mimimusing

Before I can post a picture of a burning sky
And land,
Of bodies divided like a cruel math problem,
Poets will write new lines
With new breaks and new heartbreaks
Baffled by and tired of
Tragic mistakes.
My armchair finance specialist counts days
Elections, wars, hopefully-rising stocks,
The moon goes around the earth as always 
But we will not hear the children again.
I beg people to care 
Even though I don't, at the meat of things,
I just want a good life, with good food,
With children and their annoying shrieks.

I loved you very deeply.
There are no other words for it
No poetic enigma that can conceal the strength of my weakness for you
Or a literary device to protect me from your memory.
You told me that the egg yolk of the sun
The birth of a year
The populated festivals of our city
Anything can be poetry.
I had learnt to rhyme, even before you I think,
It doesn't surprise me now
That I still thought it was you who taught me to write.
Where are you now?
The egg yolk is up and shining through my window 
Are you still in bed?
I hope you still write poems, rhymed and descriptive,
And teach your friends
The discoveries you make.
I should curse you to love so deeply
That you can't euphemize it
Or hold back
Instead I keep my heart open like always
Like a doorhinge, cracked.

She rested her hand over the folds of her pale blue sari
I could tell her she looked
Snigdho. Soothing. Warm, and cool.
Decades spent reading English but I faltered,
Clutching at my mother tongue when I am wordless at heart.
I could tell her she felt like a piece of music
A well-woven song
One might forget the words but never the tune.
I could tell her many things, she would not listen
She could not,
Through my cheap phone's half-broken screen
My words wouldn't reach her the way I want them to.
Just another comment, just another DM,
I toyed with the idea of being kissed with a thoughtless double-tap
And forgotten like the rest of her admirers.
My sister tells me to stop writing for women like I want them
And pining for the idea of men
Then too, I was torn
Did I want to see myself as her?
Did I really want her to see me?
I couldn't compete with whoever that sent her those lilies
The bouquet she nursed with one hand
While the other caught busy fixing her hair.
Calculated, but candid 
I haven't forgotten when she was once my friend
Carefree and just as beautiful
You could look at her any moment and she would make it stop.
I'm sure I was jealous.
Of her beauty, of its power
I have told men and they never understood
They blink fast
Gulp once
Then try to convince me that I am pretty
Even with a bare face.
I'm not sure I understand it either
So I did what I do -
Scroll away.

No one will write me a poem that I'd want to read
Without wanting it to be a bit different
Here, and there, and there too 
Until it's a new thing altogether
Possibly no worse nor better.
I was someone's muse once
I'm not sure whether I hated his diction or myself
His verses have rotten in my memory,
Nothing remains but a faint blister of his ego.
Just like most men he never asked
Never knew
Sailed his pen on what he thought was best.
I admire him for his confidence, I judge myself for my scorn
At the end of the day we're both poets
Who write because they can't do.

It's been a while since I have felt a sickening pulse
Of nervous affection.
When you go to the beach, how much do you cover up?
The sun will brush you everywhere
The waves will run into your arms
I will be at home,
Thinking of my body.
What do you think of? When you wear that hat
Or smoke that coarse cigarette?
I wait for you to show the world your life
I live in it in my head
You chase your job and your friends laugh with you.
Maybe some day we will meet by the sea
You'll keep an eye on my belongings
And I, on you.

Why would I kill for a pair of kind eyes
If they don't seem to meet mine?
Summer has returned with its arid desires
His face is like a mango
Asymmetrical and plump.
I wonder if his cheeks flush when he cries,
I wonder if he cries at all.
He runs towards the metro with his backpack
A boyish gait that I would mock at, yet
His man arms strangle my throat speechless.
My friend tells me she hates moustaches
My rejoinder: I despise them.
His smile, however, is beyond dazzling
It needs a bush to shade it.
I don't make the rules anymore
If he asks me anything I will choke in my hurry to answer
When he looks at me I will die.

My grandmother has a library of medicine.
She watches TV, smiles like a newborn flower
I wonder if I will ever be a bright spot in the universe.
Her real library of books raised me
No friends, no quick fix to a dull childhood
The man I talked to last night did not know a single story at all.
I am defeated, my feed blowing up with women
Without darkened eyebags and thickening waistlines
I am defeated but as always I refuse to give up,
Really.

Yesterday I heard of a bridge collapsing.
It took me back to a long time ago,
A winter when I was running away from a man
Towards a future carbon-copied.
I wrote a poem
A prophecy
We'd meet at a bridge and find our footsteps enshrined
I wanted you to know
We would keep meeting.
Yesterday when the bridge fell down
I cried myself to sleep
A ghazal mourning my frail routine of self-loathing
Am I human? Am I human?
Don't you know I will always be?
Glaciers will melt and people will die like insects
Men will, let's admit, be men
And I will run towards you
Like flies swarm to sweets
You will be there
With me.