is evidence Of a lack of evidence for not sleeping. A buzzing mosquito is material evidence Of its aliveness and my wakefulness. The dogs bark is a collateral evidence. These tidbits-they add up to a lack of girl. This my typing is evidence the girl is dead And ying as a thing to embrace her re Amid a thousand candles that had walked A sorrow enacted, a mime staged in dark. The young woman whose rape and torture by six hoodlums on a Delhi bus shook a nations conscience died early on Saturday,

904

Chrysanthemums (2012-12-31 00:58)

The chrysanthemums are stars of a sun Taking sun light from wind and worms A bouquet to no one except an earth pot Its mother of womb, softly under water In earthly fragrance of mother and wind. A sky overlooks from a blue parapet wall Topped with a Krishna-black granite like Lake mirroring shore trees,in the evening . Like sky-stars they seem to last for ever.

905

BlogBook v0.4, A L TEX 2 & GNU/Linux. http://www.blogbooker.com Edited: May 18, 2013