He is probably one of the few people who still carry a handkerchief wherever he goes. While I wash and dry his clothes under the scorching South Asian sun, his handkerchief safely finds its home inside those formal pockets. Wet and divine.

Joseph Kern had never seen The Starry Night,
Had he been there, the parsonage across
Van Gogh’s memory, leading to Arles or somewhere else,
Had he been there, he could have thrown the pebbles he
Collected that flew through his window
In the afternoons he eavesdropped.

I like to think that Joseph Kern has seen The Starry Night
While somebody played the
Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042: II. Adagio
I like to imagine him  amongst the thickly applied whorls of paint,
I like him across the English Channel, waiting with one of
Rita’s puppies, echoing the sky-
Not as it looks but how as it feels.

This is how it is, more or less like Ramanujan,
Or I don’t know if it’s okay to think like this,
Whatever makes you comfortable, stable.

I know how it feels to be outside my body
When appachi, valyammavan and all others
Exist in minor contradictions, but you must
Realise that the pictures that run your mind
Include things as silly as our car loans.

In the slanting late-night musings that you do-
Beneath the green and white curtains of my room,
I collapse into a cupboard of my little history
And you stand as a ghost in absence. Lost.
Like a child, like how I used to be. Crying.

Have had I told you that you smell like
A jewelry shop in brand new air freshener,
Just after a midnight Medimix shower
Perhaps you could have recognized me-
The tiny girl, daughter, lover, and mother, next you.

Where did I fail? Probably in the mornings I learned
To walk, the years that taught me math lessons,
Times father reached me as phone calls,  
In college as a pair of blue jeans and love poems,
While in Chandini Chowk, inside the tiny room-
Upstairs home and all the hours before I walked
Into the college library with my roommate.

I don't remember when I first read Sophie's World, today I sit and write about Sophie's world hoping someday someone is gonna read it too.

We live alongside her, well, I live in the third world and we hardly know anything about it. However its a reality, and I see myself like the Italian grandmother who appeared on my computer screen this morning trying to make a conversation with 'goo-goo'. I am just being another 'cucumber with anxiety'.

Hey goo-goo, okay goo-goo, play Mary did you know!
"..this child that you delivered, will soon deliver you"

Your generation is full of pillows that need hugs,
Come here, congratulations, you finally made it!

*******, I have never seen those eyes
But you are my 42, meaning and universe
The dog, a room, few chilies and some strange-
Men! I need more, more of everything.

Serious days, break down and slide through me,
I have been thinking that I won't make it to the -
The day my letters finally reach your standing desk
But hey, I surprise myself these days, poems are home.

I can't believe that every freakin day I wake up thinking of those circles and go back to bed late night getting somewhere lost inside those comic strips. It has always been there at the back of my head for the past few years, but when it started to bite my conscience, I began to solve the puzzle, little every day. These days I sit in the library, stare at my computer screen, deduct lanes, find faces, trace stores and calculate the kilometres that my mind travels in a minute. It makes me high somewhere and trust me, technology amuses me every time I crack one little clue and reaches one step ahead in solving my mystery. Yesterday night, I was watching NASA's live announcement on the discovery of seven earth sized planets and for a moment I thought what if my mystery fell right out of Tardis. Who knows.

Once upon a time people 'mailed children',
I was imagining me inside a postman's bag
And travelling to your city,
I would have self-posted me
To which address?
Maybe to your university.

Seems to me I am doing something wrong,
Terribly wrong to the birthday cakes you
Ate and bikes that broke your spine, but
Spaceless words leave me with pipedreams,
Three years, long and gone but it's not easy
To quit binoculars, I always watch over you,
Obsess over the voiceless words and
Movies I did not understand but I know that
I will keep chasing unless one day you
Pop out of that lousy little town. One day.

When Trump was closing the big gates,
Nonhumans of a classroom debated over speech,
Nature's call and an assumed reaction.
Supervisor said its ok to not speak in class
Because non-speech is not death,
Cross version species conversation is possible.
The romantic Kompridis checked tennis scores
And nonhumans had a grand pool dinner.

My thermometer showed water lilies,
While the I drank the sky in a perfect line
Now, choke me with that smile
And let me borrow small pieces of your time
Afterall it's a cashless transaction.

When we were young, we went DYU in
Lipsticks and jumpsuits and gulped
Chamomile tea on table one, our hot spot.
Now that Eapen is here, I want to go
Back to those Bangalore days with my-
Ladies, diapers and a pair of baby socks.
Tim, time, time! Stop, stop, stop!
This is the moment, the moment from
Our yester imaginings, Eapen our baby drug
Let's get back to those hostel rooms,
Jumpsuits and lipsticks with 'the nucleus' on our shoulders.

They have chopped down that tree
And the bees rush to my balcony,
Dad has cut down those pink roses,
But there are mosquitoes from Aleppo
Flying around my bedroom fan.

I sat on our study table with fairy lights
While my roommate put on her running shoes,
Mosquitoes waltzed around her sugarless tea,
Drank my blood below the knee and flew-
Away to Aleppo, far away to those dead roses.

Did you know-
The greatest Triumph of the year?
Time has a meaningless cover,
Well, Time is meaningless, anyway.
Sigh.

There are days when I go Kaki's, at the corner of the field, leaning over newly imported plastic chairs, sipping tea, counting  vimanams and think of you. I have absolutely no idea where you live, but in my Culture Theory class, I sit and map your existence, believe me, I came down to a radius of 30kms- where my meaning of life is your 42. My friend told me I am a creepy stalker , of course, she absolutely had no idea about you, me or our story. I don't know, I really don't know why I keep thinking, keep missing, keep reading and keep hoping.

BTW Trump won.

I knew they will come
In-search
Of yesterdays.
Today they came, jumping
the fence, somewhere
from the river bed,
where they lived.
While I sat inside
An air-conditioned cube
Sketching their fingers-
Like mine
They invaded a
Concrete jungle.

Why do you not sleep and roam with me, at night?
Talk to city airplanes, migrant trucks, loose wind.
Silent breeze. Tea across the road. Furious ginger tea.

Fetch me some sea, Arabian stories and boredom
To the land, lost and barren next to an unromantic riverbed,
My love, this land is everywhere but for now, with me.

I hear no voice, no music to your intimate conversations,
Let me gather my bits and press it over you. How does-
It feel? How does it finally feel to be a listener?

Days like this, I do not crave a somewhere behind me
Now that you’ve come so far, I might swim with you
But I need a return. A return before the night.

I was flying like a kite at the end of his motorcycle, I never felt it before even though I have travelled countless times with him for the past few years, I was drunk like the wind, dancing with his tripping silk wrapped around his slender long neck, the night I breathed him in, to everyone's disapproval. The night should have a comeback, but he's on his bucket list and I know both of us are not going back.

Don't send me, I don't want to go
To bridge poetry at the loss of words

Don't send me, I don't want to go
I've walked miles, singing Gulzar and Gazals

Don't send me, I don't want to go
To sail in silence, cadaver to your Dal

Don't send me, I don't want to go
I might return as a fragile layer of dust

Don't send me, I don't want to go
I don't, oh beloved, don't don't send me

I stand there, every day, nose to the cold iron grills,
Eyes to the sky, dark and cloudy, desperate to rain,
Feet kissing the earth, mad roots of hibiscus plants,
Clasping my hands to catch some wind and put-
It all inside my bag, time has come to gather my things
And leave. Live the moment with me, grow with me.

The catastrophe of being a poet is that you are an annoying brain with delicate bones made of glass, who watches weird TV shows and reads bizarre newspaper happenings, ponder over the final chapters of your literary idols while walking the rain with hands inside your pajama pockets and dig out incomprehensible meanings someone managed to scribble at the back of his notebooks. Psychologists have such complicated theories about your social ineptitude, hence you die breathing the yellow notebook pages of a second-hand bookstore even though your brain signals warned you about chronic asthma. But you'll live for centuries inside punched hearts, libraries and under lazy bedsheets because at least for a moment you made a total stranger giggle, weep, scream and sometimes jump in joy over a well-penned verse. Did your friends tell you 'you ****'? Well, no one's gonna  remember those *** holes and always remember if not today, but someday you'll be someone's wonderwall.

Sometimes I imagine sitting under our dining table wanting to chop my hair off, days and nights oppressed, yet not to run the rat race. Partly because I was too resistant to be happy, but with the first monsoon showers, I almost collapsed inside my oversized grey T-shirt that began to turn white, infinite gaps inside mind channels, I sat and watched strange men winning Wimbledon. I stopped writing one thousand words a day, themes and perspectives slipped into a closed brown diary, and I always worried what if someone finds it and reads it aloud in the public sphere in Prague, right in front of David Cherry’s rotating Kafka, how miserable he died thinking he was worthless, how miserable it would be to listen to voices that came beneath my dining table. I talk to a shy Kafka, every day, under our dining table, today he shaved my head.

In the monsoon,
I walked colonised streets
trying to befriend a city,
forged fields and bright street lights,
they often vanished inside my eyes
to see happy children on beaches;
glass ceilings shattering to find a sky,
that broke down abruptly
to weep on my shoulders.
I swam in the rain
only to meet those children at the beach.
They roofed me under white curtains,
for the Witch might try to grab me,
plait my hair
and take me back
to her hall of circus.

Every flower,
every breeze,
every wounded bird in a city
are part of a folklore
where minstrels live,
they all sing me
back to beaches.

Mickey,

I will not get guns for Scout and Finch to shoot
the blue jays, I will not raise them with guns, ever.
I want to read them Eddie’s messages to his Mum
Before ‘he’ came and killed him, them, killed us.
They should learn what the world felt next morning,
Let them weep, sob and finally feel love, for our world.

This is where I cannot compare myself to people,
I weep as I write to you, my bones weak, skin tearing,
The 20-year-old girl did not understand but agreed
With your Mum when you said “even rapists don’t
Deserve death penalty”, it took me three years to
Realize and not agree with your Mum’s Spanish TV.

I didn’t sleep yesterday night, I watched a film with A,
At night, I could hear the boys screaming from
Tents of their Afghan allies, the scream, pain and
Moaning an elite clout wanted every night.
I threw up dinner, they called it their ‘culture’, I-
Couldn’t look at those boys dancing with bells on feet.

There’s nowhere I feel safe with Finch and Scout,
When will ‘he’ feel love and not think to “fire who?”
I fail every day unable to scream, being a coward, but
I feel good, sense hope when I see HUMAN BEINGS,
I feel exactly what Kern felt when he saw Valentine
Walk safe from the ferry, I feel home, I feel safe.

Maybe that's what people call peace
Maybe that's what people call bliss
I need sleep, I want to sleep peacefully.

Love,
Gaye
13th June 2016, 10:56 pm

It's that time of the year again,
There are jasmine buds
Inside my pocket
And I walk my yard
With ink stains on fingers.
At a distance
I see you and take refuge
In your love
The hooting breeze
Walk my door, but
When I sit to write
Love poems, there
Are only bald-chested hills
And ghosts of dead farmers
Grazing my eyes
What should I write to you?

He will not fix it,
He is such a bleak assignment
He is bigoted as ****!
But I'm surprised
You're voting him to power,
And in English, that would be
Ignorance!

He will push you back 50 years
On opinions about modern living,
He will **** your families and
Ask you to never leave Churches.
Somebody come and look at this,
All puny mods are voting for
A Phoney Republic!

You might very well need
More oil
Stage 9/11 and get more
Private armies to Middle East?
Create more ISISs, Make
All Muslims look Evil,
Give them a free ride to
West and EU
And finally make them
Fat, Dumb and Addicted to Reality TV!

Well, just run off to Mexico,
There'll at least be a wall between you and Trump!

I feel jealous that I wasn't there to grow up with you, in the rain. The matchboxes I used to play doll house burst yesterday night and it rained my entire face, wet pillows weeping over my loss. You haven't seen those match boxes but did you feel the rain under the city?

In the end, I never really climbed-
Them, they gave me panic attacks,
Razors loped my flesh and I ran in
Circles over a reverse nightmare,
Spiral staircase, awful storeys,
They all scooted to 1999.

I want to climb down my 1999, burn
And not be smolder in an ashtray.
I hope to fall asleep, away from
The city, away from my guava trees.
I have my history of walking,
Suddenly lost without postage stamps.

Will you take me to Ferris wheel?
Push me down the spiral staircase,
And sleep next to my 1999? Will you?
Will you take me to Ferris wheel?
Push me down the spiral staircase,
And sleep next to my 1999? Will you?

“Some other day”

I don’t want to go back to the city,
I’m learning to forget you
And the city we grew together
To be something that we are not anymore.

I don’t want to see our city
Eat alone or wander the crowd
I don’t belong there, neither you
We were strangers like we’re today.

I will never ever go back to the city
Where there are sediments of us
Wanting to be jolted to a story
To pinch our flesh every **** day.

I want to be the city, someday
I want to be a hopeless lover and
Monsoon scent, I want to be the city
You'll never forget, the city we lived.

All pretentious bores,
Read and internalise
As much as possible
With all your dull brain.
You may have all the
Time in this world to
Sit and Google me,
Stalk my friends and
Assume my life, get a life!

You are inappropriate
To be associated with,
Oh heavens! I’m glad
You totally hate me.
Poke your nose on
Your own ****** ***,
Wash your wits and
Take healthy naps,
Drink cold water, it helps!  

I’ve tried to be candid
As possible, if your ego
Cannot digest, get help.
Listen, read, talk and eat-
Good, you probably will
Start to think good.
Peace be with your
Dignity and respect you
Desperately cry for! Amen!

I saw her across the highway, shyly dancing,
Mute spectators imprinting her inside their memory,
Some to their cameras.
She tangled the desert with the whirls of her skirt,
Walked its bare chest with anklets melting to the hot sun,
Only to sell salt, her monopoly, and sing in perfect melody,
A stranger to the land, a stranger everywhere.

Where does it hurt? I have no idea
Somewhere inside, it was raining, raining heavily
Music and art and love decoding themselves to a new myth.
At absolute moments like this-
I cried, powerlessly begging for help, distressed corridors-
Pushing me across wind, water, light and obsessions
It did hurt. Everywhere.

“Your eyes are black, black as coal, oh banjara!”
I was sinking into her scrap clay
The pedant moulded into pots and toys and saucers
Lurking with words she barely penned, love,
As divine as it is, like onion in peels, hidden.
I wanted to sleep, in the most innocent leg
But she kept travelling, everywhere, everywhere.

A long time ago,
He was my son
Residue of an infamous
House, a feeble little boy.
But today he reminds
Me a potent revolution,
He reminds me God and
He, the loyal opposition,
He reminds me hope and
Rage that pass the veins
Of my country, he, my son.

A long time ago,
He was my son
Today he isn’t just my son
He’s truth, he’s light, he’s
Hope and future, he’s India.

I happen to live in Central Indian-
Forests, I collect wood and honey
And have no idea about English woods
And Manchester clothes, I belong
To the soil, I’m anti national?

I live on concessions, subsidies
And support, And You call me-
‘Dark skinned untouchable’; today
I don’t have bells over my neck
I’m proud of me, I’m anti national?

I always spoke of empowerment,
Marx and Che run my blood and
I’m a utopian reality to you
But you cannot ignore my voice
I’m not outdated, I’m anti national?

I believe in ‘being human’ above all-
Traits, I live beyond geographies
And I cannot stand war and bloodshed
You brand me as an activist, I’m
Just humane, I’m anti national?

I do not belong to the 80% of our
Country’s population, but I’m as
Much a patriot as you, My God
Is same as yours, How am I an
Alien? I’m anti national?

I don’t believe in the power and safety
You claim with a nuclear reaction.
I see only explosions and devastation
I want my children to be safe, I love
The world, I’m anti national?

I don’t like vegetables, I eat meat-
Since birth. I will not force-feed you,
I respect your choice and I expect you
To be tolerant to what I cook-
At my home, I’m anti national?

I’m not Pakistani but I love them
As much I love an American or an
European. After all, we share
Our borders. I want to settle all
Disputes, I’m anti national?  

I married a man outside my tribe,
Love didn’t notice his 'official tribe',
Our children are a mixed tribe
And we celebrate life as it is,
We’re human-tribe, I’m anti national?

I stand with them with rainbow flags,
They deserve justice as much as you
And me. Give me one valid reason to
Call them unnatural? I want S377
To be scrapped, I’m anti national?

I celebrate my country’s diversity,
I don’t need your certificate to prove
My patriotism! This is India, I stand
With my constitution and its democracy
And I give a **** about what you think!

My shoe bit my skin
He pulled me up
We walked the snow
Singing; foot on foot.

The home out of sight
He hardly felt his lungs
But we wanted to be home
And read My Brother Jack.

He plucked a cloud
Whispered a wish
Drew a diabolic smile,
"Some other day"

How bright is the lone desert tonight?
I’m at my store to catch a sight,
Hot and cold fantasy there upright
I’ve never been in such hungry delight.

I walk the Cuban café with blues
Eyes on albums and letters on glues,
Your bits rushing my lips like juice
When my brain pass me your clues.

I have not seen you in a while for now
But the sturdy and shy love you sow,
Far into a fierce gone hair on blow
Has set my calm waves on crossbow.

Reasons beyond seasons and time
Giving myself to your heart not dime
The world has shrugged to your chime,
I've finally found my home, Oh Valentine.

And to the seas, he intoxicated by brain with his black matt pencils and evenly crafted italic words that sleepwalked into my reality. I let my heart pour verses far from a detention camp, expelled out of a Bobby Darin song. The moment was for music and we did not sing, but together we sat like a last labyrinth. Perhaps he wasn't my tribe.

I see a rainbow, a petite spark
Out of colonist's burrow,
The judge stirred his ink
Winked a little; scintillation!
They made love, at the
Shaft’s end, bourgeois’ couch
And marble halls, unmasked
Art did not meet camera, my friend.

Leave my flesh, blood and the lingering scent, leave it to your strongest desires, lecherous books and loose roads, they all have forgotten to run behind you, they've all become independent rascals.

Blonde pages and bulb lights, titled peaks and tethered bags, I sniff
Hug me safe, quite; the beats inside a wrap where nights mutely tailed,
Past not breed but memories not leak; roads to touch that fright me kip
To a world I see, breathe and live; flesh, blood and dreams on sail,
You, your world, your soul, your journey, I sit-aside, a tiny stake

Where had been the sky,
The superhero and ruby chip?
They lived here, ignored,
A while ago floating with
Ghosts of my mangroves and
Things I did not know
How to say- how to say.

I cannot gape anymore,
Let’s go back to Damascus,
Istanbul and verses you-
Did not know that spread
Wings beneath my skin
I have got stamps and ink,
Frozen food and deck of cards.

Sit with me and adapt
The ways how a mirror shake
Herself off the dirt and break
Her bones, his, endless ways.
There are plenty of things
They did not know how to-
Take, you and I, we dance.

Once upon a time, somewhere
When the seagulls speeded
With a bike to a night that
Popped new tyres and did
Not wipe the rain, storm and
Long blue letters that spoke,
I remember you, I remember you

Chillies that swam across the earth
To a milky way where seasons
Changed, candles blew over
Secret nights and lodges Mum
Did not know, emotionlessness fails,
Don’t fly away because
I remember you, I remember you

There’s a standing table and
Papers all around, the ghost
That tiptoed into a bedroom
Where an insomniac fooled
With magic pen and blue eyes
I see you smiling and you know
I remember you, I remember you

Get on the chair and climb
Up to my swing, I’ll take you
To my city and show little jingles.
I caught the sun inside my-
Palm, your little town and
A comic store, look at this!
I remember you, I remember you

I should start making sushies,
Swim across a little ocean
To find a Mickey world of
Endless topics and FIFO workers
You're probably goanna **** me
For the good things I did not write
But you do remember me, don't you?

At certain junctures of a journey you feel you connect to certain people, places and situations at a different level, hardly comprehendible, quite different from the hundreds of people you've ever met and many places you've ever been, they leave you with a spirit, their inherited tastes and an obsession that you will go back to it all someday.

Somewhere next to the sea when the waves are not still, when you don't smell of the summer sun and I not of the ****** sand, lets get married. I want the tango night, dance to the drums late night on your rooftop with some cheap *** bottles. Lets not sign the deal, lets feed out hearts, lets see how miserable we are gonna to make each other. Lets get married my love!