07:00
there was knocking on my door
and a quiet voice
asking for me to let in

when I finally got
to open the door
there was no trace of anyone
not my sister
who never knocked so softly
always two quick knocks
not my father
who bangs on the door
as if I've stolen something from him and now he wants it back
no, no one was at the door
nor the corridor
nor the winding stairs that resembled the shriveled oak tree
we admired so. (she turned a hundred last year)

no, my only visitor
was the sunlight
creeping her way in softly, silently
through the square glass windows

I admit I am not a morning person
(wrong. I am not a waking up at 07:00 person)
if my ghosts are trying to wake me up,
its 07:00,                                   too early.

a contradiction contracted in
lowest terms are
you.
[it’s metal edges]

your beauty is
of
a
garden
(suspended at mid-
clouds), to enter
and

to say

that in such a
variety of
flowers
there
can not
be
one that
attracts
you

to pick it

to dismantle it
and
to
neglect
the
rest.

[it’s plasticized segments]

you know how to
quickly imprint
yourself
on me

when

you laugh
at times
and
conversely
you weep
and

you are like

those skies
that shake me
to my core

when

they are
blinding
on one hand
and
violently bleak
on the other

so

clearly
fractured
they shake
me pierce
me
pierced
i am
by

you.

[it’s just thinned points]

imagine if
a chameleon
started
to
acquire
each
gradation
of
another
creature
in the form
already
similar
to
it:

where
could
he
ever
escape?

[it’s inconstant semicircles]

(i can not
delineate
you
it is like
sketching
a tidal
wave
nobody
can:

painters

invent them)


[and it’s shoved arches]


i’ll tell you
of
a
woman
her soul
shattered
and

subsequently

imprisoned
splinter by
splinter
in hail
stones

she

fell
and
she felt
herself
crashing
at the same
instant
millions
of times

however

she
never
went
insane.

[it’s torn curves]


(and I know well
how a continuity
interrupted
succeeds
to make
you
fumble
convulsively
but it’s not
enough
for me to
restrain
myself
don’t
ask
me
to)

[it’s petrified vertical axes]

what i see
is
a cross
section of
enclosure
handfuls with
disconcerting
efficiency
consisting
of prisms
and

you know how to decompose

yourself inside
an innocence
delimited
you proceed
by inconstancies
you lacerate
metabolizing
you struggle
silencing
and

i could
only
teach you
one thing:

gray is not
a faded
version
of
black.

Go ahead,
Call me gay,
You have fun with that.
Its not an insult to me.
Why should it be?
Its an obvious fact,
Yeah I'm happy,
And gay.
Wait...
Which gay were you talking about?
Oh yeah,
I'm that too.

In love they wore themselves in a green embrace.
A silken rain fell through the spring upon them.
In the park she fed the swans and he
whittled nervously with his strange hands.
And white was mixed with all their colours
as if they drew it from the flowering trees.

At night his two finger whistle brought her down
the waterfall stairs to his shy smile
which like an eddy, turned her round and round
lazily and slowly so her will
was nowhere—as in dreams things are and aren't.

Walking along avenues in the dark
street lamps sang like sopranos in their heads
with a voilence they never understood
and all their movements when they were together
had no conclusion.

Only leaning into the question had they motion;
after they parted were savage and swift as gulls.
asking and asking the hostile emptiness
they were as sharp as partly sculptured stone
and all who watched, forgetting, were amazed
to see them form and fade before their eyes.

and i did not conquer
the demons
that live inside my head
or the devils
that walk with me
i loved them instead

so i became obsessed with
joining those
i adore as my own ghost
the ethereal
the deathly is what
i dream of the most

now i have grown into
beautiful fantasies
of blood and eternal sleep
the desire to die
to free myself is the
greatest secret i keep

i slowly doubt the efficacy
of living and
breathing as others do
my lovely shadows
my best friends
i am coming to join you

*© Tara India.

heat sinks through
my skin these days, i
can't keep it out. i can't stay
put to shed the extraneous
motion inside of me; i suppose,
if anything,
i'm contracting, collapsing.

god knows what i am willing,
but, angularly, my
motives are changing and i'm
afraid of where these
clouds lead.

am i free or just a
cast shadow of me?
am i a liar,
or do i care simply in veiled metre,
and
would i stop before i seem?