spoilt rotten by the ability to dream

(poems about disreality & phantom deities)

by: aditi n.

disclaimer: these words do not exist there as they do here.

cannot find the courage to believe in anyone elses gods i dip my hair in salt and filth; this is how i worship, knees unbuckled and spent not able to decipher a wale from a wail: one goes to the skin and the other to the ears but both lose their coarseness on the way; this is how i pray, without tongue or palms. to be a member of this family of all motion is to be a devotee. i frolic from edge to edge; this is how i pay homage to my mystical deities.

veils guard my gates carelessly, unarmed against the bullets. today, these words are made of smoke and they are sifting off the page in rebellion. my lashes try to quieten the shrieks and with trembling fingers, I brush away all corpses from my cheeks. (I am not wholly blind: only selectively.) delusions march on, from my nose to my neck from my chest to my legs, echoing the chant of my pulse, as if it too is involved in this operation. here, I see a straw with a lowered head, bowing to the idols of my hands. if this war was real, I would be grinning a triumphant stance.

i tread lightly on hellstones, walk with flat soles bare and unashamed no i cannot call this bravery, magic maybe an illusion, a trick, where i authoritatively sculpt figurines and place them around a landscape that only i can see.

Open your mouth. I want you to listen to me. Last night, I had a dream in which the two of us were drowning. Now, taste me; am I salt? In an old city, the metal frames of every building are corroding. The bricks are stained with rain and the windows have bags under their eyes. Old men and their wives sleep, without touching. Their silence is no mask, no poetry. Children. They dream of children. Of homes and wombs and phantom limbs. Of etherized frogs and dentures swimming in glass jars. When they turn on their beds, they fill the house with noise. Momentarily, there is life. But then, the creaks quieten, and the air is again infused with bitter humidity and sleep. In another city, everyones skin is the color of sand. There is a girl, and the sparkle in her eyes is just a mirage. There is a boy, and he is thirsty. That is their waltz. Listen to me. In the dream, I was made of blue. Either the blue of touch or the blue of resentI couldnt tell. We did not float, nor did we beg for air. The waves had entranced us. Our soft-shelled arms; our laden eyelids; our heavy hips; our knees of thunder. Cities. There were cities, under that water. Long, flowing legs of roads and streetlamps like puppet-strings. Rusty metal. Old men and their wives, gasping. Children. There were no children, only empty homes and emptier wombs. The waters throat was coarse and dark. We were blue, and we were aching with thirst, and we had haunted aquariums for lungs. Tell me that we are far away. That we are by the sea. By the pier while it rains. While it snows. Tell me that my hands arent crinkled. Tell me that the dream ended with us pulling our bodies out of the trap and wrapping each other in warm towels. That we smeared the color off. Take my tongue in your mouth and tell me that I am not salt. That you are not gone.

furniture faces shifted from room to room both hapless & helpless branded, tagged with patchy blushes; mouths like open-toe socks; hush. give discomfort a resting spot (foreheads like walls) an infidel stop.

1. Do you know who you are? Yes? Too bad. Forget that. You are probably a woman today. Your name starts with J. Jessica, maybe. No. Jenny? No. It doesnt matter. You dont use it very often anyway. 2. Youre in a bar and the man next to you has a small scar on his finger. You think: its probably from a beer bottle shard. He says: I want to kiss you. You say: tomorrow. You finish your glass of whiskey and coke, take a large and loud last gulp, and leave. He pays for your drink while watching your back. 3. Theres a road. You walk down it until you reach the dead end. Theres a pale green painted house. You knock on the door. A little girl in a dress answers it. You say: can I sleep here tonight? 4. Sometimes, you wish that you had a ghost for a mother. 5. It is tomorrow. You go back to the bar. The man is there, waiting. You lean over and kiss him. He says: werent you wearing that bra yesterday? 6. You are on another road. By a lake, maybe. No. By a mosque. A tall boy with honey skin tries to touch your hand. He calls you a slut. You regret the eyeliner. Your name starts with J. Youre probably a woman today because you hate men. You cannot be one of them. 7. You have a brother. You have two, actually. They are twins. They have the same shoulders as your father. Your boyfriend has the same shoulders too. Two of the four think that you have beautiful legs. Two of the four are not real. You cross your fingers and hope that the first two and the second two are the same, but you cannot tell. Their shoulders keep getting in the way. 8. Imagine. Youre in a room. Youre naked, but you cannot see your body. Theres a song playing in the background. You do not know it, but you start humming along. The song stops. You do not realize.

9. Youre not in a room any more. Youre in a field. A sunflower field. But it is winter, and there is no yellow. 10. You have a lovely nose. I want to write a poem in its shape. I probably wont though. 11. Now, come back to yourself. Is there mud on your jeans? Sorry. I didnt mean to take you there. We should probably wait until summer. Do you still remember the song? No? Me neither. How many brothers do you have? Please say one. Say one. Say that you have a father. Say that you do not have a boyfriend. No one thinks that you have beautiful legs. Phew! 12. Tell me your name. It isnt J, is it? Thats okay. You can still sleep here tonight.

this spectre jaw knocks against itself in an attempt to unearth a truth every blank sheet hides a secret, but the twist in this is that only the right scalpel nib can get past its surface.

Here, a split-stone fantasy for you to knock your head on. No, it does not care if it is unwelcome, and no, it will not wipe its soles on the mat before stepping in through your closed door. Here, a second key for you to hand over let your fear sit by the hearth, it will tire, and retire, soon enough.

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who what am I? if not a thin film of coagulated subconscious? if not the eye of a city in war? if not a silent abstraction, if not if not? who what am I, if not a question? if not the ruins of an age? if not the world refound? if not the palm of sirocco absorbing a disobedient cloud? who what am I, if not a sum of all my metaphors? if not a vivid, unreal memory? if not a long, winding road of all the milestones I have craved, carved? who what am I, if not if not?

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is it possible to measure the distance between a baptism and a burial with two hands? I wish to know; my clothes are drenched with a gutters spit and I cannot tell whether these broken lines are combing out the tangles or if they are the reason that they exist.

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- play
This selective youthful ignorance arrogance, if you must is a solvent. I hold the glass up to my nose, run salt along its brim, and gulp it down; forgetting that its absence too, can swallow.

fast-forward
From inside, I feel my torso disenchant itself, and my nerves dissolve in disillusionment. How miserable is such a fate, when one sip of falsity can create many a figure of speech but just a whiff of reality destroys all other worlds.

- pause -

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an eyelash, a flashback, a forest underwater. do I make sense? (no but when one image treads on another, the composition of the collage is less important than the sum of its pieces; today, I built a portrait out of noise and touch, and I have not spoken one coherent word since.)

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My tongue forks in indecision, willing to create a lie but not to speak it. These are the daemons that creep on my ceiling, forged from the skin of my own making. They watch over me, licking their lips in hunger. At night, I dream of a destiny where I dig a trench to bury myself in. I am a mystery delved in itself; the drafts reveal no exit plan. What channel, what stream does this mirror recognize? I am unaware, but I say otherwise anyway.

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extract your own from this now, listen: I thrive on abstraction(it is always a clamor fest inside; the end does not have an end)s this unhidden lick of madness :more split-skin wound less trophy shelf: is not a victory. let us not pretend as if I will crown myself a poet after this verse is done: I am much too contained by disarray, discord to step out of the crust therewith. now, look towards another diving sparrow; I cannot offer you another confessional.

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we are a long, winding staircase, leading both upwards & downwards. railings of cold metal and rust, the color of carcass; the crux of this spiral being our legs who are unpracticed & curious, but nothing more than that. there are steps made of concrete, stolen from a city somewhere past this day, slabs where children have left footprints (that now decay & rot like our tongues). I wonder why these pedestrians come & go in pairs, all this hubbub, hustle & bustle on misadjusted, unquiet floorboards of a museum of stolen portraits, all of which look exactly the same.

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// the stomach lining of alleyways momentarily aglow in the dark, a glimpse of supposed street art in the headlights of indifferent cars / the echo of my shadow puppet / question mark misplaced / cough / I place a glass against the wall to eavesdrop on the sunset / click together two fingers in poetic applause / ! / dip my hands into a sack of flour, blow the dust off onto greasy dishes / cough / collage of polaroids from back then / , / reminiscing skin before it knew of its existence think: touch, think: incision / ? / throbbing temples / surface tension of the subconscious / striking matches against text / history has no place for me; I am soot & soil & bombshell reincarnate / cough / short-cut to the diablesse / unforgotten senselessness //

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I drop a drawer of stationery on the floor and its clatter reminds me of the cacophony of a bad marriage havent we all heard two parents gamble on their debts in rage and then curse each other for all lost bets? My mother asks me why all noise sounds like divorce to me. My father breaks a plate against the kitchen slab and pretends to not read any of my poetry. I trip over a rhyme and land on the ground with a thud, a lump of bones and premonition amongst caged ink and pencil dust. I help myself stand back up.

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a diorama of a past , intricately jewelled stories strung together as if with drafted intentions . but no this garland of loosened ballad lines , of petalled verse , of lovers ode was an accident , a sudden grasp of impulse wound together with strands of diluted prophecy . this is how I see us: far apart & gazing at the same doors , from the same distance.

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(im)poster poetry: that is what I write replacing blades with knives, undisguised but in hiding. Cant you see me, standing naked on stage with my back to the audience? This selective nudity, these accents of the tongue that do not exist when I speak my body is not crafted the way these lines are. Cant you see (me)? But this one, this very one is as close to a truth as Ill ever cough up; here, I must untake a bow and admit that the act was just an act, & that it is not over yet.

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this strange diabolo of a cause: the consequence to all consequences, the long tense strand on which we dance; a tight-rope romance, a lifeline in denial of its own existence. (who holds the ends of this game? do these poems weigh more than shadows? am I tangible, or do I chop and change, or do I fade?) this is not about you it is about him. in some trance, Ill admit that there is no difference; but I am wide awake right now, and there is.

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this is the banner we title our bravery with: unthreatened by the mortality of karma and kismet, we run our fingers through weeds of time, and do not wince when they tear.

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to forget :: to unlearn when a four-strand braid of silence unties itself out of lethargy :: when a lock of hair is yanked out, tongue caught in the accident between the two jaws. (I have both unwound tresses and blood-bathed teeth; can no longer recognize shackled feet.)

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Ive been trying to count without numbers and nouns, but I havent found an alternate medium yet can you think of one? One : yes, there it is again. I cannot shake myself out of the curse of language of gears that run on digits and sounds that wear masks to face the page. Ive been trying to escape can you teach me? I fail at the art of silence. Even in the most muffled thought, I hear the nervous shivering of a grenade. I cannot deem myself incapable of it though, because when the day begins to wilt, there is no one that I want to have a conversation with more than the sun as it settles and sits.

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we, who know the truth of loops, holes, know that humans too spiral down in sequence (not fibonacci, not Lucas, but one of a more tender pattern); here, we find ourselves diving, twirling midair, again & again, not out of necessity, but into it. : I find myself plunging into the same well (yours) with a circle for a bracelet; I land with a flump and it slips from my wrist, twists itself into eternity. we, who know the truth of each other, gaps, know that I should not have been back (know that I am).

towards the same waters

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: to wallow in disappointment : to lap up the snarks : to plague all sighs with indifference : to wear punctuation as accessories : to misunderstand the trees : to hit the window shutters with a drumstick : to chew pride with a mouth ajar : to curate unreliability : to detract names : to question panes : to bandage regret in sin : to illustrate sans art : to stop start stop start : to fill both fists with choices and unclench them only to find a clutter :

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trails leading to the culprit (pickled paw prints well preserved in the dust, on winters earlobe) ; it has not been too much of a challenge finding my way to you, you with worn claws and blunted teeth ; I am here to steal back all that youve thieved from me. // I hear you gargling in the distance and gulp down your faults with saltwater is this what I came after? is this the wounded fate I came to heal? // I am marching back in retreat, erasing the marks on the track with my feet. you, both criminal and the felony, are not worth the prison cell of my enmity I cannot afford another mouth to feed.

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A doll-house family, plastic cheeks and legs, we sit at the table, and chew mechanically not speaking a word, not even asking each other to pass the rice, or pass the salad, no, we all have these synthetic arms for reason. I unearth a coffin in my fathers chest, when at night, his tongue is loosened with a hint of liquor and a stronger hint of resent. And in that coffin, I find trinkets and jewels from long ago. And in that coffin, I find a corpse still intact, still fighting away the black ants. My hands now dirty, I run to the sink, and run them under the tap. My toy-like hands now turn to pink flesh; from them, rises a fresh stench. The water washes off the mud but cannot erase the soft mortality. I will die soon I think. I can no longer tell if this is a curse or a blessing. Next evening, though, at dinner time, the table is set as usual. I do not ask for the rice, not for the salad, no I do not eat at all.

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hovering over old piano keys cannot remember which two do not rise back up upon pressing oh, its voice is dreadful, strings out of tune, poor chamber of wood lathered in hand-me-down yesterdays; silence : the stillborn child of this soundbox. how it weeps for its loss, its belly emptied like an abandoned fishtank, more algae than corpse more stale recollection than resent. music was not meant to be a feat, and yet, from this side of the story, I find my knuckles jammed in disbeliefI must leave before the trebles and bass align and turn into nooses for my hearing.

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 how we are letting our young minds rot in swamps of filth , gutters brewing stench , drainage pipes of disease , we are not the children that our parents dreamed of ! but were we ever? dipping our nails in stolen liquor , dyeing teeth in drugs we wonder: can they see us , are we real? end every sentence with appropriate punctuation , but switch lanes when it comes to full stops we arent winning these races any more (here, you must ask : but were we ever?) no , we are barefoot and bleeding burnt tongues and bruised arms , there is no competition now / I am different , I imagine ; I want to jump further than the rest, a long frog leap into the future universities & cities & seas , I must conquer them all but then , the tides sweep over and I know that one small voice will be drowned I am not the blaring sound of a warning call now but was I ever? no, I have always marched the same track as my drunken comrades. we are not going anywhere in particular , well see what we see when we get there. we are not doomed , we are blessed by the clouds and the Sun who raise their palms in a salute to the likes of us; we , who take up space as if it is ours , are more than entitled to it ; as we always were , as we will be forever (?)

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i swat him off like a gadfly ; i hear sirens ; the future threatens me with bayonet of regret ; i walk towards it with more navet than courage ; we use oblivion as crutches ; i wipe sunlight off the windshield ; i am ugly with fatigue ; my stagnation is an invitation card for him ; cows graze in the pasture nodding their heads from time to time ; this universal tendency of pests, returning with no end ; i crunch his wings beneath my feet ; the cows keep chewing ; the slosh of grass behind their teeth sounds like a question that he would have asked ;

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Strange, how none of the quick-ending lines that I wrote earlier crept up to me while you were asleep to warn me of your departure. I place the blame on all the periods that withered without advice before our weather changed and with the first word of that season, only an echo stayed.

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(to be the spiritual equivalent of a man in a suit with kohl-rimmed eyes) there are tufts of smoke across the sky and they look like a little girls torn dress, maybe from falling, maybe from her fathers hands. we are crossing the road while looking up the stars are hiding tonight, but we seek their absence because it reminds us of ours i want to run. i have feet like a birds: they do not like the taste of cement too much. my brother should have been a ghost. (i am looking for a ghost. it is hiding with the stars.) the night is not really ours it is the leaves the crackles the chimneys and we are just side-effects of this whole god routine; though when the crisp air bathes my eyes in tears and i find black smeared all over my cheeks, i can only wipe it off with my sleeve and roll it (, a snakeskin mimic,) and tilt back my head to another day,

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 i attach myself to the nonexistent, i am her & him & them together this is not without reason, if anything is; i have found out how to climb into other worlds without knowing where they live. the ladder creaks when i step on it, whispering: there she goes again! the romance between my feet and its steps almost makes me envious.

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everywhen I ask to be cradled like a dream, the hosts surrender their cots and retrieve the spare key. I move from house to house, trying to find one that slips on like a tailored dress, but that is not at all how it works: you see, every bed I have ever slept in has been a hospital bed; people only stay until they are strong enough to leave again.

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i string together a bouquet of grass i accidentally pluck a daisy too, and hand it to you as if i am god and my fingers are poets (it is true: if god exists, he is writing through them). when i pull out that small flower from a tide of green, it is out of place; in the wrong world; but beautiful. that is how we know in many ways, we are ideal and that is my gift to you.

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I pay homage to that forgotten sun in the belly of this earth. I lay my feet against the ground in silent devotion. I am scared of winter a fear of fear; I know too well what a frightened mind concocts, and how it turns to phantom hell to ward off enemies. Now, there is no logic behind my feet becoming so cold at the advance of winter: it does not exist. It is only autumn with an itch in its nose, infected by the flu and laying in bed in its wait; it is only spring delaying itself in preparation, forgetting time and again to wake up. Now, how does one fight this tendency to let slip importance? When we rest our hands on the floor, there is no warmth, no evident display of affection.

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he is not lost: he is taking life as you would take a jar full of honey: clink of tongue against bottom of spoon by clink. a deforested land has more shadows than it once did trees, believe me. he does. (he: the ghost, the imaginary role model. you: the flesh, the sorrow.)

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only summer I must be in a trance but no, this crisp whiff of air, as if sharpened by a cigarette, I cannot mistake it. it must be that only summer break recess of life / a snowflake melts at the side of my face; soft nostril of such sullen dream / I drink in the facade of every passerby and memorize the face of each building. must not forget the folds of this lake; that yellow boat; the self-harmed clouds; that naked tree; these brown feet; me, and the city, dressed in the habit of a winter. the sun shines on my back a crack in my age, a gaping keyhole to my story.

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we, who know of the corruption of the poets soul and how the world is not the world but a subtle metaphor, do not lick at wounds like hounds but bandage them in skin and salt for other days usage. when time ascends and sheds, (we wonder we wander) it does not show us any color. our black is blind , our white is deaf; we are just a sum of our widely dispersed selves by accident, of course, why else?

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the idle fancies of your waist have lost their charm to me. I would ask for your return, but I have dreamed up a new piece. irony, you would say, doesnt taste like metal at all & yet, when I threw a punch at your face, you filled your mouth with blood. why was that so out of order? because the very mouth that I hurled my fist on is the one that all the docile words came from. hah. what do you look like? Ive forgotten. (that too, is a scrub of rust on my tongue.)

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(you do not know how easy it is for me to jump off, from any height) dangling off a twig, i hear a creak i place a bubble of life on my tongue and let it roll down i am full; i am ready. theres autumn in my leaves. i float down and sit on the grass, blowing smoke rings through dry lips dusted with the dread of longing.

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we lower the volume before the show starts. your silence is arthritic and aching at the joints, the tendons that connect your exhale to your inhale. we cook with recipes all spice-agnostic since the powder of words is taste enough to last. at your chair, you sit with shins dangling off the edge and in a breath, i find you on the floor weaving another carpet with the bones. the two of us swing from moment to moment with arms outstretched and eyes closed, blind to the suicide of the vines we cling onto. tonight, the atmosphere takes a stand with its cynicism and mocks our choice of disbelieving flavor we say that we are agnostic to taste, but the upturned reflection in our spoons shows us as agonists to it all instead.

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I imagine: him, perplexed by the anatomy of a candle, and I, by him. The mirrors of his eyes fogged by the flame I do not see myself in them. A shadow falls across my lids; I blink.

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There are several (oh, so many) ways to highlight the way I am quite (oh, so very) not in place LOST (lost, lost, lost) ((lost!)) I mean: I could hand you a book of my travels, and you wouldnt know where I started; I could graph you a map of my thoughts, and you wouldnt know how to unfold it; I could let you listen to my footsteps, and you wouldnt know where Im going; I could write you into a poem, and you wouldnt know what it said. I mean: I am very much like the word left: whats left can mean what stayed, and also what has chosen to not, and also what isnt right, (it all depends on the context) and I could be whispering to you in bed, buried within the folds of your breath, and Id stutter: dear one, darling one, my love for you is

all thats left,

and that would be a metaphor for me, and maybe youd get that, and maybe youd feel me dissolve in your hands while I slept. There are several (oh, so many) kinds of people, but I am quite (oh, so very) complex: not the kind you can find once shes lost, not the kind you can get lost with.

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// a dozen prostitutes in fathers mouth. / sad eyes on a bulletin board. / photographs to take one day: bird mid-flight, mid-life, weeping petals of dead flower. / smoke. / men in bundles, blankets for armor. / mother crying. / skin like cracked computer screens with words swallowed into cyber black holes. / death in the sky, no stars to be seen. / unspoken poems. / photographs to never take: broken bones + homes, secrets growing like moss in stomach acid lakes. / apple trees without roots, fruits rotten, branches withered. / family prayers, unspoken too. / destruction in silence. / crunch. //

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handing out chipped nails with that peculiar smile that is reserved for oldman strangers we say no, do not go into that cafe with him, do not tell him that you are fiction: here, take a flash of teeth instead of my reality enough. it is, so to speak. you, who see me blood-orange; burgundy; indigo; green, do not know. blank. white is not pure: it is greed, a puddle with a thin film of volition hiding me underneath. did you not see that coming? excuse me, now, I have to leave look for me, someday? ill probably be too busy, drowning with the sun into some small cup of sea, sorry.

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Loose strands of your hair curve along the base of your throat. I am about to die, you know. One day. You will wake up in my arms and say, "The love we make so raw, so often leaves me feeling like I owe my flesh to yours, like I have no name left. In the bowl of our bodies, we cook a tragedy because we are always so terribly hungry for more: more soft of skin, more silk of touch, more hard teeth of lust, more mouthfuls of gone, more fistfuls of gone, more bruises disguised as love. Before we lived this world within our world, I kissed every eye that held your sight, but tonight I want to be gnawed down to the bone. Im about to die, one day. You know.

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we are all fruits, spoilt rotten by the ability to dream split seeds, vision corrupted by the unseen. we lather our shoulders in shredded peel and shrug off all dust of reality.

-FIN-

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