A.J.

Rao's Poetry Volume 2

A.J.Rao

A.J.Rao's Poetry Volume 2

Poems written between 25July,2011 and 5th October,2011

A.J.Rao

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Contents
The street with the wall at the end Pensioners notebook Death for dishonour The list The list Spaces A petromax lamp Bed State of affairs Birds Register Poetry of ghosts Decline and fall Forgetting The bush shirt River steps 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 12 14 16 17 18 19 21

Granite Moonlight Another mother Bus dust The broken moon The whistle Rash The door Walks Rain Fragments The wooden pillar The window-sill It is Krishna who did it The earth-pot Body Who started the wind?

22 23 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Mirrors in mirrors The immersion of Ganesh idol in the lake Literature The men in the photograph Temple Gravel Tyranny of time Echoes The sock We stymie you Shape Dancing beauty Putting the cart before the horse Wife Larvae Otherness of room The mobile

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 48 49 50 51 52 54 56 57 58 60

The hurricane Flowers, leaves and fruit The chair as object poem The chair Grandmothers Sufficient The cold wind The world has already begun The table lamp Family Laugh Children Fractals Seminar Sorority Brakes Posthumous poetry

62 63 64 65 66 67 69 71 72 73 75 77 79 80 81 82 83

The brick wall Story Meaning The lake that was sea Looking for a word Particles Seeing is dead Sleep comes Stone maidens of Ramappa temple Naming the child Prices Flowers that make my window glad Work A childs birthday Soliloquies Dark circles Dust mites

84 85 86 88 89 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 102 103

Wall Miracle The first flower Words for trees Light Figures of our speech The sea of images Authenticity Climate change Metaphors Phony vision Scream Holes Children in the rain Bridge The temple of shadows

104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 116 117 118 120 121

The street with the wall at the end

In the morning the feet shuffle through streets Listening to Gods song in the ears, the splatter Of water before houses, brooms before houses Women making gurgling noises in nights throat Of water- cleaning of sleep, on tongues stretched. The men have tooth-paste foam at their mouths. Some days we reach the history of an old woman Walking the feet of yesterdays marriages, pickles Made, worship of deities, hospitals of childbirths Babies crying in lungs, dark nights spent on bodies Silk sarees in steel trunks, fragrant brides of sons Sweetmeats brought from gods, fears of violence. An unease occurs of slowly dawning futility of it all And the feet somehow end up at the wall at the end And have to trace the morning back to a side street Losing sight of the woman and her enacted history.

Pensioners notebook
When the word comes, the ideas genesis occurs In the deep night, when idea happens in our eyes Open from sleep, having been quiet on sleeps bed Or in ghostly rapid eye moments of broken dreams. Body is thought, on a wrinkled face, deep in poems, Or on a furrowed brow, bearing daughters like Sita Who are destined to suffer as wives for bigger glory. Daughter has to prove her life and innocence by fire All because she is someones wife in the deep jungle. A pensioners notebook has to record his existence He has to prove his aliveness to the birds in the tree. The birds have to prove their aliveness on the wire. They have to hold a daily parliament on T.V. cable. So nobody will deny their existence in color plumes. A pensioner has to prove his existence to the world The world needs a viable proof of earthly existence. A body or a signed paper is proof of yearly aliveness. September poems are not recognized for the purpose.

Death for dishonour

A crusty old boss causes death to girls dad And his dishonor weaving a swindling story. The fathers death is daughter's beginning The glory of womanhood, a sweet revenge When sold body is defiled for a sweet cause. A body has no purity when dead, in father. The gun is boss own phallus, waiting to die And wipe the dishonor on daughters father. (Reading a short story titled Emma Zunj By J.L.Borges)

The list
The list is formidable, frayed in the corner Yellowed, crawly writing, corner to corner Like little ants in line that have lost the way To the edge of the wall, shouts lost in legs We have got to do these things, before dying. Our dying list is a bucket list, a corners list Where all is swept up to the angular edges And we make our ant-lines, lost in our ways Our little white stuff, on our backs all the time. So many legs, we have lost count, so many.

The list
The list is formidable, frayed in the corner Yellowed, crawly writing, corner to corner Like little ants in line that have lost the way To the wall's edge , their shouts lost in legs. We have got to do these things, before dying. Our dying list is a bucket list, a corners list Where all is swept up to the angular edges And we make our ant-lines, lost in our ways Our little white stuff, on backs all the time. So many legs, we have lost count, so many.

Spaces
I think of spaces, holes made by space in a sky of space Holes in under-shirts like tiny stars on a stand-still night Pockets that had the air and sea of laughing childhoods, Villages visited, fairs that sold hair-bands, plastic flowers Sweets of white sugar, that took the forms of noisy parrots Of dark men who had gobbled space behind those hills And harvesters of green fields, their feet of sinking space In muddy rice plantings, their female throats crying songs Of rain that sliced through space, in marriage with the sun Spaces contained in humongous mountains, like bubbles That issue slowly from a kid brothers running half-mouth.

I think of space in this room that continues to the horizon Beyond curtains, houses, trees, vehicles, rivers, hills, seas Over heads of people, their thoughts, their sleeping dreams The blabber of children, the wails of old women, refusals to Speak by dead men on the bamboo stretchers, the fires that Followed them in pitchers and rice-flakes strewn around And yellow marigolds that celebrated their joy of dying.

I think of spaces eaten by the buffalos in their slow mouths Their thoughts in their udders of flowing milk, in their eyes That flickered in the blinding headlights of oncoming trucks With the spaces that stretched from them on endless nights.

A petromax lamp

A lamp burned in white light, inside a soft rib cage Feeling like an exhausted star from the Milky Way. Its light curdled like white milk on the mud walls. The shadows of the rain moths swarming around it Were a massive mess of unreal figures on the wall, As the dots together became squares and polygons In the way they whirred around the petromax light. As the wind stirred in the leaves, the lamp danced Gently on the door frame, where it is hung by a nail Its shadow quickly responded on the wall in dance With the entire halo of rain-moths around its head.

Bed

Between this ceiling and the earth is my sleep Lying sprawled on a four-poster bed like a lizard Warm-blooded on roof, upside down, augmenting Knowledge and beauty, for its tiny insects waiting For death to liberate them and it from the need To hang upside down, to go about their business. Stealthy spiders trap them in their silk strands Glistening in corners among the falling shadows Their meaning found in insects wanting to die. My sleep hangs between the earth and the ceiling. My four posters are the four corners of the world That brought me to the world from the earth up. Now I am three feet away from the earth and soon There shall be no roof between sleep and the sky.

State of affairs
In regard to the present state of affairs It is the objects here that make it, not me. The philosopher sees light on the wall A Wittgenstein (pp 120), in convolutions. Our own state of affairs is a mere state. A state exists in words but passes over. Objects are not unhappy, only subjects Only they have affairs, drawn from objects And not vice versa, or even virtue versa If I do not speak them, they are not there. In a vast glass wall a young woman opens The door inward, that should open out, A blonde, her thoughts open out, in a state. The color of hair is not her state of affairs. But no, she is not a blonde, nor do blondes Open their outward opening doors inside. A glass wall that shuts out most of her light A door that has no doorman in mustaches Opening a door to a cold night of reason. A body is embroiled in a state of affairs. A body that will one day be behind the glass Saying nothing in its pantomimic gestures.

10

11

Birds

When I was a child birds gave me ideas, In their flights of rows, towards the lake When they looked white and glistening Against the autumn sky, my fingernails Clawing the air rhythmically and my lips Calling them to infuse whites in my nails. Those days birds could drop their whites Directly in the behind of our fingernails. Actually they were bringing these whites From the marshes of Siberia in the seas. A little drop of whites in childrens nails Would not diminish their white too much When they returned from our nesting trees. Birds gave me their ideas, from their wings And bones full of hollow air, silky feathers That would some times drop in our street

12

Dancing down many layers of air playfully. We would catch and curate them in pages Of books, afraid to use them for homework.

13

Register

Life goes on as frogs croak in the rain puddles And pretty little brown birds continue to make Mothering noises over the balcony A.C. outlet. My register is filled with the smallest of details.

In the evening the car stops at the intersection With some human hands inserted in our eye-holes. The car has gaping holes inside, behind the glass. The music fills the register; our ears are full of it. The register fills, from time to time, with details.

The buffaloes rise against buildings in the grass Their emotions in control, but their bowels open. Their milk overflows, grass in abundant supply. Their milk is white, like the whites of our eyes The register is full from time to time with details.

We heard about a boy who stared in the hospital Trying not to cry, when they were shaving his head. It is the uncertainty of what lies inside his skull

14

That is what makes him cry, not just an egg-head. An egg-head is a joke, a laughing matter in mirror. But we are all egg-heads and we are in this together. Our register gets filled with details from time to time.

15

Poetry of ghosts
The poet brings up poetry from random words Powder-dried to make a street mosquito killer fog Enveloping ghosts of persons that never existed. Poetry is thus made from blurbs of apparitions Those have vaguely tapering tails in place of legs Like you draw them roundly in kids magazines Vanishing in trees, if you answer a ghosts riddle And if you don't answer, head will break in pieces. Somewhere in the head you have a thing growing That makes your head break, even if you answer As the ghost does not accept it as the right one Because there are no right answers to its riddles.

16

Decline and fall

It is September and you mark the decline of the sun Behind the long rows of buildings and listless trees. From the train its decline is noticeable in arid wastes That have straggling shepherds and their grazing sheep. The sun does not envelop their bodies in silhouettes. The orange of light shall wait at the mountain's mouth Beyond the spartan colors of the lake, less its shimmer As clouds pass without event, giving rain a sabbatical. The decline will of course be followed by an exciting fall.

17

Forgetting
Forgetting is sound disappearing, bodys spasm In folds of death, minds entrails in a stomach As everything of you freezes in lifes green liquid An ice block of death, whose water of life melts The night when it happens in a death that stares And you collect lifes water in rags of wet clothes As body is a waiting rag torn off from your fabric. Forgetting is fire and wood, in a crackling sound.

18

The bush shirt

That was a bush-shirt with big, big flowers A soft windy silken shirt we wore to school To others envy, with pockets on both sides That had bulged with flowery spaces and air. We were hurling fingers in air as if clawing it Not for any complaint, but just in boy-show. (We had not picked it up in the wayside bush We were not bush-men of arrows and bow) We had left our long shirt with horn buttons. We looked like fierce Afghan men in turbans With moustaches that struck terror in shirts. Our buttons were two at the top, to our neck. When the bush shirt came our money changed Our annas went of four to a rupee, to easy paisa We now ate rice in shining stainless steel plates And we played in streets seven stones and ball. Our moustaches are silver over frayed collars. We now have pounding hearts under our shirts Weak of memory, but still love the big flowers.

19

20

River steps
River steps are wet with village womens baths. A golden sunlight floods their mornings in boats Leaving early for mountains on wrinkled rivers. Giant banyans greet them from the other bank Spreading their shadows of hair on the blue sky. Mornings are for sun, palms cupped with water Looking the sun in the eye, lips softly trembling With prayers, as white wet clothes clung to body. On the river bed, the buffaloes bath in shallows, Unperturbed by the sun flashing in vacant eyes, Like little rocks in the bed laid smooth and bare By a dried up river, after last years flash floods.

21

Granite

Granite is our stone, blue black like Krishna, That provokes strong feelings, hard on fingers But soft and silky in its core, in hues like rain. It is like Krishnas belly, filled with flute music By a river of gentle ripples flowing from trees. There is rain and wind in it, as in moonless sky. Feel it , play on it and sing its mountain tunes. The more you work on it the silkier it becomes.

22

Moonlight

Yesterdays moon had slid behind the school To surface today at midnight, behind the shed. It is a struggle for the cow to reflect on events Of the day, near the haystack, with tacky flies Needlessly bothering its tail, while the moon Is reflecting temptingly on its water trough. The straw is all around its feet, stewed with urine And Bengal grams tastefully added to porridge. There at mountains all was peace and heaven. The grass was just fine, the flies less of a bother. A red bull came with dishonorable intentions But was promptly ignored, as if he did not exist. The moon is now directly above the asbestos roof. The night is quiet with the street dogs gone to sleep And the moonlight has become brighter and cooler. Somehow the cow seems less angry with the bull.

23

24

Another mother
Just as my own had gone out of the mind Another mother came to night in light words Spoken at the moon that hid still in clouds. The night generally prevailed on the road. A machine then kept whirring at the back The machine that churned out hard words In the nights vast wastes across a dark sea, A sea of words that surged in old thoughts Like the sea behind humming casuarinas In old custom houses sitting pretty morose As a white spit hurled at them in contempt. The night swallowed her too in its memories.

25

Bus dust
The bus shelter stands against a silhouette of bus dust. A newspaper half-read lies on a lap in its cement bench. A towel is spread on the seat, with an open-ended smile Hidden in beard growth, meant to forget hunger pangs. The face inside has no travel on mind, just a killer of time. Layers of fine bus dust have settled on it burying its years.

26

The broken moon

There is a broken moon on the housetop there Cold and soggy, snuggling to the breezy coconut. The elephant god is not looking for it for laughter After a heavy meal of sweets in his child-stomach. Our dear elephant-god lies now broken himself At the bottom of the lake, snuggling to the algae. Time for a many-armed mother, who shall bestow Our victory for this season, wealth for our devout. The mother maternal, eyes wet with love for sons And terror in tongue, trounces demons under foot. After the victory she too will go down to the lake To the drum beating of music and camphor flames. Our gods are like us, of soft clay and kitschy colors. They disappear from lives after the season is over.

27

The whistle
The whistle blares it is the inky night of 2O clock Marked by feet in old boots, in a Himalayan walk, With their stick tapping the earth to warn thieves.

Another whistle, man and boy blew this morning Whose shrillness of blowing sounded quite hollow Across the bare earth and houses to friends down All in mirth, the boy in a snigger after the whistle. Their whistle is mere surrogate for nights cricket Since the latter has taken short leave from bushes.

When our rice is ready for meal in pressure cooker The whistle sounds blowing the lid off afternoon nap. The pressure rises in vapor, pressing down the valve, A short whistle-blower on hunger pangs in our belly.

28

Rash
Wife bursts into rash, as pink- hued as pollen From the plotted hibiscus flower on balcony, Petite, not liking birds, honey not dripping. Mother birds causing rashes are pure baloney. Birds do not bring allergy from A.C. outlets Being brown and stupid with little chick-lets Open-mouthed with wonder at mamas feats. Nor does the political grass from a green lake That smells of so many dirty fluids and deeds. The lab says unpronounceable issues for rash. Little dots on wifes moonless sky are its cash. The rashes are bodys too much of a good thing Anti-bodies wiggling in the blood ready to sting. You must know which rascals they are fighting. Otherwise you are doing shadow-boxing thing.

29

The door
Plastic doors are much like ear membranes They last while you last, water not touching. The shower is effervescent in the bathroom But the door remains calm and wet to gills. A handle that does not go down to fingers? Use it to upside, when the urge in you is quick And the bathroom is getting ready for a song. You will need it, man, in the thick of the night As your bloody system comes to blinding stop And doors open together to let in cold draught.

30

Walks
Long are our walks, morning and evening, Some mental walks, hearty walks, city walks. There are walks, talk walks, like talk going on In waking limbs, body thinking under the skull. Body merely thinks as its mind which walks Like a hundred-footed worm, a goods train Of a hundred steel boxes on unending track The mountains walk unendingly to the horizon And the horizon walks unendingly to the sky. Words walk, spirit walks, our hands go up In the night air in vertical sky breaking walk. Chilly fields walk and up down with the train As also the blue bush birds on phone wires The bridge noisily walks away from the train.

31

Rain
Rain in the afternoon makes less noise On a napping mind, more on a dulled skin The way it tickles it by the wind from trees And comes in instalments like crow-caws And rice poundings in neighbour houses. Half -awake eyes are shut in old thoughts As certain rain of day and sun on the side, Rain and sun married like dogs and foxes. It is at leaf-ends that rain-magic happens. The sun trains a flashing mirror into room Way past gaps in curtains, on to the wall.

32

Fragments
It seems we cannot but be mere fragments If it would mean many parts coming together In re-assembly just like in a natural system Or in a page of a novel, leaving action to guess In the snows of Kilimanjaro, a rich woman Content to watch gangrene dying in a snarl A Hemingway hero who forgot to put iodine On thorn wounds under a September sky. Here within walls, there is no further action Except dead silence, beyond a dying gangrene Festering on foot in proud wails, in nasty snarls. We cannot be making up things all the time The way nature makes assembling parts easy In programmable sequence of parts to wholes. Now what ,asks itself against the wall up north When it comes to re-assembly of broken parts, Memories that had long since trailed off in dust Their drag marks collecting rain in their holes.

33

The wooden pillar

The pillar is smoothly rounded by the girl As she swirled with hands holding it tight. Her eyes looked dizzily at the hot tin roof, Her face in slant, at forty degrees to pillar. She whirled around it holding it steadfast. The pillar is her friend, its shape smooth With her fingers wrapped around it in love. It is worn smooth with her love for years.

34

The window-sill
The window is lack of matter in matter, A hole that is wall against being alone An open invitation to citys darkness. The sill is there to break abruptness To make landing softer and smoother. It is there as a transit point before fall. It is there to host rain-moths that die On the pane ,trying to embrace light.

35

It is Krishna who did it

I have not made the war or these enemies, Nor the clang of metal, nor the fall of dusk Nor blind men, love of sons, blindfold eyes Nor ivory dice with dots of five, four, three Nor caves nor foreheads bleeding with truth. I look at the fish-eyes, fight for fair maidens Divide women into brothers, cry as they lose Clothes for honor, never ending as Krishna. My forehead is still bleeding for useless truth In fluorescent letters, on the flanks of hills Their trees precariously perched, from where Women warriors jump on horses with babies. A bearded man fought for his useless truth In blazing skyscrapers with vaporous bodies In a fall of truth struck by planes of beards When in direct contact with a burning god And fair maidens dancing in fire and water. I have not made the war or burning enemies. It is our Krishna who did it, blue as our sky.

36

The earth-pot

This earth is a pot, full of light in its holes If not holding water for crows with pebbles. A mere wheel turns to give birth to it softly. In summer its earth smells nicely of water. Its shadows at bottom betray our emotions Of deep passion, thirst for hills, dark fears In deep down of belly, butterflies for future. It is like our mom, silk-soft in belly for us.

37

Body
Body is the essence of night, a falling of flowers A few particles of the night, on the way to dawn. The red of their stems is the feet up, faces down Quietly buried in the earth of the dust, leaf-swept By women of organic garbage, to greater dusk. Bodies are spoken of well in heaven, their seats Reserved where beauty is condemned to dance In tasseled silk blouses that are not quite there. The bodies exist till our minds permit, not there When our eyes become shut, on not intact skulls.

38

Who started the wind?

In the river, you look up from the waters, And see the wind walking down calmly From the hills that have holes at the top. On your feet, if joined in a lotus posture At the rivers bottom, the wind will push Through currents smelling of the far hills. Your face can smell the wind in the river Where it touches your cheeks, in caress. Surely the trees have not started the wind. The trees just shake as though they did it. It is not even a sea of giant rolling waves. Those just pretend they brought it about. It seems the wind comes from upstream Riding down to the sea on the rivers back. The sea hosts the wind from all the hills. Who originated the wind is now answered Finally and without equivocation, after all.

39

Mirrors in mirrors
It came to you before night, before sleep The fact that watchmen dream of sleep While still drunk and dreaming, dreams Within dreams, like mirrors into mirrors Endlessly entering, never to turn back. You drink cool milk and chocolate to calm Your nerves before sleep, as there is a fire In the belly, not the one they use to drive Up the north, in the mountains and pine Needles on floor, to collect a few in pockets. You are concerned with foam mattresses Left to dry in the sun by a drunk watchman Who has smelly dreams of own to dream. There is sunshine in his dreams, in his eyes Betrayed by a nose-smell of alcohol in air. Your mattresses are ready for your dreams. You have poems that begin afresh each day. Your dreams are in poems, poems in dreams In eyes deeply red with forgetful liquids.

40

The immersion of Ganesh idol in the lake

The lake flaunts plastics and floating gods With their eyes and feet in clay fragments Staring at the clouds, their dark acrylic hues Lighting dusk fires on its smiling ripples. Their leaves and dead flowers lie in a heap. Dark men meditate on colored gods of clay Their wobbling feet made of it, bottom up. Childrens gods fade into red, blue balloons And their stomachs ache for evening snacks, A few warm golden teeth, with hair on top As a golden ball, tossed in the lake, floats, At the shore, near the holes where men live. Men in the tall machines lift their clay gods, Their women red in faces, their hair in knots. The flowers turn the lake into a yellow sea. They first hoist their gods into the blue sky And hurl them into the waters, all in a ripple.

41

Literature
You are quite a thing, as a black crow caws A big man vertically split by mind-thought In sky rings of white smoke, falling deeply In love, at times, with just being beautiful. Your everyman touches on your raw nerves, Street men that are not yet your real people. These are the phantoms that walk the edge Trying not to fall off with the hems of lungis In their hands, in walking in slippered feet. Their walking sleep evokes big time yawns. You have soft dreams of mirrors that show Big time visions of you, in the grand walk It is the lungis held by the hand in the street That makes the world, in the street corners And the mongrel that follows you by the lake. It is they who make your literature for you.

42

The men in the photograph

These men are in shadows, all the time Trying to speak, to open their mouths In the temple, at the lake, on the road Their common destiny looks unfolding Bounded by their collective lip-sealing The ineptitude of their lives and bodies. If only they opened, shouted and forgot Their gaffes, their shame, common guilt The primeval guilt flowing from bodies The guilt of colors, the inevitable doom Foreclosing of future options, the walls Built on their words, the burden of a past. They are there at the temple in squares, Palms cupped to water, their heads hung To obeisance, their songs sung in unison Their hopes jumping from thing to thing. The camera would bring them out of light Their bodies dumped in squares of shade In limpid pools of thought, under the trees. Their water flows in thin shiny streamlets Their words frozen at lips, still trembling At their imagination, in a foregone reality.

43

Temple
Drowned in the temples noon shadows Man and tree turn phantoms, whose lips Hardly seem to move, except in the wind Bearing the fragrance of the smiling gods In incense, flowers and camphor flames. The priests pot-belly quivers as god-words Issue forth from his large lips, licking words As if they were sweets, delectable to tongue. The trees begin to speak their sibilant words As shadows flow on the mosaic of the floor Filling the cameras eyes with a mist of love.

44

Gravel
We try to sleep off our daydreams. It is when dreams come and we try To sleep over dreams as in the night. We doze off on train seat, eyes shut. The train sleeps its eyes wide open. Its sleep sounds come from its underside With tiny gravel stones hitting the night. They are its shattered dreams about hills.

45

Tyranny of time

A new morning is opening in my window. A September wind is speaking in its trees Before customary rain of the elephant-god Who will drown in the pond later in shouts. The poet asks to please, please let go of him Of the stranglehold of time on his innards A rumble at four is hardly a photo-caption While some of our pictures do need a caption. Of course pictures are not made for captions. I live in the deep bowels where time rules My bearded rebellion gets calmly put down While body refuses to succumb to the wind As the tree there does in its body in the sky.

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Echoes
Well into music, you sound your note A jarring note, just an echo of harshness An electric fan that has lost its bearing A cane juice crusher that is spluttering Shortfall of sweetness in a mouth of echo, A gearbox dripping in thick black grease. Where echoes abound, the tree is bare Of spring leaves, roots bony in the earth Its birds de-feathered of love, of its chicks The eagle is on roof in echoes of tragedy. Unhappiness echoes in its wings of flight. Well into music the goat shouts in its skin. Its shouts are echoes from an alive skin. Its drum beat is a mere illusion of sound, An echo from the old sounds of mountains.

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The sock

A single cotton sock caresses the foot. Its other seems missing in the closet. It seems your leg pairs do not match, Except in their holes, similar-shaped At the toe, in its curve and asymptote Where the toe tends to a shoes curve But will meet it only at its dark infinity. But the wind in their holes is the same In the way it tickles the toe in the hole.

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We stymie you

Before holes, we shall stymie you In a global challenge of the earth Wiping deep red tears of currency Overflowing holes, deep as night. The holes are bottomless of money. We mine ferrous sorrows of the earth And of trees suspended from the sky. Our holes are full of rain of the seas Trapped in a hot sun, in smaller seas. They mirror the darkness of our walls.

(About the illegal mining of the iron ore in the Obulapuram belt that has caused large scale ecological damage)

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Shape
The shape is in the night hidden from our view. You take to night to drown in delightful confusion Brewing in a freedom to take shape from a word When word is poem, a woman that comes to you With the freedom of shape, from your innerness.

Then a crow caws in the dawn of a poem walk A walk postponed for a poem, a thought woman Who comes to you with your own shape of body, The mind shaping a body you love in all shapes A shapelessness of freedom, a release of mind

An amoeba of no shapes, with false feet all sides Always flexible, moving only to stay immobile With the possibility of disappearing as a shape To be a cloud of all shapes in the space of time.

A patch of discoloration on a wall, a rain-moss Black of the summer sun, a soft morning sound Of wood against metal, a smell burning in milk, A death into the sky, a dark fear, a loss of shape.

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Dancing beauty
We have to think of beauty in our dance. Our camels look funny and quite risky For a fall from their humps, in climbing. But their colours make them soft in sky When they look up from their tall necks They really touch high-end palm trees.

In the desert we have to move our feet Quickly, to not get scalded in hot sand. We have to dance our feet in blue sarees Holding their hems in both hands at back As indulgent camels watch in their mirth.

In desert we are not our women but men. But we dance their dance remembering Their steps on the hot sand, as they would Back home, in kitchens and earth-stoves Where fire dances its tongues on breads.

Our womens eyes are of smoke and fire. When they dance there is fire in their eyes Melting their kohl in streams of black tears

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Flowing on soft cheeks like rivers at night.

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Putting the cart before the horse

Horse- cart is women in laughter, A happiness image, a moving away From house, water tap, bitter tree A broken wall of never to return, A space lost on other side of wall Of womens heads peeping, with Eyes of laughter, wanting to know White dragons of surprised eyes Eyes crinkled in round disbelief. A guava tree of ripe fruit not theirs. Smells lost of flowers on the roof By smells that overwhelm senses Of horse-turds on rhythmic hoofs. Loss of film songs is felt in the air In loudspeakers over mango trees. The annual dragonflies do not come This season of monsoon, from grass To lose their silly wings on the wall. Everything is in a blind daze of rain Its flies conspire to hide the world Beyond a tuft of tail, in busy swish. Horse cannot see green on other side, Nor the world beginning with tail But all the while, laughter goes on.

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Wife
Anne Bradstreet was the wife of a husband. If ever two were one, then surely we,said she. It is all in the things of the night uttered In an utter seventeenth century bleakness Of a New England straight from the ship. An earldom left in general vagueness of sea For a tableless living among fierce Indians. Wifes importance lies in the other of life Not merely of the fire, seven times, round As every year you think of the seven rounds, In gold, in textiles, in dim-wit restaurants. Wife-love is in the early day of a long night A pillow night of fears, ghosts and the dead As you turn to the left of belly fear in sleep You hear her sleeping, re-asserting your life.

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Larvae
From trees, on a gentle wind from the hills A new light shall fall on the fluff of marigold Its petals scattered for bees to tempt smells On antenna of viscous honey, pollen of love. The larvae are growing as luminescent dust In beams of light that travel down from the roof In chinks of old tiles, awaiting their change After the moss turns on them black in sun When new tiles will replace them, by workers Sitting on the roof as if they are sky-birds. The larvae are growing in white water- clouds Hoarding river and sea for tomorrows festival When they will be beating tin-roofs like drums Pushing dried flowers down their corrugations And send down snakes of water to our ground. Of light dust and snowflakes the larvae will grow Till evening when they will vanish in our pages.

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Otherness of room
The wind blows in a light rain on the road In gentle leaves waving the dawn to break. Here I shall pass in the otherness of room When the sea howls child fears in pockets Filled with flowers plucked early morning For worship, leaf by leaf, of gods in frames On words uttered on trembling lips of other.

Rooms are demolished like they of the sea Lying in string cots as they stare at the roof With sea memories of shells on the beach Its snails walking slowly in crooked lines.

The tea vendors of beach laugh like snails Offering paper cups for your lifes worries. Their footprints are demolished by waves As soon as they are made, their paper cups Swallowed by the sea in otherness of sea. A loving parijat tree drops shy love-flowers On its utter defeat, right outside my room. Their death-smells enter holes of my room Re-defining my room, its walls reinstated.

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The mobile
The mobile is now on the moving taxi seat. Speak into it, you eyes, its Latin ring is seen In the mauve of the taxi seat, quite agitated Of much pants comfort, less heart- warmth Of yesterday, in more cold of todays words. It is in the hot words of wax in a cold syntax Of a mobile talk between shoulder and head As the former comes close to a sneezing head. Its words are filthy, steeped in religious tunes In the kitschy filmy tradition of the back alley. Its tunes rhyme with the bodys foot tapping. The head is now leaning tower on motorcycle. Such heads, leaning on shoulders, warm cops In their pockets, their hearts, burning stoves. Its talk now walks on its feet on road like bird A non-flying bird of the wingless, its feet tied Together in the coop, in a joy ride to market. It will speak in hush from someones stomach.

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The hurricane
The earth had only slightly stirred there Leaving denizens remarkably disposed To funny jokes and light banter, between Wisecrack twitters of blue birds perched On the windowsills of frivolous jokesters. The visitor hurricane is a delicate thing A softer sister of earlier, who turned tough In her underpants, blowing it really hard On their lives in smug suburban houses. This one is soft-spoken, unlike prior sister, Only gently touching their lives and roofs And ever so soft on weekend getaway cars. Nature is not twitter stuff over fat pizzas By sedentary geeks behind smog screens. Mocking nature may be a happy pastime But remember there could be worse sisters That may not blow as softly in our faces.

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Flowers, leaves and fruit

Our flowers and leaves and fruit are here In silver-white plates of morning fragrance From burning incenses, flames of camphor. Our waters stream between lips and palms. Our flowers shall be flung at framed pictures. Come face to face with the elephant head That laughs on a rounded stomach of sweets The head of a trunk from a severed north On a torso standing guard on mothers bath. A father is egotistical of a divine drum dance He that dances in snow hills of blue poison That cannot wait to see wife bathing in cave, He that smears his body with our death-wish. His prankster son has to eat in his stomach. Pock-marked moon laughs at his bloated stuff. We all love him the way he pats his stomach When he will pace up and down on our roof After a heavy meal of rice cakes and jaggery.

(Tomorrow is the worship day of Ganesha, the elephant-god who visits us every year this day)

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The chair as object poem

I dislike the word chair just before dawn When I have to hit upon it when the wind Outside the window falls on nearby trees In a rhythm of rain, expected in daybreak. As a false positive I have to like the chair. Its contours are deeply etched in my mind As if they were from my very ancient man. Here I am talking about the chair as object While sitting in it as subject doing poems. The chair suddenly ceases to be the object, An object poem in my subjective thought. It becomes me in its pearl-white plasticity Not deigning to melt into my light letters Of poems materializing from air as objects. My words turn objects, ahead of the chair. They are now object poems like the chair.

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The chair
The chairs memories go back to a sylvan past Of animals, trees and foliage, in caves of dark Men, women and kids in leaves of loin cover, Fire in twigs and bird calls and bees of honey. The ancestors might have sat on its wood Hopping from tree to tree, looking for chairs, When there were no chairs, only branches. You still see the ancestors seats delineated In the chair, as if they had once sat on them.

(Think of the chair as Idea of chair, in a platonic sense of an object being copy of the Idea. Reflect on the slight depression built in the chair anticipating how the sitters body will fill the chair)

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Grandmothers
Our grandmother we remember vividly In the moon and sitting on a sagging cot Woven with old stories and waving trees Circulating the moon wind and princes. Coconuts join in stories of green lands lost On daughters weddings, gold shining less, Vegetables brought and cut, from groves. Men come in rain bearing wedding stuffs Between slippery field boundaries of rice, Paddies with water snakes swimming early Women ankle deep in mud, their shoulders On level with the mountains of the horizon. Grandmothers cry from no salt in the eye. They cry softly from waters in the head Of memories of husbands lost in opium Of sons and grand-nieces lost to a moon. They laugh toothless laughter in ripples Over vegan jokes made specially for kids, Not on fart jokes in high demand by them. As they make hot evening snacks for kids They rub their eye-whites, of blue smoke.

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Sufficient
We have never felt it sufficient in all this In blocks of time we had made quite early One after other, the latest one sticking out Earlier ones fading away in a dust of time.

We have never felt it sufficient to work out The grand logic of it all, in a clear ontology A hierarchy of speed, a journey in the wild. A mere outcry, a walk in the wind alone Over dry leaves that hid a lizard, nothing. There emerged no poetry in this blind path Merely a fear of fears, of death and night.

A piano solo concert, from a friends son A solar energy that flowed from anothers Were benchmarks, a few lines in the sky, Ephemeral as eccentric son of other friend In a clink of bangles, of a gene gone awry. All is in a minds dark, in a together-guilt A sons failure in fathers life and thoughts. One does not feel sufficient, father of son.

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The cold wind

The window has let in a benignly cold air Between a promised rain and a buried rain Of yesterdays clouds dripping from trees. I close windows to formally remove a cloth Of needless wool warmth over old shoulders. A mountain arrived by a kind monkey god Who promptly consumed garlands of eats In his ample rolls of neck, a laughing matter In the foolishness of our pre-facto desires. The monkey who burnt an island with a tail Will surely bring us mountains of smugness, Our desires realized in solid gold and power. The cold wind shall cease only on our graves When our desires no more burn in temples And our gods turn silent in their sanctums And look away quickly from our burning eyes Entirely embarrassed, of promises not met.

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The world has already begun

Look, I already hear the morning noises Of the bird parents to their new chicks Above the dripping A.C. unit in balcony. White flowers have already broken out On the wire mesh as though they were My bath-wet clothes hanging in the sun. I look out the parapet for parijat dropping Its flowers, their heads down and feet up. Looks like the world has already begun.

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The table lamp

A clipped lamp poured its light on light Twice it went to sleep and on waking up Its sleep-weary eyes blinked in disbelief. A poem before dawn from knots of words On what rhymes with a green table light! Nothing rhymes with a table lamp right. Poetry of things comes from inner light. Its music is in the very nature of things, The way it trains its light on trite things.

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Family
Just a few bodies live together in a hole, A burrow in a space of cement concrete. Pigeons that return on beaks of worms. Gophers in their holes of common space Exploring life, sharing its outer darkness, As the sky hangs in balance, tautly held.

Our children eat porridge off our hands. We are their white walls, with nail-holes. Their clothes are hung in our blankness.

Old men stare at ceilings, under the stairs. Sagging cots bring them closer to the earth Away from the overhanging sky of the roof. Just a few bodies that return to the earth, One by one, noting each others presence.

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Laugh
Laugh if you must, in your body shudders, Especially if it would hurt, in you of night. Pain or pleasure would vibrate in eardrum Lately suspected to hear less of own words That ring as though addressed to audience. You needlessly increase volume of speech Beyond the hearing distance in your room Or above the market din and bees buzzing. Otoliths may cause balance distortion in old. Nice word this, please remember to look up When the vibration comes in the dictionary. You want to sense meaning, you shall vibrate.

The Buddha laughs on enormous stomach Not the one under our ancient wisdom tree But the yellow one, of a figurine in curio shop. Wisdom is when one laughs at rolls of pain Not of too much eating in moon of rice balls. He laughs because he cannot cry in the view. Under the circumstances, he vibrates of pain.

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You want to celebrate years in wax flames To vibrate to sounds of breaking birth walls. But take care of the all-around green fluid, And a cord that has to be cut off from mamma. That is when you vibrate in lungful of laugh. When you cry, you laugh at the darkness left And the pain of light on new rolls of stomach.

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Children
You children from our knees down Look upon the world as blue hills In a fuzzy grove of far, far trees. You play games in wood pillars Of eyes dreams, also-have-beens. You hide and we seek very eyes. Shout if you must, when the stone Does not tumble on the sixth one. You play cheat, ball a mere flower. A marigold tossed from cardboard. Your rules change like lifes rules With no notice, now this, now that. From knees up dont grow to sky. Make clay god out of a wet earth A funny god of an elephant-child Eating big balls of rice and sugar Into a stomach, rounded of eating. When you finish making clay god Please make us too, in river loam So just like him we can easily break In the swirling waters of monsoon.

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Fractals
Six O clock and it is time to repeat On scale, joint walks, up and yonder. The overcast sky says much nothing. We understand life beside the tree. Repeat the tree and the old dusty car With the same old names washed off In yesterdays rain, waiting in new dust For the same names, heart and arrow. You looking for repeat arches in art? I have them plenty in my digital box In old tombs where angry sultans lie In endless repetitive arches of beauty Where men vanish in trees at the end. Our walks are repeat feet under shoes Occupying space, little by little, in sky. The feet shuffle slowly, one behind one. Eight O clock is time to repeat on scale A bus of people on rods, lunch boxes Touching sweaty bodies tantalizingly.

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Seminar
When a midnight dog had barked at the dark There came up a word seminar from the night In a hall of poets chasing truths widely known An electric fan stirring its hot air of repetitions. Supposing the seminar is shifted to a sit-stone Under the tree, with ant-holes brimming with views A passing fantasy from inside a sleeping mind. Here we have a seminar of e-poets with lulu books Behind the window curtains, to bypass brown ants Who vent strong acidic views on our under-legs. We will not miss hot air of higher reaches of hall. A man sits in the back row with a head in hands Dreaming of golden brown lunch with lentil soup . He has no rabid views about making verse blank In the forenoon sessions, after a biscuit break. Just when the speaker comes up with a rare gem The loo at the back beckons the high and the low The lulu poets stand in rows before filling pots. It is in these mini-seminars that inspiration flows.

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Sorority

The soap sisters drop their doe-eyes Too soon and pretty on the noses, The way they sniff at their sisters All in the race for big house power High-ceilinged and chandeliered. Creepy music is suited to villainy. As they pull female legs, in music, Around mustachioed landlordism. They are sisters up against sisters. They are now in plush boardrooms In their fight against their sorority All for sons, fathers and husbands Not against male tyranny, but for it. They would even check for stomachs Big with sorority, to finish it all off Much before it will scream in the air. (About woman stereotypes in Indian T.V. soaps)

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Brakes
Silent rain and rainbows of grease Trace on the road polygonal maps. The grease maps drop from squeals Of rained brakes in car undersides. Their brakes rebel against tyrant feet And trace line-maps of free countries As their throats shout hoarse slogans.

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Posthumous poetry
We are mostly writing posthumous poems In the corners of our souls, in the outer reaches Of our bodies, from the despair of ripe nights. A shrill midnight whistle causes such poems. Some poems come from lonely street corners Where heavy boots will arrive, on Himalayan Feet with large sized memories of kids and wife In a firelight of warm coals in deep snow hills. The street dogs howls aggravate such poems. A bloody uprising in us triggers some poems In the unreal company of a Kafka in beard When humongous creatures fill front rooms Of overflowings from pockets, book shelves Our windows closed from the inside of rain. Our literary agent has just died of our poems. He will sure publish our poems posthumously.

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The brick wall

What came to the mind was a brick wall In several squares of thought, a soft wind Buffeting the creepers flying on its holes And moss of history faded into black night. The busy brown ants were not left behind. If it was words of bricks we might build it In its brown brokenness,on music of thought. A bird visitor would come in brown stripes Its fickle screw-head moving in sky for worms. The creeper strutted in the sun its proud stuff Of flowers of paper hanging in leaves in pink. It was not a mere brick wall, but a broken wall Of holes that hid childhood, my lost years.

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Story
It is raining lightly through the night On muddy streets and rain-puddles On cars under heavy veil, squatting As if dying to make story under trees. The trees sat there without brown birds. The brown birds will come later to us From a golden sun behind our house To make nest of straw in our A.C. outlet. In a room of silence I make my story Of a friend with heart that just rebelled Against too much edible oil and work, In a calm of death that had no foretaste On our tongues in the fragrant harbor. The brown birds have to make a story Behind the A.C. outlet in green straw And twigs that will not stay on clamps. The rain has made story of reluctance On muddy roads refusing reverse-flow Under trees that yawned in boredom As stories spread lazily around them.

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Meaning
Water has meaning when it overflows Like god-sounds, pictures of lost color With white faced women in old clothes As they flow from sounds of old space. Meaning shall continue without break. The objects quickly lose a revised sense. Their sounds combine with their eyes, The seeing eyes of all objects in poems. Their meaning shall accrue as they see Behind senselessness, in fail interiority. Sounds have no meaning, when heard. Images are all meaning, when in letters. They weave meaning around our things, A mosquito in dark waters of steel glass, Light pouring from steel dome in a pool. Fan sounds feeling thoughts in its whir. A cloth bag had dark worries at bottom. A bird flew from our nest in a window. A person disappeared from glass-pane. The watchman belched from his hand. His pockets were full of night sounds. Our meaning jumps from thing to thing. Under a silken veil of soft fluorescence. A rain that hides mud-houses in moths.

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Some twigs that bird-fall from branches A night with no sounds of song in wind A scooter that kicked its innards to life.

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The lake that was sea

The lake went unnecessarily emotional In the shadows of the banyan and men Sitting on the rails of its embankment Who looked like birds flying on the sea. Its ripples pretended to be ocean-waves. The trees waved knowingly on the rim Their green hairs eating up the blue sky. We fished for hidden grandma stories. An auntie lent her gold in a cloth bundle. You need jewels, you jewels of women? Come to the lake and ask the lake auntie Who will lend hers to you for wedding. Remember to return them when done. You, betrayer, have not returned them? She is no more a jewel lending auntie. You can hear her sad silence in ripples .

(The myth relates to the Ramappa lake , a 800-year old lake near Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh that has remained a part of the collective conscious of the people through such interesting myths and folk lore in circulation in the area)

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Looking for a word

At this time, I am looking for a word And that is when I have found them When they come in as blood- cousins Twice removed, I mean, not literally. They turn sad all the time, all the time; Their sadness is for unknown people. At times they assume grinning faces. They turn sad as they come to a close. Actually they are not that important, Meaning those the words are sad for. It is the language that is sad in its words, The sad language we had made our own Coming from far, in sounds of bagpipes The bagpipes are sad, celebrating defeat. But their windy sounds are fine music.

(About Indian writing in English)

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Particles

The night advanced in floating particles Of tiny flowers that would fall at sun rise. Her memories floated as light particles Of sun dust on the earths fallen flowers. We offer rice particles to keep her alive In our bellies, our throats, dusty minds.

(On the fourth death anniversary of my mother)

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Seeing is dead

The master sculptor had made tonalities Stone upon stone, of women in dance Men in beards, servants removing thorns From the swollen feet of soft princesses. Their cloth caps towered over dainty feet. Nubile girls danced on slender midriffs Of black tonalities, ankles high in the air. A child gods flute was heard in soft stone. Gods lived in fading nights of a memory. The vandals seeing is death of immortality The death of artifice, the death of beauty.

(Several sculpted figures can be seen in deliberate disfigurement by historys vandals on the exquisite temple walls of the Ramappa temple near Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh)

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Sleep comes

Sleep comes when things seem to be fizzling down, Like late night line drawings, just over a soft pillow In a fuzz of thoughts, their outlines vaguely formed, As the air slowly turns heavy with cavernous yawns. Sleep is when a red of white forms in our glassy eyes Into a mess of capillaries supplying blood to seeing, To dreaming in a sleep of time, in a sleep of thought. Sleeping is body in a merger in the blue of the sky Into a sky of nothing that rises above the apartment, On the roof , by the water tank, listening to its water.

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Stone maidens of Ramappa temple

These stone maidens turn you to stone If you stare at them too long, in the sun. Their bodies are badly stuck in the wall, They lean forward in the sky of the day Seen by creatures that are still not dust. At night they come out of the moonlight For hopscotch in the chalk-lines of the sky. Then they come out in groups and dance To nobodys pleasure except god-husbands Who became stardust in the sky long ago. Their sculptor-father is a chisels dust, From the father sculptor of all-time sky. His dust is not seen by men, not yet dust.

(About the exquisite sculptures of idealized female beauty on the temple walls of Ramappa Gudi ,near Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh)

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Naming the child

Name filling is after our pleasure taking And body giving, from a rubber umbilicus Strapped to a golden lotus, from where The Creator would spring with his wife Highly educated, feminist in approach. The lotus-seated god is duly hen-pecked By a goddess of learning, his own alphabet On our brows in disarray, in strange script Undecipherable in far too many words. The navel springing the lotus shall maintain The creation products with brilliant learning, Including femininity of luscious apple eating And why not, in a world of devious serpents. The lotus-springing god shall have his feet Pressed gently, for walking fatigue, by wife, Without his ever walking in the sky-clouds. He keeps the world going by wifes wealth And his own health on a serpent mattress With an arching serpent hood for umbrella.

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Prices
The fish are mostly in the lake Sometimes, found by the lake Lumped with random friends They do not set their own prices. Stomachs decide how much. They are later buried in them. Stomachs do not set own prices. They are later buried.

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Flowers that make my window glad

Three or four white flowers in a window sky Demolishing curtains will surely gladden glass With a tiny button rose to button up experience Of a heaving chest, full of old age, death fears. Fears growl in the malfeasance of flesh organs It is their dirty smell of decomposition in bones In the phenyl smell of a dying hospital, flowers Smelling like formaldehyde, of sickening tubes Those carry dirty water to be emptied for money. But the white flowers shall gladden my window yet. My clothes shall smell of wilted flowers in pocket. I shall keep fears on hold, this side of the window Under a table light that reads nice smelling words Remembering parijat flowers waiting on the earth, Their faces down , feet up, at the crack of dawn.

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Work
I have always work to do when I sit alone With the passions of neurons in high fever. Sometimes the blood runs up bloody tubes Sending waves that rise at midnight moons. There is serendipity, a fortuitous discovery A mere possibility of a chance stumble-upon By a machine perpetually in fear of stopping. I work on words for serendipity, discoveries In the random and derive existence from them. That is the way I keep the machine running.

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A childs birthday
The old poet looks from his thoughtful eyes At the blue and white baby birthday balloons Stuck like hearts to the roof, helpless on roof As they had gone up from childrens mouths. Then the children remember future birthdays Of white cream on knowingly smiling faces. Their parents are high on hot lentil soup among Rags of unprovoked conversations of no ends, Only tassels, shreds of silk, golden embroidered. They will, back at home, cull the gold from them In their sleep and melt them to increase riches.

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Soliloquies

Evenings are good time for free frank talk When our mind is full and our tired body Echoes with incidents, days happenings With a belly down there, loudly cheering. Our soliloquies occur then, breaking silences In loud exclamations, puzzled question marks, Wild hand gestures, vague finger- pointings In vivid figures of speech, in pure blank verse. My own soliloquies clash with the sparrows And at times with the nodding wall lizards When it crouches in pure love for its insect And quickly darts back to safety of roof-light With the love-act smack on its happy lips. kitta, kitta, it soliloquizes, quite solemnly. That is when the sparrow too soliloquizes. Actually it is talking with its own alter ego In the mirror, alleging brazen plagiarizing Of its poise and beauty, its melody of song. There seems no reply from the mirrors side So its verbal outpourings remain soliloquies.

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Dark circles
Dark circles do not mean refusal to beauty-sleep Or long years of skin, into eternity of same place. The circles are ever expanding, from outer ring. The centre is holding contrarian views from eyes Not seeing eye to eye, they have circular runs to do. There are holes behind eyes, their circles hiding them. Fathers do not see them, when they first sketch them And as the lines proceed apace,the circles take shape. When they are noticed it is always late, always late. The holes behind them are bottomless quarry-holes Where darkness rules like the night cricket in bush; A stones drop in it will not even be acknowledged.

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Dust mites

They had come before us, in our heads of hair, Our flat backs with or without bony vertebrae Dust they are and our future dust they embrace Under flowers of our pillows, in sleep-softness When we turn at night they turn in dusty ways At us, in our bloodstream, in the fever of nights Our inside fights, not knowing enemy within. Let us get them inside out, in bedroom antics, Carry on relentless pillow-fight, on way to dust.

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Wall
A little white wall stood between us Of indifference, from our both sides. Only the tree knew our day, our lives, Comparing them meticulously above. We could finally break its whiteness Only to confront an indifferent wind.

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Miracle
The sky is still gray, over the mountains, Trees still in their leaves, not a whistle. Our child shall be born anew, our miracle, The birth from a deep night, nights child. The folds of the hills held it in their wind, In haunting fragrance of thorny flowers On the side of the mud-track, in furrows Of rice fields, with wet feet of our women. The hills waited expectantly and the cows In their return, in the dust of their hoofs. Let us get a peacock feather for his head A little blue of the sky for his over-wear. But the sky is still gray with shades of rain And the peacock is dizzy in its rain-dance Waiting for its own miracle on a gray sky.

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The first flower

The first flower is fixed in my sky, waving in wind. Its white fragrance is mine alone in its blue space, The wind I do not own, but here this balcony I own In bricks and cement, in sand from rivers holes. The flower is mine for claim to neighbors And the squirrel that passes by, whoever. When it dies and falls, I alone shall mourn.

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Words for trees

I do not have any words for trees, in my throat I know them in throat, by astringency of fruit, By disgust on tongue of caterpillars on them In ironic glow as creatures of beauty of future Their projected butterfly stature in the next sky, By leaves falling one by one in October wind Like snow in December of higher Himalayas.

I call them trees, even if they stand there alone It is in their plurality they turn colored butterflies When they are up and about, alone, in bunches, Their lady-like cackle heard from jungle peacocks As they raise blue heads from bushes under them.

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Light

Morning is pure light, on coffee and paper A song in light raises head softly in the east On the high place where god sits with trees In his loin cloth and a fixed stare at the wall. The rain flies shall begin lifes journey now As light first reddens trees, makes them blush Of god on their leaves, in their golden splendor Their green then mixing in gold from the east. Light fills our chests, our sleeves, our hair, In loose strands of a girls hair on the road Where electricity flowed at their fiery tips, A song on her lips lacking, but felt in breeze. The girls hands flowed as water from hills. Their music filled trees with leaves of blush.

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Figures of our speech

All the worlds layers are in our throats, Hoarse with words, spoken way too often With proper emphasis, some letters said With our teeth pressed and eyes closed. Our fingers are clenched for good effect. Our body is distorted with much emotion. Let us, for a change, feel the damn thing, Before words, without flourishes of writing. We say the cap on our head sports a knot That looks like a ruined temple on the hill, Specially when in silhouette against sunset. As if our saying makes it larger than seeing. The knot on cap is a mess of wool that bears Not even a flimsy likeness to ruined temples.

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The sea of images

This crowd of images will not leave us in blood. Its voices fill our minds like morning squatters, As one din, rising to the sky ,when on the beach Among tall trees waving good bye across the seas. These trees crowd all our spaces near our feet And in the folds of our minds, musically flowing When tall ships blow their steam-horns at them. It is one vast sea of images, in waters and brine. The boat goes up and down on the morning sky. A plastic rope holds it in place, its green strands Tying lives, in strange places, in shadow and light Of fish in men, fire in women, smoke in old men. Black bodies rise high in froth at the seas mouth. Tiny tentacles burrow holes in its brown wet sand. They tickle your feet and question your foot space. The sea swallows us all, including our old shadows.

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Authenticity
I am often confronted by a feeling Of lack of authenticity, in this river, Of not feeling like a subject, spurious Against mountains that sit in the far With river waters beating on my ears. I am words from vaporous thoughts, A prose-poem thought in dark nooks Of the mind, mining word after word. The mountains belong to the earth. I, waving in breeze, am a mere baby A cry-baby in quick mountain wind, Flying words against its rock solidity In its flowing wind and night silence.

The mountains are authentic in space With river about me, in daily ripples. They had come here much before me With the waters from skies, daily sun. I exist here in the river, as a thought A passing thought of a real mountain, A thought in river, a temporary rock.

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Climate change
We spoke all our recent dialogues nicely Voicing apprehension of the big change. Our struggle had continued underneath. It was a monotone speech in a gray sky When the line of trees came to a freeze In their hostility, where they stood tall. The gentle summer breeze did not matter. The trees sniffed autumn and looked away. Emaciated street dogs barked incessantly, At hooded strangers coming at us from hills From the edge of the sky, in clouds of dust. Our dialogues went on in our dark robes As our culture bristled riskily in our back, The culture of reality, in our failed hearts Where several realities came up together Not as a single earth-reality in silk thread But a failed reality of a fluid mind-state A sky of treeless vapour, sea of flake-salt.

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Metaphors

We are nowadays happy with our new door A membrane bathroom door that now sheds A certain mauve hue on baths, while in song, With the shower flowering on our cool backs Streaming as if from a rock skirted by trees Its vapors swirling like their winter breaths. Our song is under breath, in some mutters. Our vapors are on glass that hides in smoke Our rather banal faces, their jejune laughter. We are, in fact, searching for our metaphors, Being upbeat about our recent turns of phrase.

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Phony vision
I do not know if the thing is phony Glass-like, with glistening dew-drops Of a morning vision on windshield, Pearl-glass that breaks in little coins On endless highways, on mild impact Of metallic bodies with drunk men. Some cars have steam on bonnets Like bees, in spring, on the stone. Our vision is partly crowded, you see With birds hiding dust in the east That has turned orange at sunrise A phony vision, it is partly clouded.

On the highway there are no houses Only string cots for our dream sleep On glasses of buttermilk, hot breads. We have whites on our mustaches Of too much buttermilk in throats.

You crinkle eyes enough and you will see Wet buffaloes calmly chewing their cud In tin sheds that jump out of green fields Their milk sloshing in their pink udders.

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Luckily their tail-flies and smells fly away Into tree-tops, waking the morning birds, A phony vision indeed, partly clouded.

The sunflower beds have darker kids That smile nicely of a little alphabet, Like flowers that turned deep inward When the sun went behind the hills. Their little bees have nowhere to go, Wait; let the sun come from the hills. The village school is closed for today In honor of the guests on the string cot The sunflowers will open with the wind And the shadows will creep up slowly Behind the buffaloes, with eyes closed Their mandibles moving up and down. The vision is clouded, a phony vision Caused by much emotion in the eyes.

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Scream

In the bone house it would appear The lower mandibles were stretching And stretching to produce a scream That would fail to reach down to ears. Actually they were trying to bite sarcasm, Surely a futile endeavor, especially They do not have tongues in cheeks.

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Holes

We are talking of holes, mere lack of matter Subsisting in matter and surrounded by it Of words that exist in crevices of thoughts, Words making the worlds holes in whole. My dead are matter in lack of it, globe-earths Those spin in lack of space, in crisp night air. They spin in the space of time, holes in space, Phosphorus glow-worms roaming thin nights. They are holes in space, where they had lived. They are now words that will live in thoughts, Those remain in my mind, as images of reality Till I become a hole in space, a picture, a word.

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Children in the rain

We wanted clearly laid out paths Between thin strands of July rain. Our faces were drowned in hoods As the rain fell softly on our heads. Its sounds came as from the ocean. Our puny judgments took a beating In such a steady patter on our ears Where they seem to be beating us Like angry fathers, back from office. As we walked we made tiny circles In rain water, under our umbrellas That saved us from an angry sky. The houses were a blur in white. Our paths ended in green of trees. Rain-mud spattered on black coats Surprised by blurs of passing cars, Their wipers saying no to the rain.

We had left our school in the street. Our home of angry smoking fathers And soft grannies in loving egg-heads Seemed to vanish in the fuzzy rain.

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A scruffy dog shook its body of rain. Back at home, we bath our wet bodies In eucalyptus steam, as its vapors rise Quickly to drown the rain in its smell.

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Bridge
We had passed the bridge spanning a river of sand At dawn, when our noisy train spoke to its emptiness. Once out of it, the train was bending like a centipede And we took a long backward glance to see the bridge Now smarting under noise injury on its deaf,deaf ears. The buffalos on its sand-bed looked up, unmindful Of the bridge, of the noisy train that passed, and of us In the train that saw them as mere globs on the sand. Their black bodies longed for green puddles of water. Their eyes seemed vacant, as their tails swished flies. We saw they had not even once met us in our eyes.

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The temple of shadows

Men and women live here with stones Their shadows live with them in daylight. The shadow phalluses of shadowy gods Live in the musty smells of kings in silks Their soldiers in attendance on swords. Women have their foreheads on red dots. Priests move throats up, down like birds. Their prayers fly like shadows to the sky, Their hungry stomachs touch their backs Where they produce shrill incantations. Here god is crying inside, in the shadow. Beauty is hunger in distended stomachs Drunk with soft palm wine from the sky.

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