A ten-minute NaPoWriMo #21

This poem is a pond

Here is a place you walk into backwards,
hands held out before you to push back
the reaching sky, one leg tense with the burden
of earth while the other is a jaunty angle
sinking in the chlorine blue. Here is a wind
out of water, a transparent sheet swaddling
you back into the freedom offered
by thrashing four limbs, by holding your mouth
perfectly ajar like a grotto spitting bubbles.
Screw your eyes shut against the pressure
of lines in the floating page receding
above you. When fish pass you by,
think of those friends you never called.
When the coral scrapes your vertebrae,
remember chairs you never fit into. Where
the bed breathes floating sand displaced
by your settling in, dream of nights
where stars were falling dust.

NOTE: This poem was written in ten minutes. No edits, no cuts. Raw as shark liver.

A scurriedly written NaPoWriMo #20

Breaking up

She fears the hidden confidences of bones
clacking in the dark, the secret tar of teeth
stashed behind their rotting enamel, the Lethean
flow of blood and piss. She chews crescents 
out of her nails, turns them in her mouth, their edges 
raking the sides of her tongue. She tastes
their sharpness, the slow unfolding of their pricks,
red and saline. She blinks at the unknown
number on her phone and wonders why she can’t
remember it.
                 You obediently press your ear
to her shaking wrist. “Hear, hear the rattle, 
the creak. They are moving things inside me, man!”
You convince her bones can’t be bitten through, 
that skulls don’t have eyes, that a ribcage
is not a prison, the heart is not a flapping moth. 
You fit your arms, your chin, your lips to her gaps
You tell her she is whole. 
	                       An evening under watching
crows, she answers her phone to his voice so like an empty
drum. She lets him approach her, pull her phalanges
into hooks, find the hollow in her back and fill it with a palm. 
Later, her femur nuzzles his hand, her ribs convex
pulling her apart, her eyes retreat into the vacuum
of sockets, her lips peel back against his lips. She finds
she must smile as an engine churns inside her, 
to the rhythm of clacking bones, the forgetful
murmur of blood and piss.
                                 The morning after, you see
the precision of her steps, the easy flex of her fingers, 
the copper flow of her hair. When you take her hand, 
there is no rattle. When she answers her phone, 
her smile flashes like steel. You watch her walk away
heels clacking over your oblong shadow.

(NOTE: Today was my first work day after a long 6 month haul of idyllic berozgaari. As such, since the first day is usually just filling up HR forms and smiling at people and getting one’s tongue desensitised to the muck that passes for food in the office canteen, I found myself with not a lot of time on my hands. This poem was mostly written in snatches, in whatever time I found myself free and unburdened by the curious/accusatory glances of passing bystanders. I will only say this poem is about body issues.)

A sleepyheaded NaPoWriMo #19

Perchance to dream

He dreams of a lit matchstick, the hollow weight
of a gun, the tip of the bullet he swats away, the end
of his hands blazing like exploding suns. He dreams
in bullet time, the graceful arcing of arms, the light
press of the trigger, the slow dance of bodies
crumpling like falling sheets, the inching trickle of sweat
with each recoiling thud. He dreams of flight, of rooftops
and a searchlight moon, the pulsar shifts of sirens
below, the urgent need to scrape his skin off. He dreams
of a door kicked in, stairs falling away in an endless spiral,
the flaking white of walls on his groping hands, laughter
behind closed doors, a key in his hand, his fumbling at locks.
He dreams of a bed, sheets like crumbling tombs in a corner,
the slow stripping of his shirt, his belt, his pants, their scent
of lead, sweat and death, his brow a meteor crashing
into a yielding pillow. He dreams of sleep, black and unbroken
like a sky that could not afford stars.

(NOTE: Written yesternight. Edited, spruced up (as best I could) and now up. Also this was a handwritten poem, my first in the past 4 years or so.)

A short and easy NaPoWriMo#18

(untitled)

He types out a message and finds it
too casual. Another, too curt. A third,
too presumptuous. A fourth, creepy.
A fifth, maudlin. A sixth, too dramatic.
A half hour later, he settles for
“Happy birthday!” He wonders if more
!’s are needed. He decides to keep
the one and appends a “:)”
Later, in the bus, he thinks the smile,
unwarranted. Like a clown with carved lips.
He should have stuck with
three !’s, he sighs.

(NOTE: This was the last in a set of 7 or so doggerel poems I doodled earlier in the evening about Facebook. The rest are worse than this. For example, this was another: )

He sees the sand with its crouching
tables, their linen flapping at gulls.
The frothing face of a grey sea,
the palm leaves raking the space
behind her. He likes it. Later,
he muses, “She knows I am
a mountain person. Will she think
I liked it for her boobs?” He
unlikes it and sighs.

(Well, tomorrow is another day and one with better poems, one hopes.)

Something about street lamps in this NaPoWriMo #17

A street follows me wherever I go.
I hop onto steps, a corridor, a room.
It waits outside creeping along its length,
a tapeworm living off the soles of my shoes.

Some nights, I lean against street lamps,
a rising ramp. It climbs over my ankles then,
the tingling backs of my knees, the small
of my back. It hesitates at the neck,

but steels its resolve and hands raised,
marches through the forest of my hair
up onto the pole. The climb is too much.
It loses parts of itself but keeps creeping

to the sun it seeks. Some nights, I imagine
if I lean on it night after night, the lines
of my forehead fusing with the cold of the pole,

the street lamp will be coloured with the rust
of the street. Its light, a slowly dimming copper
that will die watching the tips of my shoes.

(NOTE: Yay, street lamps! Another hastily written NaPoWriMo, this. Also, an attempt at a change from what I’ve been writing so far.)

NaPoWriMo #16

[EDIT - 6/11/2011]

A temple

You allow yourself to be lead
through broken columns, stones
etched with spearing leaves and
shut-eyed women with pointed
breasts. He tells you, “That was
a temple.” A mass of bricks
like a lego set left half done
because one ran out of pieces.
You look around, was everything
here a temple once? The pillar lolling
in the sun, the empty doorways
now filled with light, with dust
with heat and the poses of tourists.
He leads you to a hole in the ground
You step blindly into the smell
of guano. Your phone throws no light.
You pass between walls, cool to the touch
and lined with rivulets, creased like
aging skin. A slope descends, you follow it.
A crack in the wall lights up a priest,
still as stone. He points, you squint
at mad painted eyes and a gash of vermilion
painted on a rock that grows like a tumor
into the wall from the earth.

On your way back, you do not touch
the walls. You crawl on all fours
to the slab of light that is the hole.
Behind you, he kneels and mutters prayers
to a mad-eyed god slowly rising through
the empty cold to the sun and ruins
it abandoned above.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————-

A temple

You allow yourself to be lead
through broken columns, stones
etched with spearing leaves and
shut-eyed women with pointed
breasts. He tells you, “That was
a temple.” A mass of bricks
like a lego set left half done
because one ran out of pieces.
You look around, was everything
here a temple once? The pillar lolling
in the sun, the empty doorways
now filled with light, the arches
standing mouths open to dust
and heat and the poses of tourists.
He leads you to a hole in the ground
You step blindly into the smell
of guano. Your phone throws no light.
You pass between walls, cool to the touch
and lined with rivulets, creased like
aging skin. A slope descends, you follow it.
A crack in the wall lights up a priest,
still as stone. He points, you squint
at wide white eyes and a gash of vermilion
painted on a rock growing like a tumor
into the wall from the earth.

On the way back, you do not touch
the walls. You crawl on all fours
to the slab of light that is the hole.
Behind you, he kneels and mutters prayers
to a mad-eyed god slowly rising through
the empty cold to the sun and ruins
it abandoned above.

(NOTE: Underground temples scare me. That is all.)

A hastily jotted NaPoWriMo #15

On the ramparts of a fort

From these ramparts, you can see it all.
The rickshaws turning the curve of the road
like ants that never bump into each other.
The open windows of houses and their TV’s
playing something blue and bright. (You imagine
a ball of dough being flattened before them)
A terrace where a boy chases a rolling ball
through a forest of flapping saris. (You wonder
does he go to school? Does he read?)
A rooftop restaurant with its lone German
curling in a wicker chair, a plate of something
and an open book, untended. You zoom in
on her face with your camera lens. She is looking
at the flag behind you. You find her eyes
are too far apart. Beyond the city’s sprawl,
a grey tongue of a highway snakes away
through huddled brown dunes and the feet
of towers holding on to each other with wire
arms. Windmills turn in an afternoon haze,
the air burns before them. Beyond, there is
only the curve of the sky, the end of earth.
You turn back to the German, but she is gone.
Waiters sit around her table, dealing cards,
passing a cigarette around. You turn and leave.

(NOTE: This follows, in a sense, from yesterday’s poem.)

An insecure little NaPoWriMo #14

In a room full of clocks

In a room full of clocks
your guide with the saffron turban
and immaculately pleated trousers
points to Turkish clocks and French clocks
and Italian clocks and Russian clocks
you find they show the same time
so you tell him so. His moustache bristles
and you see the lines near his eyes
wax deeper. You see yourself
your brown neck, the eight day beard
you can’t stop scratching, the tears
on your jeans, the faded slogan
on your t-shirt “You talking to me?”,
your splitting shoes. You feel the glare
of the marble floor, the pointed eyes
of hanging chandeliers, the disdain
of pillars seething in silence.
You fear you are turning brittle, that
the next loud tock from the resonant
clocks will shatter you. You wonder
will he keep standing there till someone
mops up your fragments. Or will he
walk on, gritting teeth at your dust
sticking to his shoes like pollen
seeking a better home.

(NOTE: I have nothing to say. fgrgrgrgryrwhrhrwhrwhw. Good night.)

A pornographic NaPoWriMo #13 that should have been up yesternight

VII

He cannot see porn without a searching glance
for peepholes or the sudden presence of someone
who was always there. Lights are dimmed
and speakers muted. Sounds disconcert him.
He watches breasts sink into sheets, burst out of fabric,
pointed straight at him, nipples muzzles.
The barren faces of buttocks clamped into palms.
Gelatin lips and caving mouths. Fingers merge
into shovels, penises turn pistons. Navels
fascinate him. The flash of teeth, the arch of brows,
the tongue flailing like a dying worm, these
he cannot see. He looks at thighs, the wrinkled
plums of shaved testicles, the eye of the navel,
the nubs of elbows. Halfway through, he recalls
equations, their tau’s, their rho’s, their sigmas.
Still later, he looks at the space emptied between
the bodies on screen, the rectangle of a woman
on all fours, the right angle of the man behind
her, the obtuse arcing of their bodies, then
the close-up where he stops and closes the window.

(NOTE: Yay, porn! When in doubt, when struck by boredom or ennui, when stuck for things to do, it remains the one constant thing that will never fail you.)

An experiment of sorts in NaPoWriMo #12

Delegations

A delegation of pigeons
waits on a wire.
The current under their talons
does not bother them.
They speak of things
with blinks and tilted red eyes
and cocked iridescent necks.
They look down at the flying dust
and the exposed heads of men,
reading portents in our bald spots.
Below them, a delegation
of old men in faded white shirts
and dhotis pulled up between
their legs squat under
a roof of tarp and leather strips
stretched like skin over bamboo
poles. They think in blinks.
They watch the shadow of the sky,
their spatulate thumbs
pestling tobacco. They hawk
their lives up and spit in corners.

Their gnarled brown arms
are branches the pigeons
could settle. Their beards, the stuff
of nests. Under the shade,
the pigeons could talk of things
they have long forgotten,
that they no longer care
to remember.

(NOTE: This was, as the title says, an attempt at something different, a different voice, a different form. )