wonder-lust

Let's go out then,
let's take a long walk down
strange paths,
talking--as ever--
about things
inconsequential, weighty
and personal.

Let's stop to sit,
shoulder-to-shoulder
on a city pavement
(where we should be sitting
gingerly)
and stare at the traffic
and lose ourselves in thoughts.

Perhaps as evening falls
and lights come on
we can buy hot dosais
from a crowded stall.
I'll watch you luxuriate in smoke
and you'll watch me demolish
my food in
two minutes flat.

At the beach, we'll lick our lips
to the salt and dig our feet
into the sand.
When the endless waves depress you,
I'll take you
to taste molaga bajji
(while ruefully admitting
that I've never had it myself,
and you laugh)
and instead we'll dine on
fresh fried fish
and discuss politics
and the possibilities of
space-travel.

As the night creeps in,
we will return,
pretending that this is
our life.

face

The blade has been drawn
across your skin,
the poison mixed in your
red tea.
I have placed the barrell
to your temple, and
am but a
hair-trigger away.

*

I have walked
naked under the stars,
a ghost in this
blinding moonlight;
I have danced
naked, as the open sky
watches, disinterested.
I have channeled the creeping
fingers of the fog,
wrapped it
around my nakedness
and jumped
and laughed
and let it in
to warm me;
I have bored into
my forehead
the frost
that was gifted.

*

Dead through the winter,
I wake now
with not a trace
of dream or
faded memory;
I look around
me,
at the world that is
scattered
with scarves, tissue,
half-burned cigarettes
and half-torn-and-tossed sheets
of scribbled fantasy.

I look up to the ceiling
(the world drones on
in the background)
and wish sleep back into
dead eyes,
swollen eyelids.

*

The mirror stands, tall
and dull.
It stares back.
No bullet penetrates.
No knife scratches the
unflinching surface.
No fog nor sky
dare penetrate.
The mirror stands
oblivious to dream
memory
and will.
The mirror stares,
unflinching
impenetrable
unchanging.

victory

Your petty victories, piled up, one against the other
high
will never measure up to
the lack of victory,
to the freedom that brings.
But you wear masks now
that blind you.

afresh

forgetting,
we paint pictures
of past, the pain,
and colourlessness;
compose symphonies
in legattos of
langorous pleasures-to-come
and crescendos–
we forget.

conversing,
we acquire new languages
of metaphor,
phrase and poetry,
shutting out,
as others look over
our slow-building wall
(forgotten)–
we converse.

loving,
with kisses across
frames of newly-splashed
colour;
(lips and fingers stained)
and we push keys,
caress bows, strings,
and rise,
with the riot of notes,
rise,
rise,
rise,
to look in with unbearable wonder–
we love.

destroying,
we forget,
and create,
converse, build, burst
with new love.

"Constantly"

"Do you love

me..." she asks,

fully knowing

that Love ebbs,

flows,

and is not steadfast:

full in the morning,

trailing off into little dips by noon,

and is fascinated

by the most usual of things

at dusk;

builds unnoticed,

stays, wobbly,

and destroys itself with passion,

rebuilding

and fizzling

out,

at whim;

arhythmic and

maddeningly predictable;

the more you say it is,

the more it is not;

and giving up, you resign yourself,

but now, it is...

(or is it?)

And she, knowing all this,

half-smiling (self-deprecating),

leads into

the adjective:

"...constantly?"

Can('t) I live?

Without love. Without hate. Without sorrow. Without expectation. Without disappointment. Without heartbreak. Without tears. Without silences. Without those long, stifling, stifled silences. Without sleeplessness. Without insecurity. Without fear. Without the need to get away, far away. Without privacy or the need for it. Without judgement. Without pain. Without pain. Without pain. Without pain.

Without repetition.

Without mockery or self-mockery. Without running away. Without foolishness. Without those false notions the world or your slice of the world taught you. Without pretenses. Without honesty. Without dreams. Without doubts. Without humour. Without music. Without FEELING. Without honour. Without self. Without mindless heart. Without fear. Without you. Without us.

poetry

Those fleeting spaces
have escaped me--
those spaces I would build,
and build,
and craft.
And I blink, sleepy child to
the morning.

I only find the banal now--
the useless, self-conscious
moments
that are more anxious to finish
than to see where we go.

Crinkly eyed, teeth set on
that sharp edge of
sleeplessness,
I am left, bereft
of those spaces, with just
words.

(and I would never dream of blaming you.)