Division of Labour

The division of labour between poet and person
I think, is very cumbersome:
The poet is of course free -
To live in a truth of his own contrivance
Strewn with an abundance of roses or miseries
As he sees fit;
The person often has a wife and child
And so the slavery of billed existence.
But he is the one with the eyes and ears
That the poet so parasitises on
To turn sights into spectacles
And sounds into symphonies
Or all into a dystopic, pus-filled rant.
It is in this obscene dance of words yet
That the person finds freedom -
However fleeting - from his personhood
Entrapped in flesh, that presents him mirages
To drudge on.
Cumbersome indeed then, this schizophrenia
Of being real and imaginary
In the same fragile frame.

Going home

Railway toilets plastered with washing soda,
The rasping of nylon streamers against fly racquets,
Chinese toys beating about before the vendor quickly bundles up and flees,
Jasmine garlands and incense-stick boxes
Sharing space with severed goats' heads
Their eyes staring glassily at you to match your startled glance,
The smell of fried flour and potatoes,
And of withering cabbage stalks,
Taxi smoke, gasoline and soot,
Sweat - anxious sweat - whiffing by on hurried steps,
And a quickly muttered apology on pushing you out of the way,
Mysore masala dosas frying on a street griddle
All beetroot and carrot and tomato flakes,
A promise of naked women in usb drives,
And hard-bodied nude males promising fairer skin from giant billboards,
Death of course, lurking everywhere, sometimes peering from a bier,
Suburban lifeforms in their TV-equipped habitats not peering out of lit windows;

And I - I just go home, as everyday.

Halfnesses

Somewhere between the truth,
And our world of comforting lies,
Is the world we seek to live in,
Half earth, half fantasy;
Happiness is what we call it, Though a stagnating
lack of worry would do as well,
Maybe it's a race we're running
Against our own aging selves
Chasing a childhood memory
Always a step ahead of us:
A visible phantasm, a mirage
Concocted from our own imagined pasts
With guilt conveniently buried
In the shroud of forgetfulness
And yet - there's always a yet -
There is a listlessness, ennui,
That we never got what we wanted
And the regret, unmessianic,
Of not knowing what that was
Till the commas of life stop abruptly.

Dark

Thoughts chatter
in silence
Awake in the dark

Standing Guard to Kamakhya

They've seen much, these statues
Standing guard to Kamakhya's
Dark, mystic sanctum;

There's a nose lopped off here,
An ear eroded there,
By wind, by time, by swords.

They've been nested on by doves:
Love-making, chick-rearing
Guano-shedding doves.

They've seen cows amble around
Bestowing sacred dung
While bulls bestow sacred blood.

They still stand, these statues,
Their medieval silence further
stifled with vermilion and ash.

They see the pilgrims wilt
— lined in their rag-covered faith —
shivering in morning drizzle

Like oleander petals and
mango leaves; temple offerings
to an invisible goddess.

They see the pandas in red
bearings; unbearability
writ large on their pouchy faces,

Against the tall, thin trees
Banana, papaya, margosa,
shading a sacrificial goat.

They see the Brahmaputra
which is always a presence —
a brooding, looming presence.

And they see me, eager tourist
encaging them in camera stills:
Another spectacle to see.

Untitled

I sit, clumsily I confess,
In a row of suitors,
Clad in their own passion
And little else besides.

For your attentions:
A lapsed lover, vending
Memories oozing pus
And neatly bottled bile;

Another in post-coital flush,
Grasping her love-maker
In yellowing afterglow
Clasping her champagne tightly;

And then there is the bore
In love perhaps with love
But more so with his voice;

The romantic, handsome
In form and phrase, most
Likely to steal you from me,
Kidnap you to some rose-strewn,
Candle-lit bathtub;

And there is the mandatory
Ageing pervert, seeking
To press your young skin
Against his fatted flesh;

You will surely lose me here,
The one with the perfect words,
Subtle, sublime, silent worship,
The carnation fully formed,
The love-tokens flawless
And in just the right shade of pink

And yet just so many words,
Set out in fourteen points
With a title and an author,
And an index entry
In an anthology of love-poems.