You waded through memories
on your throne
All of us look on, smiling,
False courtiers, pretend lovers
To the hag who was queen
Your Tudor eyes crinkle

As you pretend joy
At this false homage
From this worthless court,
All bows and manic grins
shining winter twilight coldly on you

You see Death in their eyes
As once before in your sister's
When her Spanish heart
Sent yours to the Tower

But your head did not roll on its green,
As your mother's once did
For tearing Christendom in two
For daring
To think
That a woman
Could have
A voice

You stroke Queen Anne's jewels
With her fingers,
The ones she gave you
When she loved your father
Despite all it cost the world

We, the victors of the Elizabethean age
Laugh at you, Elizabeth, aged,
****** Queen
Whose lover's letters litter
The back of her tear-stained pillow

When your cold Tudor eyes finally close
And end the dynasty first founded
On a woman's vicious piety,
Know that you,

Lilibeth,
Liquid eyes
that sunk a Thousand Ships,
Tinkling laughter
that tore men asunder,
Iron fist
that quashed a myriad hopes,
will not be mourned.

The memory of my father lies in
The stoop of my shoulders

The inability to hold them up
Is evenly balanced with the push into the small of my back
Leaving me with a queer spinelessness

I learnt to hate myself as I hated him,
In the twist of my arrogant nose
The overwrought hands
And the curve of a jagged smile

But somewhere in between these things I saw
Everything I ever loved
Eyes that spoke of quiet starlight
A jaw that tempered my furious mirth
A peace that babbled
Between each laugh

And so my mirror, forever Janus
Hides in it everything I have ever loved
And everything I try to.

But this is also what love looks like
This moment when you
Reach for the stars and know exactly
How many miles separate you from them

And though you paint them on your hands
One galaxy at a time
You know
Even as the paint dries off your fingertips,
That you will not feel as if you cradle
The universe in your arms
Again

- missing, too, is loving

Say you don't love me, woman
But your eyes speak brighter than
Any green ******* light in any God ****** book

Quote them authors I've never read
Tell me about heartbreak and letting things go gracefully
But though you may think that we're over
I can promise that we've only just begun
- Aries

I have lived
And I have grown
In this garden
And nothing,
Not even the clinking of your anklets
Long after you have gone
Will convince me to leave
Even if this means that my tears
Are what water the jasmine bush
That you so smelt of
Everytime we made love
After the first rain showers
- Taurus

The butterflies have come early this year, I know,
And though you are humming my favourite song
In my grandmother's kitchen this dawn,
I know that it will be someone else doing so when next they swarm
- Gemini

Each day is drenched in memory
From my head to my toes, I still feel your kisses
Drowning the rat tat tat of rains
Against my window

Bombay hides you in it
And I,
Despite all my shallow pride
Cannot seek you out
Because while every breath you breathe
Is stolen from against my chest,
I know that your stone heart will seethe inside me forever
- Cancer

In anguish I shatter the mirror
That once held so much Promise
Because no matter what time of day it is
I can only see your sunset eyes
Reflected in mine
After an afternoon
Of red wine
- Leo

I folded my heart
And put it in your sleeve
And you left it there
Even as I stared at you across the hallway kissing her

Thirty years later
She hands me your first child
And asks me to be Godfather

I smile through heartbreak and remark
On just how much her lips resemble yours
The very rosebuds that kissed me that one night
At 3 am during that sleepover
When I became a man
- Virgo

They buried me
In rolls of fabric
Giggling at my tears
Thinking they were bride's fears
Not knowng that
Even after all this time I hear
Your terrible poetry ringing between
Every toll of my wedding bells.
- Libra

You have said many loud things
As I politely hum our song
While burning your best shirt

I am the witch, the crone, the scorpion hidden
Underneath your sheets, you say,
But through five long years of excellent ***
It was only today you bothered to say
That mummy dearest thought
My skin too dark for a wedding gown

Do not doubt karma, my love
Know that four years from now
As you hold my children (Each the colour of a midnight sky),
It could have been you
And not your brother
That they call 'father.'

- Scorpio


You tired of the chase when you finally knew
That I was running not from you
But into the arms of
A universe I was hell bent on making
With or without
Your stolen kisses on the back of my neck.
- Sagittarius

You held me as I
Splintered against the cruel night
Bones shattering like crystal shards
That slip into the earth's ears.
I'm sorry because
I was never in love with anything but
Your steady hands
That held my sorrows
For this little while
- Capricorn

You were nothing more
And nothing less
Than my favourite idea
But you were not meant to be trapped between
The pages of my bookish heart
And no matter how many times my lips studied
The almonds of your thin fingernails
You were never meant
For me
My bed
This quiet, scholar's nest

So when the universe called
You stood up, packed up your bags, left them behind
And floated on to your next vice.
- Aquarius

Lost in the ever widening oceans of your silence, I succumb and take a deep draught of you.
At last the teapot does not rattle when I serve us evening tea. 
- Pisces

I have made a wooden doll of you
Carving into its top
A jagged smile
Just the kind you used to give me
Before you slipped your tongue
In
To meet mine

Sometimes I dangle it off my knees
Imagining you begging me please
Let go
Let go, don’t tease
Me so
I know, I know

But this isn’t about you
For once

Darling, sweetheart, *******,

This is about my nails digging in
To your splinter belly
Like a month ago
When your wooden sighs
Rocked the prow of my bed
When I thought that the timbre of your moans
Meant I wouldn’t ever be alone

Creature, mine,
Did you know that
Every seven years or so
Every cell of the body replaces itself?
The day will come when, with elation
No part of me
Will know
Your touch

Then is when
I will finally burn you, doll,
In a fire that will light incense
And I will smell you again
New, brand new
As you once were
And never again shall be.

I look at you as you crush the daisies
Strewn in the meadow we hardly visit
Still reeking as it were from our first kiss

Your hands carelessly crush the petals
And not my fingers
Above and below us, silence
The moon is the only one who sees
My heart splintering against
Your sleeves

I had a reputation for burning bridges
But you had builder’s hands
Though this night, neither of us know
How to do either

When these plants are long gone
And they find my skull here,
Centuries from now
Reeking of crushed daisies
I wonder whether they will smell you hiding
Beneath the grinning bone

- Love should go **** itself

You are-

The taste of summer
In a coffee pudding  

The sound of a table fan
Masking sighs

A muffled chuckle when
My fingers do the congo

On your
Expanse of
Flesh
Undulating
My head spinning
Your lips whispering
Our hearts pounding  

Quiet

You are-

Seine nights we swapped
For evenings of 'just one kiss'

Sunrays in a jardin
Over crisscrossed fingers

Pastéis de nata when
All else is sour

A Spanish song I hum
I cannot understand

Love,
The sky grumbles because
Try as we may to hide it,
Our June knows
When we ignore it for each other

- Lui(s) II

I wake up
Terrified
Knowing that your scent
(In all its transcendence)
Is fleeting.

The fear is not unfounded.
Yesterday, my most summer shirt
Smelt like
Your touch at sunset

Tongue
Pressed to my lungs,
Fingers
That forever lingered
Hair
Tousled air

But today
It lies dead,
Crushed beneath the burning sky it weathered
After a day bereft
Of your cool laughter

Beloved,
Try as I may to hide it,
We both know when
My clothes have not touched you enough

- Lui(s)

I burn for you
In places you have never known
The sweet expanse that is my chest
Thumping painfully
Uncharted territory that rises and falls
Second for every second that you do not calm it
With your ploughing teeth

My neck is wreathed in
Your kisses never given
The ocean folds of it
Rippling for want of
The moon of your smile
In darkest night

My sinew arms creaking
Like a forest rustling
Without
The liquid lap of your
Sweet tongue
Dripping dewdrop desire
Into parched elbows

My body is a land entombed
Without your blessed breathing
Fogging its locked grounds

When you finally find yourself
At my doorstep
Brave enough to conquer a land
Flat chested, hard, briny
You will find that
Someone else has wet these terrains
And love grows like lush
On every part of me
Worth touching

From the dust of my memories I put you together,
I am trying to glean you from the sands of time that have separated us.
There is no poetry in me, nothing hidden or secret that I can say, just that
Though we had long known each other, we now simply
Know
Of
Each
Other
And this, to me, will always be the finest tragedy,
The coup de main of time

I watch you though the layers of lies that are Facebook
Instagram
I see your words dry up and sometimes flow
A stream few others love; the sweet cadence of the
Silent rhythms I have long loved
Your tribute to the bea(s)ts inside your heart

You always reminded me of silver,
The tarnished kind,
Sitting quietly in Colaba market
Waiting to be touched, loved, occasionally dropped,
But always retaining in yourself
The sleek splendor reserved for someone
Proud in the knowledge that
When the moonlight shines on her,
She would know how to shine right back.

Beloved,
You are married now,
And no words dance between us
I have listened to you on nights
With barbequed meats simmering
Moths fluttering
And laughter tinkling
The wind caressing your stray hair as if it knew
That you belonged to it all this while.

I will burn into the back of my otherwise undisturbed skull
The pictures of you in white,

I laugh.

Seeing your delight
In a dress
We never thought you’d slip yourself into
So evasive were you,
But nothing stopped you when your mind was made,
Falling in love with a man who could listen like the ocean

From the dust of my memories, I draw you out
Through the sands of time I see you,
Living in a world where
The stars dance for your joy alone.

Someday, somewhere beyond this life,
We will meet each other in the spaces
Between two others’ lonely fingers.

I made you breakfast because
Last night, you called me ‘luv’
While laughing at the way I hung our clothes
(Still warm from us)
Behind my door.

It was the English in you, I admit,
But I was hoping that
If I left you something to remember
Like how I cared about
Even the fabric that caressed you before I did
Or how I like my breakfast
As I do my men,
English and in bed,
You would stick around
And say it again
Because the next time, it would be true.

You steal your thoughts
From memories never lived
Hoping that terror will hide
In a whisky filled teacup

It's the 1 a.m blues again
(Everything is burning
Everything is burning
Everything is burning)
And your friends pretend happiness
By feigning death and snoring.

You did not sign up for this, you know,
Not the cold nor the bit of blood
From the lip you cut too hard
But you've got it, anyway,
So you may as well ****
But everyone who'd touch you is gone,
Looking to love and not simply make it

You cannot think what then you were

Now it's morning
Go to church, eat a sermon
The leaves are crackling in the wind
And your Sunday is cried away at the pews
Breadcrumbs burning your ears
A poet can bleed, they say,
If his ears are torn up with words enough

Now it's night again and you're trying
"Beloved", you say. The mirror does not reply
"Beautiful", you say. The mirror does not reply
"Broken", you say. The lights go out
Now you can go to bed
With your eyes open
Waiting for sleep to say
"How do you do? Let's hold each other forever."

I am made of water

I first learnt it when, at age 13
I dropped a glass of it
And it trickled through my veins
As my father told me he didn’t know why he loved me

After that, every day I was kissed by sunlight
I shimmered
Like a pond lost in a forest of
Thought that no one visited

I used to look at my hands and wonder
Why I could see right through
The sinew
And bone
Into translucent fluid bubbling
Where blood red should be

But whenever someone deigned to hold
My shaking digits, I felt the cold
Of my insides freezing us both
Eventually, when they could no longer hold
My icy arms,
They let go
On their way to greener pastures

Then I would melt
Seek the sun,
Weep for joy at the torrents inside me
That flowed again

You cannot touch this liquid life
Unless your fingers are blessed by a burning
Unlike anything before or after you,

I long to simmer in a scalding embrace,
You whom I have yet to meet,
You who will boil my insides until
One day,
I disappear
Like a pond dried up in summer,
Its filaments caressing the sun,
Lost forever to the world below

Until after years,
I will rain again on gardens
That men will worship
And whose beauty,
(Nourished by a love that no one knows),
Will enshrine our embrace for generations

You held me as I
Washed our dishes,
Soap suds sticking to my elbows
Bent against the curve of your
Arms that went on for days,

And I, in that moment
As the bubbles blossomed from
My dark fingers into the
Splash and sound of
Your tiny sink
Knew that
Even if you asked me not to
Wash away
Every inch of me from your kitchenette,
I couldn’t.

Somehow, as your breathing tickled
The side of my neck
I knew that leaning in
To wash away my sins
Meant leaning out
Into the ever widening eclipse of our
Infinity

Try as I may to hide it, Beloved,
My writing knows when I don’t love enough
The stranger I have become to you.

- Why I will always wash the dishes