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.