inside my broken heart is a pocket for you

about honesty:

for convenience's sake, the truth is malleable.

determined to bloom, these buds.

dialogging | take 2

The maker of saintly questions:

Ayushma, tell me, truly and honestly, what your greatest tragedy is.

Me:

Men seem to fall in love with me all the time. Only I seem to be unable to love them back. Not even one.

The maker of saintly questions:

Yes, I thought as much.

today I feel sadness in my body

dialogging

The maker of saintly questions:

Ayushma, what do you think is your greatest tragedy?

Me:

I always seem to fall in love with men who don't know how to love me back.

The maker of saintly questions:

And what do you think has been your greatest success?

Me:

I also seem to fall in love with everything else that seems to know exactly how.

L Cohen does me a personal favour

Thousands

Out of the thousands

who are known,

or who want to be known

as poets,

maybe one or two

are genuine

and the rest are fakes,

hanging around the sacred precincts

trying to look like the real thing.

Needless to say

I am one of the fakes,

and this is my story.

by L Cohen

Thanks to you, I don't have to write that poem full of fake musings on how I want to be a real poet.

getting ready to sleep

cold newspapers lie on my bed.

news is crashing and burning and killing and looting

negotiating, compromising,

commercializing, politicizing,

hypocritizing, and occasionally superficially celebrating

me.

stealing warmth from under the covers,

cold newspapers are unfit for this december day.

somebody tell them to stop manufacturing news!

untitled

we, too, took a bite out of the forbidden fruit...

...this came of it.

oh kid me not!

when i say a day is

dull,

wet,

gloomy,

blue,

cold,

cruel,

infuriatingly unfair,

am i simply looking away from the sun?

traveling in circles

everyday on this beaten path

life is losing innocence that cannot be regained

life is coming to multiple awarenesses of truth after truth

that define and redefine the ugly, the horrid

often within you

life is living out the daily fear

of knowing that the person you love most

will never understand you entirely

life is growing old in your soul

before it begins to show on your skin and in your bones

life is learning of all that you'd hate in yourself

and not knowing how to hate yourself

it is ultimately learning how to embrace

life is, above all, living through your days

thinking innocence lost can never be regained

and finding it at the doorsteps of death

life is a hurt; a pinch, a pain

we fuss, we crib, we curse, we pine

but innocence lost is always regained

in a way that feels just right.

We are stupid.

And although we see it,

We like to forget.

And in our neglect

it grows.

komawa

yummmm!

the friendship of flowerpots and sunlight and wooden tables and naughty muffins.

yummmm!

the friendship of you and I somewhere amidst theirs, talking, talking, talking.

envy at 4 52 a.m.

I open the book

Not expecting a sword.

Centered around the body

Your poetry intact, whole

I engulf every word.

I close the book

Not before I'm sliced in two.

Stranger, is it not strange

how eventually you spill out of me?

only you

special is that otherworldly category

that everyone is entitled to.

in my head, i'm always making exceptions though.

one for you two

"We walked through the night in couplets."

story of fish

for 35 days

i have been spooning air to a fish

gagging, fish says to me, thank you very much, my dear

but i'm a fish

and it is not my wish

to be fed air

it would be fair

if it were water you put in my dish

agonizing, i think to myself, i'm crashing against my fear

i'm a bird

and it's my thirst

to burst

this fishy bubble

to turn her gills

into something loveable

for 35 days

i have been teaching myself to swim

flapping, soaked wings

please no one

no, air saves no life

no, water lubricates no soul

all builds up to strife

all disintegrates into foul

Yusuf the cat

Yusuf the cat dashed into my brain

This odd nighttime meow meow of a cat

shaves the edges of my brain

to show to me an aberration of the norm

of things having a beginning and an end

Round and round it goes in circles

without beginning nor end

without meaning nor purpose

existing, still

Brown eyes churn out an emotional mill

This delightful daytime mia mia of a girl

Sends my hair into quiet giggles

A little window opens

In flows a girl

Out flows a cat

Yusuf the cat

Sends me into shots of enlightenment

The high lows

and the low tides

Makes me say things I couldn't have dreamt of thinking

Takes me into worlds that disappear under the eyelids

Wakes me up to life

Wakes me up to life

I dreamt up thinking

Of a mia mia girl

With giggles for hair

Blue eyes stare out the ocean

Baby blue eyes

Brown ones cry

Bold brown ones

Cry looking for love

looking in

and finding out

Leave the window open

Watch it grow

As what flows out

Brings in more.

love is not the fulfillment of your expectations.

the body pickle

i pick a fruit and bite into it while it is still alive

i think therein lies my philosophy of life.

woodpecking, still

the only way to make love stay is by letting it go

trigger

the blood boils again.

yells rage, rage, rage!

anger is a sharp knife

stabbing endlessly,

like it's never enough.

it's never enough.

blood boils. like rain,

rage swells seas

that bathe stainless steel

in red.

genius

They knew what they were doing.

Of course, they knew,

Because they weren't the ones doing it

And as long as this they knew,

They did well.

Resentment is a blunt knife.

An ugly weapon.

A useless defense.

pouring lives into buckets

so our buckets match, but nobody told me yours was filled with magic.

kiss the flowers that bend

for once, stooping is fun

for both.

always in the danger of living, ultimately, in my own head.

duet - inspired by mango-like breasts

"now. now, i can see you fly"

"fly. float. glide. the sea swims in me"

"oh, i see the sea too, skulking in your radiant pink stomach"

"breasts bare after so long. watch them breathe."

"like mangoes slumbering with delight. see a slow falling leaf"

"a slow dying leaf. slowly fills life in me."

"i can see you breathe now, your breasts waking with a lazy glee

look at me now, floating into your dreaming eyes"

"my fingers dream up your touch. memory coats a layer over me."

"i will peel it through your skin and brush over"

"you will when you can. for now, distances hover."

"i will slice them with my violence, the distances of lovers"

"i stand firm between the moon and the water.

i, without my lover, they, without each other."

"you have let me die on slow hover, a flash of a quiver. never forgetting"

"in memory, i ache. in absences, you linger."

aayush

ayushma

with love, we're both that way

quick to fall in

quick to fall out

friend

when you smile

i can feel the warmth spread across my face.

keep your soul curling;

you're the flexibility in my diamond.

multitasker

in this life

i juggle the moon and the mobile phone

as i try to negotiate

a space for silence

in a world that runs on commands that ring

new moon

a new moon is looking for new things in the same old womb

ugly

if I'd known you were going to grace my wall

I would have scrawled

something better, you know.

asking for forgiveness when you know not what you're doing

the end is near

the end is clear

we part

like broken ends of a single strand of hair we didn't care for in time. you know. when it would have mattered.

it is the end, my dear,

we are talking about the end here.

we grieve

we mope

we sulk

we weep

we skulk

we leave

the end i fear,

that end is here

my dear.

ill prepared, incapacitated, in denial,

we think of new beginnings.

comfort

when she says blubber

i know to snub her.

if she mentions beauty

i think incongruity.

as she talks of comfort

i imagine a familiar form -

snailing, snuggling, scuffling you.

she waits at the cusp,

between dawn and dusk,

between tomorrow and tomorrow,

as i vanish into dusty death.

she lays photograph after photograph

like petals for me to walk on.

i watch, straddling mind's webbed feet;

each photograph the ghost of a single past

ready to haunt future memories.

lullaby; raspy and amatuerish

it's a song i haven't heard before,

it's a voice new to my door.

the door creaks,

my heart whistles,

this melody runs like butter,

a girl dances through the windpipe of night

sends me into raspy, amatuerish sleep.

i dream with glee, i dream of she.

she - who?

can you really miss the elephant in the room?

hide and seek

i could chase after love for the rest of my life

chasing rabbit's paws with rabbit's hooves.

i could chase after love for ever i could

chasing fireflies on empty roofs.

i could chase after love with enough luck

chasing phone calls that ring like empty tea cups.

i could chase after love, i could chase it all right

while you chase your day, and i run through my night.

could i chase after love this one more time

as i chance into you, do i chase you out of sight?

where's your tree?

are you the beauty of my naked bough
squishing the earth beneath your naked toes
arching around my naked bark
embracing, engulfing me naked, stark?

sometimes, I hear voices that do ring
in between the living and dying,
are these voices of silence that sing?

someone drew a line between this earth and this sky
somewhere along this line, let's entwine, you and I.

sometimes, in the dark, when earth and sky combine,
a worm wriggles without words
another wriggles back to life.

cover her face, mine eyes dazzle

is poison the necessary antidote to interminable love?

with spleen, they shine

impossible to leave, she departs,
tragedy chuckles in knotted hearts.
tied together, odd adjunct,
linked forever
forever apart.

night uncloaks alarm,
she wakes up every day
hands touching mound of birth,
unable to dispatch.

sometimes, in the dark,
she curls up,
encases hopeless misery;
a weeping, tear filled sort of hourglass.
time traps tragedy;
preserves loss

after loss after loss
scrapes the womb clean.

you, unmothered, motherless, motherer,
cannot, will not protect the unbirthed.

love lover's frailty.
lover's loveless grief.
gold to ash to gold,
from lover to the unloved.

why can't strangers remain
unknown in the least, unknown at most?

sits on a stone, this mute child of death.
says not a word, watching love groan.
savage child does not kill, waiting
for love to take love's life.

i watch from this hole -
binary depositions, fetile arrangements.
beyond this hole, out of mirth,
juvenile spat inherit the earth.

i watch from this hole, incapable of birth.

fragile pearls, they slip, they smile
unafraid, with spleen, they shine.
and i, i grow rusty from the core.

a plunge, perhaps?

at the margins of mediocrity
lie the margins of the spectacular

the worm wriggles without words

sinking, sodding, beneath the skin
beneath this laughter, this faithful, sturdy, reliable, overworked sinfaced smile stretching skin affirmative. lie.

beneath the smiles, the grievances, the justifications
the incantations and saddened voices of motherhood that do yell.

beneath the belly, hard and full
beneath, bloated. unrecognizable fragments unshored.

beneath water fading, fading, forever
in the shush, slush, sounds cementing, eyes unwanted.

beneath the hair
turn, grow, merge, twist, tangled dance along broken screams, schizophrenic mania
abruptly pours out of soul.

beneath the chin
uptight, upright, up about, almost sprouts, given to whim.

beneath the wisdom
only shadows that mistrust, no way, i can, i say, you show, i know. lies.

beneath your sin
we all sleep, stolid ghosts. discord corners day into night.

beneath this earth
i sprawl, you crawl, you pluck, my back swallows dampening darkness.

beneath the dream
this awkward dream,
you grow your age, you cut this cage,
wake me up to my nightmare.

the better half

this is so good

so so so good

no?

you don't get it?

not this one?

not any?

that's cause the better half of it is still in my head.

the next big poem

feels like the time for a new poem is here
what with the new year
and new friends
and a newer melody of loneliness
that now triggers these brain cells.

oh, talking about brain cells,
i don't know what's happened to them lately
i cannot read
i cannot write
i cannot -
see i got distracted while writing this poem
and that has never happened to me before.

for some reason, i am not into what i am in.
and for the first time in my life,
i am unable to understand the phrase -
"there are two kinds of people in this world,
those who believe that there are two kinds of people
and those who know better."
something whose significance used to strike me,
whose humor has stung me repeatedly,
but now, intelligence is seated in nostalgia.
and now an intelligent phrase
makes me intelligent
only in memory.

yes, friends, to put it simply,
i have dumbed down,
if you too have noticed, you will stop reading further.

if not, then let's dumb down together.

the next big poem
is composed of sloppy notes
of a degenerating state of mind.

the next big poem
is here
without further procrastination.

the next big poem
is a mistake
that we are all eager to make.