I know it isn't fair,
But there's always a slight favourite.
She has a fountain of tea-red curly hair,
A gangly teenager, half moon of a woman.

I don't know why she stands out
But she emanates a warmth
She is a child Pinterest threw up
She is fairy lights, post its and posters.

with bells in her voice
she sings in a husky deep
has no idea how talented
how emotionally brave and strong she is.

She writes beautiful, heartfelt poetry
With an envious ease and earn praise.
"Miss, I want to join Human Resources when i'm older"
She joyfully proclaims.

"There's nothing wrong with HR..."
I try my diplomatic side,
But you were born to be an artist
It says so in your defining eyes.

My maid broke up today.
Something I never thought
I’d have to say.
In my bouncing babyish bubble,
She doesn’t have a love life,
She doesn’t have a say.

She must continue
To iron the shirts,
To make the tea,
To cook tomorrows meal,
To keep us going
When inside
She is broken.

I stopped to ask her
If we could go catch a movie.
A paltry solution
For a fragmented life
Her world must be.
She must have been disgusted
That I thought mere fiction
Would fix her reality.

I hurt rather than help.
She helps through her heart unmet.

She doesn’t have any girl friends
Or a mother to lean on.
She must hold back her tears,
And bear it to the bone.
She is a real woman
A woman in love
Who can’t afford to wallow,
Or other privileged stuff.

I suggested a day of, maybe a week,
But an idle mind may make her more weak.

Nothing can repair her broken dreams,
Of being a bride wed,
Of sharing a bed,
Of someone she could call her own.
All of this she silently must mourn.

How distant we are, that I cannot reach her,
Or comfort her, or soothe her ruptured nerves.
This is a life no one deserves.

When I was 15
I heard a song
That I though I'd love
For all along.

But by 20 that song
Didn't have the same ring
It sounded wrong
It didn't bring
The same feeling.

I  told the next song I loved
That this love probably woudn't last
The song and I pushed and shoved
Soon the song was of the past.

A near decade I went through some songs
Hardly a week, a month...not long
Every beat sounds good
In a drunken whirl
But all they did, was make me hurl.

And now nearing 30
I have come into my own.
Happened upon a song
That's been playing a near two years long.

I wasn't obsessed. Didn't play it on loop
The song, a subtle soundtrack
A swift shot through the hoop.

A daily drunken father
A mother who waits for death
A house unkempt
The bills just almost paid.

Bed wetting.

The "games" the older boys played
"Visitors" while asleep
The crush who liked your friend
The pain that ran too deep.

Disorganised language.

The boyfriend who never called
the bouts of crying making sense of it all
The endless assignments due.
The crticism, first class and thesis too.

Feeling a presence of "God"

The boy you both liked and not
The one who confused you a lot
Working till 5 am
On market research again and again

Delusions.

The confusion that grew and grew
The heightened senses that were all but true
Connecting colossal dots
A higher calling and the lot.

Hearing voices.

Everyone is watching me
I have no privacy
My phone is tapped
And i am trapped
Everyone wearing a disguise
Filling my head with lies.

Paranoia.

A book that burst it's way
Out of me and held sway
Jesus's commands
Abiding by his demands.

Grandiose delusions.

Mountain highs and abyss lows
Shabby clothes, things all over the floor
Manic shopping sprees
Poems buzz in my head like bees
Barely staying awake
Not much from me to take

Mania and Apathy.

"You left this group"
Disabled Facebook
Backed out of the hen night
Everything wrong seems right

Socially withdrawn.

Smoking a near pack
Unironed clothes and slack
Persistent thoughts of death
Messy hair and dried up sweat.

Suicidal thoughts.

A drunken father still
A mother barely paying the bills
Still afraid to soundly sleep
A slow descent of sanity, slow and steep.

Never dare the devil.
Say to him "catch me if you can"
And he will creep up on you
When you least expect it
Except he won't look him
But rather in God like guise.

He will not only seek to destroy you
He will tear apart your Godly connection
Rob your spiritual fulfilment
Lure you away
Take you astray
And slowly start killing you.

You won't die immediately
You will first stop combing your hair
Your clothes will go unironed
Your teeth brushed but barely
This is how he slowly summons.

Then you will stop looking forward
To all that tomorrow brings
You will smoke till your lungs can take no more
You will inhale all the toxins in.

You will start hoping for conditions
For cancer, lupus and aids
You will want a reason to let go of life
Walk into traffic when the light is green bright.

You will wake up late
Or not go to work at all
And even when you make it
Look vacant and small.

You'll pray without believing
You'll look to God with doubt
This is not what the Lord has promised..
But where are his promises now?

People will say "just fight it"
And you know very well this is a must
But how can you fight the almighties
Like God bet over Job. It is not just.

"Magey chooti Deiyo"
she says; my little Godling
These words of affection gently
caress her heart fabric
as if feathered over
and over to stop the bleeding.

Not so fast says poetry
I wont just leave you like that.
Please please do, I beg it
Leave my brain intact.

I have carefully glued it back together
With counsel, and with meds.
I fear this is a relapse
Have our talks not come to and end?

More meds does not make my life easy
I struggle with quivering hands, sleep and appetite.
I have asked you to kindly leave me
With myself i have ended this fight.

What more do you want me to do voice?
Have you not done enough?
I wont post anymore on facebook
But that does not mean this is tough.

I have chosen my path
I have chosen to live my life
But you whisper softly to me
And it makes me want my head to the knife.

Voice, listen i don't mind being wrong
That book from my life is gone
I just want to be at peace with God
I want real faith not illness dear Lord!

I have begun to rationalise
That this just cannot be real
I have identified that the staunch belief
Is a part of my illness. Thats how it feels.

Whats more i dont need to believe it
I have enough love in my life
If you continue to taunt me
It might ruin my chance of being his wife.

I am done with the book
I am done with the connection
It means nothing to me
I love my new found clarity.

So dont come back here again
With your insistent "calling"
I swear one day you will feel my pain
I am sick and tired of falling

I have job now and children to teach
I dont want this book or to preach
I dont care for any of its magic
This whole **** thing has been tragic.

So run off to where you came from
I dont need to listen to you
I dont need to wait for answers
Voice, i am finally through

A bowl of Rice,
Soft, simmered
And milky white.
Evenly shaped,
Each one like the next.

Rice was this abundance of
Easy going grain.
Wholesomely predictable
But comforting all the same.

The Pol Sambol had double his fury
A haphazard mix of harsh spices
Woven into soft textures.
The tangy taste of lime,
With a sweet coconuty crunch.
A burst. A passion.
An unevenness. A pattern.

Palatable extremes
That Rice had grown to love.

Their journey never began,
So there journey will end in never.

Rice was the base.
And Pol Sambol was the taste.
And so they lived forever.


Pol Sambol- A spicy coconut grind based sambol

Never ask a linguist a question.
Your ‘question’
Will never fit into that tiny two syllabled linguistic feature
, Or be a string of words
that you think you control
Because they are, what you invented.

Whether it is fashioned into a simple- one word,
Direct, Indirect, Sarcastic, Rhetorical, Interrogating,
Requesting, Accusing, Information Eliciting, Affirmation Seeking,
Cross examining, Spot Light Shining
Figure of speech,
Where speaker assumes A Position of Power….
It Will be heard not only for its
Bare-naked lexicon,
But also enveloped in its unconscious inflections,
intonation, micro pauses, combined with gestures
And set within that ever so important context.

With every move, you may hope to extract.
But be aware that you may give away
Much much more

I used to trace
your face in every face
and yet could not place
your face at all

in my corporeal world
i used to find
pieces of you
entwined
in lyrics and in phrases

the once clear photograph
that turned mosaic was now
a fragmented work of art
and everyday rips you
further apart

then to meet the original article
to see you with sight
your voice auricular
your fingers tangible
in a fraction you converted
from the surreal to the somatic

you that breathed seemed exhausted
and every gulp of oxygen
seemed to rust your pipes
the ones you galvanized
in alcohol at night
knowing it would increase the rate
your organs would take to depreciate

your zestful pipes were drained of color
punctured perhaps by careless claws
or by your own negligence and flaws
you always loved to tease death
and now you seem to prompt it

"Life" was over
you were passed "Survival"
now it was "Endurance"
a step away from "Existence"

"you" that fueled my memories
has now decayed
so how is it that i still feel
a faint pulse
in that corner of my mind
you still occupy?

Looking down and around
During an upward climb
Can sometimes confuse
Our discernment of direction.

When motion is set,
Against an unchanging sky
Even movement
Is seemingly, still.

So wrongly perceived
Is our sense of advancement,
For eyes only see
What appear to be,

And deceitful Sight,
Trumps over Insight
And our sense-less introspection.

We are told that
The ‘patriarch-ally- pup-petted’  and produced
Stereotypical, cross culturally similar
‘mother roles’
allow little margins
For individual identity,
and Women are subsumed into this
Large all encompassing
Earth like word.

This word
Has power in just that.
Its gigantic homogeneity
That swallows
All who enter it
And everything within its radius.

And once in,
For some, it becomes a  clash
of’ Intrinsic’ with the ‘Learned’,
the Reflexes Vs the Rational
the battle and balance
Of both You and Mother
And the existence of both:
In moments of synchronization,
The alternate emergence,
The topsy- turvy Co existence.
Or the complete
Beating to pulp of both,
Into near absolute polarization.


The daddy issues
Are fancy Freudian
Easy to display
Easy  to  pin down.
The Mother. The Giantess.
Becomes your most silent fear.

The severed ends of a rope
Jagged like jaws,
Limp like dying leaves,
Hangs loose.

It wasn’t cut
But it frayed
Because of the beating sun
Because of the heaviness of load
Because it was taught with tension
Because it was not meant to hold
So much

No matter the rope,
There lies a moving sea
Between the shores of souls
As Gibran told.

You can’t let go
Of something in between.
You can’t let go
No matter the fraying rope.

You never let love in.
You only taste it
With the tip of your tongue
And tease Lvoe
Only to spit it out
As if it was venom.

Lvoe hangs around you
Like a peeping tom
Eager to see what you don’t
Want to show some.

Loev that took you for dinner
And insisted on paying the bill
Who said you looked nice
But it only made you feel ill.

Lveo that wanted to take the “next step”
As if it were in a manual
That society writ till death.

Lvoe that made you nauseous
Lveo that made your cringe
Lvoe that made you anxious
Lvoe that made you binge

To all those girls I’m here to say
A "once upon a" love doesn’t happen
Upon us all

But something better may come
Something better will come

And you won’t break out in hives
And you won’t guard yourself with knives
Like a duck to water grasp
A love that will forever be in your clasp.

You know they say Accounts is boring
Full of rules and such.
But I see in it a beauty,
One that I miss so much.

Accounting is an art,
Not to be framed or praised.
You will never find it hung in galleries,
And most will not be amazed.

It has in its insipid placidity
A calmness, stillness of being
It prizes precision, stoic obedience
And an unquestioning routine.

In its so called predictability
Many are led to be jaded
To do something the same way over and over
They find that the  novelty has faded.

But to me it is a land
Where man rules with his mind and his hand
Where everything has a place to be
And a counter- part to keep it company.

I miss so much the process
Of allocating what needs to be.
I ache sometimes for that closure
The drawing of double lines, you see.

Because amidst the raging chaos
Of our bubbling minds
Accounts demands discipline
And control of some kind.

I don’t find this stifling
I find in it a peace
A closure most of life doesn’t offer
And with its balance sheets, a release.

It’s nice to make sense for a change
Of our haphazard world
Where everything belongs somewhere
And nothing is left unheard.

Accounts, you are well adjusted
Perhaps too much to a fault
People are tired of your perfection
The balance you bring, the halt.

But I in my maze of a mind
Love to do a few sums
That start of like puzzles
But end up being fun

Mostly because there are answers
That are arguably right
This absoluteness maybe a construct
But I’m willing to suspend my insight

And go along with something
For once that keeps me on track
Accounts you are meditation
You demand concentration that most people lack.

Poetry is applauded
Poetry is acclaimed
But in the real world, it is you who are useful
Although you don’t have any fame.

You are also a quiet achiever
That doesn’t boast of your strengths
Rarely a loud inspiration
That does not go to great extents.

You are not melodramatic
Nor do you lure peoples with guise
What you see is what you get.
No gimmicks and no lies.

You teach me of a denied truth
That reality is boring.
Your philosophy is order and balance
Your karmic world sends me soaring.

Past tense feels funny on you.

The days you feel you could never ‘live’ with my messy laziness,
That you just, can’t, live, with my drama,or routines or planning,
That you don’t want to always explain, apologize or understand,
Remember –
You don’t have to ‘live’ with me.


But If you are to live with someone like me….
She will learn to be tidy for you,
To tone down the drama, to be flexible with routines,
To read your unsaid words, your apologetic body language....

But on her off days, when she just wants to be messy,
to wait in bed, To shout nonsensical things, to demand dates and time,
Keeps heeding for a better reply, and just. Does. Not. Hear. you….
On those days, know, that she tries.

There will be off days an on days,
your turn, and hers
Don’t forget that the process of evening things out
Is a process.

Repetition of events is a strain,
But would you be satisfied with a perfect equilibrium
With no more to go?

Across the sea
safe in a case
was brought to me
a trinket.
a silver thread
enwrought with
starlets
of pretty pink and silver

it liked my tan
and formed a decorative band
around my ankle

a suitable occasion
and my anklet embraced
its moment of recognition.

we abandoned our plans
and headed for the polluted shores
our feet in first
then our knees
the sea water lapped and lapped
at once i felt
a significant snap!
i picked it up
and hid it in my blackening bag.

that night i celebrated without my anklet
my chain was loose
my foot was free
I crossed boundaries into deeper sands
sands that sank
conveniently forgetting
my glimmering chain
shut up in my blackening bag

my free foot sank and sank
the harder i climbed the deeper it bore
until i was completely engulfed
suffocating

the air is clear now
no grains of sand to grind my skin
i found my anklet
my broken anklet
and latched it on
with a safety pin.

When the paint runs out
You dab dab and blotch
From what remains,
To even out the blatant gaps

You try to substitute
To frugally use, reuse
Just
to keep the painting intact

when the worn out brush
can no longer preserve
what was,
or keep designing
what is to be


it recedes to rest
an thus,
The fading begins.


At first it’s a tinge lighter
Just a little less brighter


But then shades begin to wary
Significantly, from what they were.
Paleness maybe be boring
But boring doesn’t hurt.

This new insipidity,
Soothes the ruptured nerves.

Or so the brush tells itself
To lie in its inactive state
To escape into false contentment
Is easier
Than to be a brush without the paint.

My anguish finds its way onto paper,
Like ants to dribbles of honey.
No pauses. No thought,
but an intrinsic pull
of pain onto paper
palpable.
Nothing to lose for all is lost.

My happiness is cautious.
It’s meditative and still.
It spills not out
Nor seeps through a crevice.
It searches long and hard for words
And I fear to speak it
For fear of it being lost.
It hides in its recluse seclusion.
I have everything to lose for all is found.

My words do not lend themselves
As easily unto happiness
As it does to anguish.
My pain is verbose,
My happiness; silent.

I’ll be brief. I’ll be bold
No pain
For so much poetry to unfold.

With you no anxiety
With you I have no fear
I’m happy to write bad poems
If it means you will be near.

With you I struggle for metaphors
With you I struggle for fluidity.
No flood gate break of emotions
No conflict or enmity.

No pain. No piercing poetry
No pain can sometimes mean
No art
I'd trade my entire vocabulary
To keep you in my heart.

You make me write bad poems
Never gave me reason for pills
I'd trade my art for a happy heart
One with minimal ills.

Thank you for not giving me
A reason to write and write.
Except in that to acknowledge
Your importance and your light.

To simplify
A whirl of words
In an uncertain haze,
Is to undo a knot
With ones left hand.
The fastened knots
The right hand creates
With its callous ease
An confident twists,
Which to its sight,
Appears as artfully right.
Until its complexities over take its sway
And stirs up an ugly blotch,
Stagnating the flow.
And once a knot
The right shamefully resigns.
While, the unfamiliar left
Attempts to loosen
The whirly wordy knot,
String by string.
A tedious task.

*
(2017)
Years went by…and
The know- it- all Right
Realized with a fright
That she should have Left it alone.

That the Left knew from the start
It wasn’t destined to last
And said "this mess is now your own"

The one knot became two
And two became four
Till it squared and squared…
The space between the Left and the Right
Was never meant to be shared.

The sound and silent fury
From the two hands that clapped
Was only a cosmic spark.
To leave in each palm, a mark.

The Right conceded to have been
Wrong all along
The Left, said "your love was never there
To be gone".

Right nodded with humility
And accepted defeat.
The Left triumphant said;
We were just meant to meet.

So they both parted ways,
One to the Right
The other to the Left.
A bond not to live with
But never to forget.

Down with the D word
A dark cloud looms over.
Down in the dumps.
“you belong in a bin”
Your colonized - conscience hums.

Sloth overcomes.

No poignant metaphors
For the ****** dark D word.
It deserves none.

Down in the dumps
A dark cloud comes
One week turns into months
and like in a stenchy trench
dampness overcomes.
Gangrene in your soul.

“At war with yourself?
To what? Get out of bed?”
Society laughs..

It may not be the norm
But God comes in 50mg forms.
One day turns into a month.
And a weak smile breaks out
Your colonized conscience now dumb.
Joy must, joys shall, joy will
Soon overcome.

When pain surfaces,
it has already been blended and pulped.
It’s that untraceable mash
of the brightly colored clay,
that so easily, yet unexpectedly
merged into that
sickening grey.

We try to master this mess,
to understand and own
to both possess and disown
something we bore
something we bear.

But it doesn’t matter
if it was the Red
that started running into Yellow
that didn’t never saw it coming…
or the burst of Orange
that snowballed its way
and swallowed  the blues and greens.

Soon we will see,
that Grey is also a color
and isn’t just a haphazard mix.
So nothing, really,
needs to be fixed.

Start.
Start running.
Start at that easy pace,
That comfortable trot,

Test.
Test your speed.

Once that internal gear shift takes place
Into rapid but perfectly coordinated alternative movements,
That amazingly synchronized ****** rhythm
Will take over.


To allow this, is to test your capacity.
To allow this is to also lose
Almost - Absolute control.

We are all trained
To run as fast as we can.


What may appear to be
A soaring sense,
Of will power driven motion...
Of an adrenalin enforced, endorphin educing
Constant velocity - monotony – breaking
Invincible High..
Is a moment, when you are least
In  control.

It is one thing to win a race
But another thing
To own it.

Poetry, is not always art
You say, it can also be a symptom.

Although it comes like a ****
I say, there always is a twinge of wisdom.

See, this gassy release,
A sign of my impending thought- feces
A mark of my emotional constipation.
It puts at ease.
Though others be displeased
It is a sign of my imagination.

Is it madness or it is magic?
You begin to probe.
You say it would be tragic
And suspect a diseased temporal lobe.

Can medication
Cause hesitation
In the outpouring of my words?
“Yes it can.
Certain chemicals it may ban
You'd stop expelling all that "****" ”

But this is MY ****
I continue to persist
Who are you to grudge?
Whether I may or may not
Progress or rot,
Is not for you to judge.

You say you want to help me
To function, to be “normal”
But I don’t think that life should be
So boring and so formal.

But you say it is not that romantic
But rather mania.
I think you are being pedantic,
Science does not cover all areas.

In the end I concede,
To take the blessed pill
But say good bye to my rhyming poetry,
It will be gone once my mind is still.

If this verse were an object,
It would be both hard and soft.
The emotion I want to express
Is a painful paradox.
The light-hearted heaviness,
of both gain and loss.

The answer is not zero,
The answer is a cross.
And X marks the spot
Where gain met with loss.

And I found this X marked scar,
Across my crooked chest.
A mark of a dead heart,
Buried beneath my breast.

I did not know
This love was stillborn.
I swear, I didn’t know.
I only saw a bubble surface
And expected true love to grow.

You always knew my fetus heart
Was beatless, pulseless and miniscule.
Forgive me and my convictions,
I wasn’t trying to fool.

I feel both light and heavy.
I feel down and yet relieved.

I now see that my words were empty,
My gestures bland,
I hurt, humiliated and hunted you
Steering all, with my know it all hand.

I’ve been driving down this road alone,
Carrying carrion flesh,
Beneath my bones.

No reason for "if onlys"
But rather a heartfelt adieu,
Your insight was right.
I honestly did not have a clue.
I only said what I believed to be true.