Forty

There’s a grace to falling.

Like deft hands skittering across a piano, notes tumbling out hurriedly.
Yet, a grace to it.

Like walking a giddy, high wall. And falling.
Not slipping, mind you. But leaping, of your own volition.

Falling from grace.
Falling to it.

Falling anywhere. Free falling. In love. Out of it.
Falling down.

A wedding of opposites –
The body effortlessly passing through a condition it is predisposed to avoid.

Strands of hair that flutter, barely escaping gravity’s clutch.
Arms that float on wind currents.
Bulk that fights a g-force.

A strange crescendo.

And the landing.
Sharp. Ultimate.

Like the cymbal, shaking out every molecule of music,
finally standing still, as a spicy ssss.

Thirty Six

Words that burst blue, orange, yellow,
leaving ebbing and heaving cinders –
fleeting fleeing fluttering memory that disintegrated into some nitrate.

Resurrected in a conspiracy hatched
by m/s. prose, pen, paper.

Soar, phoenix.

Twenty

smudged moonlight quivers
off a frosted glass window.
look! third-hand sunshine.

Fifteen

god’s eyes are shut.

in his yard,
a tree bears twelve wishes for offspring
twelve wombs’ waiting, tethered tight to its bark,
a circumventing mother’s eyes pressured shut, chanting
please please please please.

this tree probably has delivered the approximate number.

everyday,
god’s eyes are shut
between one and four at noon.

the absence of a red or black circle on my forehead
tells him i won’t visit anyway.

trapped in stone, then four walls, heavy curtains, wooden doors,
and even iron grills,
god yawns at the world hurling past in a hurry,
at his more faithful pieces touching each cheek at a time,
or kissing a bent finger,
in a reflex, lasting five seconds.

my unbowed eyes, glazed over by original plans,
exclusive of the maker,
tell him i won’t visit anyway.

but i pass him by, everyday,
around a round-about, dedicated just to his shrine.

everyday,
his eyes are shut,
between one and four at noon,

and i’m glad he can’t see me
smile
everytime i inhale
his camphor skin doused with water.
a moist calm of belief.

olfactory is my religion.

Fourteen

my fingertips twirl
apathy, while he writes on
my feet, poetry.

—
For Peeya

Thirteen

curses glued together
with deep black sleep,
when i tug at your pyjama leg,
seep forth through your teeth
gritted
holding back mouthfuls of dreams.

somewhere,
your head forgets the pillow,
and morning filters orange
into your speech.

you talk to me
in one word clarity.

you stretch, your fingers flex,
you are reluctant to leave behind
familiar warmth
of promises, prophecies, visions hidden
that you promise to tell me.

the black of your eyes have a single shine,
each.
you smile,
remembering how ugly you are.

it is morning.
you smile.
it is morning.

i laugh,
loving it every single time
you wake up
to me.

Twelve

Stillness.

I can hear sleep.

The gentle rustle of people absently adjusting the sheets.
An occasional sigh in response to a nerve-generated movie blaring
soundlessly, colourlessly
on a pervading black.
Beetles bugging their highpitched lullabies that they practiced all day long,
and suddenly, cleared their throats.
Automobiles on roads a kilometer away, doing dizzy speeds, groaning under commodity, guiltily sounding their horns.
The distant, bored mid-
nightwatchman.
A muted yelp, when leaves rustle.
A conscious, testing bark.

insomnia.
the keyskin depressing, stretching, flexing,
at my command.

i can hear
silence:

supersonic pixel-made sounds sourced from the telly gagged
by the mute button.

rhythms set at morning,
unfastening buttons hastily at night.

night,
bored canvas.

10.11.06

Eleven

i spit at the end of the thread,
and push it to the eye of the needle.

it bends, twists, disintegrates, splits,
misses,
beats around the bush,

(with irreverance to the fact that my face is presently most unladylike)

shovels its feet around in the sand,
knots up its fingers,
tugs at its hair,
sniffles,
twists the odd end of tablecloth –

there.
i lost thread.

Four

It was all for his
taking.

And he took it,
with time.

A universe,
treasured in units
called moments.

Till one day, he
forgot to forget
himself
in fleeting somethings.

Forgot to flutter.
Forgot to feel.

Today, he told me,
the
biting cold,
a moon blushing shades of gray,
a mouthful of fragrance of a flowers busy dying,
a silent beam of moonshine locking her finger under his chin,

made him spend the night
crying.