We sit there
in our corners of a bar
our eyes never meet,
you there with your
mild mouth and your
signature breath so rare
and your infinite stare
chills to the bone.

We sip scalding tea
etched in time like a
stitch that saved none,
you by yourself
me by myself
not by ourselves
and slowly we burn
out before Saturn
returns to take its rightful
place under the sun.

Think you can write?
Wake up, smell the tea,
You’re just a mardy
*** from Palookaville
so am I
who are we kidding?
Delhi has no lights
or black sparrows
but then again
neither does Goa.

The day will come,
or maybe not,
one day is just
another day, let’s
sleep in and
smoke tea.

Fluff and puff,
water plugs,
power plants,
paper over eyesores,
paint it matte,
pink as salmon,
pack the homeless
into the Bird's Nest,
ghettoise Moses,
bleed the Amazon
down to size,
moor the battleships
to Yamuna Bank,
let white elephants
run riot on warm Black ice
over those who won't
play ball in our
electric garden
free your head
from the rails
for what?
roti kapda makaan
or BSP ki maya?
be buried or a sport
let laal battis through
ab bus, stop
blaming it on Rio
don't you know
how India shone
in October 2010,
or that Russians love
their children too?
So what if they don't
believe in modern love?
Potemkin villages are
built brick by brick
by BRICS,
Red, Yellow, Orange
kilned to Black.