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