Some admiration, please
something akin to a pill or
a sudden welcome warmth
I want to be put to sleep

a sleep of no tremors or waking
but not death, not quite
like satisfaction or tea, some instilling
of the sea in me
I thought I had quite grasped
a thread or two
but I am paper now
I have no word to write
no light to write in
I have no thought, and I cannot think

some affection would do
some small touch
some bowl to melt into
some flame as well

I want the night to stay
I want to sleep it away
Poetry is for nothing now
I write to satiate
to not weep, or to not fiddle
to remember, or to clear up
to love poetry
or to gather myself up

But the bed is warm and still a pond
and I wish to weep
I wish words were there to stay
I wish they could pat or touch
stoke my hair with an inhuman presence
some song would do
some voice/whisper/word
some sigh or solidity, some affirmation
I am so lonely
I will eat myself up

Sweet hands, half-concealed
in bright red sleeves
you are so cute when you weep
orange-cheeked and blue
with anger that comes from small lungs
and shakes the chest
Stubborn moth, I like to stub
you, just to see you move
you move like water
when it boils, when it breaks
You are gentle beauty
in thin blue arms, sniffing with the clock
and trying to stop, oh
always trying to stop. You weep like Icarus--
a gleaming smudge in the sky
I want to break you over and over

minaret, matte in haze
an illusion of detail
you, Impressionism
your bricks clasp each other
intricately, intimately
without hesitation or sense

lips of red and suave craft
tilt:
pyre suddenly

I step back

I can fathom you
from here only

Silly old papa with a head of stone
A heart of stone, as he wont say
A heart petty, poor and grotesque
Table unturned - noise and show
A jagged black stone - I pick you up

Debris and Zeus - I pick you up!
I throw you to the streets
There you kiss, you kiss - you foul sag
Of a naive wish, you bland-brown day
Out, please, to your beloved grey

You! Pitiful - huge - huge
Huge with arms of steel
Brazen love, burnt scent, naked sculpture
Chipped and art, you are the museum
Of yell and watch and monotony
The crease I will never paint
Gesture that will tear the paper
You disgust my pencil. You hold;
Crumbling; crumpled a poem
Cold, sold - sold. Sold, Papa! Sold!

Alabaster hands
I paint like I know you
but I am afraid
I paint like I know
the hours of holy songs he sung
when chip by chip
he broke his David
out of stone

but I mumble with a brush
polluted a tomb
with thievery and doubt
if I return to you
I will do so stollen
rolled up in bay and --
my Florence! I couldn't see you
I was lost

I could not be him
he unleashed, I hold
and now you wear his hands
like a beloved scar
and then you haunt my sleep
with your eyes of old

I am sessile, sterile - I doubt.
I cannot speak.
stone carved inadequate, for
I do not know hands
the venules and the etchings.
I could not learn

fiddling like a cricket
in the arms of leaf
I see him leap through ages
to come and observe
I am an artefact flaw
and him the sound perfectionist
he inspects fingers
as they stumble in paint
ever-looming, giant, bearded
with a broken nose

you, Florence! He steals
movement, instill it, gifts it
you wear it, then you watch me
with museum eyes
Good love,
I am no David
do not ask that of me, I may weep
stone in my hand
I sling stutter over my shoulder
and watch the forever tyrant grow

1.
Hibiscus rue.
citrus.
cataclysm.
but so gentle rue.

2.
A cappuccino night
eavesdrops,
the lamp sleeps slouching
its jaw slack,
my clock's monotonous cadence
is loyal as always

4.
A quaver
from a cadaver
that is what muttering trucks
do to the night

It is like startled birds:
they never sit back just right

5.
Insomniac mosquitos
have a *******, I think

The night sky
moves like a swarm

I watch it like a friendless owl
but I am happy

3.
Picture:
smog pilfers
away some stars;
some cars
my words

Silence:
like a pinch, a piercer,
a piercing

Little winter:
a pistachio
salty, sweetly
confined a bead
I crack the door open
I eat it up

Clock:
a pistil
in it
time incubates

This lamplight
is like a pineapple
I want to write, write, write

Privet! You are that
puerile, puffy
no longer the outline
that they had cut of you

Bold like a spider
smaller than the white spot
on my nail
I slam the book shut
you are faster
you skitter about on the table
mocking as if
but I like to play too

Morrow, morrow, city of dreams
Turpentine, slowly sifting
Invades here in sashes of silk
Sounds through bone, bone
Fluid, lures the brain:
It follows coy, curious
Shuffling its thoughts, like one
With fingers, like you
with seasons— blue, and then bold—

The crows shift on the wall
Linseed a moment, and then acetone
I can only overhang and see
The stretches of the city
Forever overspill, overkill— overt
And covert— sounding through
Its buz-busses and snorts; crickets,
Cats, night, white, night
An ox-y-mo-ron, you
Are an orchestra, a tryst

Sweet mo-no-to-ny, a
Platform in a plaza
A plaque on a platform in a plaza
I ransack the dictionary in search of you
The road to lead to the relic of you—
Feed the retrospect’s imagery away
Then the crows look at me
Like I killed their maa
Lit up a June solstice in the beautiful light
Pollution and sound pollution, you
Are homecoming, I say
I say, nothing blinds like home, I say
And I cough the air out like a slang
Your city is ****, a skullduggery
To last the brazen evening
And sag by the night, you are slant
Static, ruthless to the stone come for moss
A slap on the face
Of my sentimentality
How I love to draw you: this way,
This, however I like, since you
Are sightless like a TV, hive of bee
You jig like rain, like sun, woe to me
Like sen-su-a-lity
A satin city, itty bitty pretty
Silly, let me study!

Roused in fanfare, these facets
are full of scantiness,
of cold-***** futility, of bitter thanks

The light turns, morphs them
now they are faces, now limbs
now rancid rag houses again

Crooked sun gurgles, spits a fraud spring
and the office men observe their machines
straight-backed like chairs, they droop
rampant on scarped brown desks,
desks with picked-nail edges, so brown
no one sees them, so solid one forgets to

The sky runs her threads again
accumulating: stagnant noon, sitting
spread-legged, with wax-paper eyes
it watches, watches the aging

Slowly, everyone leaves
the formal men, their leisurely burlap work
lights blink as if to bulwark tears, and
the foul remnants of day's charred pleasure
begin to settle on skin.
the wrists thin, some nails cave in
some lichens on stone-nose

Things that elude cuddle elastic back
into the things they elude
and, spent, the sky breaks at last the thread
to another demure death:
glitchy and green, riddled
in its own secrecies,
dry-lipped as a crone

The light turns again
and this time, it is perfect:
just past the critical angle,
where bustle-bundles of beam
flee unfettered
and leave unlit the grateful subject
reticent, stale
bold in a boastless brood

only a singular fissure
of pretend slight
to mourn aloud in the spectacle of black

Did you weep too?
when we put down our cups of hot tea and joy
they seemed to speak to the wavering air
some reticent secrets of themselves or us
I thought: death is like my father now
it names me, not after, for itself
and I smell the petalled incense of its security
security…
Security. Security.
I thought: we are written
you pull right, and I pull to left
and we go stumbling forward to papa
I thought: I am a cold bottle put in the day
I wipe my tears, and I smile at the beautiful sun
and then again, I wipe my tears, and I smile at the beautiful sun
Did you whimper?
sweetly like a child
I could have loved you if I wasn’t afraid
You say: I am always afraid
You say: it is my excuse for everything
You act so brave, you think I do not think
I have seen you in the velvet dark
crystalline eyed and thin,
not yet the woman that becomes my sin
You are just like me

I thought the eyes would swell and mama would know
so, I stopped and quietened
breathing like a valley, sniffing like lizards
We heard the city sing by
I thought: it is like a train
its tail hooked to the nose, it moves in a circle
and we are in it
Say, do you recall at all?
not more a nigh to pass, but the sentimentality fades,
and we ought to go

Say, stay?
Say, stay for a dance
However pained– a waltz of held-hand and shoe
I will try not to tremble
like that acrid tongue of forever time
Now your forehead gleams with the smear of gloom
and we are wont to let it dry
wont then, to become canvases
wont then, to hide them away, in slots of unlit places
(like ******* or... palm-on-palm or... in between bookshelves or lip)
with so many others
Remember that one? Then that, then that, then that
when we wore our shameless dresses of terror and shame
and we cursed the holy heavens of youth,
when we fought, when we fought, when ran like laughter
There was so much grief
I thought: it will eat us
I thought: I will never escape this
this name that papa wrote
on the paper of my breath
we will always be here, babes, fumbling in shawls
and pleasing the house
plaint and faint and so much like fear

Did you weep too?
I was astray in the street, I couldn’t quite see
I could’ve kissed you like the girls on TV
but mama was everywhere, and she was dressed in papa’s shadow
She said
She said—
She needn’t say anything at all

Say, did you weep at all?
I said I was afraid,
I said then so much of it, I forgot of you
Say, I don’t think you did.

You are an idol of stone
You do not move, you stand at the doorway and watch
You do not talk
You stand at the doorway and watch
When you thunder downstairs to your mistress
Your wife sits blue-eyed on the bed
That is old and ugly, its wood full
Of red insects that bite, but you
Will not let her sell it
For you think it is just fine

When you drive away with your mistress
There is laughter in the house
There is a board-game
Of fickle fate and try
That your wife and your children toss dices upon
And there is so much chatter and so much sound
All red things crawl back
Into the deep deep dens of the bed
That your wife got from her own house
And that you will not let her sell
For you think it is just fine

When you laugh, it is like storm
Sounding through the fingers of the city
And you make so much noise, it startles the sky
It makes the fat dead TV wince at its past
It makes the gruff old drawers never want to move again
And you are always here
Such loving god:
We cut the stone from which you came
Into pieces, pieces, we carved so many of you
Now you are in every doorway
And you do not move

When you return from your mistress
You are happy
You put the new TV on, loud and the news
Of the city flood the house
You are a news yourself
You cough like a steel glass falling in the silence of the night
When everything is sleeping, you cough like its bouncing
That goes on and on, and like its spinning stop
You cough and you chew on the furniture wood
And you make so much noise

She cannot sleep

Well, after, you are still; grey-eyed and corpse
And the insects come; and they do not bite stone

I am made of infatuation, shame and forever gloom
You could not fall
This is not the chessboard of your dreams
No pawn makes—
No bishop makes
The queen takes, is taken an equal
This is not an aisle of rebirth
Or some sombre remembrance
It halts, it halts
The numbers lessen
I did not abandon, I am still here
Yet, a halt lingers
Like death stuck on the precipice of throat
A life of a single lifetime of a thought
I am energy, a little restless
But restless so out of the nature of self
Like the eye of a rook
On the king through a rook

A stupor unblinking
Like a sharpening of a dream
The knight-slide like an Arabian sword
The king scuttles
Rook takes rook, king takes rook

I fancied myself a manly dream
But it doesn’t work like that, does it—
The game writes, and children play
Now I wait the shameful minutes away
(And I watch you hands, so patient, simple
Say, are you dead or pleased?)
And I watch your hands
I should’ve looked up when I had the chance
Now the brooding leaves
And my eye hardens
Father, you have won
With a dream so well, you played just right
I should have not worshipped the pawns like that

Fear is a fire that eats the soul
Muffles the brain in a cold body’s triumph
Toss the world from hand to hand
Say, praise the petty warrior heart

Why do I do this? This mumbling
How many Discord VCs to lurk through?
Silence becomes; nobody hears the girl talk
Yet she is good with word, think one once did say

Bold with brushstrokes I dream to make
Yet never the warrior I’d one day paint
As mice we scuttle, say, as a mouse I do
She’s so shy, is said, and I seethe - I stutter

Words are we, and the absence as well
Bumbling thunder that tricks a tongue
Fear is a fire that eats the soul
With its carnal hands, it is so so sweet

I yield to mumble, the scuttle of old
This is not the pretty stumble of youth
World bloomed a bud, bright-eyed and blue
Called to me, it calls me still

Called to me, they all do still
Curse the Icarus eyes of song
We couldn’t look through, we couldn’t do

Gold did lure, it glittered too
Stroked the wings - I couldn’t do
                                        Lord, I couldn’t do

I was happy once - when sadness loomed
Over gangly shoulders and looked
With its bare black eyes upon the world
Upon which I looked, I laughed pale-toothed
And gaunt, and startled its wings that clothed
My pretty green arms and made me lean
into the silly embrace

Sweet, ghastly vehicles churned
Before childish eyes, my childish eyes, and
All night long I watched the city chase its tail
Do you understand? There is a gloom
To trap the soul. The laughter but boiled
Oozed out like ants from a bottle of sweet -
Canvas-skinned, like torn milk it was, and
I chased it like a babe before a bee,
Then like a babe I feared its pretty pinpricks
There is a beast in fear that touches
The young

The gape of a cold cold crown that makes
Even the crescent ugly - of rains run stale
Through the ages of dance, of wheat fields’
Jolly feathers and the merrymaking
Of the nights when warm things creeped
Nearer and said things so gentle, they lead
Through paths of grey caress toward
The golden sun

There is a gloom to eat the sky
A joy that mumbles like dry thunder, that wobbles
Like ripe clouds through the winds, swept off
From the heights…

Sweet, the night lifted her head and nodded, and
Sweet, all good things drooped like prayers
before stone - sweet, the crescents,
Of indent and star, where holy terror
Had loved us slow, never felt so small as did
In the leaning - the yielding - us, beautiful:
Bone-eyed and bare, shuffled off from the heights
Of silver youth, as ****** birds, as ****** boys
Through the winds, and we melted
Sifted, out of ourselves and into the honeyed
Embrace of old

We forget the tides as they claw on
Into the purple oceans of old
We forget the shores
Thousands, ten thousands
And then so many more
As ***** mix in with the seagulls
And seashells we lose
Through toiling of wave wave wave
Everything passes

acrid sweetness
collects in the crevices
of our soapy grey clouds

see, this winded winding
bell of a city
and the porcelain blue night
that guards in its curvature
winds that giddy waters
shuffle their feet,
and clouds the lather
that slowly thins away;
there is a pattern here
a Van Gogh swish-slosh
of silver and black
this is the ecstatic dance
that they talk of

a movement that starts a thousand chains
spiralling unspeakably swift—
a mantra of colour and script—
flicking wrists, and ankles turning
(and the crickets: tch-tch…tch-tch…)
and then all meeting
singularly, before the silver sun-washed eye
of the sky

pretty
this ripe peach moon
I wish to bite

these winds mimic the sea
with stalwart droop and a cape of silk threads
the very worms became them: slowly working
a criss-cross play through the night,
through its zenith and sombre blue, a simple silhouette
before the whispers of clouds—
then tiding parabolic back into a smash
of feathery scattering, these winds are the fireworks
that leap upon us
voiceless and stark, slyly soft, softly silver
dandelions themselves as they break
(leaves trembling in their fervent furore)
and this night stands, its feet dipped
in the shallow rippling of the city
it gazes over the horizons
reflecting into itself

01:00 am

if right now
I were to tell
of a thing that I’d do
for the rest life on
you know I’d say this
—
this is… magic
poetry is magic
and in this
I feel like only in this
am I ever true
and good
—
good
it is a strange word
one does not hear words
this simple
a lot now
—
good
it is so honest.
in its mediocrity
it leaves room for nothing else
—
right now
I think that poetry is good.

12:38 am

think I fell in love with a poem
when I fell in love with her

for she was pretty and I never thought
pretty, silly, aren’t they all?

think I painted her up
and then I thought I had lost her all

—then she smiled a knife’s edge
and I never thought— I never thought—

slowly pulled;
and then she did not quite;
and then all at once she did

then she became small again
a collection I liked to see

and then I stopped running for touch
and I thought I had written her then
thought I’d finished her in word

but she nears sometimes
and she never leaves

12:45 am

everything passes
winds disperse
to clouds scatter

wars dissolve
to remnants and
pinpricks of song

everything passes

and Osamu did say
everything passes

everything passes
winds run on, scatter
to cloud on the sky
electrons
through eyes of streets
oscillate
between days and darks
and then they too tire
say
Osamu believed
before I could:
everything passes

wait and—
would we wait and see if everything passes?
we will pass in the waiting and it is so so simple

Osamu
everything passes…
Osamu
perhaps we never will

here
love tides
through age
and knowledge
just as shiny
comes, lures, goes

Osamu…
here

perhaps not your humanity
but this was your curse
that in every passing moment
you stayed
and to no staying
could you hold

everything passes
it’s funny
we will too
it sounds like a lie

12:50 am

everyday
the words accumulate in me
and at night
I shoo them out
I never know what they are going to be
it is like a smoke
one sniffs all day
but does not smell

how dreary…
how unaware we stay
of all that makes us
what is it that blinds us,
if not the gaze with which we see

sometimes
the words become dreams
sometimes
tossing turning wake
and emptiness sometimes—
or like right now
they become it all
sometimes
I turn on Faizan’s brutal bright lights
and I uncap my pen
and I watch this page
and I pick my nails
and I think think think
it may sound silly
but those are words too.

01:55 am

I think that someday
I would like to paint a ghost
like did Osamu
and I too would like to hide
it for no one to find

I think I’d like to paint
like I like to write:
quietly, clumsily
and without eyes

as a dove flies
and as it hits against the window
curious, and fearing
the picture it wears
I’d like to paint mirrors
and not beauty

for many can paint beauty
and beauty is never
without eyes
and though it may not lie
it may too not be true

I think Osamu
never wrote so fragile
as did when he wrote
where does this little path go?
where does this little path go?

—

11:55 pm

now I will write a poem
I will write no thought
for they lie like silk
smooth and slick with solidity
and its thirst
(pretty pearls fall and fall and fall) perhaps
poetry is hand
the ink that writes it
something of the muscle
subtly moving
to move the words
then this one will be white
for in the light that it forms
is white and sharp

thoughtless banter…

with paper and secret—
we never become so still,
all rehearsals halted
to see the show:

perhaps this one will be fear
perhaps blanket blue
perhaps time
that slips into bed and sleeps
perhaps this will be snore
(I do not snore, I breathe only,
but this time does)

11:40 pm

sometimes the night comes early
fast like the lid of a pepper-jar
that spins itself geometric into place
sometimes though it is patient
like the swarm of a moss
or of a tide that turns time
to obese slime
sometimes there is so much to say
and do and wish for
sometimes very less
sometimes, the past nights
become other people
and future nights
become other people
and they sway like drain worms
round a puddle
on a tile
we are a crowd
all of us, a crowd -
body upon body like
an ugly cluster of skin
and shadow and grasp
we write things and we make them poems
then we write more
and we are all naked, but none truer
and sometimes the night
does not come at all
and I linger solidly
fidgeting with my words

01:16 am

and this night
things are gentler

pillow - the stuffed owl and the clock,
swivel of silence
and stray dust; white-lit
hands as shadows
moulding themselves around limbs

and sensation:
a simple news
to the heart: a moth-wing
watching the light,
its ticks
timed with the pulses
of time -
it watches slowly
the light

—

and this night
we are gentler
body on body - like mingled wave,
ripples trail
but carefully so
as all fish sleep
or rest

—

and tonight
the weight
is just a weight

—

and tonight
there are no flutters
                          to drown to

01:10 am

there is a number for everything
all strange surrenders
and imaginative threads
of stars that predicting move
and men predicted on;
like resonating blackness
of a still night,
the numerals scatter
symmetric in their magnet-dance
and then they write

every step,
every tide, buzzing
with possibilities,
burning intensely to one—
why do I doubt the hold of this?
this puppetry Law
and its fingers of strings
why do I think to flea?
I move a piece
on the chessboard of pieces
and something in me changes forever

02:37 am

I have something more to say
frail like a young stem
something just as green

I think if I were to die:
here; now
I would not be upset
and I think if I were told just now
that I was to live
forever here
I would not be upset still

and it is sweetly silly
that love makes
letting go easy—
sometimes, perhaps
perhaps a short love only
a sensation that visits
only in the gentlest of nights

perhaps this will be my lover
and my war
perhaps it will be one
because it will be other
it is sweetly silly

12:30 am

I like poetry
I like the tenderness of it
and how it is like a leaf
I may slip into my pocket
and carry along
into stifling examination halls

I like its thoughts
the gaps and turns
it does not ask for cleverness
from me
as I do
it is not a mother
and not a child

a poem, a poem only
silly and free
like a fly
that does not care for freedom
or like a little gust
in a thousand crowd:

the hair furls
I turn to watch it go
but it is gone
before i do

12:40 am

this is not sadness
I said wrong
this is pillow, pen
a patience of time
in between its clicks
like a chess move halted
for a carriage of thought
this is books
I never read

this is not the books I read
they sagged
to stale pale stories
but this is a passage one forgets
among a pile of others
like this
this is the stillness that breathes me
in and out
through the night

this is not sadness
this is… like tea

02:30 am

something of tiring
soothes the soul
lemon eyes
lettuce body
and yield

when thoughts swivel,
as vision bugs, in moving mind
when the cradle of the heart
rocks
and bed
becomes an anchor
a tundra ecosystem
of surrender:

the breaths
faintly white like
gentle ash
ruffle around,
and something little of the jaw
lets go a little,
and the fingers
stop fighting

time disperses
and all writing stops.

11:25 am

some stillness here
that I fear to break
some gentle memory
of the body
some luciferase show
of a little plant
something still softer
and still small
like the tickle of an ant
before it is revealed
or the startle
of a single hair

say

I spent years trying to break
the horrible spell of past
to free myself
from its shame
but such nights
bring it back
like an abandoned baby
in their cautious arms
and when I take
it does not cry
or scare me with frenzy
it sleeps beside me
chubby-lipped and pillow
and the nights do to
beside me

I don’t know…
some stillness here
makes us one

12:43 am

the glide
of a good pen on paper
is like freedom
like the graceful slide
of a kite
as she searches for fruit
sometimes
writing becomes a predator
and I become its gaze
I watch, yes
and I see too––
but come to the strike...
that is not mine
sometimes
tens prey I see
but it will not stop for them
and sometimes
it wants all
and will dive before I can focus.
and it is like ageing
this motion:
with every word, I know
a little more;
and freedom
it is a lot like freedom

01:00 am

it was faith, I think
it never left me so lonely
as when it was mine

say— prayer
like a dance I did all alone
grasping limbs
in an auditorium of echo

my sajdah
never mine—  the
surrender of ruku
and the chant of Fatiha
my tongue moving
with the coded keys
slurping, slipping
tumbling over words
that like malignant came
incomplete and too many

it was faith, I think
it was like love
of paper
dampened with blandness
it was sugar
that turns mouth to moss

it lingered
after I was done

and it was faith, I think too;
for while it was mine
it haunted, and haunted too
with a haunting
of something lost

and all age long
I chased it reckless
grasping in takbeer
and forgetting
before the salam
had even opened its wings

12:15 am

now the paper
feels as gentle moss
beneath the feet

and now I have
no words to write
for the night

is the body ever quiet?
now the wrist moves
and I become a crowd again

and
now
one

and now
I am a sea
(I have never met a sea)

and now sad—
swear I do so
every night

and it is not even mourn
but just a hue
in the hues of the sea

02:20 am

need a poem be good
for it to be true
good poems resonate
but need all always do

were the heart a still
forlorn principle
need it know no moving
of a tinkling ripple

what of machines—
do the gears not rhyme?
and must they really do
for the flowing of time

for how a young girl
lost in fear
so intricate delicacies
of secrets must hear

if a poem be hard
to achieve a task
where must one turn
to evacuate the flask

that bubbles anew
every new day—
need a poem be smart
to hold it at bay?

need a war be fought
to sing of a war
and need warriors,
comparing, spar?

is not a poem alone
as is a man alone
must then we all adorn
the sounds of a mourn

12:47 am

I like poetry
I like the company of it
the gathering laughter
the calmness of it

I like silence
and the lightness it wears
I like its chest,
the full embrace

and I like the night
especially its eyes
as it blinks itself awake
and as it sways
like an old woman
in her prayer

I like body too
how it tires
and how it jolts up again
its sweet sleep,
the strangeness
I like the geometry,
the dual nature of it.

12:30 am

today I am not
what I was yesterday
and I know it sounds bold
but it is really
a simple thing to say

as a vine coils a little bit
with every wake of day
so do we children
slowly on the way

and something of night
always remains
even as it turns
from us away

and something of sea
visits unchanged
upon the changing bay

so, today I am not
what I was yesterday
but some of me lingers
and in future it will stay

12:36 am

Lord, this night does keep its quiet
not of our silver gyre does it tire

a thousand times I watch it rise
a thousand slips of its drips

up-down-up-down-up-down town
I watch its crowds black and brown

I watch the trees, the silver bees
Lord, this night is not night quite

bed:
blood
in us
of mud

shed
the rust
muscle
of dust

red:
tongue
wrung
strung

said:
run
the run
begun
(we did)

-

head
of toil
of ours
in soil

bread
of skin
soiled
in sin

led:
we went
say, patent
we went

wed?
ha, sweet
pleased
bland wheat

bed:
pillow
above us
below

bed:
black hand
fragile
and

you write like a sea
I see

gyring and free
stubbornly

flapping only
to be

easy
to see

your profanity
holy

in its naivety,
wholly

scanty,
heavy

with plenty,
empty

like sea,
pretty

for me
for me partially

for you only
hesitantly

for world boldly
bare to see

you write like a sea
lady

toiling sweetly
to monotony

and plea
howling all free

free
ah, lovely

like the slavery
of a sea

this earthly gaze
still so stirs
even now the face
something kills

mountain eyes
still do peep
upon all that dies
and then do leap

on our frail fortress
in the green
you do not rest
your golden keen

say some fable
invite
if we then are able
do bite

unclothe sheep
unearth meat
your secret keep
we will in sweet

bliss of moonlit bit
turn then all away
and lure with just the wit
of a silver bay

laugh faceless
sound of sea
on grey impress
the sound of sea

sight of shadow
gallows' scarf
in gusts then flow
call on the calf

row a waving
seeing and still
move the boat-wing
down the hill

down down
we do come
smile now the ivory crown
do we you become?

this bitter green dawn
does not move the city

that in crisp antiquity
spreads her thighs, her palms

her fingertips licked
with drought and the soft sweet

stink of the night
rubbery skin

flavourless as a leaf;
her armpits and knees

gape with rasping mouths
and the basins of the neck

rugged stretch
striped and on

up the sloping stumbling face
gaunt as concrete

where carts and rickshaws
startle and snort

succulent bulbs part
mechanical and jagged and

through the gutter
sallow eyes watch

cement tunnels
tumble and twist

the taste of thick leather
mossy on their walls

there are feet too
thousand toes

with chipped windows,
stooping they swell, and

there are dry highways
of the calves

where nothing lingers.
it is morn now

the birds gargle
and a thin yellow kite

shivers like a hanged thing
on the spidery scaffold

of an electric tower.
her salty streetlights

stare like iron
in the urinary winds that shoo

crusty litter
in between *******, and crevices

of eyes, sills of the hips
the cracks of the elbows

butter sun scatters
and coats the houses viscid

flies come
torment the quiet awake

her men barge out
hasty and mad

and vehicles shake
a thousand breaths

exit: their CNG sweetness
caking in the nails

and jamming the doors;
pungent liquids churn

and ignite in taut-limbed engines;
now gears tick and click

sweating rancid
and thick

leaking on roads
and roiling canals

gruff huffs and coughs
now the sky is grey

and cool
a cadaver

now loud ears unfurl
bare as banners

and shrill winds
pound hot-metal on skin

—

the bark-wood body
turns

and reveals the moors
of a stoney back

where steel rods
bend

at silly angles
and where they protrude

their same old tang of DC
and the same old

tingling of it
now a sigh escapes

the latex lips
and shutters shudder

over spiced eyes
now all is red

like hot tea on tongue
and the tongue tinkles

with the sounds of the heart
that ripe an onion

pleads to be pulled
out out out

and peeled
layer by layer

until it is none
and now, the familiar viscosity

soothes it again
and it swoons limp

a fat still-born
in the womb

this precious rickshaw
hiccups

it jolts at slightest expressions
of the roads' flat faces
hick!
and my stomach wobbles up
like an astronaut made of jelly
bounces against the diaphragm
disturbing the cuddly lungs and
the lattice pancreas wince
hick!
the sour liver curses and
noodle intestines startle and then
grumble
and the swish slosh slosh
of my kerosine blood
is light and jumpy
in the ancient pipelines of flesh

my hands unlearn
unlearn
they are chubby preteens
then hesitating littles
now my handwriting
is an infant walking
hick!
crawling
hick!
this wash-machine ride
with an inferno of April breaths
hick –– hick –– hick!
my little dog-heart
shakes
its fur all ruffled and spiky

some secrets up the clouds
some gatherings that gleam

lie, artefact
chipped a statue

moving
like the watery movement of a sea

a thousand thoughts
furl unfurl

coral tunes
fish word, hues

as the curtain thins
thins

satin sky
silver sun

swift the whistlings
of drunken clumsies

and stout their wings
with merry and night

gentle
on stone body

that moves
watery

green green
like moss beneath Moon
and Moon is lit up, perhaps
half or more or less some little
as leafy litter tickles the street
and a gust
in riot
solitary opens
with a voice of Autumn and
bronze dust body
that in nails and toes
of alleys and houses
sits and sleeps
old lady knitting spiders
and rats
in antique blazers of black
as a car whispers by
swift like a hiss
or a city’s small sigh
that startles the silver-eyed lizards
and they scatter
as wheat breaths away
into into into the browny blue
and gold gold
like cold sun
that beats and licks all noise to fire

and rises, it rises fatly
with the lone gust and the white

I don’t, don't speak human
when blue comes down to talk
in the clogged old crannies of the night
woman
with ornate skin
moves her arm
her wrist, her fingers
quick like the clicking of a tongue
quick glitter, gentle then gentler
and rippling, a water eye in blue

over hills and over muddles
see the crow fly

when time comes fluttering back to us
tell me again of the war
when mingles the sword with
flowering heart and the reeds
speak up, their
thin throats filled
with lore, and lure the scattered world here
here here
          here

tell me

tell me, on and on the
tingling of mud as it is
lifted, lifted, to man, to callous,
like sun-forged flesh and force,
to his child, and the parting
of two lips
parting! the lifting, the toiling of tendon in the
riot of soul

over the woods! over mountains
see the crow fly, feel her shadow
when throe laughs, tickles the muscle
and even past wakes up
and even the gaunt clutched spine
of a thin sallow voice
perks up keening

hear hear hear

the beating of the feat
the beating of the nerve
when chant them men, and sole
and leather, with rumble
the rumble of war
when slides sly down the sweat and dust
and galleries light up
with walls full of human
and museums cradle little stones
little bones and calls
tell me
tell me tell me
even a crow can sing sing
sing one awake

tell me, tell me tell tell tell
when ducks beat pebbles
a tribal thunder
and beetles scramble stumbling beneath leafs
tell tell, the warm-bellied lady
said birds become children

and flutes the grasshoppers they hear
in warm green sleeps
as out curl curling
the stout sun-seasoned caterpillars
shrill now! now not! now piercing needles
sewing brazen black black to brittle dreamings
tell me tell me tell
what the old man said, said
lyres rebel rebel and
strum, say, strum taut a riot unsettled
even as geese vanish grey
in grey
and ducks pat their way away
to springs of seas where no child sails

even then
the sky plucks her lightening sly
and claps claps claps the day,
the night, the day, down
to a kites sway
as a perfect moon-arc it cuts
and
we heard birth
brings along a dress
that tribe men
and tribe women flower
when they
spin and spin and circle clapping
cursing merriment up the sick old sky

who need fly

tell me tell me, valley-joy on a face of age,
oh human song and human sigh! tell tell
also of koel’s mimic cry

tell tell, tell then
and they pound their feet
together apart together apart and the ground remembers, the ground
remembers!
and then tell this too! we heard,
ducks lurk by listening
practicing
their
drums! and and
and some

some children almost hear

-