Psk

Tag: longing

  • The Nectar Of Her Neck

                       I

    The tip of the grass was yellow
    The root of the grass was green
    They waved at me like water in winter
    And I waved back just glad at being seen
    The words rolled back
    Dyeing my tongue
    Like a dry river

    Rocks and pebbles
    Fishbones and silt
    Traced my thorax
    Grinding my guilt
    So I could swallow and wallow 
    The echo of oars
    Belonging to those ancient mariners before me
    Who sought loneliness 
    And found it
    One step before horizon 


                    II


    In my dream
    I pool out from the fissure of earth
    After a midlife rebirth
    Gleaming, polished, welted and wet
    Watching the woman holding my fate
    Nestled like a flower
    Asleep in my rubicon arms
    Dreaming of fragrance 
    At once tender and torn;
    Oh to be born beautiful 
    And in all beauties, a unicorn,
    In my mythical ache
    I keep this universe at stake
    For it’s brutal to awake
    When I am so brittle to break.                            

    It is night
    But the dark shines
    A soft black
    Such perceptible blindness 
    Such untouchable familiarity 
    Should I succumb to the magic touch?
    Drawn like a dying man to the nectar of her neck 
    Should I summarise eons of my afterthoughts in an afternoon with her?
    And let her reciprocate the same
    On a kohl claimed evening 
    So my ashtray mind
    Can drift 
    And ignite 
    My field of dreams 
    A purple blue;
    That colour of a newfound forgetfulness 
    Unnoticed to the irises of her eyes.

    I dim and she shimmers
    As we dance in the glass case
    She; of velvet toes
    And I; of rubber gloves 
    With her hand in my hand
    Like time through sand
    Passing, and staying
    This melting portrait 
    Of our memories 
    And I am aware, suddenly,
    At the soft sweetness of everything 
    That percolates into the inchoate perfection 
    Wavering and waiting to crystallise in our kiss;
    I lean in
    And the world holds still
    Till another breath finds me
    And it feels what I feel












  • Abrasion

    My life is a loose translation 
    Barely read, rarely understood 
    And sits, with an air of years spent 
    Suspended between two strokes
    Of a broken down pendulum 
    Ages have passed undivided
    A single line, perpetually drawn
    Getting thin and thinner 
    Till the Parallax Error
    Caters for my silence 
    At the center of my heart
    And I am able to remember 
    The taste of my first breath
    The warmth of my first touch 
    The colour of my first view
    All amounting to nothing much

    I submit to the auguries made about me
    By people who claim to know
    When the leaves of a tree in the autumn would fall
    And when the sun would melt the snow

    Fire in the birdcage 
    Would the wings be able to save?
    Can feathers and the flame
    Be the same
    Can the ashes for once be brave?

    I humour the dinner table
    My hands carefully caressing 
    The cold, silver cutlery 
    And my words
    Churning in my mouth with the morsels 
    Breaking down
    With every bite, with every conversation
    Leaves a taste
    Something lingering upon the tongue
    They watch me as I listen 
    They listen as I watch 
    The thin sound, going around 
    A tiptoeing whisper 
    Toeing a line;
    I am known to these strangers 
    I am shared and savoured 
    Wound licked with salt
    I am a pariah and thus favoured 

    Long into the night
    I stare at my soul
    Standing by the window 
    Stitching itself whole
    And the night breeze is painting 
    And the dark woods; they dream
    Only the blind sky is witness 
    As I thread down my scream

  • Her Other Half

    We talk like strangers
    Unwilling to laugh
    Unable to cry
    Like two shells remembering
    The sound of a sea
    Buried deep
    Somewhere
    In fissures of our bone…
    Yours too my love?
    Or of mine alone?

    I was wrong to dream, wasn’t I?
    Wrong to feel
    Wrong to hope
    A fool who thought her happiness starts
    At the end of his joke
    O Pagliacci, Pagliacci
    Thou story of my life
    Why didn’t you laugh and say:
    It’s the heart which pierced the knife

    Bye now, it’s late
    And I have old wounds to tear
    Like promises to make love
    Or I wish you were here
    The night is still young
    Do not waste it on me
    You had my life once
    But you never stopped to see

  • The Shadow Of Absent Things


    I can smell the brown sugar
    Melting in my tea pot
    And I am rooted
    Between two oak trees
    Made immovable
    By the stone lips oaring my depths
    Reaching for the sky silhouetted against me
    But the ache of it does not feel like tooth decay
    Nor the pleasure makes me shiver and rain
    Glass beads and spirit of grain
    Into the hands of praying men

    I can feel my skin
    Breathing under your fingernails
    Like snail on a hot tar road
    While your voice in my ear
    Whisper garbage
    Something about me, my hair,
    My face and the rest
    Of me but not about
    As if your eyes are nothing but mirror
    Or old shoes spit polished this morning
    And my heart wanders like flies on foodstuffs
    Unable to digest
    The truth of you touching me
    In and beyond
    Anymore

    Steel on the tip of my tongue
    Marble on the base of my back
    I am pierced and pinned to the pedestal
    A naked butterfly
    At once transparent and tarnished
    Bruised, battered and bludgeoned into being;
    Beautiful sans beauty

    So I stare like a light bulb numb in its holder:
    The roof is blank
    A grey slate
    False sky
    Absent mind
    White chessboard
    And the omniscient blind

  • A Line On The Sand


    Amidst the dunes of Rajasthan
    I breathed as an ocean would;
    Endless and eternal

  • The Sailor

    There was dust upon his eyebrows
    And stars under his eye
    Each for one color of the rainbow
    Taped to the woolen sky
    I was swimming on a rose bridge
    And saw him drink the sea
    He was a dolphin from the desert
    Dressed as a honeybee

    So I fell for him forever
    Like lovers on rainy night
    And my heart was Christmas carol
    Raw as Eve’s apple bite
    Thus we drowned in whispering voices
    Pouring out our crystal skin
    There were wings upon our shoulders
    And a shared velvet fin

    But the man he was a sailor
    With a thirst for sea green ocean
    All I had was sky blue eyes
    And a sense of moonlight motion
    So I kissed his salt shaped lips
    And set his anchor free
    And I watched him drift asleep
    On a heavy wooden sea
    Now I am swimming on a rose bridge
    Alone on rainy night
    And I have apples around my ankles
    But no heart to leave a bite

  • Kohl

    There is shadow under her eyes
    Eclipses she called them
    From the tears left behind
    Of the pain that came far too late
    To flow and feel with the pulse of time

    I look at her bare back
    With the bedsheet pattern
    Still alive on her skin
    The crests of her shoulders
    Peeking like crescent moons
    From under the sea of argent hair

    So I turn away
    To another day
    A still life, blur, Monet.
    Years ago to this Tinseltown:
    People leaping out of their skins
    Skeletons dancing in glass cases
    The enamel skulls selling
    A hollow reed laugh
    And a touch at the base of your spine
    As a keepsake

    She was standing
    Under the irreparable light
    Doused in city flames
    And dressed in the dark left behind by dirty minds,
    Counting cars that passed
    Without halting for her

    My feet were silent
    My thoughts far too loud
    As I hovered round her shadow
    Like a leftover cloud
    With neither thunder nor rain
    In the threads of my vein
    But the promise of a shade
    And the warmth of a bed

    It’s been years since that night
    And every night since then
    Whence I swallowed her sorrow
    And she pardoned my pain
    And together we have slept
    Counting each other’s scar
    Some dealt amongst us
    Others unremembered for far
    And yet I can hear her
    Counting cars passing by
    And there are eclipses under her eyes
    From all the kohl she forgot to dry…