Virginia
I am blocked. Dysfunctional as the
unfinished wail. I am sad for lost things,
cities misplaced like aborted children,
dead people, women I have loved
and women I have never known
but loved all the same
like one loves a dream
I yearn for a jolt, for the universe
to hurl inwards suddenly. I yearn for
glassy seas and the infinite scope of
the eyes that watch. I yearn for the
blur and hurry of things said loudly,
clothes left in a rubbishy heap
at the foot of the bed
Instead, my life is bound neatly
at the edges. Nothing spills. Trussed
as a turkey dinner, it glistens dully
like the dead, its truths in order like
picket fences, its lies proportionate
and still, its loves entirely calm
At night, when the trees rustle outside
like so many nodding aunts, I want to cast off
the pale nightgown, lean far out and smash
the flowers for their red smell, break things,
wake the house with lights and shouts
and walk the Atlantic in my bare feet
Water will be my undoing.
Medusa
Did you look in the mirror one day and
find that you had grown used to it? The hair -
gleaming, little coils, each one tensile
as rope; the tongue quick and sharp as sunlight;
eyes vast in that thin face, deeper than earth.
Had you almost forgotten what you looked
like once, in an earlier time, when you were
still untouched by love, still free as a
tidal wave, brazen and full of joy like
that girl walking calmly to meet the sea?
Or did you like too much the blood that burns
through your veins now, magical and potent,
the heady insanity of being
utterly and totally unloved?
Do you see them in dreams - your stone eulogies?
Perhaps, on rainsoaked nights you also
stare at passing cars and wait for the churn
to subside; the dreadful, ancient passion
to return to slumber; fumbling in the
dark, curse softly. Perhaps, you even weep.
Nithari
Land where no children play
where the water seeps and moves
quietly, like sin in dark corners
of vacant classrooms after school,
where air malingers, pregnant
with unspeakable things.
No swings climb here. Early sunsets
shut to evenings, brackish with
nightmare salt. Street corners turn
cannibal, hungry with the suck
of something monstrous.
****
He shits among the swine
There is dreadful comfort in
symbiosis, and as they grumble
and grapple in the mud, he spits.
He searches for a face among the ruins
He searches for it among the ashes
All burns at break of day
In the end, there is nothing there.
****
Against the high fence, her body
is flat as an ancient totem, limbs
misshapen in fury, lips a blur of tears.
A howl of why, a wail of how,
bursts and splatters red
the careful white paint.
No answer comes
She will wait
She has time now.
****
Land of bloodied streams
and substanceless ghosts,
of cleansing rites, ancient
horrors and sacrifices
to a demon God
Nithari,
You stole their dreams.
February
There were no poems in February
A dry, cracked month, stretched across
its requisite twenty eight days, like a crocodile in the sun.
Some nights, words, like love, climb in through
strange places - dusty attics, disused store rooms,
lonely bedrooms and with a sense of relief,
like being reborn, torn out of the void
headfirst, foetal, Luciferish
But in February, when I marked my
twenty ninth and mourned an youth almost gone,
a life not enough lived, no words came
though I waited often
alone, by lamplight, or in bed
with eyes half shut and quivering like moth wings,
hoping that vindication would come before dawn.
Ganges
Ganges.
I’m buried deep within you.
Your waters wash over me
constantly.
Strangely enough,
They keep me warm.
I sank when I was three
Nobody noticed.
Today,
I sing.
And they think it’s the river.
Older
A green-burn howl works its way into the road
and slips along the quiet, night pavement
under the cassia, slithers
like an asp at a queen's breast
exciting her last megalomaniac gasp
My father's corpse was dragged unwilling
in an ambulance across these streets,
dry as a winter sheath or autumn leaves
when they crackle dull brown underfoot
and leave a stale smell
The walls of his house, formerly sparkling
turned grey-pink over the years,
the blood slowly seeping into each crack,
whispering in the wrinkled crannies,
starting up at dusk to sigh sometimes
City of hiss and shout, resigned fatigue
and quiet headaches,
I wish I could leave.
Vermillion
is the colour
of devotion.
Cover your head
This thin translucence
will protect you
Laugh softly,
and softly walk
like gentle rain
Pull a smile across
the thin lines
of your face
Wear modest pastels
Never scream,
my grandmother said
mother, barely twelve
with scuffed knees
and trees to climb still
laughed and jounced out
to adopt stray dogs
Forty years gone
Time sprints like
running water
or quicksilver
and disperses what it must.
But some things remain.
Don't wear shorts, look down
slouch so your breasts
don't really show
tie your hair back
keep the boys calm
cross your legs -
Be cheerful always
please don't scream
I with scuffed knees at twelve,
dungarees at eighteen
lovers lost, reclaimed, discarded
like driftwood
by twenty one
could never listen
with exactitude
I wear red
My eyes are dark
Sometimes, I scream
I could have a baby
enjoy its fat, spongy happiness
its open mouth like a kissing gorami
its curls like soft silk swirls
eyes, bright and round
I could chase it on all fours, a horse, supergirl
let toothlike gums bite down on my fingers
let tiny fingers encircle my life
softly and firmly
I could have a baby
but the moist hurling minute may
suck the fire dry, dull the eyes
soften the bite in my smile
replace the carefully cultivated
taste for success, stress and pleasure
with vacuity and love.