Give me a cushion, I’ll lay your head.
You think you’re useless, but I’m not dead
I’ll hammer in some sense, my God,
You’re a fucking treasure!
I love your work, your art, your thoughts
Your pain and your pleasure
Cry all you want, here, take some ice-cream
You can, always, come crying to me
I’ll tell you some new jokes for myself to laugh at
So you’d smile too; for me that’s enough, and
I love you like family, my friend,
You say you love me too
We’re fucking amazing
At most things we do!
Or maybe just some things, who cares, right?
Let’s listen to some music and we’ll be just fine.
I think I am happy, I wrote some new songs.
I love the sunsets, and where I come from,
There is much beauty but there is more evil
It hurts to look, and when you do see them
You blame all mankind, you refuse to exist
You can’t solve a thing, not those you wished
Your friends might still love you
Wrap you with smiles
But so many unhappy,
The disparity in lives-
But I think I’m happy. I just wrote some songs
I know I can’t really right all the wrongs
I’m glad for friendships, for family as well
We live in our fights and the cold war spells
Let’s have some chocolates. You want some tea?
I think I am happy, and I want you to be
Glad that you met me, glad that you’re here
Tapping on the moment, spreading some cheer
I’m glad to have met you; I’ll write you a song
I’m starting a journey, friend. Won’t you come along?
I imagine the sun settingflowingdropping into the crease of buildings
A mellow skyline, pink and rose and yellow and blushing
I imagine everyday beauty
I am inside a small room and I never go out.
My house is only two storeys high
My ambition no higher
I crave the softness that comes with smallness
All I taste is the gap I never even dream to remove someday
I often wonder what other dots in the web are doing
It glitches my mind and I get disconnected
I bet it’s beautiful outside
Even the high-rise residents can’t jog at their beautified parks
I wrap my arm around my pillow
Take a deep breath
I am herenowalwaysforever
I pick a movie to watch
The deadlines can wait
The dead lines aren’t waiting
They’re piling up at riverbanks
I’m still at home playingwatchingignoring a movie
I’m too afraid to murmur a premature thanks
I stare at the ceiling
My spotify is wailing
The only thing moving is the fan.
My silences are sprinting
They're so many, at once
There's a pimple on my wooden face
Waiting to be burst
But the silences come first
They threaten me with an explosion
I can already smell ashes
Grey, spotty, flaky, and choking
A ruined world remaking
No I'm not romanticizing
Someone else's war
All my problems are mine, okay?
My jarred edges
Reek of stale cynicism
My unlit mind
Damp and resistant to hope
I try to look like I care
Resharing brutal news
Replaying the victims' tears
I mimic activism
Lying passive in my bed of privilege
Unremarkable in my performative concern
As I think to myself
The world will always stretch, tear and burn
I am throwing my words around
Because I like their gibberish sounds
They're hurdles for the silent beams
That are racing towards me
And I don't want to be found.
My aloneness is an island
Walls so high that a tsunami can't break it down
My aloneness is naked
I keep trying to clothe myself in strangers' words
But my skeletoned yearning is exposed and loud
It's battering my brain
I am back this time again
My aloneness is punching me to a pulp
I have no memories to eat
I am hungry and in need
I think I'm going to throw up.
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.
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
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
Don’t be a metaphor- “A flower trying it’s hardest to bloom In the shattered cement ruins” Be what you are A woman of flesh and blood Warring with words. Your intangible insecurities, tangible tears Your bleeding womb, intellectual fears The friction of trying to transgress spheres Makes you who you are. Language may turn into metaphor Or you can harden it into goals In a void devoid of meaning. What does it mean, to be feminine?
I am looking for opulence
The tags of success
Houses, cars, and a bank balance heavier than a grieving heart
Looking for all of it
Of course, with my eyes shut
How pretty it feels
To be a careerist woman
The glossy air of perfumed professionalism
No more the stench of burnt rice and messy lentil soup
How else to be equal to man?
I haven’t got a plan yet
(God forbid someone finds me out)
Without a gold-aimed focus, what will I be?
Just a girl waiting for the shehnai
A gold-digger whose housework fails to fall under GDP
To be looked down upon contemporaries
To be ruled over by the smug elders
There’s no room to aim for minor roles
We should only look for big things
Superimpose our sight with the really feminist aspirations
No more petty positions
You can be Lady Macbeth
Let your ambition kill you
But never the reverse
Of course, I’m still thinking
And looking
With my eyes shut
Padma, Qayanat, Lakshmi and Sheila
Have all the doors already shut to them
While I bicker in my cocooned metropolis
While I compare my feminisms
While I waste my words on them and myself
So before I open my eyes
To inevitably jump into the rat race
Running to be equal
To finally be a modern adult
A modern Indian woman,
Let me for one last time
Dream of smallness
Where I travel throughout the land
Settle anywhere, work anyhow
Just enough to keep alive
Free as a bird
Without any man or an elder snatching away my wings
Terrorizing my honour;
Free as rippling wind
Strong enough to turn into a storm anytime I choose
A wishful wanderer let loose
Let me dream of simplicity
Let me be.
mimimusing 