I know my thoughts will roam about
I’ve got to bring them home, but how?
They’ll peep in through my neighbour’s door
They’ll tell me what they have more
I’ll play a tug of war with the spies
Reel them away from the magic-eyes
I’m tired, tired, tired, tired
My anxiety soaring higher
Frictionless thoughts will slide past me
Rushing out with lightning speed
I will throw my net but it is torn
I am sick and I am worn out.
My thoughts are still
Beyond my will
Roaming about.
I hate that I love myself
Even when I can’t.
At me the looking glass gapes
With a shadow as lifeless
As the idol’s eyes in the temple
Looking straight beyond me
When I once used to pray
I hate that I look at the glass
Harder and harder
Trying to imagine myself into
An aesthetic self
A wise woman
A smiling soul
Bubbling with joy
With a contagious smile
I hate that I make myself believe
I need not be anyone else
My reflection is flawed but never me
Only the glass could be purer
Oh I couldn’t be surer
But I hate that I don’t love myself
As soon as my coerced conception
Breaks into pieces
The illusion shattering into shards of glass
Piercing me everywhere
And I’m back again
Stranded in the dark alley
Sitting with my knees bent
Drenching in the never ending rain.
When the blue sky drips down
And darkens into my hair
When my skin is sketched with human dust
I lie down on seas of grass.
Pearls flow out of my half-closed eyes
A gathering grows around me
Spectres and smoke-heavy souls
Touch my arm in a grey breeze
My demure lips part in peace
Closer to freedom than bliss.
Each time my mother lacked care
My father, love
Myself, hope
I sighed.
I blew out lukewarm images
Of the Ones Who Should Have Been.
They have come to visit me, finally,
A swarm of smoke enters my soul
Each whiff a companion
My heart is full.
The sand bag of my body
Leaks through tears on the sides
When I cry at night
Stone chips rest on my chest
They collect one by one
Clink, clink, clink
Seconds tick inside aloud
My sack is a shroud
That I sewed for myself
Threads made out of
Agonising hate
I’m cemented to the floor,
I need some help
I want to get back up.
Should I wait for the bulldozer to arrive
On some time even gloomier than this?
I’m perhaps already laughing at myself
On the other side of the pain
In moments of bliss and disbelief.
I don’t need help, please.
Monsoon breeds rainy eves
Outside I hear, raindrops scream
Like lovers with fiery passion
With almost a violent motion
They rush to kiss the earth.
Their watery bodies
Shaped like exclamation marks
Strike the ground.
There’s no other sound
I’d rather listen to.
Oh how I enjoy
To drown my thoughts
More often than not
With steady noise.
Hit me with the rain
Do away with words
I’m so tired of your questions
Knocking on my door
Over and over again
Drench me in rain!
My murky mind is paused
Oh, I am so lost.
When lockdown ends
The flowers that have grown on my bedcover
Will crawl back into their still shapes
The grey floor that has stretched into miles
Will squeeze back into the 10×10 room
The hours that have become endless
Will trap themselves inside the watch
When lockdown ends
I’ll come out of a Dali painting
And I’ll ask (perhaps in vain)
Am I still the same?
My mind tends to forget the worst
She keeps me away from my own ghosts
When lockdown ends
Will it make sense, if I find
That in the corners of my mind
Greyish blue patches of memory have disappeared
Forgetfulness spreading like fungus on old bread
Where did the time go?
Where did I?
Where am I?
I might go round in circles
When the lockdown ends
Will I be able to make amends
To those who I might have lost
Might have crossed
Out from my life
When I perhaps dissolved in my endless room
It is the season of doom, after all.
When lockdown ends
I wish for remembrance.
“Who will be my home?”
Everyone looks outside the window and asks.
But I can’t remember what a home is,
Is it my mind, my body, my family, my city, my country?
I’ve been a stranger everywhere,
Often enough to ask like a little child
What is a home?
Home is the person you love, they say,
The person you return to after a day of rain and hailstorms,
The arms you hide inside when the world comes out to swallow you whole.
It’s not that I don’t know what a home is
I can’t feel it.
All I can understand with my massive joke of a brain
Are stories.
You and I, we’re stories, we’ve always been
Some are more than that, they are dreams.
Therefore I’ve stopped searching for a home
(After years of walking along aimless alleys and lanes which lead nowhere)
I’ll start stringing words and actions into tales
Only hoping they’ll connect me to a story that I can call mine
So the next time I put on sad, soothing music
And look out of the window
I’ll ask
“Who will be my story?”
I don’t know what it is to be a daughter
They say that blood runs thicker than water
But why is it that I feel no ties?
I look at my mother and I see it in her eyes
The pure, unconditional love she bears
I know ‘motherhood’ has been glorified for years
Their sacrifices becoming not a choice but a consequence.
Yet unmistakably I’ve seen love in her, hence
Her love must make me a daughter?
There have been days when I have thought her
Love for me was misplaced, a mistake
Because despite my desire to reciprocate
I’ve let my heart be an impassive stone
Despite her love, I have felt alone.
My father does listen to what I have to say
But smiles at my concerns, at the end of the day
I’m not the older son whose advice holds sway
And not until my brother had to move away
Did I become my father’s right hand
Despite a daughter, (almost) a dependable young ‘man’.
I was twelve when one day I served him tea
Without being asked to, and he
Smiled sweetly and said “It’s great
You’re finally learning how a daughter should behave.”
What it is to be a daughter I don’t know yet
I’m putting together pieces from the society’s set
Of rules and do’s and don’ts I can find
So that one day I can have my peace of mind.
There’s nothing new under the sun
There’s nothing new about my pain, longing, love
Nor in my desire to be unique.
There’s nothing new in my poem,
When I say I’ve been blue to have missed you
Red to have kissed you
Black to have forgotten you and myself
I’m only rewording what I’ve said
Maybe a hundred years ago,
Even a thousand, who knows?
The gnawing hunger in my mind
To compose the poem to end all poems
To create it all and consume it all-
Is a spectacular piece of comic nonsense
I laugh, louder and louder till my lungs bitterly burst
And I’m finally empty again-
A quill with no ink
A blank word file
A waste of time.
Last night I held you in my arms
Your warmth felt like a thousand suns
You bared your heart right into mine
My breath just stopped, and so did time.
The words you spoke were songs to me
They calmed me like a lullaby
Your laughter rang like jingling bells
I gave in to your charming spell
You touched me and I dreamed again
I felt as free as pouring rain
Falling from up high above
Falling hard, for you, my love
I took a breath and smelled the sea
Your stormy soul was calling me
I lost my way among the waves
You found me and you saved the day
We locked our lips, a feast began
Of each delight that’s known to man
Fresh new buds bloomed within
An homage to Original Sin
You’re made of stardust and the sky
You’re the Beauty in my eyes
You’ve bared your heart right into mine,
I’ll be yours till the end of time.
mimimusing 