Before I go back to sleep
I have so much to write.
Yell
Spit
And cry.
If I weren't so sick of myself,
Would I crave sunnier days?
Wait for golden brown pages to read,
Sit on the balcony on a lovely afternoon
Noticing the sun set and
A lone cobbler walking down the road,
Like in a Rituparno film.
Will you get me back to who I was?
I miss my mother's scent.
Primordial needs,
The city is too fast and the work is never ending
I always have too much to yell and cry
So I write.
Maybe I want to read something familiar now.
Bask in an old sadness,
Or less than that
Anything which floats but is deeper than
What I see daily, now.
My life is curdling into wrinkles
So much new, so little substance
Will the gods remember to make me fulfilled?
I will read tonight, even if it's only a poem
Or two.
Return me to the smouldering aroma
Burn me afresh
Wrap me into my soft, mellow life.
Would you film the filth in my breath?
I have spoken
Now the fire is unleashed,
Smoke hanging on your lips like those annoying flies
We're cocooned too deep, too long.
In another January you won't remember
To call me or remember the meds I need to take
Tonight you gladly suffer my verbs and nouns
Whatever expletives I throw up
You let me rant and enjoy my day.
I let you let me do anything
We're trapped, happily,
It's only for a moment or two
Every other year I will remember you less
You too, I hope.
This evening we are what we had pictured
In another evening like now;
The cars rush by and the smoke and the tinkling
I am not unhappy with myself
The moon shines quite bright
Even in a place like ours.
Maybe the sky is the same everywhere
But it isn't.
I will not spend any breaths discussing
Delhi's AQI or the stale humidity of your room
The sky is, I will tell you,
The same:
You are not looking at it with me.
I watched a few films last night
You would've cried
I didn't
The films are the same all the time
You aren't watching any with me, are you?
Today I want to wear red lipstick
The kind that doesn't suit my skin
To go out with a man of science who worships nothing
But me.
I know my limitations
Daydreams, they call them
Maladaptive
I am adapting well enough, why, thank you
Can't a woman dream?
What else is there in life? Dream big and small,
My sisters,
Shake out every bit of happiness that you can get.
No one is going to give it to us,
Sad, sad world with a just enough time to dream.
Last night I dreamt of being in a completely different city
An entirely different girl
I was happy. Excited, nervous, reveling with friends
Waking up I saw my calendar and went back to sleep.
I'm still thinking of wearing some red lipstick
With or without a man in my arms
Only to wipe it off and shower away my dreams.
If it's because I have never been in love
There is nothing else to write, perhaps, I am right
Or that's what I thought.
My friend, however, tells me
My friend, who is young and old enough to have felt the pangs
And their dull reverberations
During lonely cigarette breaks
My friend who I will cherish for life, tells me
A heartbreak is a heartbreak,
Small or big, love or not.
I look around, I don't meet any eyes.
I remember you, and you too, and perhaps you, once,
For a second,
When everyone is dancing and the buzz swirls in their cups
I look away to find the source of my empty arms.
Of men I don't think about and women who I aspire to be
I will not write tonight
Tonight is for me,
My cold hands, silent nods, terrible, terrible
Terrible lack of a language
My smooth sorrow chugged down my throat with every beat.
By the time you think of a name,
Roses will rise and lower in a cathartic gloom
Would you know? What you had wanted?
How you throned yourself in an empty room?
I am traveling tonight
Womanly and sharp gutted
Accurate and solemn
I could tell you about the storm, but you are a child
Soft and quick, eagerly elbowing all that comes
In your way
I could tell you about the storm or shield you.
Would you dare throw me under the rug?
The clock is running like she will miss her man
I am daydreaming
Again.
I run like a rag doll with a magnet in its belly
But I'm more of a plushie, of course
Sick and bloated, and
So many things that I refuse to be up for debate.
Once I know what home is,
I begin to miss it.
I am right there in my room, mind you,
And I miss it like I miss our jagged conversations
That streamed and ran and disappeared like a mist
The past is a mistake and the present is its lesson.
I miss my home and I'm sick of knowing
Or not knowing
What I say.
The magnet in my belly is dragging me again
What is this life? Of no music, no love,
No biting off our jokes into a deadly palate
What is this life without my own?
Such are days of gloomy moisture
Frizzing my hair out and turning me into a witch,
If only.
What is this life with no wormholes of time travel or a reset button?
No questions please, not tonight,
Let the warm air roll up my neck and reach my ears
Let it speak my tongue, sitting heavy
On my heart
As it echoes the longings towards a faraway home.
It's a long summer, lonely and quiet
My sweat sticks to my skin
I am leaving once again.
The air is violent and humid,
I am rambling like a cloud with no tears to shed
No self to keep safe
My routine is clayed into a mess of mud.
Last good day
(I have struck off weekdays and weekends for now)
I lived an eternity in a few hours
With my voices all gone, like travelers emptying an inn,
Last good day I made sure to live.
The sweat may stick to your skin,
Your memories?
Who knows? Of love and life and most of all, luck
Everything is insane and inane,
Unless I tell you which is which.
In this long summer I have lived too long
And not at all on most days
In the next I will look for some earth
That will send me home
Even if for one good day.
I think I should be brilliant again
Forgive the roots of my pain
Lie on the ground and think of my ancestors
Years and years of dreams, or not.
I thought I should be brilliant again,
When he asked me to never grow up
And named me for himself
But
Quite casually, like a man,
Never asked who I am.
Did I wish he'd whisk me away to a different world?
I'm sure he didn't know I'm brilliant
I'm not, but I could have been
He neither asked me who I am or could be.
I gazed into his glasses
His small beads of eyes, glistening in the familar bar,
He broke it.
My trail of longings cut short,
What are you doing? What are your goals?
Who have you been with?
How long ago?
I know I should be brilliant again
A lot more cunning, too.
A few more years and a lot more words
Memories pitch black and fading
I'll sit somewhere again and despair
I'll need to be brilliant, always.
mimimusing 