2019 1. Villanelle

I just wouldn't be myself without my career
And you're my lighthouse across our divide
so we'll both forge on without fear.
Although we're missing the cuddles and the beer
and we're so lacking in opportunities to confide:
I just wouldn't be myself without my career.
So many times I wish you were here
But we always negotiate how the ocean's so wide
So we'll both forge on without fear.
And in spite of how often the road seems unclear
And we feel so torn apart by this tide
I just wouldn't be myself without my career.
You back up my choices with such loving cheer
And confidently brush all trepidation aside
So we'll both forge on without fear.
Freedom, to us, will eternally be dear
And you're willing and happy to not want a bride:
I just wouldn't be myself without my career
So we'll both forge on without fear.

An April of Poems (2018)

Day 1: Letter to body

Taking the bait

 

I won't call you "dear"

or "dearest"

or even "my"

because you are not mine

and I am not yours.

We are just we

We are.

Descartes would have been proud

that I am writing to my body

with my mind.

But, nonetheless,

This is a letter of gratitude,

I write to thank you for how

you heal without my noticing,

you forgive me, repeatedly, for

mistakes made in sleep and wakefulness,

you carry the weight of my unhealthiness

in the roundness of my gut,

you allow me the leisure of

a jiggle in my thigh or

the ripple of my bum.

you digest.

everything.

together, we make a terrific team

and I thank you so deeply.

We make it possible

to shift shape and colour

and yet see a 'me' in the mirror.

​

(the myness of me is

a function of

we)

You are wonderful

and you deserve more care

than I deign to give you.

​Yet, this letter will find me

in better health than you.

 

Day 2: Fools

You're always worrying about "the consequences" -

consequences are always futures or pasts -

You've asked me with fear about how we'd survive this,

Our first real separation -

You think I'm selfish for choosing this road

and leaving my gem all on his own.

You've called me a fool and questioned this choice

But don't you see?

We're all fools.

We're all fools for second-guessing,

fools for conjecturing

We're fools to believe we know what's in store

When the best we can do is remember what we started asking questions for.

Dig under the questions

And you hit concern

And under that bedrock

Is your experience,

Molten and untempered.

We're all fools

We're all fools made of love

In a million different shades.

Our love paints some in light washes

And others receive layer over layer

Over layer.

 

Day 3: Typo

The evening dragged on.

You spilled around the room

As elephants climbed the walls.

They met underwater

And dissolved into colour

after colour  

after colour.

The evening deranged out

As you spoke in tongues

Used by Time

to explain to novices that

            nothing 

     is                      linear

and so you spoke in 

dots and circles and words

that unravelled into pictures

The evening drugged on

as your eyes drove out the neon lights,

as your sweat evaporated into memory,

as the colours all quietly marched back into their outlines

and the evening drugged out

as you came home so far away from home.

 

Day 4: Cleaned out 

We shan't come to clean

If you say you'll be at home:

Fresh Start Cleaning Co.

 

Day 5: Enemy

Do words hit hard

Or do the people who use them?

Or is all the hurt in the receiver?

​Do ideas burn

Or do they only remain

impressions of the people who do them?
​

​Marriage sounded

like the minatour in the labyrinth​,

like the nightmare of silence,

of muteness, of deafness.

Marriage sounded like

an endless pageant

of sacrifice and happiness,

and sacrificed happiness

and happiness in sacrifice.

Marriage was the enemy,

the monster of monsters

wielded by one

over another.

But enemies,

sometimes,

reveal themselves to be

nothing less

than hidden friends.

Day 6: Caverns (a Kural poem)

डोळ्यांचे गुहे अंधारात दिसेना

तेव्हा साचे पाणी

Day 7: Smells

Three. Two. One.

For years I've been sneaking 

farts into corners

where others have been

so I can be viewed

as a fart-free 'uman bean.

Three. Two. One.

Launch sequence completed

and all the sulphurous smells

are are prepped and heated.

I unleash them, now

with a certain ease

because, hitherto, farts

weren't accepted like these.

Oh! Thanks be to nostrils

unaffected by rips

and hisses and whines.

Thanks be to intestines

that can compete with mine.

Farts find a home

without judgement or glares,

where a fart un-joked about

is blissfully rare.

Thanks be to "manners"

that do not exist

and oh.

three.

two-one.

I let another one slip.

Day 8: Sex

Socks,

my trousers, his jeans,

boxers,

bra and baniyan

bunched together.

Our cotton shirts

wrinkle and frown -

deep lines of concentration form.

Tussling, entwined,

completely absorbed in the tumbling affair of

one over the other,

under

and around.

Bedsheet and pillow covers join the twist and jive.

Dishcloth, towel and napkins arrive.

What an orgy it is!

How the temperature soars!

They're writhing and slapping

and still in it for more.

When, finally, it stops

and they're all peeled apart,

the washing machine wheezes off

to let the sun-drying start.

 

Day 9: Ageing

Baby elbow:

dimples of delight.

I run reluctant fingers 

over the craggy, brown cliffs

of my own ageing elbows.

 

Day 10: Acrostic

Alone isn't always lonely,

Near isn't always close.

Dreaming is how I hold you, but

Awake is when "we" disappear.

Meagre words try and make up for

All the things we say without saying.

Nothing compares to being with you, yet

So much to gain from this fear.

Day 11: Fried Rice

in the clutch of 🍜

we found a stray bag of fried 🍚 -

uninvited and alone.

"who ordered fried rice?"

someone hollered into the room

bodies stirred but no one answered.

"who wants fried rice?"

the voice repeated, too soon - 

a "mmph" of recognition floated back

but no one arrived with a 🥄.

everyone loves noodles:

oily ropes of delight.

but fried rice is just a bag of 'whys':

why have the grain shaped like it is?

why not have it mashed up

and mushed together

and stretched out

and oiled up

and fried sexy -

into the Chinese hairs of myth and magic?

who cares how Indian it is

or how Chinese it is not.

frice is just bullets fried in vegetables.

GIVE ME AJINOMOTO FAIRYVEINS ANYDAY.

 

Day 12: Some clever words are...

Some clever words are,

"just give up on this one."

In fact,

Those are the cleverest ones.

 

Day 13: Bad Memory

Just like a photograph in too much light

Memories burn to an indistinguishable blur,

Obliterating what was once in sight.

Each scene becomes becomes a flood of white

As if it never did occur

Just like a photograph in too much light.

No recall of the days or nights

That got my pores to stir

Obliterating what was once in sight.

Untraceable tastes of the many bites

(of the best food, I do aver)

Like photographs in too much light.

I'd capture smells in vials, sealed tight

To unleash when melancholy hovers

Obliterating what was once in sight.

But memories can't be held, you're right

Else you'll never remember

Just like a photograph in too much light,

Obliterating what was once in sight.

 

Day 14: First and Last

I squat.

It is daytime.

The air is cool and

somewhat dry.

My fingers find

one from this heap

of dried areca nuts.

​Placed on its wooden cradle,

my sharp blade finds its mark.

The shell

splits open,

hairs torn asunder.

I coax the nut

out of its cocoon.

One nut done,

a heap yet to go.

My fingers,

knees,

calves,

feet

sing the song of

the areca nut -

hot rushes of pain

are the chorus.

I squat.

The sun is high

in the sky.

My heap is halved

but the air is wet

and slow to cool

my brow, my back,

my fingers.

The heap's undoing is

undone.

A granddaughter comes

with a new sack.

I squat,

It is dark.

Where are you,

oh last areca nut?

A heap yet to go

Day 15: Architecture

Words

​build a home

from our scrapbooks of dreams -

a two-storeyed affair

right by a stream.
There will also be

a mountain skulking around

and the air will be sprinkled

with birdsy-sorts of sounds.

We'll have our four walls

and our flat, sun-baked terrace

and rough-stone-tiled floors

(that'll make the winter a menace).

We'll have rough hewn wood

to hold everything together

and the wood will keep changing -

just like us it'll weather

and soften, it will under

everyday caresses; and
words of love and understanding

​will echo around the land*

and we'll watch it all

from our warm woolly couch.
In the house from our dreamings

we'll​ grow old and more in love, without a doubt.

​*this line is making me cringe but I badly wanted a rhyme! :o

 

Day 16: Odd Numbers

It's strange to recall

how everyone is really 

just one

and not the twos, threes,

fours and scores

we take shelter in being.

Day 17: I Spy

I spy an alien to these parts -

a tetrapod fellow,

looks rather large,

sounds rather heavy,

moves rather dumb.

I spy it's spindly legs,

I spy a tail,

And there's something

hanging down there

that shoots milk into a pail.

I spy some nubby horns,

I spy a dangling neck

and most of all, I spy how it's not supposed to be here

but in the present political climate, it tells me I'm still in India.

 

Day 18: Djinn

I fancy me some wishes

without consequence.

I want what I want while

I have what I have.

 

Day 19: Triangle

See this triangle here?

From these mountains to this tip?

That's considered 'south India'

All of you, remember this.

Here's Bengaluru, there's Madras,

Hyderabad and down here's 

Thiruvananthapuram.

You'll see Madurai,

on this side and further down,

Rameswaram and Kanyakumari.

In that, southern part of India, 

the languages are not like here.

People eat completely different food,

(but mostly rice and fish).

There are a lot of temples

And trade is very strong.

We learned about the mainland

And the famed peninsular cities.

We chose swatches of the people

And made up mnemonic ditties.

We talked about 'southern' kingdoms,

And the literature and dance.

We talked about the British

And gave their reign a quiet glance.

We memorised all these factoids

And we marked them all on maps.

In the saga of our independence,

Another south gets a fleeting mention:

A dockyard, a prison, a symbol of injustices,

A mute land, witness to foreign tensions.

No one mentions these colonies of Indians,

Settled here when the colonists left,

Leaving those who never wanted a paternal state,

Feeling threatened, helpless and bereft.

These islands are also south India,

Whose real history we'll never be taught

Because India can never be the cruel one

And a nameless crime can never be caught.

 

Day 20: Sounds of Life

Baby boy passed around;

mumma's cooing friends.

'banana mouth baby!'

'what sounds do potatoes make?

Farrrrt! Frrrrt! Pok!'

Baby boy passed around;

acquaintances gravitate.

'baby, kya bolta hai?

Bolo, baby, aapka naam...'

Baby boy passed around;

Baby boy makes no sound.

Baby boy passed right back:

Mumma's back in sight.

Baby boy cooes and laughs

Tells mumma, 'please just hold me.

Tight.'

 

Day 21: Slow Day

Sunday sleep-in

Five-thirty a.m.:

Sunrise shoots across the sky.

Stay in bed till eight.

 

An April of Poems (2017)

Day 1: Things that Make You Hungry

Neck

Have you ever watched a child flirt

With hot, french-fried onions,

seduced by their sensuous brown skin?

Fingers pick lightly - with only tips -

Trailing bedlam along crisp spines.

Almost like a fried treasure

the skin of you neck submits

to the french-trained flirtations

of my child-memory's teeth.​

 

Day 2: The best kisses of your life

Bawled Lies

I'll never have

My favourite kisses:

Baby's cheek wobbles

For mumma's lipses.

 

Day 3: Villanelle

Birthmark

A father-shaped fire unleashes the dark

On a daughter, left alone, in tears,

Fighting to save the very last spark.

Before she can pause, or even remark

A daughter must confront her fear:

A father-shaped fire unleashes the dark.

It will be months before she can embark

On a journey into the new and clear:

Fighting to save the very last spark

Traversing without cairn or landmark –

She has no hope that one will appear –

A father-shaped fire unleashes the dark.

She wished the scene were not that stark

and that he – her father – would be near,

fighting to save the very last spark.

All she has now, is a queer little birthmark

And a broken heart and an unending tear –

A father-shaped fire unleashes the dark

Fighting to save the very last spark

 

Day 4: Friends you can't remember

Magellan

 Remember.

'Remember', it's a funny word –

A word of goodbyes

From a home,

Distant home

Oceans

and oceans

A new name found every moon​

to remember the ocean –

There's no going home soon.

Brothers of blood –

Distant, surreal –

Now, new brothers at each port –

Brothers only by deal

Voyage,

voyage,

voyage away.

Oceans for decades:

A new god to whom I pray.

The whores of each port

Are my only true friends.

Yet I've no names to call out
When I reach my journey's end.

 

Day 5: Haibun

Time-card

Over the thrum of traffic, clear on the wind, come six peals of laughter from six happy children. Grass underfoot; bare toes and blades entwine. The last sunlight of the day, falls so differently on bare heads thrown back in merriment. Hand-in-hand a string of children laugh around a flowering bush. Light summer blossoms drizzle to the grass. The littlest, a girl in yellow, belly-flops onto the grass and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. The glow around them is clear and nothing like the acrid weariness of homeward-bound commuters.

Street-imps, happy, at

traffic-island-kindergarten, 

glum at business-time

 

Day 6: Places in the city you hate

Me

Just because I have to

I'll go down to the store.

I don't know why I bother

It's really such a bore.

Don't be bothered by me –

I'm just here to get some milk –

No need to even look at me,
I'll help myself...I think.

Stop your banal small talk!
I just want to get away!
I don't need your slobbering attention.
Yes, I will be on my way.

You make me wait for everything.
You make me chase and fuss.
And when I make you do the same
You call me names and cuss.

I hate your friends and colleagues,
I hate your family, too.
I hate everything you leave me for,
I hate everything you do.

I hate that you don't understand
That everything is about me!
Everything is about my pleasure!
So worship me! Serve me!
Me!

ME!

MEE!

MEOW!

 

Day 7: Describing something about yourself that doesn't have a word yet

How you should not be me

Falling asleep in a box of cold marshmallows,

Sliding under a door like blood, in slow motion,

Hanging on a window grill by a single strand of hair

And never falling, never falling.

Leaking out through a tap, never reaching the drain,

Cemented under tiles, jumped on, thumped on,

Nails running down a blackboard in your heart​

Again and again and again.

Knowing every minute that your little toe is going to break

Lying under fleece blankets at noon in the desert

Crying without sound, without breath, without a brain

Forever and ever and ever.

 

Day 8: The eye colour of the people you looked at, and who looked back at you, on the train/bus/street

It's best that I don't

Try to divine intention

From tints of the eye.

 

Day 9: Favourite sad songs

Kenny Rogers, Mukesh and Ink Spots
(or, Wallowing for kicks)

Favourite sad songs 

are a funny little bunch:

some were sad to begin with

and others just came along.

The sad, sad songs -

ones that started that way -

are sad

'cause they're meant to be.

And there are still others

that are really love-happy songs

But are terribly sad

to me.

Sad is the song

about people in love

that's the recurring soundtrack 

of every mom-and-pop row

And then there are

the old film jewels

that resurrect

grandfathers-gone

And the most favourite of all

is the saddest of all:

the video-game love song

you don't remember

you ever sang 

to me.

 

Day 10: A creepy rhyming poem to the meter of a classic nursery rhyme

Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dongDoll

Lips like cherries, luscious berries!
Round, little bum - made me come.
Cherubic and carefree, now so limp and icy,
only three, only three 

 

Day 11: Shake it off

Role-model

My uterus would make

an excellent motivational speaker.

She'd get up on stage

And everyone would cheer

Because her opening lines would be

'Never let go!'

'Never let go!'

And the crowd would thunder

And rumble in wonder

At her simple three-word life-philosophy.

Yes,

My uterus would make

A bestselling horror-writer.

She'd churn your guts

With her maniacs and nuts

Each written to never resemble

Any other she's never written,

At the end of her story

She'd enthral you with

An exodus so thrilling and victorious,

Bloody and satisfactorily gory.

My uterus would make

A sensational model

She knows how to twist

Into impossible knots

And she'll knock your socks off

With her shapely clots

And when she's on assignment

You can be very certain

The last thing on her mind is nourishment.

My uterus would make

A killer role-model.

Un-slow-downable,

Un-stoppable,

Un-put-offable

I only wish

my uterus would be more punctual.

So here's me begging:

Pleeeease, shake it off!

 

Day 12: Things you (only) do when you're alone

Birthday suit

Today is my birthday:
I'm turning thirty-eight.

I'd ask you to come over

So we could celebrate.

But my wife found out about it -

The thing only I know about me,

The thing I never do when she's around,

The thing that satisfies me, secretly.

She told everyone on reddit

And millions follow this thread

So if I rustle up a guest-list

I'm sure there'll be someone who'll have read.

So I'll sit here like I always do

When I'm the only one at home.

I'm safe here in my daiper

And no, I don't feel alone.

 

Day 13: Sonnet

Spring cleaning

(Or, The longest poem of my life)

There's a light cough of dust in every room,

Settled on all things flat; filling up cracks -

The dust manufactures permanent gloom,

Laying down canvas for creaturely tracks,

Smothering the curtains, filling channels up,

Hijacking my windpipe (breathing is hard)!

Footsteps fall and clouds of dust develop -

Wilful dust, never wounded, merely scarred.

Prepare for battle! Cover noses and heads.

Beware, the Sneeze! T'will but full you with dread.

Unleash the Wetrags! Dustmonsters, be dead!

We're coming for you! We'll rip you to shreds!

Spring cleaning, spring cleaning: a battle begun -

Spring cleaning, spring cleaning: it shall be won!

 

Day 14: Parenting

Time

We

We think

We think, you

We think, you should

We think, you should do

We think, you should do what's best

We think, you should do what's best for you.

 

Day 15: Words from your childhood

Kids say the damnedest things

आली - an expression of terror used to indicate the imminent arrival of a mother
Amaaan - an expression of terror used to indicate the imminent arrival of a brother
भांडीकुंडी - a collection of magical toys that could never be completely cleared up - a piece would always turn out under the foot of a mother or a brother
excusememiss - an expression of terror used to indicate the unexpected arrival of the need to use the loo
डुबुक - a measure of shit
धू - the call to action after a decided number of डुबुकs were made
धडपडली - the sound of a grandmother showering her floor with utensils
inTOXicatingdrink - a bizarre activity consisting of sitting about with glasses of brown strong-smelling-stuff, indulged in by grandfathers, grandmothers and fathers
obviously - an expression of confidence that what you have just said is the absolute truth
stoppit-stuppid-shuttup -  an expression of confidence that what you have just said is the absolute 
openupinthenameofthelaw -  a substitute for a doorbell
आबा is troubling me - the high-pitched call of a grandchild whose grandfather was only ever as old as his youngest grandchild

 

Day 16: A time before your name existed but the idea of you did

Untitled

Apples fell from trees

Long before you noticed.

When you fell, as a child,

Did you think it was me?

 

Day 17: Sibling Similarities

Weekday babies,

Afternoon-born,

Reportedly at the identical time on the clock

Yet, with 2631 days in which to cultivate differences.

But this is about similarities.

1331

Advice that's unsolicited, we don't like that,

Beer, however, I think we both do.

Choosing our own paths, we totally do that,

Dancing, on the other hand, no.

Extra ghee on rotis,
Falling in love,

(Ghee on anything, really, on love as well) and

Hugs, we really dig.

Irked by the BJP's ban on beef,

Jokes, especially dead baby jokes, crack us both up, but

Keeping things light, we're terrible at that.

Last piece of <insert food name here> fights,

Midnight, undercover hushed phone calls to significant others,

Naive about many 'realities of the world'.

Olmost omnivorous,

Passionate, but about opposite things,

Queasy on buses,

Rebellious,

Sleep-lovers,

Tall-type fellows,

Underweight-type too,

Violent tempers,

Witty,

Xeroxed features of some Modi before us,

Yearning for a better relationship with each other, and oh!

Zipping around - quite fastish - on scooters.

 

Day 18: Things you call your lover

Water-babies

I think I was thirteen,

or fifteen,

or nine, 

or an unmemorable age

before them all?

After?

I wanted one of those - 

a man-kiss,

on lips

with some openings of mouths

and visible tongue 

(tongue was important; 

I learned that from James Bond)

And so 

I must have been thirteen,

or fifteen,

or nine,

or an un-wanted-to-remember age

before or after

when I discovered who all 

I could call

my lover(s).

Some, I'll confess

Some, I'll never disclose (or will I?)

But I remember taking 

showers in clothes - 

wet tee shirts made me a Bond-girl - 

Siren, seductress, sex-icon

in the privacy of my bathroom.

A wet dupatta was 

even better:

so many ways for it

to seduce me

in the shower.

The sounds of privacy are

flowing water,

running taps - 

the sound drowned out

the time spent

inspecting my lover

in the mirror.

I must have been twelve,

or thirteen,

or fifteen, 

or nine,

or twenty-eight - 

I don't remember - 

when, exactly, in time

I graduated to human beings

but my most steadfast lover

has always been

my shower.

 

Day 19: What ______ looks to you when ______'s gone

Bird-watcher 

The Kingfisher on the wire never sleeps,

The bee-eater twirls to catch a buzzer,

The heron and cormorant plunge beneath

Trying to snatch the fish from the other,

The grandiose kite swoops o'er the water -

She's spotted a fish she would like to eat -

She's lucky if no other bird's caught her,

Else she will have to find another treat.

Koels call out - from a distance - to their mates,

Lapwings nag spouses as they fly back home,

Pigeons complain hopelessly 'bout their weights,

Their listeners - bored stiff - are the garden gnomes.

The world comes alive when the WiFi's down -

Bright lights of wonderment light up the town.

 

Day 20: Something inspired by Kay Ryan's poem - All Your Horses

All Your Horses

By Kay Ryan

Say when rain

cannot make

you more wet

or a certain

thought can’t

deepen and yet

you think it again:

you have lost

count. A larger

amount is

no longer a

larger amount.

There has been

a collapse; perhaps

in the night.

Like a rupture

in water (which

can’t rupture

of course). All

your horses

broken out with

all your horses.

----------

When looking down 

Into some deep memory

allow ---

Allow your mind to rejoice.

Allow no shackles 

of ice to come between

warm skin and

cool memory.

 

Day 21: The dirtiest analogies you can think of

 Asinine questions

Don't you think

the word 'analogy'

comes close to being

a sodomite's study

of banal poetry?

Day 22: Accidents

Not quite, but still, something like love

It was a complete accident until
i looked at You with intent -
who taught You to be
a gazelle in the grass? -
never once had it crossed my mind
until i accidentally imagined my fingers
in Your hair.
It wasn't intentional when i accepted
the drink You poured me
with music-calloused hands,
under a moonrise so blue
it had to be enjoyed in silence.
i sensed that it was a slip
when You took your fingers
off the perspiring beer
and ran them down my bare back -
my rarely bare back in a little dress
i just accidentally put on to work You up.
It must have been a game of destiny
when You found a coin in bed
and rolled it down -
from my bare shoulder
to my naked knee
and it was certainly an accident
for Your lips to find my ankles.
You accidentally drove down
from a city, far away
to just, maybe hang out,
perhaps, get a drink,
possibly, find a kiss
at the edge of my lips,
under rain-trees
in the middle of a tungsten-lit street.
And i, accidentally, i swear to You,
broke your heart
because I thought
we were just
a very long accident
like the breeze
eternally rushing
off the beating wings
of the original butterfly

 

Day 23: This _____ got me feeling so ______/ So pardon me if I'm ______

It's two golden cans later,

It's time to roll the dice

Will you get to twirl me?

Or will I turn to ice?

How long before you kiss me?

How long before I melt?

How long before you let me bite

That delicious scent I've smelt?

Your delicious secret lures me,

Your dark hue makes me thirst,

And if we let me continue

my poems will be the worst.

So pardon me if I slobber

And pardon me if I cry,

This beer got me feelin' so light

So pardon me if I fly.