Thursday, January 22, 2009

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

Saturday, January 17, 2009

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

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

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

Saturday, January 3, 2009

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