SOME OTHER POEMS...Check out the prose poems

Poem at 7 p.m.

And as you hold the evening
in your eyelashes,

and as you sprinkle the evening
In restless droplets,

...over the chocolate of death

I bite into the blood lips of the evening

Let us stand on a dark mountain
and with a violent swing of arms

Fling our watches
into the red oceans of infinity

...and now I am a different Buddha

Fractions

A man once ran about the streets of a small town, hammering onto the heads of the men- heads that were typewriters - that "Someone has thrown the crescent moon like a boomerang into the tins of our paint stores; and look now the sky is making love to multicoloured nerves!"

The typewriters stopped drafting their balance sheets and spat the poison-ink into his eyes. As he fumed and died, his blood mixed with a cartographer's ink, who was drawing Jerusalem and New York.

The Unseen Circle
-dedicated to the poet Rumi

The night unflexes its muscles

Clouds over the fields
and rain in the deep chest

Sleep, anywhere
inside the circle
of the true poet…

Walking with him
down the streets of sleep
You read
the fingertips of a newborn …

your friend,
she had the breath of a flute
and always hit the same notes

there is a truth of 1 a.m.

now you can sing
the malkauns
in the circle's voice

and see the stones
gallop away
to the mounds of snow…

Who has spread
these blue flowers
In my sleep?

on the topmost stair
you see the dream maker
sketch a vision
Of blind date palms
surrender
to the rainy opera

unflex the night

and sleep, anywhere
inside
the circle of the true poet…

Water Song

and whose poem colours the fish…as you let your confessions crumble upon the river…the stone falls from your soul…sinks somewhere…somewhere the wind churns up the words of the saint….rebel saint…the wind wounds the sleeping tiger in your fingers…the wind is the shade of old city streets…
the city shakes…in the river's pulse…and I know how the river looks at night…when all the bullets have mixed in bones…and all the bones have mixed in the boatman's breath…and the women in the auto remember death…and that night of séance…when the dead man let the romance leak out of his soiled hair…his purple love…for when he was dying he was afraid of insects but yet…he dreamed of the dark child who seemed to be watching him by the corner of the street…the dark child who held wild leaves between his lips…and the tanpura crept in like the tiger…or the wind flower…
At times, the darkness speaks…speaks of that thin figure that walked up and down the corridor…looking at pain…painted on the floor in the colour of a kiss…she wept at the river…time slides in her skull…her story was only heard by the rebel saint…a story clings to the bullet in her hair and his soul…
In the old silent streets, you sit on the steps of a home and let your confessions mix with the wind…and will the darkness find its priest…who sings the water song

girl of the rivers
whirl in the blue air
talk to the lovers
walk the tiger's lair

the girl walks upon the tides, and hears the voice of the fish and the voice of the stones…and the voice in the bones swallows time… the tanpura starts again…like wine and the wind…

And I know just how the river looks at night.




Fear in Red Bags

Fear in your red bag

A friend flies like a hawk
in my dreams,
he opens his fist
and I see a bony foetus

And the harmonica girl
Lets the boy smell
Her rain wet armpits

Do your guns
move in my sleep?

and as I saw you
Squeezing his fingers,
Standing between
the tribal bodies

I felt the fear in your red bag

Maybe I could paint
a land
of doors
shut at twilight,
if only
I took off my hat

It's a land you often passed
journeying to the city,
asleep in the train...

I can not speak
and I can not take off my hat

but do your guns move in my sleep?

So she left the harmonica
on a coffee table
and squeezed his fingers

and as the fear lingers
on the button
of your red bag

An angel is carved which sings

hip luv song 4 dria
-dedicated to Allen Ginsberg

dria i luv u

Cacti in the skin

He puffs out smoke
Over the beggar's head

The cages of mad men
are smeared
with rain

dria, luv

Fragments of coloured glass

You lose your pet eagle
Among the smelly streets

twisted lanes,
soap foam,
clothes hung like thieves

luv u dria

radars and the clock

the flower lady
gives you a smile

the same smile she gave
to ten thousand ants
inside the kaliedoscope

dria

Programmers and RJs
collect their cheques

offerings to God
searching a prayer
my left hand burns every day

i luv u

Laugh
like birds inside
the wind inside
the nose bone

prophets buried
beneath the TV tower

call
for the wizard
in green

dria
do u lik luv songs?

Dria in the Streets of Blue

Dria cuts the velvet noon

a blue arrow
flies
into the mouth
of the night

She haunts
The tobacco streets
and drops a feather
into the postbox

Dria
fill the syringe
with the dead man's
dream

1 a.m.
fear of the sky
I walk the line

smells of Dria,
and lonesome angels

'tap the sea'

Dria comes

and tells a story
of the unseen circle

It's a true story…

Fear of Lizards

she remembers the teacher
as he crawled into the class

and looks at the door
in the haze of the blue lamp

far away the fire-wagon
rings upon the owl

and interrupts the tree

she coils in bed
like an overcast prayer

the rat recognizes the ghost

that teacher had talked
of a mathematics
of unlocked doors

somewhere
a singer curses his own tongue

she puts off the lamp

the fan spins
like a ritual of blood

on the streets a man vomits

she tries to sleep

the fire-wagon tolls every year
this day

the cockroach holds
on to the darkness
of the wall

she feels the singer's pain

and trembles

at the noise
of a brother

the lizard brings good luck

of lost evenings…

and now
when a dark jazz
fills the room

the evening waits
for its poet

the evening calls her name…

the leaves are heavy
with memories
of a dying sky

and strange hours of light

rain washes off the sun
from the skin
of leaves

who washes the clouds?

she watches the evening
split into so many
pieces

on the mouth
of the jazz singer…

we did not know
the evening had so many ghosts

calls the poet again…

but she turns,
never to look again
at the street lamps

that are narcotized
with strange sketches
of love

never…

and I can only
paint the poet

happy
under another sky
under another evening

within another skin…

where love is not strange.

The Blue Song

where did you last keep
the corners
of your eyes?

girl of the rivers

blue river
blue prayer

down where the steps
pour
into
the waters,
there is a smell

the river smells
almost like the moist girl

laugh
as I sprinkle
grapes and fingertips
upon your dripping soul

blue nerves
blue glass

the corners of your eyes
sold shorelines
to the blind

thieves and kisses
fought in your breasts

you were scared
of the gypsy
whose song moved
the bedroom chimes
…everytime
you were naked
…or alone

blue ship
blue rhyme
blue kiss and wind

the song was spinning
in his skin,
there was also a falcon

where did you last keep

the magician's cards
the sweat of the shorelines

and the corners of your eyes?

girl of the rivers,
where did you?

smells lick
the blue slumber in

the secret earth…

Painter, my friend

And then,
On a night of dogs
and winds
and washing of dishes

I might just die…

Painter, my friend
Grant me a canvas then
Yes, a small one will do
Not one that touched the forest shrine

and paint a few hyacinths

Purple

like that evening
that slipped from my fingers
upon the cobblestone

Don't go by Realism

and there must be an insect too
as the lizard devours

and a sliced finger
beside a round clock
with no hands

but remember, a ring of wax on the finger

Have a mango tree in summer
and the gardener walking away

and see if you can fit in more
Like a moon in a cave...

Afterwards

and wash me in wet earth…

in sweet scented earth
wash my hair

let the million pictures
seep out of my skin

let the light
wash my nakedness

then wrap me in white
wrap me in prayers

cover my head,
hide the thread of smile
on my lips…

the ancient sounds linger
like flutes

rest me on the bier
say your prayers

...your voices collapse
in the garden...

then walk with me a while

sprinkle your earth

then depart.



Under the microscope
-for Jibanananda and other ghosts

The poet's wife
writes poems too,

at tmes.

you array the child's feet

with permutations and combinations
of toe nails

but there is blood
on the tramline

and there is the head
of a martyr

rolling through
the fierce soul
of uneasy nights

others sit
and remark upon the bad tea

like Caligula in a white uniform
who can't remember
that December's martyr

the stage is set
to cage the actors
and the very personal poet

the mad horse disappears
inside the body

blue stars
drip
blood

o the blood
on the tramline

you wrap the streets
with a measuring tape

and drop your steps
on the shadow of hawks

a lost October
moves like a worm
in her tea

moves like a frigid claw
in my hair

moves in our watches

the poet's wife
talks love and protest
and unfastens her watch

the bubblegum boy
chases cars and souls

Park Street is happy or sad again

rats lick the retina

so you lose
the city's picture

Some of us
could be poets

or merchant or headbanger
in a pub

some of us smirk
at the two men
in the park

lost genitals
inside the
aquariums

the worms die
under your feet
as you drop a curse upon

the horse that shoulders the twilight

it's real blood
on the tramline

some of us
could be poets

or Caligula in a white uniform

or perhaps,
a prophet who lost his horse

inside your guitar there is
a pale death calling

robots clutch their genitals

Whose fierce kiss
still bleeds the girl of the mad nocturne?

whose fierce evening
still shakes the child of the secret rivers?

staccato necks and eyeballs

dead after all

the pick-pocket is on dope
and doesn't stir
at the design in blood

that
drips

from the leper's thigh

the martyr falls

but then again , the tramline
nibbling at the blood

The Poet’s Apology

Someone told me…‘and that’s all you can do, write poems, and that’s about it.’ It’s true…
It’s true that damp, creaking, leaking, lethargic clockwork poems…are all I can offer…I’m sorry

I can’t stop the fires…howling in the sky like wounded dogs…and the smoke spiralling in the newborn’s soul…I can’t bury the smell of orphans or the smell of vomit…I can’t shoot all the boots that march upon the nerves at midnight…can’t help disarmament or for that matter even talk to George or Osama…

twilight painter, I couldn’t decipher the patterns you spread on the ceiling…were there any faces or just the sleepwalking of insects….but I don’t want to get personal here.

I can’t show them the carbon wombs in Gujarat or the priest hiding in valleys of the north… I can’t show them the blood that is crucified on the tree…can’t scream that after all the paperwork is done, personal details ascertained, a death is nothing but a death.

I can’t resurrect the ghost of Bapi Sen and ask if he’s happy…or if his head still hurts…I can’t ask the girl what her fault was…why they took her to the police station etc…I can’t fracture the wall for Piramus and Thesbe at Palestine…I can’t make them tell me why Lorca…or if you so prefer, Safdar Hashmi had to die…I can’t seem to understand what is so hip about Che on the T-shirt…

o did I forget, I can’t make Dria sing on the mountain roads…in that town of dust and dreams…but that’s personal, so we’ll keep it aside for the time being…

I’m sorry I can’t prove that poetry bleeds more…slightly more than weather reports…and that the dark blood seeping between the syllables had also been spattered…last night upon your door…by nightmare children …

I can’t plant the rook’s egg in your soul…or ask Sindbad to arise from the sound of pendulums…or even show you that nerves are not mortgaged after all…and that eagles still cut the city’s breath…

River girl…there are kingdoms beneath the waters…I couldn’t win them…o the personal creeps in again…

I can’t nail it on the walls that police vans don’t really move in the campus…and that 14 year old boys can’t be disgorged from local trains…and that uniforms also require detergent…

I can’t offer any of it…and as I have already said…I’m somewhat sorry.

Dria and the Rains

Let us talk Dria…let us pretend that we are distant drums…let us talk of that old gentle song…that the soul caught in a moment of doubt…let us remember dragons that swallowed whole cities…and you stood by the burnt house…in fear and in love…the hourglass shaking in your hand…and I asked you, ‘is the old piano burnt too…?

‘I found the hourglass only’, you said, ‘but I am afraid of the curse.’
O yes the curse…of the cold rains…they cut the bones and the lanes…and bring back stories of dead angels…

Dria, light the candles in the shrine…and stand with me beeath those rains…let the bones dissolve…let the hawk eat our remains…but let us talk just once of the dim room…where your hair fell over me…or stuck to your shoulders in sweat…and my breath seeped into your ears…with the dreams of poets and ancient horses…or I played my kisses on the skin of your thighs…

and let the hawk eat our remains….

let us talk of promises and subway stations…of afternoons filled with the sound of crows and sugarcane-grinders…and then the sudden music…the child emerging from the guitar’s womb…as if it was the usual thing…and the policemen all lay dead…as if it was the usual thing…

are you troubled when the alarms ring? Are you haunted by the screams that lurk in the rains? The dreams must go, you say…the street lamps glow in your brain…you watch the dogs fighting in the street…and in your feet the blood beats…you remember the blood on the old piano…how it formed a symphony of its own…of its own

‘do you know the tune, Dria?’
‘yes, the symphony of stones…at the graveyard…’

The rain falls hard upon your sweat…my kisses turn in your tongue…you run for shelter…the child cries in the guitar…‘look at me being born…’, it says… ‘it is the only way to be born.’…but your soul is torn again…you must roll yourself…and sleep inside the hourglass again…

but let us talk Dria…just once…of our remains.