a love poem

i’d slip out for quiet walks on the terrace

when you thought i was in bed asleep

and then much later with the dogs

at night i walked the streets 

while you slept for it kept  

bothering me

that that was not where i belonged

and so i longed to be somewhere somewhere else

don’t ask me where for i don’t know yet

you remember the time we argued about careers

your monologue that left me in tears

and i said i’d be happy

breaking stones by the roadside

i was young then and rather naïve

and i think i’ve changed my mind

since. i wouldn’t want anymore to break

them, just balance them in cairns

by the sides of the many roads that i take

and on the mountains, by the passes that i pass

i wish you could see it but alas

we’re very different people

i want you however to know

that i see your point of view

i understand your insecurities

and i don’t hold them against you

but i can’t help but plan my escape

while you think i’m hard at work

to the shadowy world you know nothing of

where crazy dreams and passions lurk

i know you will not understand

why i must do what i do in my turn

and it is beyond me it to describe

so please just sit there and watch be burn

but i want you to know that this isn’t a diatribe

it’s a love poem

the most cynical old man i ever met

so where you come from you must’ve preserved the forest pretty well

said the old man i’d come to see and i couldn’t tell

if he was being sarcastic. must be, no, before you’ve trudged

all the way here to ask us to leave ours untouched

and everyone now turns to me. no, i say, but then we were fools

and i’m afraid he can tell from the ease, the slick dishonesty of a line often used

we didn’t know any better and so we floundered away our wealth

mindlessly. and now surrounded by concrete structures we repent

but the world’s one big home and we need the forests intact

for the generations to come we need this conservation pact

ah, so you made money from your forests and now drive fancy cars

on metalled roads and yet intact you need these forests of ours

our women and children  trudge to town on the mud roads

that flow like streams and i’m a thief if grazing my cow goes

into the forest across this stupid official fence

please explain to me how that makes any sense

and while we must now pay for wood to burn to keep us warm

i’ve heard you make money just making phone calls

forgive me but i’m afraid it is a little hard for us to see

the ecological services of an uncommon tree

how does one explain your urgent need to conserve it

to someone who needs money to pay the doctor’s fee

of course we see the streams going dirty and the soil going bad

and seeing the place you’ve grown up in being destroyed is always sad

it’s hard to see my son go find a job in town and now he’s even

paying for my daughter to go to a polytechnic for women

look at what a lovely place this still is peaceful lush severe

and yet all we ever hope for is to get away from here

so just go home and let us be i’m not asking you to feel guilty

about drinking milk out of plastic packets or all the utilities

that you take for granted and all the waste that you generate

there’s no point pointing fingers who are we to rebate

the world’s full of idiots and yet we have our lives to live

i used to care a lot and it’s not like i don’t anymore give

a damn. i too would like the trees to stand and not be taken away as logs

fine, stop us, but who’ll stop the loggers when the country’s going to the dogs

so my children have opted out. i too wish i could just go

buy meat in the market but i seldom have that kind of dough

i know you wish we weren’t here at all and we often wish the same for you

but your smoke-filled cities are the damned hell we’re all doomed to turn into

and of course we understand that it’s not long before the forests will all be gone

and we too see the rains going sparse and the summers getting hotter

so go back now, and fantasize about the world being one big home

as you masturbate and flush it away with a day’s worth of water

because life is so perfect

there are these moments too

perfect to be true

like they’re straight out of a movie, something

actors in a well thought out shot would do

leaning over me, a knee

on the soft bed

your hair a cascade

you wake me with a kiss to say goodbye

you’re off to work and will be back by five

your pants are creased and the white shirt’s crisp

a thin belt with a flat matt buckle sits low on your hips

your cheeks are smooth and your finger tips

cold as stone

you smell so good in a heavenly mix

of the shampoo the moisturizer

and the expensive cologne

chin high and a smile on your lips

you pick up your bag and head for the door

your heels clicking on the wooden floorboards

and before you’re gone from view

i’m drifting back to sleep

curled up in the sheets

that still smell of you

i wake up later and the room’s full of light

the day’s well on its way and i hear the bright

muted late-morning sounds from the street outside

and i wonder how long i can take it

for even the coffee and the cigarette

aren’t enough to root the moment

in reality

but then i open the dustbin to throw the used ear buds

and i’m overwhelmed by the nauseatingly mingled smells

of used sanitary napkins and cigarette butts

and i breathe a sigh of relief

for i know poetry

will happen. the cloying spell insipid

is broken. there are these times like frozen frames

when you get all idle and complacent

and anything goes. but for the periods of transit

you’d be dead. life is rarely perfect, and luckily

when it gets close, living ruins it

give it a proper death

half-hearted heys and unsaid goodbyes

is that how love eventually dies?

oh come, we must give it a better demise

just turn around and walk away

and never look into my eyes

again

they gave us their insecurities

a village or a town i know not

but a middle class house i think

on a narrow-walled blind street

its red bricks with age gone pink

bricks steeped in outdated ideals

that they actually think are older

thick walls to keep the heat out

all they do is make the hearts go colder

living that way till it makes no sense

but there they must live and hence

this inadvertent inheritance

their morbid defence of dense thick walls

creates this immense miasmic void

that nurtures their insecurities

until they talk of pride and purity

and the dangers of impurities

work for money work hard and never beyond venture

and raise a family that is similarly indentured

shackled and burdened you must fit the cast the muffling mask

but she refused to blend in to give in to this farce

where love is scarce and happiness doesn’t last

where joy is but dried polished muck

smiles that come from how you measure up

smiles that are there just because you smile

back. you must treat them like

the insolent child who’ll use language foul

just to see a reaction see if the grownups scowl

she just told them, no, it’s not funny

and i’m not amused

happiness weighed down by gold

easily sold out to the carpet that we’re all woven into

the intricate web of your social groups and their traditions of old

the cross-hatching weave of relatives who haven’t got a clue

about what it is that one must do, but she knew

so she sat still, biding her time, rusting, until

being rubbed the wrong way sharpened her

and then she cut her way through

you served your time

so why should she?

why should she be held prisoner by your insecurities?

life just happens to be bigger and you happen not to see it, you see?

with your petty ideas and hard-cast lines which you expect to be

followed and walked upon to eternity

these lines that you read that you believe should be tread

that you think are eternal are not as old as you think

you assumed they’re set in stone because you were born into it

that’s your tragedy

not hers

she’ll get by if she’s any good at what she does

that’s the confidence you were supposed to instill in her

but instead you tried to bind her in your own fears

about stability and money and assured careers

anxieties of the future and all the other silly mess

that’s fermenting in your suffocating head

wrapped up tight in your own warped morality

her beauty crushed by the obscene cruelty

of your hard-headed narrow-mindedness

the red bricks pink are but from yesterday

and life is so much longer so why do you lay

so much emphasis on the security of your walls

these gilded cages these imprisoning halls

that you think  have lasted ages but are recent constructs

that have already outlived their petty utility

and it’s a pity that you don’t see it

do you see?

that there need not be an inventory

of things to achieve and things to do

what you perceive is not really true

flowering trees in the blistering heat

do all you can, try and beat

her now

she’s suddenly invincible in this moment somehow

coz the threads held taut got too tight

and she cut her way through and is now free

the sun still beats down

but she sits in the shade of flowering trees

and whiles away her time writing poetry

about a middle class home in a village or a town

or a long-forgotten cobbled city street

how does my smile sound?

my poems seem so flat

since i saw you

pricking your words into

the paper in patterned dots

i wish i too could tattoo

my pain into it

the way you

punch in your thoughts

i hesitate to go up

to you and talk

coz i’m afraid i can’t

fool you with  my smile

and you’ll see me

for who i really am

and all my pretenses

will be futile

you sit there so

composed so serene

and when i start talking

your eyes

don’t give you away

and so i turn

to your lips to see

what you think of me

i wish i could do

an etching of you

or a woodcut maybe

and taking your hand

show you the curls

of your hair or the lines

of your nose or of

your profile as you stand

and while i wonder

if you wonder

what the person you’re

talking to looks like

you ask me about

the tree outside

because you heard

the rustling leaves

offering to the goddess: muthati

it looks unbelievably picturesque from afar 

but something’s bothering you

a dip in the river on a hot afternoon like this 
would be bliss but you’ve been around a bit 

and it all seems too good to be true

something’s gotta give you think 
strolling past the last empty eateries

with their stacked chicken coops having skirted

the few drunkards sitting around on the rickety wooden benches

but it’s a weekday and the lone street in the dead-end-bus-route town is deserted

it’s only on the rocky bank that your jaw slowly clenches

and then it hits you in the face as you find your feet wading slow

through chicken feathers that litter the ground like raggedy snow

or like the muddied fibers of the silk-cotton seeds

there are bones too discoloured big and small and a goat jaw bleached

plastic bags amongst the weeds 
on the left and plastic bags half-submerged on the right

on the path amongst the rocks wherever one looks

plastic bags plastic bags plastic bags black and white

and tattered faded underwears recognizable at the sight

of their labeled elastic bands and

hair clips broken slippers wax matches

oil ginger-garlic paste red chilly powder packets

lie scattered amongst the giant mortar-and-pestles carved out of stone

just naked ugly decadence of all pretense shorn

and you walk on

because there’s someone taking a dump

with his heels touching the water and

his pants down around the shins

a little group of fish swims

away from empty glass bottles hemmed in by fallen leaves and sticks

there are others strewn around amongst the rocks amrut’s silver cup supreme

khoday’s royal stag original choice old matured triple-x rum hercules

and then as you go reeling along the bank you see

framed pictures of the gods at the base of a big arjuna tree

and it just goes from being stupid ugly to fucked up obscene

that night i dreamt i was tied naked to a bare metal bed with plastic cords smooth like catheters

and there was a hyaena convulsing its back bristling as it regurgitated before the framed pictures

i pulled and pulled until the cords cut into my wrists and scraped the skin right off my ankles

bees swarm at the water’s edge and a plastic cup

makes its way downstream tumbling over the rocks

and you realize your face’s screwed up in a grimace but it’s probably just the sun

and the lapwings go berserk with did you do it did you do it?

then add another plaintive syllable

why

why did you do it?

and fly away before you can reply

a pond heron yet sits preening and the cormorants swim and dive

wagtails bounce from bank to stinking bank dreary

littered with offerings to the river

the goddess kaveri

and you’re overcome by a repulsion

that begins from the soles of your feet

and makes your scalp creep

leaving your insides churning

like you’re in the stream and something brushes past

you feel the slime against you thigh

and before you know what it is

there are ashen logs floating by

and nothing you’ve ever seen or read or heard or learnt

has prepared you for the realization

that it was a corpse

half-burnt

everyone changes

you’ve changed

she said

ya

i know

there was a time i cried

when the dog in our street died

such things don’t affect me

anymore

no

i meant

in the weeks

since we’ve met

oh

hemingway's butterfly

guess i’m a poet now

if never was i one before

with poems as my masters

for i cannot write anymore

words too are like lovers sly

they lure you in and then evade you

enslave you and then break you

seduce you and then reduce you to

                        to a mendicant mindlessly wandering

and now all i can do is agonize

over the poems in your words

that you don’t even notice

won’t care to record

and i’m itching to write

them down, but  they’re not mine

they’re yours

and i’d like to believe

that i’m just a poet

not yet a thief

and you

you’re a photographer

since the shifting light leaves you in raptures

surrounded by images you cannot capture

agonizing over moments lost

and yet mindless

of your captions and descriptions –

poems carelessly tossed

and while i cringe

at how they’ll be gone

they have no power over you – quite none

so they stand and stare

don’t write of glossy waxed mannequins

write of sweaty armpits and pubic hair

even when the setting is a bourgeois drawing room

show me the greasy corners behind the rickety chairs

or the dirty edges where the faded wallpaper meets the floor

i want none of these sunny days and maidens fair

give me bad weather the wet rain and the freezing sleet

and write of the rats in the clogged streets with flair

show me the naked bodies as they are

take away their trappings layer by layer

and that done don’t show me their smooth derrieres

turn to me their hairy cunts of you dare

when of the trappings shorn

what gender what age

what religion what faith

what community who’s to say

labels are for bottles anyway

what fame what wealth

what looks what health

just as it came

it’ll all go away

your decisions are all

half chance anyway

so what do you live for

what can you say

who are you inside

when the masks

fall away?

you’re beautiful

you’re wearing the bra too low

squeezing your breasts against your ribs flat

but when you hold your arms across your chest

your kurta though large i’m afraid sticks to your back

and in a series of rolling dunes and pinched off troughs

it gives you away

and i wish i could just go up to you and say

relax it’s cool just revel in your voluptuous folds

or maybe tell you how sick i am of these stupid clothes

that you have such lovely skin and such sexy eyes

or that the purple stole

goes really well with your smile

and your orange keds are a riot and

i’m mesmerized by your hair unruly

or just that you’re truly

beautiful