Bombay, a March Vacation

Bombay, a March vacation
Met Sreya Sankar
In a double ducker bus
Shared a seat, lines of a magazine
Taste of some poetry
She told me of various mangoes
Experiences from her fruit store

Bombay, in March heat
Hot saucepan of
Bodies and buildings

Bombay, in March heat, we met again
Walked long walks
Shared peanuts
Silly laughs and
Browsed through
Church Gate second hand book shops
Bought Michal Ondaatje’s
The Cinnamon Peeler, once

Bombay, in March, a bitch in heat
Felt it in my spine
Eyes on her breasts
Hands on her shoulder
Wanted to feel her dark lips
Wanted to taste the mangoes
From her tongue

Bombay, in March, my last vacation night
We left Silky Bar, drunk
Carried her through the beer
In a Premier Padmini
To her apartment
'You smell like a mango'
'You smell like a mango'
- She, drunk in the car
I was enjoying her breast on my shoulder

She vomited in her bedroom
For me to clean

Bombay, in a March night
I slept alone in her sofa, drunk
Morning, she made coffee
We made love on her hard bed
Done it again and again till noon

Bombay, in a March vacation
Train to Pune was late
At the platform
Reading Cinnamon Peeler,
A hand touched me from behind
‘Where is Sreya Sankar?’

Bombay, a March vacation
I looked back into her past
A chill drilled holes in my heart
Loud cries
Dark crimson pool of blood
Half nude girls
Violent sobs, shouts
Hands, legs, sweat bodies
Red eyes

But she couldn’t hear me
But she couldn’t see me
But she couldn’t reach me
Then she died again

Bombay, a March vacation
A seat in the Pune train was vacant.

Transparent wings

Trapped in a tight
Screw like passion,
A black moth

Eyes focused
Yet distant
You lay on
A moonlight rug

Black moth
Fluttered around
Transformed
As my passion
Rested on you

Filling you
With
Transparent wings

Rain

When
Angels dance

God
Smile upon us

Rainbow Station

This railway station
Stops every train
The tickets can be reserved
But can’t be cancelled

This station is built on the
Breathe of silence
Even the horns
Whistle and talks are silent

In the platform
No green or red flags
Those who miss the right train
Becomes the porter for a life time
Bearing the entire load

In this railway company
No track is fixed on the earth
They never know the dirt
While hanging on the misty clouds

My son first saw all this
And told me
I still wonder
Who the station master is!

Last breath

Shadows of
Burned out stars

Touch
The silence
With
Their last breath

Gallery

There is a picture

Me with my baby, Louisa
One year old, in my flat in Paris

There is a picture:
Me with my parents
My father, 50
My mother, 40
In our home in London

There is a picture of me
With my friend
Her name is Carla
She is from America
We are on holiday in Spain

There is a picture of me
With my husband
He is young
He is tired
We are in our car in Paris

Louisa looks at the pictures
Louisa looks at me

There is a picture of me in her eyes
Me with my silence
In my home in heaven

History Book

Sitting on a history book
Swords scratched my bottom

Potholes, dust, heat,
Blood, horse hoofs,
Camel dung, war cries,
Rape, death, conquest

Sitting on a history book is horrible

Post Script to an Accident

A narrow pencil
On your colourful walls
Sketching lines
Not so correct, direct or sharp

You lay here like a butterfly
Pinned to a white board

My eyes burned
Seeing your daughter
Drawing on the wall
You must have restricted

A pencil intruding your
Perimeters
Even before you are some
Smoke or ash

Last midnight
A hump on the road
Wiped out many restraints

bare land

In the bare land
shadow of
an aged tree

Sun
sand
mirage

Sun
sand
mirage

Every dot of the sand
hot with memories
of an old wilderness

Letters were black

Letters were black

So are the words

They became a platoon
And started the war
Burned entire pages
Anthology
Language
Town, country

I have gone underground
Fearing poems may
Betray me and kill

Letters were mean
So are the words
So are the poems

The Road to Noyal

1



Road, a blazing black strip

And a wayside sign

- Noyal, 20 KM

Sleeping in midday heat



A lust burned inside me

Seeing the raw magnificence


I urinated in the dry soil

Amorously touching her with my

Warm arch of urine

Slowly something spread in me

And somehow felt, I am pregnant


The village

Grown in me, minute by minute

Second by second

Along with her history and hope

Small huts, bright colors

Graceful Tamil slang,

Sugar cane fields, dry lands, buffalo, rats

Grasshoppers, crows, bullock carts

Tube wells, tamarind trees, bicycles

Folklores, culture, music

- An entire village within me


2



Yesterday night, burning

With feverish hallucinations

Yelling and vomiting

Everything I carried inside for centuries

Came out, making my room the village


Small huts, bright colors

Sugar cane fields, dry lands,

Buffalo, rats

Grasshoppers, crows, bullock carts

Tube wells, tamarind trees, bicycles

Filled my room


The road to Noyal coiled and coiled

In my room like placenta

I shut tight my eyes and lay curled

Warm, as in a womb


A horn shook my room

And a wayside sign glowed

In the beam of a passing truck

– Noyal, 0 KM

*



Noyal – A Tamil Village

am raining


Rain is rain is rain
drizzling on my face
dripping through my eyes
to the gutters
of black and white memories


GO

FIND UR WIND
HUG
GO WITH IT
TO THE HORIZON
STILL
ORANGE WITH
THE SMILE OF
FADING SUN

its a shadow
of me
of my liquid self
i flow and flow

A KISS
MELT ME TO THE CORE
WHERE I STILL AM ALONE
WET
LIKE A MOUSE
IN A RAT TRAP

I TOUCH U IN ME

am raining

Earth
Glows on the
Tip of a green leaf

Where
A sparkle of dew drop
Dangles

The halo of wet soil
On a frozen
Moment

alchemy

Drizzling midnight with
Pradeep and Kavi
Sharing the eerie silence of
Kozhikkode beach

Silver sand
Cement bench
Orange street lights
Rain
The odor of the armpit of
Vasco da Gama
Vodka
- Cocktail of our friendship

From the unkempt hair of Pradeep
Saline music
Trickled to the bluish sand

There was no sky above
For Kavi
To conquer a starry night
Slowly
He retraced his footsteps
To translate the hollow streets beyond

With reverence
Pradeep touched the ocean
Two surfs forming his wings

An alchemist
Spreading the wings
He stood over the ocean

Singing soulfully
‘Pottithakarnna Kinavinte Mayyath
Kettippidichu Karayunna penne…’

Transforming the
Alkaline water
Into sparkling alcohol

*
Hey woman, tearfully hugging
The remains of a broken dream..

Adam and Eve

Trapped in a room

The cloud

Heard dialogues of

An old couple

Cold

It rained on the love

Scattered around the room

Silver fish

Trap
In the middle of
A stream

Caught

A lightning
To be a silver fish

together

He kissed her
I wanted to taste your smile
How does a smile taste?
Like sunshine, this universe and the orbit

He kissed her
I wanted to taste you
How is the taste?
Like fresh earth dug out of
This bleak graveyard

He kissed her
I wanted to taste your shadow
How does a shadow taste?
Like honey, past and the present
Missing only the taste of
Our future together

Undeniable Ecstasy

Search for me
under the bridge
under the streetlamps
under this vast silence
My long legs
for you to walk
my beehive to hide
from the dark Gods of
your night
My lips
glossy wet and
slippery for your taste

This street
a nightclub of
criss-cross bodies
you
make love to me here

Even if
I am afraid of
the Creeping smell of
your eyes
decayed tooth and
armpits

Engulf me with your lust
so pure, absolute and original
it is me and you
under this rusty bridge
in our only place of undivided attention
In our only moment of undeniable ecstasy

Dream in its beak

A rat
In a mail box
searching for dropped dreams

Enlightened
A crow
Waits on top of the red mail box

Running around
Stirring the darkness
The rat
Slowly dissolved into a
Transparent whirlpool
Of dreams

By noon
The crow flew off with a
Dream in its beak

Angel

When kids sleep
I saw them smile
Frown
And speak
To someone we never met

I tried to fathom
The depth
They travel
Through the tunnels of
Their sleep
Decorated with dreams
Colors or anything
We never remember
From a childhood so distant

Many times, I wondered
Whether
God just borrow their
Souls to be his angels
When they sleep

Holy Pregnancy

I died of fear
And my neighbor too

He was born again, a stray cat
That ate a snake
That was I

I used my venom
He vomited, and died a second death

I was in his body
Not dead
But, etched on the cells
The soul never escaped
From the rotten body

In a Monsoon
Sharp raindrops shattered the putrid body
I ended down in a well
A pretty girl drank up the water
And got pregnant

A holy pregnancy

My Shark My Whale

It rains, darkness
From the pond
My fish, winged and thoughtful
Ran away with the light

A shark saw this
Through my eyes
And went along

It rains, darkness
And after, light
In the light
Hungry shark saw the fish

Stunning light
After a rainy year
A year of pain

The rain ended
And hung down in the sky
A word,
Declaring all fish
Winged and thoughtful
Are whales

My fish, now a whale
My shark died of hunger

From Old Testament

Bangalore

The mezzanine pub, Metro
yellow and blue
red strips on the wall
cool interior, low fast Rap
a pitcher of beer
silhouette of a couple kissing
- working day noon

Sharon and me
friends, politically apart
sat on a shady corner
talked in different accents

I listened to her, floating on the low Rap
Every word fusing images foreign

She came back today morning
from her country
wearing a gray T-shirt, still on,
stenciled across the breasts
- My Mind is My Own

At the bar counter, wine glasses
hanged like lucent mangoes, throbbed in a pain
her voice carried, and it clogged
with the corner shadows
I felt her dipression creep into me

She was drawing a Star of David
with beer spilled on the table
- Israel is a great country, I said, pointlessly
Sharon sat there in silence

- Let’s go out and conquer this city
for a change, I suggested, maybe
the travel, alcohol and me
made Sharon an Israeli again

She left me there, alone,
gone out to the busy MG Road, and
parted the traffic without a staff