The candle is burning out I've been spread like ash long ago This is not about that Don't worry I'll have a lifetime to mourn myself. The green of the trees slip some sun through them My friends shine so bright Each different like pebbles sifted from sand Round, sharp, smooth, whichever way you like My friends are here And will be till I forget what Time is supposed to say. There is no candle, there will be no darkness I will tell myself this. I will tell myself I will be this embraced This myself Forever But the candle is burning and the sun slipped through the leaves Because they're waving me goodbye A city's open arms and a home's enormous heart If I speak I will reduce it and end up slicing it all into puns This life happened (the past tense a stab) Like no other life could This love happened, for once.
I don't always understand poems The enjambment tugging at my shirt too often, Or words too fat for my Indian teeth. Sometimes it's the pure unavailability of simple things Like the weather of snow and my Kolkata sweat Nothing alike. But it shouldn't matter Should it? I almost never understand myself How it gives up on imagination The very moments I need it, How else can I cry to that song? I keep writing about how I don't know how to read An unkind man would perhaps call me out Throw my circular logic at my face Push me to shout and accept my lack. I don't always understand poems And I almost never understand myself And if you ever ask me to explain the ones I write It would be like explaining a joke, Only a thousand times worse, Imagine period cramps that last all year, Imagine something else if you don't get them. Poetry, jokes, goals in life, I have to imagine something else if I don't get them But my brain (for I have no heart) gives up too soon I'll just keep writing about it, I guess, Or imagine something else to do.
I churn my blood like foam in a bucket Bubbles kiss the air and plop to their deaths, What a beautiful, terrific sound. If my limbs weren't torn I would travel so far, You cannot imagine, my love. I would not run to you, No. I dare not. I am slippery like soap I churn out foam, you could mistake it for venom You could mistake it for love I do not know what it is, I will admit. I will travel far, in hopes of finding myself out Before you can I need my blood to flow inside me and buzz in my ears I need my blood still and quiet Rid of bubbles Rid of the unfortunate unkempt ephemerality. If you don't understand me, Don't fret, Who ever has? Neither have I. My limbs are torn and all my blood splashed out and foaming freely One day I will tame it And the red moon will rise like my protective mother. You will taste the blood, I will pour it out for you to drink it, Endless.
Half of a night, a beautiful song kissing me to sleep A body is always making itself present Pain, a fundamental truth. Incompletion, an unfortunate calamity, Hearts sewed with a sloppy thread Detached too quickly. Cannot live with or without it, I know, It's a relishing moment when I feel like a woman A wonderful and horrifying creation, Living. My thoughts, feelings, words, all made up And dismissed By none other than myself Yet I am proud I exist in a way that has made me so happy Sometimes. The song drains my soul of all the clouds tonight I will crucially close my eyes to all that hurts me I am happy, I am Sometimes, sometimes. Alive.
I know a man who wants to be Reasonably happy. I pride myself in knowing nothing else But that There is no such happiness. He reasoned with me, his words washed into my eyes And hardened into salt. The loneliness of reason, doesn't he know? You throw your fingers out in the dark Trees shake and crumble There is no free will We try. I tell him, I try to, But my lips don't make a sound.
Leaving friends
I need to write a letter and burn it In hopes that the ashes will reach Every corner Perhaps a speck in the tea you drink Or the spice on a midnight piece of chip. I do not care about hygiene any longer I have been unhinged in your care, All of you, Who have pricked into my skin and left their scent inside Should know the weight of the grief On my feeble veins. Closing my eyes I would travel to a place I loved to complain about The first two words more crucial than I'd thought And now that its life is fissioning out To the corners of the country The place will cease to exist. I will write a letter and burn it My grief a precipitate of that reaction My tears, catalysts And I will burn too With a longing that will never die or live again.
Mid-sprint
I watched her words unfold I built my world around them, I tried, but Her hair jingled in a way I could only envy And I would pay to remember the sound. I got distracted, And I swam ashore to someone else Whose hair was cut short and firm Who did not know how to Go any deeper than the seafoam. What a waste, what a waste, All giggles and no tears Makes us madmen, don't you know? I flew far away, I had to. Now my mirror is shining black and only I can hold my gaze What a twisted way to confess The sad fate of Narcissus. I still get distracted, I'm looking for punctures If I escape through, will you be waiting? With my heart inside my palm dripping blood I can show you a life of running.
I cannot sleep tonight The interstices between my breaths Scream for fulfilling thoughts There is nothing but rain spitting bitterly on the street outside. A beautiful woman sings at my feet She asks me not to look for love or freedom Perhaps I am not free to love her either. I cannot sleep tonight and will not sleep for a few more nights Years Until my hair runs so long That anyone would know it's mine Anyone would know it's me that they are to seek And love. The woman smiles and sings again I will listen to her, I do not want to sleep She tells me of stones that maidens pick up As they splash their way To the river that births a village And the maidens pay the unpayable maternal debt In what else but tears No stone was a gem, so the song goes, No happy endings appear. The woman at my feet is cruel, I think, The woman at my feet is wise, Yet I string my few pebbles into a necklace. My eyeballs are no less stony No wonder I cannot sleep tonight And will not for some nights more. The woman will sing My heart will weep As I see her go.
Moments Of happenings and the lack thereof A swarm of crows speeding towards my skin Plucking it off by bits I take you, Time, I grab your hair and pull them off one by one Do not dare to stroke my cheeks and not stop for a kiss. A knock on my chest There are knots in my chest Time does not enter. I clutch in air and her hair falls in my palm It was an act of love I saw an act of violence Aloof and alone and endless, Time, you bitch You make love to them and look right past me.
A certain wetness in his skin Trickling down his neck like a sweetness I dreamt of Some years ago, when no mirror knew my name. My ears against his hair His face against my chest The sun drops out in mercy and the moon walks in again Red, red, round and shining Will he understand? The moon never tells you how to keep a man. He picks me up and I run along I'm descending into the madness of joy Where is the knife to destroy this? Where are my soldiers March! Cover me with shields Don't let me dance! But her eyes Oh (I am the hopeless poet) Petals of paradise. She sees me when I am hidden in smoke I stare at her I redden like the moon I once ran away from I run again Her hair like the flood of a sea Sways me. Don't draw me in! I am a child again, She is my joy My tears against her lips Her words against my breath I cry for help Oh The need to escape.
mimimusing 