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
