(Male  Female Plain-Both)

A message that's always in my head,
Maybe it'll reach somebody, who knows?
Certainly I've always been this way,
A patched up, insane Matryoshka!

A package sung from a headache,
Time may pass but the hands are still at 4!
Don't tell anyone but the world,
Will turn upside down!

Ah, I feel torn apart,
Throw out all the memories too!
Ah, how I want to know,
To the deepest part...

Uhm, well if you please,
Dance more and more!
Kalinka? Malinka?
Just play the chord!
What am I supposed to do,
With such feelings?
Can't you tell me? Just a lil bit?

Loud and clear, 524!
Freud? Keloid?
Just hit the key!
All, everything's to be laughed at!
Hurry and dance with all your foolishness!

Clap your hands, it's not really childish!
And listen, to this chaotic fully-crazed tune.
I certainly don't care either way,
The warmth of this world is melting away!

After school, you  and me,  rendezvous?
Rendezvous?
Rendezvous?
Or perhaps you'd like a hopping adventure?
With a crooked smile,
1! 2! 1! 2!

Ah, I'm falling~!
Catch every part of me!
Ah, with both of your hands,
Catch me for me...

Uhm, well... listen a little,
It's something important!
Kalinka? Malinka?
Just pinch my cheek!
It's just that I can't control myself anymore!
Should we do more fantastic things?
Pain, pleasure, hurt but don't cry!
Parade? Marade?
Just clap some more!
Wait, you say?
Wait, wait, wait,
Before we fuse to just one...

After school you  and me,  rendezvous?
Rendezvous?
Rendezvous?
Or perhaps you'd like a hopping adventure?
With a crooked stare,
1! 2! 1! 2!

Hey~ hey~
Down with a cold?
Hey~ hey~
Show me your song!
Hey~ hey~
See how even today...
I'm still a patched up, insane Matryoshka!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~­~~~~~~~~~~
Hey, hey, hey!
If you'd please,
Dance more and more!
Kalinka? Malinka?
Just play that chord!
What am I supposed to do,
With such feelings?
Can't you tell me? Just a lil bit?

Loud and clear, 524!
Freud? Keloid?
Just hit the key!
All, everything's to be laughed at!
Hurry, go and dance no more!

'Smooch' 'smooch' Kiss! This moment is ours alone!
'Smooch' 'smooch' *Kiss! We don't care about them, not at all!

I've never been good at poker
But me and Life played a game
I pulled a horrid, useless hand
And lost every penny to my name

The consequences were harsh
Life gave me them with a smile
With very little to work with
To overcome the trials

Life gave me keloid scars
Life gave me misophonia
Life gave me depression
Life gave me paranoia

And panic attacks
And a fear of love
(And a huge nose
As if I hadn't had enough)

And I'm meant to accept my "spoils"
From a horrid poker game
And spend years of my life
Pretending I'm okay

I'm supposed to laugh
And have a smile on my face
But what emotion should I show
When the audience walks away?

I'm supposed to do this
Without being too fake
But how can one be genuine
While wearing the facades they make?

So when others ask why I'm suicidal
When they ask why I find everything bland
When they try to fix my apathy
I just tell them "I drew a bad hand"

they tell me the raised marks on my skin are an overgrowth of scar tissue
and i wonder why both my mind and my body will try so aggressively to cover up a past wound that it just becomes another

She kept her heart encased in glass
  Or elegantly displayed
     On a moldy old canvass
   For callers by of gilded
      Or passing note

Wrinkled skirt crumpled in the
corner of the hardwood floor
poised to take the stand
and testify about the madness
and the lines of demarcation,
    The hollow harrowing haunting
     harbringer of the haughtiness
     that once served her so well;

I thought I spotted her reflection
in a magazine,
soot stained pages outlining
the continental shifts in her veracity
and the keloid cracks
running along the base of her foundation
a wrinkled old romance novel
in today’s latest fashion,
pretension the wayward child of passion

Once one accepts that one is healed,
one must now decide what to do
with all of the time one spent
striving for healing.

There is an enormous amount
of positive energy
that wants to do do do do.
It threatens to turn negative
if not managed properly.
It seems tangible;
feels more real
than a slap to the face.
And yet, when I look at it,
I see it is really,
and always was,
nothing.
It is within this field of play
so, only a matter of choice.
It’s a tool,
a resource,
not even a power.
I am the power.
I give the energy it’s charge
and the power it needs.
It’s nothing without me.
Don’t blame that thing
on an unseen outside force.
No other being took your hand
and made you do a thing
you didn’t make the choice to do.
To now stay healed,
without cauterizing the wound
and creating a huge keloid scar,
choose to watch the energies
float on by.

Who needs all these?
They’re only conjured up by demi-gods
who wished to play real God
in a make-believe bubble.
Every thing is clear now.
I can see right through.
You can just walk away from all this mess.
Slide off the whirlwind, roller coaster, slip-n-slide
of this ridiculous thing
we’ve fooled ourselves into believing is life.
I know you know what I’m talkin’ bout.
No other one can tell you
the thoughts you think with God.
Not even the person
you took yourself to be
so you could get along
in this ***** mirror image
of a Love Supreme.

Keep you in the heart of me
and see there is only you
only one
only just a living dream
to get caught up in
and play and dabble for a bit.
Yes, a nine.
You’re drawn to things for a reason.
Quite literally, 9.
There aren’t 7s or 8s or 2s even.
Truth is absolute which makes you 1 or 0.
So?
Which side will you play
or should I say choose?
Cuz, regardless the jersey
you pick up to wear,
in reality, there’s only one game.
So you either know you’re a player;
or, you’re part of the backdrop
and just being played.

Oh, Holy Jehovah I am elated with a devoid joy, for on the site of 1
surgically-ablated keloid, my God-gifted nose formed a fiery keloid

Broken trust lingers,
keloids bloom on tender skin—
time’s sharp hand caresses.

Only mem’ries remain,
etched deep like ancient rivers—
heart learns forgiveness.

Light seeps through the cracks,
wounds become a part of me—
scars, my final strength.

I. son
i am my mother's boy
who knows which teflon pans
can take the abrasive green of
a scotch brite sponge
whose face was spared the
potent accutane but not
the persistent whiteheads

mamma, sage and skeptic
who tells me things like
"to bury a parent is an honor,
but to bury a child is a curse"
if such things are to believed,
mamma holds the esteem and
privilege of a queen because
she buried both parents before
she could finish her roaring 20s
but also because she planted her
roots firm and coaxed a flourishing
garden kingdom from the scorched
plains of her own fragile fig-heart

i am my father's son
who is enamored with knowing
my brain ever-hungry for knowledge
my father who phones colleagues on drives
when there is nothing to say
or listens to npr and old malayalam songs,
fuzzy and wailing, when the gap
between us feels too far to bridge

dada, whose hair-trigger temper
i am said to have inherited
only he seethes in stoic solemnity
and i decompose, curdle and sour into
bitter words i'm not sure i don't mean
dada who, if **** hit the fan and the
plane was going down, would strap
the elastics of oxygen masks behind
the ears of others before his own;
reckless selflessness in everything

dada says that in his eyes,
i am still the wrinkled, delicate
bundle of flesh he took home
on march 10th, 2005
mamma says i am the first child
she has ever held and the first child
she has ever loved

the tectonics of arguments:
convergence with dada
brings only the buckling of earth
the creation of new ridges until
we are separate continents
subsidence with mamma
where deceit leads to a sinking
and my rebellion is made into
magma once more, simmering
dormant beneath the surface

i say i love you to my parents
especially during these arguments
because god forbid their lives
are cut short and all that was
and all that will ever be was
punctuated simply, indefinitely,
with two terrible semicolons;
i want to live without regret
and celebrate them in my
remembrance

i say i love you
but it’s difficult to say
“i’m sorry”

ii. material love
i tell you that love is as material
as it is immaterial:

i tell you that love
is the sore corners of our mouths
marred and slit open by the plastic
of dime a dozen fruit-flavored freeze pops
cold and sticky on sun-ironed skin
the heat-ironed fuse bead memorial plaque
buried with dexter the dead pet fish
in the sloped backyard of my old house

foil wrapped over-toasted peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches clutched in the cold hands
of my family, seated in a dusty gold nissan minivan
at 6:30 in the morning, dressed in our sunday best
on the way to church in the bleak midwinter

i'm from
crumpled bounce dryer sheets
redolent with soapy softener
heady pine-sol wet on bathroom tiles

i'm from
knees skinned on bus stop pavement
kiss it better, dust it off
keloid trinkets of my childhood

i'm from the spice and burn of liquor
miniatures on my grandfather's breath
the scent of ഏത്തക്ക അപ്പം frying on the deck
turmeric-tinted oil clinging to paper towels

i'm from fiddling with shoelaces for an eternity
because my clumsy fingers didn't have the dexterity
to coax the bunny around the tree and into its den

i'm from mamma having us stuff loose change into
cardboard coin rolls weeks before christmas,
so that santa would have a down payment for
our presents, even when we lived paycheck to paycheck

i'm from smuggling aunt jemima syrup under the dining table
with the matte finish that raised the hairs on my arms when scratched
to sip in clandestine corn syrup paradise

i'm from mac n' cheese and hot dogs
marauchen chicken-flavored instant ramen
with ice cubes so as to not scald my
young and unseasoned tongue

i'm from learning to ride a bike in the
parking lot of the local middle school
while my parents camped out in the
trunk of our old toyota highlander
racing birds, squirrels, anything that
dared so much as to breathe with
a childish eagerness, ever-chasing
the boundless oblivion of sunset
the violent shaking of training wheels
setting the tempo to my mayhem

i'm from getting fitted for a bonded zirconium tooth
not long after flipping over the handlebars of a bike
long after taking the training wheels off
(maybe i forgot to keep my head out of the clouds
or perhaps the clouds out of my head)

i'm from sonic chili cheese anything
on thursday schoolnights,
and fistfuls of arby's curly fries clenched
between tiny fingers as we watched
planes take off from the trunk of our car,
flying,
     flying,
          flying,
yaw, pitch, roll like badminton birdies
eclipsing crayola-blue skies
like sly fireflies evading mason jar capture
zipping through sleepy nights

i am rooted with conviction
in pennsylvania piedmont
(rich, chalky with minerality)
and transient like lamplight fire
dancing on houston bayous
in a mid-spring's twilight

in the strokes of my father
tracing the കുരിശ് on my
forehead after a nightmare

i am from syllogism and shortcomings
a student of disappointment but
always a child of love