spring, did you say?

it's an hour until lunch. three quarters of an hour actually

but then it's all the same when you're hungry

it's hot outside

hot even though it’s breezy

the clouds will appear by afternoon

like they do everyday going slightly grey

as the day progresses and then disappear

during the night without a trace

as a bright new day blazes you awake

most trees have shed their leaves and the dry

dusty ground is littered with these

but the peepal is sprouting fresh green ones already

the hotter it gets, the softer, more transparently fragile

the leaves that the wretch sprouts, dad would say. or was it mum?

i get confused

the shadows of the dried leaves still on the trees flutter listlessly
and the bougainvillea stalks nod in the breeze

even the sunlight looks dusty on the walls

though the copper-pod is still green

and the tabebuia is in flower

leafless, pink

there are newspaper reports of tubewells
running dry and water problems

close by, i think

it's half an hour until lunch. five minutes more than half an hour actually

but then it's all the same when you're hungry. what's the similarity

between hunger pangs and outbursts of poetry?

they come in bouts

it's half an hour until lunch. exactly

and i'm too distracted

to write

four ends of limerence

1.

after a hard day’s riding my t-shirt smells of sweat and caked mud dried

it was fresh and clean when you wore it before we eventually slept last night

it seems so long ago so far away and i wonder what you’ll do with the one i left behind

would you wear it sometime to remember me or would you forget that it was mine

maybe you’ll wrap it up in a plastic bag and put it at the back of the shoe closet

a keepsake for the times spent a reminder of this summer when we met

2.

the paver blocks fly up to meet the sharp lines of falling rain

as solitude walks drenched hunched over head down eyes burning with pain

dragging longing by the hair leaving a smear of blood to be washed into the puddles

while ryuk the shinigami watches amused from the rooftops  munching on a blood-red apple

and i walk away wicked smile and crazy hair having scribbled longing in my deathnote

because i cannot stand it when upon someone i begin to dote

3.

you come back disillusioned disaffected

the careless look of the romantic young traveller perfected

toasted brown from a sun too hot dirty feet and hair that smell of smoke and dust and sweat

you return with more questions than answers and vague tales of things you did and people you met 

but it’s impossible to not see the gaping hole instead of the self-generated self-worth you sought

but i figured something while you were away. the plug you seek is something i’m not

4.
someday the bed’ll be too narrow for the two of us

your hair in my face might bother me and you won’t make such a fuss

over the pain in my intercostals. actually the pain too will be gone before long

someday it’ll be just too irksome to steal into your room and leave before dawn

not everything i say will make you laugh or even make you smile

and kisses won’t suffice when we run out of vodka at night

tempter

with a smile and a wave of your hand

all their moral diktats you rescind

with a torso taut and sinewy

your shirt flapping in the wind

with nimble feet and a staff stout

you shower me with tamarind

with a song seductively beguiling

to the music that your oars make

with stout arms and shoulders rippling

like the cool water in your wake

with gleaming body and strokes steady

you fetch me the lily from the lake

why show me bright open skies

when you know i can never fly

why talk of another way of life

when all i’ll do is woefully sigh

why tempt me with dreams of faraway places

when it’s here that i’m destined to die

slipping through the cracks

you have to slip through the cracks to see

the morbid terror that is an incoherent reality

when things make less and less sense

and you can’t trust your own memory

pray, what gives me away?

a sunny afternoon warm

you lie in the crook of my arm

brown curls all over my face

these lazy summer days

with no one around

they seem to make you bolder

your head on my shoulder

staring in to my eyes

your inadvertent lies

couched in your coquetry

are good for the poetry

and so i let you flirt

coz though i know it’ll hurt

the pain won’t linger

playfully biting my fingers

licking my ears

finding again my lips

don’t spoil me like this

when you don’t even love me

you don’t even love me

you don’t

but i relish your fervent lies

and lie back with half-shut eyes

it’s nice to give in sometimes, and well

the sun is nice and warm and you smell

of mud dry and dusty

just before the rain

and oh lovely pain

you come with such bliss

but i realize too that maybe

i’m getting too old for this

all this mindless torment

the heartache you foment

and then imagine for a moment

if any of this you actually meant

and i think, maybe

it’s time i got a cat instead

since cats are forever indifferent

 

no, i didn’t see you

you step out for a smoke onto the balcony

the night is cool edging towards chilly

the smoke rises languidly uncoiling

a couple walk back after a day of toiling

their shadows shrink and stretch out again

clinging to them like morbid stains

as they pass under the streetlights desolate

from his shoulder dangles a muddy spade 

while she carries a bundle at her waist 

and the empty tiffin box from which they ate

the dogs bark to the faraway echo of a staff on the tar

crickets chirp up a backdrop for the screeching car

bats flutter in the rustling coconut leaves

but i hear nothing, tonight i’m deaf to these

for i sit turned away from the window

tired eyes fixed the spoon moving slow

deaf to the world for i’m weighed down

by too large black heavy much and so the only sound

i hear above the radio is me munching my food

eating out of boxes alone at the table

and the radio plays the daily staple

soon you’ll go back in to your tv or a friend

and our little tryst that i didn’t even know of will end

the only consolation is that maybe before you’re gone

you’ll watch me eat my dinner, out of boxes, alone

found scribbled on a napkin at the restaurant

the t-shirt accentuates your narrow waist

and goes really well with the muffler that you wear

your earrings dangling shimmer as you turn your head

and the light does wonders to your hair

your skin is flawless your eyes bright

your slender neck sensuous besides

the shadows at your collar bones

are deep as the night outside

and yet i don’t bother to cover my mouth

as i yawn aloud stretching in my chair

coz though you’re sitting facing me

all i see now is someone's hair

two empty tables between us

and now this strange ugly head

anyway, i came to eat alone at a restaurant

so i guess i’ll just stare at someone else instead