Distances - a poem in two parts

{part 1}

{part 2}

Distance is a difficult tongue

hard to learn, like most things after 30

Despite the mispronounced and misunderstood words

I find myself persevering

I take careful notes

of things that convey distance

of things that may lessen them

I find myself measuring the spaces

Between the faithful's forehead

and a prayer mat

Between a teacher's anxiety

and a student's success

Between the change in a schoolboy's pocket

and the samosawalah outside the gates

Between one casual insult

and a well-thought out spite 

Between the mother's breast

and her wailing infant's mouth

Between promises made in good faith

and realities that rendered them false

I learn how to wait

and find ways to ford the distance

between the day we decided it wouldn't work

and today, when we know that nothing else will

Jump

Ten floors down is a bed of flowers

You know they don't seem too far

I can almost smell them up here on the ledge

So sweet, they're almost pungent.

Like love. Everything's like love.

The wind brings crazy things with it

along with the smell of roses..

that teen next door's angry music, 

a hawk with a half-eaten rat,

the noise of neighbours who have loud sex.

Today I'm hoping it'll bring me more

than just its bag of cheap tricks

a little quietude? Perhaps some sleep?

I haven't really slept since you left.

All I do is dangle my feet in this nothingness

Ten floors down is a bed of flowers

I remember you loved looking at them

And that's all I have left of you - a view of the roses

That's all I think I'll keep of you

What's that I hear you say? Jump?

(Far) across the table

Have you ever measured a table in miles?
Or minutes, in uncomfortable silences?
They say a lot of things can happen over coffee
- they don't tell you a lot of things unhappen too.
In the incessant shaking of your leg
Or my excessive attention to the decor
In the checking of our phones
(which had no new notifications)
There was certainly a new story
but this time, of a dismantling
Was it the flavour of love, that was amiss in my cup,
Or did an infusion of blame make your tea bitter?
Were you really critiquing the cafe's bad service,
Or was it a roster of plaints of your heart?
For last evening I saw us measuring
a table in miles
and minutes in uncomfortable silences.

Sleeping beauty heart

Come boy, you need some straddling,

some kissing, some fondling

oh, that sleeping beauty of a heart

come boy, it needs some waking

Allow my words into your arms

I bring gifts of chains and whips

If you will let me bind you right

I promise you phantasmagorical trips

Come boy, look me in the eye

you need to be reminded of love

not the sweet and gentle kind

but one that is unsparingly rough

For gentleness is your bane, boy

the opium to your brain, boy

come, let me remind you

of the taste of turmoil, boy

Come boy, let me strip you,

break you, rip you apart 

until all you are left with

are dancing shoes and a naked heart

The Seance

Read that note that has just been slipped under your door

"Invitation"

it says, in a dark, cursive, Gothic font.

I'm holding a seance tonight to awaken lost loves.

Don't come alone; bring your broken heart along.

Tonight we celebrate what could have been, what never was.

I have an Ouija board with 3 questions:

"Do you still love me?"

Did you ever love me?"

"Would you love me again?"

And the answer can only be YES.

......

Ah, you've come. Nice perfume.

Sit down, hold hands, close your eyes.

Focus on this burning candle.

Yes, it's your heart. Burning, burning, burning all over again.

I race to the past to pluck your lover's spirit,

and place it upon your lap.

Ask them what you will, do what you want.

Tonight there will be no denials, betrayals or unexplained goodbyes.

Kiss them if you want

Touch and make tremble.

Let your souls lie together and make love

like you always wanted to, like you never could.

......

Hurry now, the candle is burning out

the past must return where it belongs.

Clocks must be turned back, and graves sealed shut.

I put the lights back on

and see what I need to see.
This is the only payment I seek.

A hundred tears shed 

and one heart healed.

The Song of Desire

Forget what the preachers say

Disregard every sermon you've heard

I, the priestess at love's altar,

Say, 'desire' is not a dirty word

What do they know about longing?

Of the drug of a lover's lips

One who has never been drunk

On the seduction of their swaying hips

They, who've never been woken

with desire banging at their door

What do they know of that eternal strain,

of wanting more, some more?

Covered in numbing robes of virtue

their hearts have never lurched

their skins have never screamed

with a dire need to be touched

In a frightful island of isolation

unheard, untouched, unloved,

where would you and I be

If desire was a dirty word?

Desire is not a dirty word

for it is proof of a living, beating heart

The first bright bold stroke in red

of love's amazing art

Orgy

On my bed sleep poets and saints; 

volumes of hardbound madness. 

There's a little space left -  just enough to make love.

Won't you come, my lover, and partake in this orgy? 

We'll lie among sheets of silk and paper, 

we'll talk through the chaos of geniuses.

Rumi can watch how you kiss me

And you can be witness to my love for Hafiz

Let's lock fingers, as if in prayer

even as obscenities stream out of our mouths

Sex toys and rosary beads in our sweaty palms

lines between the profound and profane erased

Jalaluddin cries out for his lover divine 

like you for me and I, for Khwaja Shams-ud-Din

Follow the poet's lead, and let your hands pleasure me

Make my head spin in ecstasy, like a whirling dervish 

Listen to what Shams says, 

"Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly".

Drop the sweet talk and an aashiq's tehzeeb

and fuck me while the saint-poets look on and sing.

Why I laugh

I once believed in love

then they licked the sugar away

Now I only laugh

at the farce of romantic men

I laugh at those eyes

looking away from my breasts

I laugh because I know

You'd rather I had no clothes on

I laugh at your fingers

tenderly tucking strands behind my ear

I laugh for I know

how they want to grab, kiss, hurt

I laugh at your mouth

feigning delicate poetry

I laugh for I know

your teeth long to sink into my flesh

I laugh at your tongue

faking grace and smooth words

I laugh for I know

it wants to claim my womanhood

I laugh at your kindness

that mask of cheap plastic

I laugh because you think

that's a ticket to my bed

Love is matter

(Image source: isiopolis.com)

Love is a need like no other.

Love is matter.

The terrible, unstable kind, yes?

The wild, sweeping kind that rips every notion apart until only nothing remains. And you weep, your tears are diamonds.

Or perhaps the luminescent, sublime kind.

The soothing, balmy kind, that caresses every scar, contains tides until only stillness remains and your smiles are rainbows.

Ah, of glorious hurts and shimmering pools of blood. Of nightskies dark with longing and days bright with impudent hope.

Of quiet acceptance that every drop of blood and sweat is mine, is thine, is ours.

Of every kiss that proclaims the tongue and every ache that screams for a union.

Of shivering limbs that crave steadiness from firm but gentle arms, but alas! Love must steady itself in its own whirlpool of collapse.

Of looking for answers in a beloved's eyes and the stoking of yellow embers that burn beneath the lids all night.

Of finding yourself staring back, a splash of white in every black; wind chimes tinkle in solitude and hearts splinter in gratitude.

Of blue cowherds and song and milkmaids and dance.

Of a day that won't see dawn on the banks of a swollen river, forever in spate.

Love is so many things, yet I know only your face.


I love so many things about you but all I can do is look at your face, helplessly, hopelessly.

(With @ScrollsNInk)

Longing

There is a drop of longing everyday
that falls from the sky of your being
Small and sharp and brilliant
It catches the light and shines
defiantly, brightly,
searing the grey of every-dreary-day
shamelessly calling attention to itself.

There is a drop of longing everyday
that I must hide in a jar
in a cool-dark place (like forbidden candy)
There is a drop of longing everyday
that no one must see.

The jar in the cool-dark place
is almost full
It blinds my eyes each time I look
within.
A million little drops of brilliance
that have morphed into a sea of desire.
Viscous, iridescent, proud.

There is a drop of longing everyday
that I must furtively add to the jar
Fuel to fire
And close a hurried lid, afraid
my home will go down in flames.

There is a drop of longing everyday
that refuses to be quietened, diffused.
Small and sharp and brilliant.
Unchanged, since I felt it first,
A drop from the sky of your being
Right into my barren heart.
'Plop', it fell, I remember
Catching me, drenching me, unawares.
I stepped away from my body,
To stare at that brazen drop.
Catching light, so much light,
shamelessly calling attention to itself.
Scared, fascinated, I hid it in a jar
in a cool-dark place.

Since then, every day,
there falls a drop of longing
from the sky of your being
small and sharp and brilliant.
Diamonds from a heaven
where you are.

I'm running out of space,
I'm running out of time.
The jar won't hold much longer
There are cracks, and light shines through
even in that cool-dark place.

There is a drop of longing everyday
Bigger than the drop of yesterday
Drowning me, drowning all.

I will need you soon,
and your mouth and your hands,
to swallow this luminous sea
so the game can start over.

Ash

You perhaps do not remember.

But how would you?

You didn't see it for what it was.

A lipstick stained table napkin

I left ever so carelessly

on the table across which 

you sat, drinking coffee

Hoping you'd steal it, save it

as a souvenir 

from our last meal together

You also didn't see

my heart on your platter

So I put them back in my purse, 

heart, napkin and hope

And left with as impassive a goodbye

as I could manage.

Now all that is left,

Is a line of ash

From the cigarettes 

I learnt to love from you

from the cigarettes 

that remind me of you

Light, grey, warm testimonies of a high

that wore off all too soon.

Middle of a dream

We are running, despite no gravity

on this road to nowhere

We are in someplace strange

that could be heaven or hell

There's no way of knowing

in the absence of signboards. 

But i'm feeling, i'm feeling

feeling so hard, 

and falling

and reeling

and flying

all at once.

My fingers are locked in yours

(but who are you, again?)

this is surely the middle of a dream.

The dream sits heavy

on the palm of my hand

(so soft, so unbearably soft)

and sometimes it cozies up

on the tip of my tongue

(so sweet, so searingly sweet)

Bits of heaven strung together

on a string of endless hours

being passed from your mouth to mine

from your hand to mine

but I still don't know who you are

what this place is

or where we are headed

this is surely the middle of a dream.

We are sitting now, floating now

by and in a rainbow river

counting stars like lovers do

and laughing at what lovers do

eternities are passing,

without the trappings of life

no birth, no shame, no want, no death

My fingers are still locked in yours

Your identity still a mystery

this place as unfamiliar

this place as desirable

this is surely the middle of a dream.

Don't wake me up yet.

.

This is love (LOL)

(Image source: Deviant Art by Yoda13)

The summary of all I'll ever have to say to you is I love you.

A love that breaks shore over and over at your stone feet, 

hoping you will feel something; anything.

Step into my skin for a day, and know how I bleed for you.

It's hard on days when the voice of my love will not be tamed.

That helpless, shameless kind of love that I can lay at no one else's altar.

My songs are orphaned without you.

My heart, a lost child in a fair.

My life, an endless spin down a black vortex.

When love is on the other side of the thick red line of morality.

But I've chosen to be blind to all else but you.

It's harder still when I almost believe that my love will be returned.

Kill me, if that's what it takes to make you lay your eyes on me.

Let me peel away all that is not about you. You were made for worship.

'Love me' I beg, you walk away, we start again.

I resign everyday to a life without your love, and the damn thing just grows stronger.

This is love. (Laugh out loud.) Exit.

Not a goodbye yet

Blow away you say?

Blow away all preciousness

Blow away everything

that truly matters to this heart?

Poked, probed, pricked, pinned

Broken, tattered, worn thin,

Whatever its state or shape,

It is an object of my love.

How can I wish away

the fire to my cold,

the rain to my drought

the rhythm to my heart?

The waiting never ceased

The wanting never ceased

I may have turned my face away

But I never stopped loving

Invitation for destruction

(A Bill Jones painting from http://www.painters-online.co.uk)

Yes, love

rain again, flood again

even nature isn't cruel this often.

Why you? Why me?

I've held in my palms

long lonely nights

fingertips shriveled

with wiping tears.

I've held in my palms

a hope that wouldn't die

a hope that bloomed

even in hatred's Sahara.

Yes, rain again cruel one

One drop, a million drops, 

until this deluge

destroys me once more.

Stricken

My mind had been still, like a clear night sky.

Some stars sprinkled even.

So I slept in peace, unsuspecting.

But I awoke, in the 'middle of the night' mahurat

The way they have in stories of myth.

That time of ghosts and ominous things.

It must have been like a loudclap of thunder

or blinding lightening, just behind my lids

Amplified millionfold in the land of Hypnos

Like an Indra lying in wait,

sharpening his quiverful of bolts

on a trumpeting Airavat.

No, like a hundred angry Indras

on a hundred angry Airavats

Lightning, trumpeting, lightning, trumpeting

My eardrums shattered, my world ripped,

I lay there, perfect darkness about me.

Then, out of the skies of my past

the first drops came.

A big thought of you,

and another, and another

until my face was drenched, with salty rain.

Before I knew, what pillar to hold

Drops became walls of water.

There was no stopping the deluge that night.

There was no saving my dams that night.

I would have to sink or swim,

Through this flash flood of emotion.

My heart shook, my limbs too,

I perhaps genuflected in bed too.

But memories were in no mood for mercy,

So I waited and let wash upon me

wave upon wave of our time together.

Your smiles flickered across the skies,

teeth flashing amidst rolling clouds.

Past happinesses projected now

in tear-jerking shades of grey.

While the storm of 'us' danced the tandav dance

breaking my walls like dominos.

In the churning oceans of thought

I tossed about and counted hours

till the sun of my present rose again.

I started all over again,

with the stricken remains of my will to forget.

I dream severe dreams

(Image source: studiojuliakay.com)

I dream severe dreams

That brand me with fire

Dreams of willful fingers (yours)

Inking me with desire.

Your touch, it causes

ripples upon my skin

You’re smiling at the pattern

(for it spells S-I-N)

I am rooted, as the fingers move

stirring up a storm,

they tease, then please,

find their way across my form.

Dreams of lips follow

[I can feel my body jerk]

My throat parches, my toes curl,

My breasts swell, perk.

Your masterful tongue

Comes next, to speak and seek

My heart roars, my breath heats,

(I’m crumbling), my knees go weak.

I dream severe dreams

That brand me with fire

I am afraid to wake up

So fraught with desire.

Languorous Love

Let things linger, let things soak,
Let love permeate slowly into your bones.

Let it slide down the edges, of sides left untouched for years
Let it show what one has no claim over, let it show what one owns.

Let it burn, ever so little, singeing slowly by the minute
Let it steal from restful sleep, and push stealthily every limit.

Let it extinguish fires of doubt, let even clarity cloud,
Let it prevail over reason, let it subdue logic, wit.

Let it walk in nonchalance, let it your patience try,
Let it act like there is forever, let it sometimes make you cry.

Let it make breathing scarce, let it melt every living cell,
Let it erase every fact, farce, let it listen, let it tell.

Let its fragrance madden you, let its burden sadden you,
Sometimes fire, sometimes ice, let it become your virtue, your vice.

Let it bind in chains of glory, let it give heights to your story,
At times bright, then dark, let it be your victim and your jury.

(Co-written with @shakwrites)

It probably isn't love

If it hasn't made you leap up wildly to embrace one morning or try to sink into the wretched bowels of one night, it probably isn't Love.

Yes, if it hasn't made you a model of unreasonable behaviour, it probably isn't love.

If it hasn't made you an amalgam of opposites; a fiery iceberg, a bleeding bouquet, it probably isn't Love.

 If it hasn't made you want to wander streets in search of your lover or death, it probably isn't love.

If it hasn't made you more tolerant than you've ever been yet more petty than you've ever dreaded, it probably isn't Love.

If it hasn't made you want to own the person, the whole and every part, then it probably isn't love.

And in return, give yourself to them; more than they ask for, more than they can handle, and say '' Keep me,'' it probably isn't Love.

If there are whys and wherefores, it probably isn't love.

(Co-written with @talli_redux)

Leftovers

(Image: feministing.com)

He undresses me. He turns off the lights. In bed, he takes me in his arms and I close my eyes. But I have not been able to close my eyes, and shut it all out. You travel the years, the darkness, and are there. Always there. I see you so clearly, it’s frightening. I don’t think I saw you then like I do you now. At the end of every day, when I lie in bed - alone sometimes, sometimes not - you are there. Hijacking my present, hijacking my all. You left long ago, but you never left, did you?

Because the other morning, when I turned away from the mirror, I saw a flash of red in my reflection. How did that happen, when I removed every shade of that colour from my life after you left? Because a few moons ago, I remember hearing footsteps climbing outside, in the corridor, your characteristic drag, that little tap against the wall with your fingers. Rat-a-tat-tat. Because just yesterday, I opened my cupboard and caught a strong whiff of your cologne. You never left, did you?

I catch myself snapping at my lover because he is not you. Then I bite my lip, and fake affection. He has no clue. He does not know of the strings attached. Strings so long, they have years for yards. Hooked to the nape of my neck, the small of my back, heck, my heart even, these strings traverse distances unknown and place their ends into your hands. You perhaps do not know. But you play me still, like you did in those days and nights of dirty love. I laugh thinking how you left, but never really did. My lover stops. He senses something odd - like a sheet of glass between our bodies. But he cannot see it. He never will.

So why leave at all if you had to continue haunting me? If you had to flash through my mind seconds before he loses himself in me? If you linger on, like yesterday’s perfume, in the crinkle of my eye, the lines on my palm? Why do you linger, half here, half wherever it is that you have gone to, your life at a standstill and my life...? Hanging on by threads that look like they are about to snap but they will not, they will not. They have frozen over, delicate, fragile beyond any bond ever formed, but frayed over time in the glare of your going.

He kisses my mouth, seeking my tongue, but the taste of your being interferes. I respond, but haltingly, reminding myself this is him, this is not you. He runs his fingers through my hair, down my back and my legs, but my pleasure is marred by the memory of your fingers. I respond, but haltingly, reminding myself this is him, this is not you. Not you. My love notes are not entirely his either. Words meant for you keep slipping in, and I crumple sheet after sheet. How you still punctuate the story of my life.

He can sense so much amiss. I feel terrible for him on days when I am alone. I feel terrible when I see his naivete, when I hear him tell his friends I am not easy to ‘get’. When I slip in and slip out, to him it is mystery. Mysterious. It fascinates him. He tells his friends I am not ‘that into him’. He is drawn to this, this lack of the real me, this lack of a total presence of me. Like a moth to fire, he does not see it is going to suck the life marrow out of him one day. But he can sense so much amiss. I see it flit across his face when I smother your name on my tongue before it escapes my lips. I see it reflect on his brow when I jerk his fingers away when he tries to find mine, almost as if a stranger touched me.

He turns away, sulking, his pride hurt. But his manhood won’t comply. I see his body has gotten used to mine, his heart to my love (or pity or sympathy). I take his hand to apologise without words, and can’t help but see how his fingers are nothing like yours. I’ve never quite gotten used to his stubby, awkward fingers. Fingers that don’t know what they are doing, where they are headed. I remember your hands, those beautiful, confident hands, even as I hold his, and juggle three lives. He is fast appeased, his eagerness most apparent. He begins to make love to me again, hungrily. I recognise this hunger. This isn’t much unlike what I felt for you. Not at all unlike what I still feel for you.

And so I wonder, sometimes, if that is why you left me. Was I too eager? Too hungry for you? Did I yearn too much? Did I hold on too much? Did I show you how vulnerable I was with you, how much I needed you, not just to love me, not just to make love to me, not just to tell me that you found me breathtakingly beautiful, but to be that tower of light to a ship lost on sea? Did I cling too much? Did I smother you and scare you away? And this, now, this odd, frighteningly clear presence of you that I have around me night and day, is it just me? Is it the idea of you that I am projecting on to every present moment I have? Am I killing my now because I want to hold on so badly to our yesterday?

Questions there are no answers to. It is like having to lay in bed with a million demons. Where are you now, I know not. Why you left without a word, I know not. What we could have been, I know not. Yet I must live in the shadow of your presence, wear it like my skin, breathe your memories like my life depended on it. I must love another (for who can live without love?), knowing it will never be the same, no man will be you, no passion so perfect. I let him nibble my ear, gush love-laden streams into them, and I find myself laughing. I am not pretending either. Pleased, he leaves. But I hear your laughter too, calling me a sentimental idiot like you did. I resign myself to him, and to you. Strange, aching threesomes. Perhaps I will learn to live this way...

But perhaps, I will not survive this breach. This rip in loyalty, this splitting of my spirit into two. Perhaps, I will not survive this choice, while I stand here now, on this ledge, looking down into this dark, grey abyss. Perhaps, in the mangled remains of my physical form, he will see that crack too and he will understand why I never seemed to possess my own body. Minutes away from now, I will not have to make this choice anymore. Minutes away from now, I will have forgotten my name, your name, his name. I will have forgotten these lines as I teeter on this edge, between life and death. This rush of wind and the quiet it brings is liberating. The numbness on my skin will be a relief from the memory of your fingers on my flesh. Finally. Finally, my eyes shall be able to shut it all out.

(Co-written with Reema Prasanna @ScrollsNInk)