rewind; replay
    we're standing in a canopy of sunlight
    and laughing, constantly.
    our faces are tired of moving up
    but our eyes are used to crinkling;
    they fold, and shut, and open like buds
    with the spread and shrink of our grins, in
    and out, with our lungs.
Pauze. Zoom.
    Your nails are chipping now, but
    You're really a halfwit,
    So that doesn't deter you the least bit
    From scratch-scratch-scratching at their shook ends:
    They fall apart as we fall out.
    We're spinning, we're dizzyingly quick,
    Hurtling at the speed of 28,800 kilometres an hour; we're brisk
    At best. (Inconceivable at worst.)
    And I can feel, already, you slipping away.
    You're outside of my grasp; you're far out.
rewind; replay.
    We're ripping at the seams;
    Our faces are like bad make-up
    That doesn't move with our smiles;
    Our eyes stay impassive,
    Uninterested at best. Incensed at worst.
    The crinkles in their corners are crusted
    And new folds form on the frowns of our foreheads.
    We're smothering each other in pillow talk and blankets.
Flash-forward, play.
    We're bathed in rain, we're in a
    Canyon, in a chasm.
    We don't know salt from wound
    Or snake from bite. We
    Bring out the worst in our best selves.
    We're drowning in suitcases and bedding.
    We let it fill our lungs and we
    Don't look back.

The sky’s a light carnelian’s shade
and, as the brightness starts to fade,
from carnelian to carmine he turns, too-
soft to vivid tones of the hue.
Looks into the ‘windows to my soul,’
     (‘windows to one’s soul’ he called them)
The intensity nearly swallows me whole-
his windows a pair of solitary gems.
Eyes the colour that fire should be,
a fury to turn flames green with envy.

So as carnelian turns to carmine
and the heavens light up with his glow,
a firefly’s brightness is overshadowed,
but the yellow is whitened down in snow

A lone, saphhired rhododendron in full bloom
unaware of its death in a pluck so soon

The furious ball of rage sets
and us (three!) need to return
-a lingering gaze for a moment too long,
cheeks of crimson and burn!
For too long have we tarried,
our hours have wasted the day
Find no longer a reason
nor any excuse to stay

Peer over the edge a last time
     (indecision, in control)
At the vast expanse of cerulean, sublime
     (pause to contemplate my goal)

Tucks the blooming rhod’ between a lock and an ear,
breathes, “it looks prettier still here,”
for another second holds ( ) near
and in parting’s ‘sweet sorrow’ starts to disappear

A gunshot echoing, a resounding sound,
as he turns away from the mead’.
His body slowly hits the ground,
and I know I’ve killed him dead.
For the first time, a lamenting tear’s grace
rolls down one side of my face
and all I see is red.


A gunshot, a second time, lying in bed,
*brow, hair, pillow- all soaked in red.

You are winter afternoons;
You're light jackets and khakhi shirts;
You are long fingers twined around a cup of chai;
You're the authentic exotic experience without the strings.
My cool heat that stings the back and caresses the arms,
You blow hot/blow cold
Alternately.
When you're hot
And my hands are stuffed in my pockets,
You are gentle and intense
And full of purpose
But with the spring,
You whirl away in dust,
Leaving your tropical wonderland
Bitter, barren and absent.
My Persephone that retreats to the underworld,
You take away my flowers
Too soon.
Let me have May with you;
Wait for me to catch up.
Slow down.
I'm counting in clicks of the clock
Our ons and our offs.

I gave him my favourite book
And laughed it off as expanding his "cultural horizons."
I showed him my favourite movie
And shrugged it off as "chillin' and killin' time."
I sent him all my favourite music
But could not write it off as anything
Other than pure devotion.
I want to scoop out
His eyes that read my most beloved works,
His unworthy ears that heard the tunes of my heart,
His awful, ugly smile that enjoyed my dearest film.
And so now here I sit,
With his organs lying before me,
Looking lovelier than on him;
And still, I am not at peace.
The rumbling in my heart, and the twitching in my fingers
Has not stopped.

I dive for his heart;
I will sew it on my sleeve.

She says
Let's go
Live in a big city
And make art and change the world.
She can say this; she is art.
But my hands are bound
With ***** hair;
They cannot make.
He says
Come, run with me
We will live on the beach
And watch films and all will be love.
He can say this; he is love.
But my heart is strapped
With suds that wrap 'round it;
I cannot love.
They say
They are leaving
To live on the hills
And sit and think about life.
They can do this; they are life.
But mine is whirring and swirling
And whirlpooling
In a black drain.
Mother says
Get a good job, and marry someone
Who thinks like you and earns like you,
Eat, and breed, so your rabbits, too,
Can eat.
She can say this; she has bred, and earned, and eaten.
But I am held
By threads that catch
And tear on the jagged edges of my body:
Shoulders and eyebrows (sinking and rising,
in submission and rebellion).
Apartments constrict and choke;
Beaches drown me;
Hills are voyeurs with sharp surveillance;
And mansions
Have golden bars, that cling too tight.
For now though
— Shampoo, soap, drain, dry —
Monotony holds comfort
And museless function runs the key that jolts me
Onwards.

I have risen but
Have not shone, and will not do.
Remind me at noon.

She was in her heavy, heavy
          Auspicious reds
On that cold winter's night,
When he arrived in white.

She stood shivering, dreaming
Of domestic bliss
And watching mindless films
On new couches with the plastic still on them
And pitter-pattering little feet.
She didn't know the names
Of some of the things she wanted
But she wanted them anyway.

All she got was barked orders
Of "have tea ready by 6 am sharp,"
And "you missed a spot."

And she is shackled
Under the weight
Of her oppressive reds.
She is scrubbing; she is trapped;
She lines her forehead every day,
Right where her hair is parted,
With the red of her blood
And devotion.

And he whispers to her
In the silence of the night that's on their shoulders by now
When they're at a traffic light,
Waiting on the blink,
"I'll send you a bill,
For each day and
                                night."

When you fall asleep by TV light; and wake
Without coaxing whispers or suggestive
Pulls, realising the ghosting, restive
Fingers you felt were only ghosts raking

Over your skin; when you pick up the phone
Every time you see a droll pick-up line,
But hear just "Leave a message at the tone,"
Don't find yourself all by yourself, but find
Yourself, all by yourself; smile wistfully
At echoes of past weaknesses; learn bull-
Fighting, or pottery, with tickets you'd bought
Together; fill your minutes with you; and when

All else fails, console yourself with dreamy
Leads, cheesy films, and tubfulls of ice-cream.

You do a simultaneous favour
To spiderwebs and fire
As they dance in your depth
And I skim across your surface
Skitterishly
Watching the blue flow up into blue
And the blue sink down into blue
Reaching fingers reluctantly down, and up,
Broken only
By the water-colour green in between-
I want to be the surface
That only I can break,
That holds the horizontal
Between you & your sky; I
I want to be within
And outside of your
Deep, light body
At once
(Till I can no longer feel the hot burn
On soles and blazen palms)
And then stay so until spiders
Build their home on my shoulders.
•
I'll stay still for them,
And you.
So you can make patterns across my arms-
Cobwebby patterns of (strobe) light-
And I will fly inside you,
Because you are my sky.
This is why I now only swim
Upside-down;
Because I feel like I am flying

We will drive
In fast cars, and climb over fences;
But when you and I ride bikes
Down speedy hills, we feel
The wind in our brains
And our arms and your fingers,
Wrapped tightly around the handlebars,
Will be red and blue and brown
And I will love you
Like mountaintops
And rolling wheels running languidly,
Round after rubber round,
My love, oh
Tender Love.
When we are doing nothing
And your fingers are
Drawing circles on my palms
-And then they're in my hair
And then they're everywhere
All at once, and fast and strong-
I will love you wholly, quickly,
On roaring hilltops, and shout
In the vacuum of our
eternity,
My tender Love.

Or, I Loved You.

The clouds did not look in any way oppressed that morning
when a table held teacups and saucers all scattered about,
Staining light brown on the fine bone china.
Scraping cutlery, cutting deep.
Leaves of a crisping newspaper thumbed through.
Polite guffaws and 'gentle' conversation.
A man lay out a map
at the table and smoothed it down.

Slurp, clink, ah.

Whips lash, sweat breaks.
     Backs break.
Skin glistens, brown grunts muffle into screams across millions of miles.
Lakhs of kilometres?
It's the weather that's oppressive, I'm sure.
     while: "Spices and gold b y  t h e  f i s t f u l,
                  get your bags of gold and spices here!"

Tea, poured into saucers from cups.
Thickly accented words, in a foreign dialect,
sitting oddly on strange, dark tongues.
Men that, years later, were imprisoned for keeping silent
Hanged those that did not.
What are we aping?, echoing in the streets.

Shattered cups and splintered saucers,
strewn neglected on the ground.
A heel crushes out a stub of ashy clove
and the bitter smell of stale coffee
lingers overheard.

The taller kids told her, fevered, in math,
Like they'd been telling everyone all day,
That if you swing all the way 'round a swing
It turns you inside out, the legends say.
She grew more and more excited
As every slow second passed
She could hardly count the moments
Until recess would come at last
She ran right out to the swing set
Didn't stop- she was almost there; she cried,
She screamed, with joy and fruition,
"Now my beauty will be on the outside!"

Leave thought of her-in-
Often-thought-of-you; Virtue
Makes way for torment

Time dons His thief's mask.
While we count days and hours,
He steals my stopwatch.

I can never bring myself
to tell you goodbye, so I
will carve into small, blue stones
My farewells and Promises,
and leave them behind at forts
and cinemas:

All the places that were ours
Will continue so to be.
Slumbering, undisturbed,
obedient stones will lie
until one of us, through brooding,
goes where so often we used to be;
or, oh forbid, the other
chances on them, with another,
fresh-picked love.

We will pirouette
On browned grass, until it turns
Into faery rings.

When I love, I
Don't just fall in-
I trip, and land
In face-first crash.

You are the only water left
in the world
when I cup you in my hands and
drink you in
But when I try to
grip and clench you
to pull you closer to me
or just hold you
you slip away and run out
through the gaps between my fingers.
You're a stormy sea I can't tame.
I'm an unskilled captain
but I've bought a new boat-
Let me be a blue raft and blend (bleed) into you.

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
That's Arthur C. Clarke.
My wife always believed we are not;
She was convinced we are not alone.
11 months ago,
My sweet wife said to me,
“Wouldn’t a pair of tiny feet
Pattering around the house
Sound so sugary sweet?”
10 months ago,
The doctor told me how
My count was pretty low and
Asked my wife about a bike accident
From when she was 10.
My wife cried a little, and then
At home, she cried
More than I’d ever seen her.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said,
But I told her we’re never alone,
As long as we have God.
She told me, in one of the worlds out there,
We are complete.
The ‘S’ in universes keeps her hopeful,
And content.
8 months ago,
I sat in the waiting room
With my sweet wife who had
Been puking and aching for weeks.
The doctor called it a miracle
And said our lonely days were gone.
My wife said she was glad
We weren’t going to be alone,
With just her and me.
7 months ago,
My wife ate right, and exercised,
And sang to her belly, and
Did all of the things
She was told to do;
But it was not enough, because
1 month ago,
My wife — my sweet, lovely wife —
She tripped on the staircase-
That last creaky step I swore I’d fix-
And fell, and bled and bled.
The doctor said he was sorry,
That my wife, she’d be okay, but
That there was nothing to be done
About the young one.
My wife cried much more
Than she had cried 4 months before.
She said she didn’t want to be alone.
“But we are not alone,”
I held her and I said,
“We have God in our midst,
we are not alone.”
A week ago,
I put out a sign
That declared ‘Garage Sale’
(Unabashedly, as if mocking us)
And lay out a motley of miniature clothes and objects-
Unused cribs and
Tiny, unworn shoes.

One day ago,
I said all the right things,
And loved and supported her,
And held her through her tears, but
Right now, as I cry
More than I’ve ever cried before,
And ask why I couldn’t be enough,
She is packing up her trunk,
Saying she can’t take it, saying
*“I just want to be alone.”

Love* tastes like beauty, devotion and affection, rolled into a wafer together.

Love is the beauty of the vain, lone rose of the wild,
fading on the skin of your arms like a lotion.

Love is the devotion of watery jasmine and apples,
running smoothly down the back of your throat.

Love is the affection of thick, chocolatey hazelnuts,
dying so they can remain for everafter on the tip of your tongue.

the sweet, smoky taste of Love rubs in your limbs and your veins
until it is one with your blood and is the only thing you feel.

You devour Love, but it consumes you.

Yourhandsyourfingersyourpalms,
Twined, a vine, delicate and proper
-The one point of softness in you,
I swear-
Around a cigarette that whispers its
Spiral tower wisps
Before it sizzles when you bite it
By accident (you say)
Before it whimpers, and gives-
The best way to die, surely,
To die on the pad of the tip of your
Finger protruding out your
Lovely balmy palm-
Look pretty fab I think! I want
To jump into them
So you can hold me so close
And I can crawl over, unsteady
On new, shortened (further!) legs
To the point on your wrist where
Your heart throbs the most
(And set up camp there).
In other words,
Be mine.

Your hands/your fingers/your palms,
Twined -a vine- delicate and proper
-The one point of softness in you,
I swear-
Around a cigarette that whispers its
Spiral tower wisps
Before it sizzles when you bite it
By accident (you say)
Before it whimpers, and gives-
The best way to die, surely,
To die on the pad of the tip of your
Finger protruding out your
Lovely balmy palm-
Look pretty fab I think! I want
To jump into them
So you can hold me so close
And I can crawl over, unsteady
On new, shortened (further!) legs
To the point on your wrist where
Your heart throbs the most.
In other words,
Be mine.