To Shakti

I have seen you sometimes,
a yellow sky wrapped around you
your face beautiful as a cyclone,
glowering at the salty rim of the horizon
or wreaking havoc at the beach
tearing up arms and legs, tossing them to sea
faster than any wave can catch.
At the temple, I catch a glimpse
of your face, obscure and absurdly smiling.
It is not how [...]

The Patio

This is the space of distilled things.
Sunlight filters through the jagged
red edges of leaves and a Carnatic raga
in the house across the street
is pleasanter for being remote
and beyond my control. Still further,
the faint sounds of delighted shouts
over something surprisingly found.
Pale-headed Anthurium speckle
the green. Pure. Spatulate. Each
tentatively nodding flower holed
with little flecks of emptiness
where body should [...]

Older

A green-burn howl slithers along the pavement
slick with rain and fallen Cassia buds.
My father’s corpse was dragged reluctant
through these streets, dry as a winter sheath,
coarse and brown like a crumble of leaves,
stale-smelled, arranged into neatness.
The walls of his house, once white, turned pink,
rosed with the seep of his blood in crannies.
The beams loosened and started [...]

Obando

dance to the knock
of bamboo sticks
on moonlit streets.
the mid-May
swelter curves
in between your breasts
and drops its tang
into your throat.
with your hips,
the world revolves.
dance
like a roar in the streets,
an ocean stampeding
past the houses,
a bustling, foamy pour,
mad and glinting
with excess.
and love
your dancing neighbour!
for she wants
the same things as you
and when you look
into that childish face,
into those need-mad [...]

Mourning

Mourning is messy business.
It’s not a flat plane from here
To there. It’s uneven
like the ridged underside
of your tongue, the slip
and fall of words, stalagmites.
Death is not clean. It’s all
black maw and smell of rot,
dreams of bats and dust,
gutters and ghosts.
The only precise thing
are the limbs, their
geometric stillness. Ignore
the radio static in your head.
Maintain decorum. Do [...]

I Remember Siachen

I remember Siachen.
Mostly because you came back from it
but not to me.
You wanted freedom, you said,
from both war and love.
And I, who had breathed less each night
thinking of you in ever-thinning air, thinking
of your face shrinking, of its broad planes
becoming sharper in the cold,
in your wait for something to happen,
for heroism to swoop like a [...]

Codes of the Body

There is shame (I’ve heard) in things that concern the body
I try to forget its call and yet I yearn the body
Ash is air. Water expands with light. Flowers decay.
Hold these secrets in your hand when you burn the body.
Degrees gather mold in the old, neglected cupboards
Now, your mad dance is a bid to–what? Learn [...]

Arambol

The smell of hashish in the air is a dancing
thing. The girl’s small, curved hands are
like two shells in sleep. The bartender
raises his foot and brings it down on a
crab, spilling its meat onto the sand, leaving
a pattern in entrails. I eat my tuna salad.
The boys on the beach turn over in their sleep
and the [...]

Still Life

Peach
heavy on my palm.
Its hard-knot,
rattling heart muffled
by flesh I want to pierce.
Its skin
soft as felt, smooth as
unshaven down
on bare arms, dust on
butterfly wings.
Its in-between colour –
less than orange
not quite pink,
ambiguous
like brown.
Apples, pears and plums
are cool against the
cheek, but a peach
is warm.
***
Sunflowers
Their brown hearts shrivel
easily. They seethe in their skins
with the patience of
stalkers. In Van Gogh’s [...]

A Violence Done

The sugary smell of aftershave
bursts over her skin like bubbles.
The taste of rotting leaves
in her mouth and behind clinched
eyelids, the black churns
like gnashing seas. Her legs
cycle the air so tightly.
Against the murky pane,
a fly drums its hope
with a single pair of wings.
The fan is white, flecked
with brown, noiseless. Outside,
the sounds of an ordinary day
never cease.
All [...]