In

I lie awake for seven nights
Running a knife over myself

Desert Love

Our love is bound by chasms

Silted with shadows

In parts horological

And parts foibles.

You will be my ruin

And yours, I.

In this circle of time

Wilting flowers 

And desert rhymes

Will descend lovingly

On our entangled flesh.

Only in death

Can lovers unite

When flesh corrodes flesh

Can lovers smile.

Sunny Days in Hell

Them little girls with little black eyes
Gazing mutely at thin scarred thighs
Walking past old church gates
Burnt passed tumbling rickety fates.

To try and smile is failing endeavor
Small legs open in prised surrender
I am their Daddy, I am the Lover
With our history, I may be the Brother.

Rage and rape go well together
Not bleeding menstrual little ones
Poke in some rump and feather
Chew those bony sugary buns.

Echoes of muffled cries finally stop
Bodies limp bloodied and bruised
Sooty tears and I push over the top
Must live some more my destiny mused.

Perspective

To be accused of destruction
Of the topmost layer of soil
while sowing a seed,
is to be truly misunderstood.

She

You must read more before you choose to strike me down. Otherwise, I will exist, in corners of your mind, and in rooms of mine. It is the only weapon you have against me, to absorb whole length sentences like walls of the ocean bed, indescribably muted. The floor of the ocean is where I learnt to walk, a place where many seas met, merging amniotic fluids with memory, gene upon gene. That is the violence that bought me to you. The violence of birth and the greater violence of living it. I never wanted to live, to breathe, as insignificance does but I was born and hence, I must endure it.

Endurance is a complex word, it does not betray emotion, the only thing the word tells us that it exists to bring strength and despair together, I can endure life, perhaps even death, though I know not much of it; but you must remember me. Always, unfailingly, you must remember me and believe with all that you are, mind, body and soul, that I am there.

He looked up in the sky and saw her face in the white clouds above. She smiled and disappeared behind nothingness.And then it rained.

I look at the red lilacs strewn across the garden. They look oddly familiar. I pick one up and open its petals, revealing dark blue pollen stalks that taste like long lost honey bees. I toss it back and pick up a stalk of grass, crushing it with my forefinger. It allows me crush itself, giving up its sovereignty in the face of brute strength. We are all stalks of grass, our destinies limped by hands of  time. I crush some more of them.

I am awake for no particular reason. Our lives are fragile, we must end them in the arms of the one we love, before cracks invade everything we touch, including each other. Time takes away what never was overs, but was promised to us by genes and fables.

I think of her with my eyes closed. She comes to me instantly. I think of her smile and take in the silence that surrounds me. A brief painful terror holds me close. I open  my eyes and the world is new again.

Last Days

It would take me several days to write
A tangible account of my deadened life.

But it would be too late by then
Some days would bring a change of heart.

Is it provocative to write about death
More than to write about life?

What do you gain by reading this
In the anonymity of your room?

Are you closer to me now or
Do you now know nothing?

I will tell you a secret, regrettably so
Our lives are a mess.

End them in the arms of the one you love.

Afterburn

To love you is to burn myself
Not just in words
But with fire from a dying stove
Trace a line of aftershave
On my wrist
Hoping to scar the places where
You love me the most.

Ovule

I have often wondered how your moans would sound
Neglected after many years of my heart breaking indifference
A quick shove of despair between your swollen thighs
Or nights spent in vain confessing my adolescent lies.

I wonder, would the moans of love and despair be different?
Or would they also, like our bodies, face different sides?

Your moans at night are heard across the deep black skies,
They reach my ears, they question my lies
You lie in your bed covered in blood
Ovulating, pulsating;
And all I do is write dark stained free verse lines. 

White Floor

My house is tired of my being
My everyday rants, broken lines of ants
And I lie on the white of the marble
Scattered everywhere, everyday
Licking it bereft of dust, of color
Thinking of it as your white bare body.
My tongue drags on and on
Splintered with lies, both black and white
Leaving behind the trail of red
On a passage of pure white,
And like an artist possessed by love
I paint the floor pure red, the red of my
Heart, the red from your body, into
The white sands of my house.

Blacker Than The Night

When I stand naked facing the mirror
I can almost make out my black heart
Looming behind pale skin, twinning an
Omen; ridiculously frightened of itself.

My heart, never really mine, cajoles me,
To love someone.

An ink-pot of soot filled liquified carbon,
My heart, is incapable, of love. Caged by
A pair of tired ribs, it rests, hoping to be
Sterilized by disease and despair. My
Beautiful black heart resembles a gutter.

The blood in my veins runs amok in my
Body, mimicking an ignorant third world
Dictator, whose wives equal his soldiers.
I am the dictator and I am the oppressed.

I have the blackest and the darkest heart,
Which, when the day comes to an end,
Cajoles me, to love someone.

Broken Bits

Parts of you flounder but I've left
You nothing but visuals
Dream like hallucinations
Neither drug induced nor amorous
Only summoned by my memories.

Parts of me flounder too but not
For you.

Corals of white stretched in bigotry
Against the great white sharks of time
Indignant that the universe values them little.

I valued you more than my time, recklessly so.
Smoked second hand smoke
Sucked on breasts, conically and laterally
All the while thinking of you.

The time has come for you, customarily
So to be penetrated soon
By a penis
Reassuringly not mine.
 

Names, Spoken Aloud.

When you turn sixty, a year away
From sixty one. Say my name aloud.

Say my name with all the years of
Love, rolled up, tightly in a ball of
Burnt ash.

Say my name with rage and want
Mixed together.

And gushing like blood in purple
Lid veins, my memory will arrive.
Twenty one was your age when
I deserted you. Or twenty two.

Clench those wrinkled two fists
Scarred by abandonment and age.
And ask yourself.

Your memory will not serve you
And you will sob in silence.
Your bleeding heart will whisper
Forty years I have loved you
Another forty I will.

When you turned twenty two
I said your name aloud.

Hollow's End

Almost a lie, that love of ours,
Deprecating mass of emotion.
Who would've thought, who
Would've decreed, love sets
Your ruin in motion.

I remember your toes, curled
Up like whiskers down there.
Furious seeing them naked.

I am vacant with your love, it
Tears me up, carves me hollow.
The disease you gave me
Farewell present, omnipresent.
Don't follow me to my end.

Bile at the corner of my mouth,
Foaming, moaning, dying to be
Free.

Will replace my heart in x days
The last one belonged to you, why
Shed a lonely tear, your sentiments
Callous few.

The Suffering Of The Sea

The night has set upon dawn
And the dawn has lost its very meaning.
Darkness has and will envelop
All the doors that lead to me.
It is here, only within myself,
That I want to confess my love for life.
A life waiting to slip away, in forgotten
Corridors of time.

I was born in a happy house
With happy people around me.
They are still here
But I have started to fade away.

I thank you, my parents, I thank
My friends. I thank the very God
That gave me life, and now
Tired by my shenanigans, conspires
To take it away.

I will miss the walls of my home,
Childhood, my brother the most.
I have lived as long as I could, I have
Lived more than my time.

Bury me in the Sea.

Hospital Days

My body loves hospital beds,
Loves the white of sheets
A painful row of injured heads
Some ugly swollen feet.

The nurses have seen me naked
The Doctors smile a lot
Bless the water, for its sacred
And I lie on a sterilized cot.

My heart refuses to cooperate
And I throw my medicines away
A senior doctor wants to operate
Waking up means vomit and sway.

People visit and bring me gifts
My parents tell them all lies
The world inside me slowly shifts
As parts of me begin to die.

My last wish is to see a mime
I was always denied sanctuary
Tried my best to make it rhyme
This is my funniest obituary.

Secrets Under Wooden Floors

I

Scissored

Bleeds in a corner

My soul, my soul, my soul

And you sip warm tea

On an empty morning.

'Can't find Sahib anywhere, Memsahib'

'Can't find him anywhere....'

I am giving up

You can come out now

I will always lose at Hide and Seek

Always lose.

'Must we call the Police, Ram Singh?'

'Must we?'

I looked at you the first time

Last time I looked at you.

Were you born this pretty?

I have to ask your mother.

'Sahib was a good man'

'Make some tea, will you?'

II

I wanted to cradle you

Before I went away.

I wanted, I wanted and I wanted.

My memory with you.

The man with nobody

Lived with his family

Occasional friends

Spoke occasionally.

'He would never commit suicide, Memsahib.'

'He used to hunt after all.'

Struggle with me a bit

Lie next to me

Live my life for a moment or two

Hold my hand and make me weep.

'Bade Sahib is coming back from London'

'Make arrangements, and make some tea.'

Meet me tomorrow at seven

I have to kiss you

I have to tell you that I, poet extraordinaire, loves you

Loves you, loves you, loves you.

III

'My son, my son, what have ye done?'

Ladies and Gentlemen, a small hiatus for the dead

I bring you, 'Much Madness is divinest Sense' by Emily Dickinson

Much Madness is divinest Sense —

To a discerning Eye —

Much Sense — the starkest Madness —

’Tis the Majority

In this, as All, prevail —

Assent — and you are sane —

Demur — you’re straightway dangerous —

And handled with a Chain — 

'My son, my son, what have ye done?'

'Have some tea, Daddy ji, have it before it turns cold.'

I liked to twirl you hair

When you slept

We even had names

For two Daughters.

IV

I want you to call a Doctor

My memory, my memory, my memory

Betrays me.

And often, just like you.

'The world is not the same without him, Memsahib'

'Your loyalty shall be rewarded, I'm sure he's watching over you.'

I suspect that I love you more

Than you love me.

I don't mind, I honestly don't.

I just like to love you.

Ain't love a bitch?

How often you used to say that,

Especially when we made love quietly.

Not to wake my parents.

'Ram Singh, Ram Singh, where have you disappeared?'

'Where is everybody?'

'Why are all the lights off?'

'Why?'

Whimper, whimper, whimper.

The Nameless Monster

Monster, monster, monster- Tonight there is a monster
All my life there has been a monster,
It came not from my Father
And nor from my Mother
It came from elsewhere
It came, it came, it came
Only to come again and again.
Monster, monster, monster- Tonight there is a monster.
I am a nameless, faceless monster.
Monster, monster, monster.

They Called Him Devdas.

Only if you were clearer in your mind, my lord, my sire;
Perhaps I would not burn myself every now and then.
Ambiguity and ambivalence may have fetched you
Literary accolades, gold coins and maybe even a besotted
Young maid, ready to be your Parvati or Chandramukhi, a whim
To your fantasies. But you ruined lives of many, Sire, lives of many.
They call you names, all beautiful, I shall call you Sarat Chandra Chattopadhay.

Chattopadhay, Chatopadhay, Chattopadhay; folklore says that chanting
Your name thrice will bring your spirit at my doorstep, only to listen to
My plight of sorrow and sorrow. Familiar territory for a man skilled
At creating pathos in lives of men enslaved to his words. My doorstep,
Reminds me of Parvati and the poor old man who died at her doorstep,
Unable to fight the golden nectar that ate his innards. You do the same to me,
Sarat, shall I call you Sarat? Of course I shall, I am your baby hamster and
Your courtesan.

You must oil my hair gently, caress it like a lover, for I make love to
Your words as they make rage to me. Who did the feeble old man love?
The whore that went by the name Parvati or was it the true romantic called
Chandramukhi, the world scoffs yet we both know better, don't we? You taught
Us that whores may dwell in the most peaceful of homes, gentle and homely,
Conning with false smiles and meaningless words. You did poetic justice when
Parvati got married. Widower was he, and he slowly taught her to ride him.
Splendid Sarat!

Parvati the whore, slowly learned the art of being on top, and making love
To a man who thought of his dead wife when he pushed. How he pushed!
I have a confession to make, I read your words in the language of the Queen,
The language of poetic flirtations, Bengali, and the language of sweat and economy,
Hindi, are both beyond my reach. Translators be blessed or you would not have found
Me Sarat. If I have made you angry then I shall make you smile too. I made love to
Your words unimaginably so. I devoured your words, I devoured them with hunger,
I devoured them with thirst.

Who did the feeble old man love anyway, or did he just love himself. I do not know
About my love for Parvati the whore or Chandramukhi the romantic, perhaps I, too,
Only love my own self. Maybe I should start drinking notoriously to forget them both.
Sarat, Sarat, Sarat, give me my answers, go on write my destiny, make me live before
I fade away, darker than black, ashes in a dirty river. Write something new, write, write,
Write. Add another chapter, let the vultures devour the feeble old man, let the whore
Ride her husband again. Let there be screams, let there be blood on wrinkled bed sheets.
Let the whore suffer.

Take care of Chandramukhi, give her a palace, give her some more words, give her a
Voice, a beautiful melodious voice. Let the feeble old man be forgotten, let him be a
Name for the dead, let him be me.

Snippet v1.2

There is no silence between us,
Just a passing absence of words.
Like snow flakes melting midair,
We too shall find death together.

Clandestine Affairs

The slit-to-be on my wrist is not too far a reckoning,
Dramatic pundits might cherish the tone and wordplay,
But some of us have destinies to fulfill, darker shades
Of maroon. Have taken a toil on a decommissioned mind.

Where did I go right anyways? Often the urge to turn
Myself up rises, but fades like a note of a Harmonica.
You should have stopped me from this rise, from this
Exquisite phenomenon of my undiluted passions, perhaps
You wanted a spectacle.

Shed not a smile when all this is over, in essence never
But linearly so. Quite the titular emotional joyride this is.
I am not embarrassed enough to proclaim that my passion
Is divided between minstrel harlots. They know the price for
Having me.

Like Wagner's operatic affairs, I too believe in the grandeur
Of a tragic affair. Fall we must, to the basest of my temptations.
Could you pass the syringe now, this is too much revelation for today.
I must continue feeding the blackened veins.

................................................................

I must, I must, I must. Like the rhythms of a spider's legs, I must.
Soon I will be consumed, my innards drained of what made me so.
Lines will follow, grammatically correct, their punctuation intact.
The exclamation being the one among many coarse enough to jest.
Standing at the end of a particularly long sentence, like a purple veined
Erection among an orgy of man and women.

In the quiet arrogance of my heart I am delighted with the outcome, the
Sentences and lines taking up dreams to a place riddled with reality. Perhaps
You mustn't compete with me, I will obliterate you with passion hitherto unknown.
Ergo I shall love you.

You will assume I am heartbroken, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Quite the 
Deconstructionist you are now. The fall shall come, brilliantly cloaked
In a sharpened razor resting upon my wrist, or maybe my addictions shall
Do me in. Either way, I shall hold you responsible. You will be delighted with
The adulation that shall follow.

Did you notice the change in the tone as the words progressed? Such is my
Life, a broken paradigm of what could have beens and what should have beens.
The slit-to-be on my wrist is not too far a reckoning.
I must, I must, I must. Like the rhythms of a spider's legs, I must.