I don't need to touch you To feel your golden glow I don't need to kiss your lips To drown in a warm rain Being with you is all I ask for When the summer sun hits your face You battle the oppressive heat With warmth that is kind My anger at myself subsides When I look into your sky wide eyes I am no longer scathing hot No longer irate at myself Hotness burns but you melt me You soften me into a lover And I become forever yours Forever warm And never sore.
If it's human to think Why are we so thoughtless You and your desk job Them and their paddy fields Thoughtless. Only summers and winters Mostly summers Thoughts never brimming up To concrete acts And what are acts If not useless Just to go back To another pit Some wrongs made right Most rights gone wrong A fragile balance of Thoughts negating thoughts We think therefore we are- Is quite overrated, as we all have agreed But it's human to think Is it human to be? If we could die everyday with the sunset Would the cycle be any different Would the cycle be shorter But the same? Small progresses attacked by Jerks of regression Perhaps we're doomed to think And redo our woes And that's how life goes.
I'm stretching my smile to cover my face I'm blinking too, to punctuate your gaze I'm learning to stay and not say no Because I've learnt that I can't go Not when death is alive and cold Uninvited guest at our doors I will stay and learn your steps You will stay and hold my waist Us against the world, so naive; We kiss and love and stay alive.
Wear a brown shirt for me I'll find a white flower for you With petals broad enough for me to scribble "I love you" In black ink Or maybe with some kohl. Will you let me put some under your eyes? Put the flower in your chest pocket You've always loved lilies, I know, And flash a smile at me So that I can call you my Textbook of love. Remember that tattered book With brown cover Short stories and poems inside English Reader Class IX? No, I didn't know you then. I didn't know what love was But I knew what it might be. Early butterflies in my belly For a boy I sat beside And this one poem in that one brown book. "If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only." Now you, you, yes, you My book of poetry, My song of love, I love you for love's sake only. You are the textbook definition And I can read between your lines This book can have a miserable ending It can break my heart into bloody shreds But I'll read it again and again My brown textbook man Look at me with your smudgy kohl eyes Consume me in your gaze Devour me in your lines While the music keeps playing And the evening is bashful I want to be a verse in your pages While the fan whirls in this room And the curtains bathe in dusky gold I want to curl up inside your stanzas We'll stay as one until words fall apart Until it's too dark to read Until the end of poetry.
How many arms did I touch And flinched away Before the blink of an eye? How many words did I miss To mouth into a phrase To greet a passer-by? How many smiles did I keep Chained into coldness Instead of laughing wide? And more importantly, Why? Why is it that I look back now Recalling names who could've been friends Heaping on sighs as the hours go by, Why is it that I know I'll drown Making the same mistakes again and again Knowing I'll never be able to try Am I dooming myself to loneliness? I wonder what's the worse case- Feeling lonely in a crowd Or lonely enough by oneself?
“Take off my glasses
My eyes will hold your gaze
We both know it’s been ages
But it’s not about the days
That are gone; it’s only about you,
About us, and your shy confidence,
My bewilderment at your beauty,
My love for you, which had no ends
But which carried on in sorrow –
I have loved you still, as I did
Yesterday, and will, tomorrow.”
Once I thought I’d tell you this
(Years later, when we meet again)
When I’d known you’d never be mine
And wrote these verses in my pain.
Do you remember me, as I remember you?
However, I won’t pretend, I know it’s not true-
I remember only what I thought you were,
My infatuating dream,
The boy with sharp eyes and untidy hair-
You were more than him.
You had your flaws and a snobbish air
But of course I didn’t care
You talked to me once and I flew high
I never even questioned why-
You were the supreme,
You were my dream.
I know you’re not the dream I built
You’re just some pretty guy who’s smart
But what you made me feel sometime
Is what told me I had a heart.
I wink at my own God
I tell her it’s a secret between us
That no one should know
Wherever I go
I’m a cool atheist, a staunch one
I “agree to disagree”
With silky smiles reflecting politeness
I’m against the riot of religions
And the proofless existence of
Divinity one worships
Wherever I come from
I’m a defiant daughter
Disagreeing with my family
Trying to laugh away my father’s anger
My mother’s sullen look
They think I’m naive now,
One day I’ll understand
One day, I’ll conform
And when I’m home within myself
On a day when I’m battered
By everything that can go wrong
I laugh at my God
Tell her it’s a lie
“Save me but I don’t believe you exist”
What is God, except
The last trick up my sleeve?
How do I furtively rely
On something I don’t believe?
When I turn my words into theirs
You’ll see that I’ve been heard
My fingers tracing the skeletons of books
Sunsets resting on my earlobes
Water streaming down my sloppy hair
It will all come back
When I’ll play around in their tongues
For you see, I will make myself a book
For everyone to read
You cannot escape me then
Can you shut your eyes and say
You’ve never heard of that story?
I will dance with your thoughts
Shedding skin in their tracks
A miniature version of torture
That you’re inflicting on me now
I’ll be out of print someday
And you’ll be the one
Madly looking for my manuscript
To finally collect my soul
You’ll make my words your own
You will come home.
Paint a pair of eyes on me
So I can look at the world and not fall apart
Dilute the blood of a rose
Sprinkle it on the glasses I wear
Make some goals for me
Add a spoonful of meaning
Yes, I’m asking a lot
But I want to be hopeful even when I’m not.
What makes me happy
Is what makes me sad
But what I regret are the feelings I never had
Am I just following my peers?
But I am still here
The road is too long and everyone’s ahead
Who will I be when I am but blank
Eyes emptied into screens
Memories of sand
I am not even
A palimpsest.
A charcoaled page,
Gone to waste?
I exist for the moment
But my back aches with history
They have twisted my tongue into a rope
I’m choking on their words
I’ve coloured myself fully red in their lashing
But they’ve set me free
Oh it’s another postcolonial vomit
Each word I speak
Is a slap of my own doing
I am dragging myself
To reach the primeval forests
Through the mud of patriarchal torture
I take every line of art
To operation theatres
And I dissect it
Until I shred myself to pieces
How do I escape the injustices
Forgive the centuries of their bloody horrors
My back aches with history
I am black and blue
And red
I am spent
Trying to live
A clean Present.
