Full stops as Hurricanes.

Fashion me,
and this crisis.

the guy in front
spills coffee on his shirt
and he sighs in frustration,
I laugh
blushing in acknowledgment.

we sit side by side
in the parlor
2 hours and we leave
he sighs off again
his hair an ugly mess.

we have sat down for coffee again
but my lips desire something completely else

signing off
he holds my hand again
like in the bookstore
in an empty aisle.

he left about 4 days back
and probably thought that I died
but I am alive. Very much.
Only wondering if he too was just
another reflection of a man.
I saw, six years back.
Hatred, the same.
In both their eyes.
Pitch black, their stone cold hearts.

Artwork by Manjit Thapp.

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Queer.

In the last maiden
season of spring
mother told me that the jasmine wouldn’t bloom
that year and they didn’t.

For father had died
the day before
and the flowers knew how to cry.

So why do they bloom now
when the lover has taken rest
and that one bite on my neck has vanished away
in the air around us.

only mother knows

she who sits on the porch
knitting sweaters and mumbling sounds
to the flowers.
‘Queer’.

Garden.

Now
I steal facts
from your history
As if they were secrets at a factory.

And annoy the gardener
at your father’s house
every time the machines rumbled,
Moaned, or cried.

Now again
When the leaves have fallen
and sprung again
In spring.

I can feel them
just the same way
I felt your soft breath on my neck,
the last time we kissed/ made love.

Only this time
the opportunities are low
and I have allowed this transition
from touch to just the wind that touches my skin.

What do I know of love,
after all?
Except that you, my love
are the flower that takes the longest to bloom.

White sheets.

Sexuality, under covers, white sheets,
Spun to perfection, with lies.
that promise
two lovers, their sexuality, unquestioned.

I too am cramped in tiny matchboxes,
of ambition.

My dreams, a vague memory
of a lover beneath these sheets
that in secrecy
becomes poetry

And slowly dies away.

 

Nothing (Not a poem #3)

Let us sit together at the shoreline today. At 3 am in the morning and do nothing, be nothing, whilst we stare at the city lights fade away. Let us sit close together, holding hands, never letting each other go away. You, my lover, have become my poetry from nothing to things that are now taking shapes, though are still ambiguous.

You, my lover, have become me, like something that belongs to me as much as the moonlight belongs to the sun. So promise me, that you will never ask for it back. And I like the moon will shine and burn and burn and shine. Into nothingness.

Prince over princesses.

My heart leaves out no space
For captured princesses
And those fairy tales
Where the prince must marry
A beautiful maiden pretty as the moon.

My heart is rustic, too bold to appear,
But somewhere in the closet;
It is also sincere
And it is love that my heart also knows

Except in a man.

In italicized words, my heart is gay,
So is my body,
And my lover, of no name.
Who is too shy to appear.

Smoked cigarettes and hangovers.

His soul is a smoked cigarette,
Blackening his bare heart.
Try not to reach for either, I fear
ash falls apart fast.

Her mind is a sober child.
That likes to believe that its drunk.
Wouldn’t she die if she knew
Boring and tiring are hangovers.

They continue to run past parallel
Steady at edges, drunk on the highways.