Lady Dog Snout

Oh, hell.
Your poise
Is all enchanting –
When you shrug off a kiss
In a gesture meaning
Less than many hours spent
Cooking, cleaning, wiping.

Your joy
Is infectious –
On a stray guitar shout
The intoxicated laughter
Many minutes past
The joke that cripples me.

The hesitant touch
Is painful
Like a fish must feel
Before the bait
It bites
(byte?!)

I’ve lived this.
Thank you.
D O N E T H A T

But know –
With a nudge
The gentle nudge
Of that cold, ever wet nose
You morph me into something
I am pining to be friends with,

The child of my precious sperm.
In the craziness I once killed for.

Lust?
Maybe.

Animal Instinct

Like the poor villager’s stream of hope
Sluggish and coy flows after hearty rains,
You in a defiant, graceful movement
Unclasped those thick locks
Brown
Carrying many minnows of possibilities;
And I found my surroundings faded
As in a clever camerawork.
Off the tilted plate slid strands of spaghetti, shunning
My hunger which was reborn
Into an astonishingly simpler, much younger urge
To see myself as I stood –
Mouth parted, eyes clouded
The tongue pressed against my teeth
Struggling to deny even as I succumbed to
This thunderbolt of beauty.

There is no age for not feeling foolish
There is no time less appropriate
For acting like a dumb cow
Waddling behind the tuft of green;
Why would I not
Chase you,
Tripping as my words tripped in the mesh of saliva
After I returned your wave?
Why would I not
Want more than dry words
Which you pronounced? While I tried
Not to sniff too obviously
Your scent.

I think there was nothing wrong
In dreaming all week
You’ll call on me this Saturday
Sit on my bed, out of concern
Nurse my swollen ankle
Share silence and popcorn and we’d kiss
And I would be lazy and rest so much,
And drought would be just one more news
On the TV set running on mute.

And
Much later, as I swat mosquitoes
Under the dripping tin roof,
I think I was quite right
To pout before your puzzled look
When you told me of the holiday;
Through the sudden unplanned mist
I, too, must follow, limping
Cow puppy tiger
Cherishing the raw naked stupidity
You stir within me.

Here comes my train.
The last train out of town.

Everything must return to 'okay'
After half a dozen urgent slaps
From love......

Harsh -- Hûrsh; [noun]

I am struggling.

To find room for a toe,
a finger-grip from which to hang on
away from certain death.

To walk my natural pace
without a collision per second.
To save my latest shoes
from ruin
by leaping across human waste.

To inhale more
than unburnt fuel
and fetid burps from
the rotting guts of this bee-hive.

To feel more
than just arms and legs
and a cocktail of sweat.
And uneven bumps
and stings of poison in my eyes.
Hear lesser
than shrieks and grinds and yells.

To spend lesser
on wasteful accumulations
of a life
that does not use them.
To save more time
for a life
that's one breath away from suffocation.

Too many lungs,
shrinking hours.
Too much of everything
Except peace.

I don't want to struggle.

A tune of my dreams
is waiting
in the sinews of a violin
waiting
in display in Colaba.

Books
are waiting
in dust and moisture.
A study of life
Past and present.

I don't want to wait.

Why
and where
did I lose myself
so completely
that I needed someone else to
jolt me into remembering?

What
is so pleasing
in declaration of employment
with "a name to reckon with"
When life's a switch between
Spending tense nights and days for
Money that doesn't show
but stuffs coffers around the world;
And
the struggle to salvage three hours
to remind myself:
I am me.

I have to burn this to the ground
Again.

"Escapist."
"Rebel."
"Wanderer."
"Unstable."
"Impractical."

I think my life needs space
Again.

The lost must be found
re-emphasize its value
by virtue of being
all
or none of the above.

So be it.

I...
Harsh.
Yes.

Train Training

(A hitchhiker's guide to the 'local' galaxy)

It is a science
To climb
This shrieking
Rumbling monster
From whose ribs
Protrudes a semi-solid mass
Of humanity.
Flowing in and out
A dynamic equilibrium
And always full to the brim.

Grab the handrail
Or someone’s shirt-tail
And loosen your limbs
Remember your swimming lessons?
Don’t fight the tide
Let it carry you in
With a smooth fluid upthrust,
Then relax
But stay put
Steeled
Before you are crushed
Into an unrecognizable pulp
By elbows, knees and hips
Poking out of super-tight pants,
And embalmed in face
By pungent-smelling hairgels.

Smile
When your rib-neighbour
Adjusts his midsection
To fart on your thighs.
When your shoulder-brother
(Whose face always remains unknown)
Lets a paan-infested yawn
In your ears.
Keep smiling
While you worm your legs
Towards a strategic stance
Next to the old Parsee uncle
Who’s about to get up.

Now… Sit!
Smile again
At the crotch-scratcher
Who has just lost to you
In this crazy round of musical chairs
And at the maulvi-saheb
Who’s chanting on his rosary
In the next seat.

Keep grinning
Whenever people get up
Or Sit down
Or sway like pendulums
Across your face.
Give the young boy a chance
To spread his homework
on your knees.

But scowl
At the boisterous cricket-team
Who hail ‘sivaji maharaj’
With every jerk of the wheels.
Brush off samosa crumbs
Off your head
After staring hard
At the fat clerk who dropped them.

Doze off
If you can
Lulled by the incessant hum
Of men and machine –
Life compressed
Like sardine in a red tin.
Remind your neighbour
To wake you up
Before your stop.

Check your possessions
Then your position
Remember your swimming lessons?
Relax your body
Let the tide push you out
Much before the monster grinds to a halt,
On your mini runway
To kill the inertia.
Smile again,
When you collide
Recoil
And recover your footing.

You’ll be okay.
Andheri to Churchgate
Is not a war.

It is a friendly chase.

Requiem

These tiny blinking yellow lights
These obscene neon grins
Stretching from here to everywhere
Dangling over my head
At obtuse, impossible angles
Strategically placed
To blot out
The moon, the stars and the beyond
These faces of deathly joy
Deny me sleep.

These fake ornaments
Around immaculate necks of aging whores
Faint beads of perfumed sweat
And the stench
Of rich alcohol on shallow breath
Shallower minds
And expensive drags of exotic tobacco
Shameless old pigs
Lustily nibbling flesh
Fornicating on satin draped divans
Amidst fluttering green bills
And merry shakes of head…
The plastic of it all
Chokes me day by day.

The blind man with his flute
Knocked asunder by the waves
Of high heels and punk boots
Red and green hair
Jingling, rumbling, snickering
Raucous laughter
Men and women
And the animals in them all
Grunting, groping
Cheating, lying,
Struggling in secret
To stare back boldly
At these terribly cold
Blazing city eyes.
The pathetic fight shreds me.

These monstrous organs
Of concrete giants
Sticking up rudely all around
These sleazy erections
Determined to rape everything, everyone.
These houses of
Loss, pain and vicious torture
In the garb of
Hope, dignity and resurrection…

Ah.

|| Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona eis requiem ||

Breaking fast at Williams'

(A tribute to William Carlos Williams;
A salute to the rare flavours of life;
A gift for the girl who shall taste..)

Burnt bread
Smells
good with butter
better with marmalade
tastes best
with a hint
of salt
fresh from your lips.

Running barefoot?
Cornfields beckoning you -
Wave your hands
Wild and retarded jerks
Chopping the crispy air
For my breakfast slices
With orange blossoms
and
Green yellow red fig.

Clutch those thick, plump
Pampered grapes
Gently
With your teeth
Like mama cat
Carries her kitties.
Bring them home
Before they spoil.
Salt again
And some pepper, please.
Gently fired
Like your earlobes.

Sweat
In clay goblets
Cooled
And warmed again
Breezy puffs
Hot milk breath.
Drink our health
Before the feast

Eat eat eat!

But don’t shower
Before we make love…

You like your poems raw
I like my sex medium rare.

Morning Frost

The warm wind raging merrily outside
Is ignoring the frost on my window.
It’s a systematic attack on all I possess
By ruthless crystals
That have suddenly sprung up this morning
Out of nowhere
On my walls, my window, my floor.
They will soon creep up my legs
The icy claws clinging to my flesh.
They will reach up
Unafraid of melting in the pitiful warmth
Of my chest.
I will be covered in this horrid, wet chill -
The steaming nostrils
And a sweaty brow
Buried under a delicate film of numbing frost.

It comes from within me,
This dangerous enemy of farmers,
The killer of infant crops, fragile dreams.
Creator of road accidents.
Here, in the darkened room
That is its latest conquest,
It rose from something warm –
A part of me –
That seeped out from all the orifices
Steadily till I was drained,
Making tiny rivulets of steaming angst
And left a dying smell
Of green grass crushed under bare knees.
A smell holding years’ worth of dreams
Shining golden in the death cry of the sun last evening.

It seeped through my fingers
When I tried to stem it,
becoming suddenly unconcerned,
Outrageously rebellious against me
Leaving my insides writhing
As if I had vomited myself inside out.
The stream trickled to a pattering end
I shut my eyes, nauseated.
That dearest of all smells
flew out of the still-open window
After half-hearted tries to drape me,
Hold me tight
Become a part of its home again.

And now that warm life-blood has returned,
Mutated into something horrible.
A frozen, malicious sheet of ice
That is immune to my body heat
Even the bright sun and the full-blooded wind.

It has taken hold of me,
Though my fretting movements
Still deny it the final joy –
A layer of expressionless ice on my skin.
But it has found entry
Into my marrow
My lungs
And the complicated network of arteries,
The ones whose names I saw in a medical dictionary long ago.

My fingers dance to its whims,
And I can’t control
The squiggling white worm of toothpaste
That is dying somewhere in the sink
Squeezed out mercilessly
Like I have been.
I am trying to conform
To this new acquaintance
But the shivering hand holding the razor
Is leaving behind tiny nicks on my chin
To match the dead eyes
Framed by angry red webs -
where children of fear and confusion
Have made a shack.

I want to risk a look inside my body
To estimate the damage.
The attempts of a shaken man
Trying to salvage a few pieces of furniture
From a flood-hit house.
It’s unbearably cold and empty.
Crude piles of iced ruins
Form a crippled, deformed crowd
Savoring the remnants of that prolonged rape.
My voice returns to me
In this maddening Hall of Echoes,
Colder, alien and unhelpful,
Bounced off stone and barren walls
All covered in frost.

The darkness in my room
Is impenetrable
Now that the window is jammed tight
And the glass coated with film upon film
Of silent, unforgiving ice.
I curl up on the cold, moist bed
Holding myself tight
Shivering in the unwelcome chill
That is here to stay.
That has replaced everything
In the once warm mansion of mine.

While the sun burns down the world...