The Story

Arrow on a line

Bubblewrap of time.

Who I want to be:

I feel as dysphoria at best.

Flicked by finger and wind

And the jest in God’s whim:

How does a coin choose which side to fall on?

Stark, is the nature of emptiness-

Meaningful, but severe.

—

A year ago, my father and I stood under Bombay’s high trees

And I learnt that it is easy to fall in love

Eventuality’s seduction-

All my imaginations undress for me.

In its startling existence

The world begins to split

And all the prophecies hence

Diverge with cunning wit

The farthest of your intents

The roads begin to tilt

There’s tarot in your heart

And scribbles on the back

When the rogue arrow departs

And the line’s drunk on arrack 

—

We’re afraid in birth and petrified in death

Torn from the womb and prey to the breast

An inertia of birth, existence’s arrears:

Why would you not waste life in this fear?

—

As you hate an effigy,

So you love me.

The awkward and the conversation

Are spirits alike

The stubborn sex in our desperate loins

Aimless and distraught

Effigy jaws and their effigy words

Effigy hips and their effigy burns

Grinding, aimless and distraught.

The remains of our truth

In combustible materials

Stuffed in a shape-

In an earthly outline.

—

I’ve loitered in the hallways of Goa and bright Bangalore,

Surathkal and choked Delhi and stuffed Varanasi,

Befriended janitors, evaded teachers, wrote on walls.

Alike, in all people who could sit for a while-

Alike, in all we do as a needy species.

I lived in a matchbox for two years

Hyphenated by highways and train tracks-

It is easy to fall in love.

—

After they die, they’ll ask, 

“what did you do of the money we gave you?”

I did the things you taught me to do

And when the teachings ran out and thinned into the air

Like the end of the thread on a spool-

Suddenly run out, but mindlessly spinning

“what did you do of the money we gave you?”

The same I did with the food you gave me:

Shit. It all became shit.

—

You can write a poem till you find the hope

By accident of verbal diarrhoea 

Some pathetitude dressed in wisdom and optimism

By intellectual abandonment 

And spirit of dreams.

Or you can write a poem till you begin to hate it.

—

I want you to ask me for the answers

Because maybe then I’ll want to find them.

I want you to love me

Because I sure as hell don’t know how.

Say old man on a street,

Looks old enough to know himself-

God help if desperate creatures die without satiation-

But say he comes to me in his coat

His feathered white hair, and lonely gait-

A man who needn’t catch up to anyone

Or worry about slowing anyone down-

Say old man looks at me

And sees a boy who chooses for the coin

Sees who can defy the finger and the wind

Sees power to chain the flick and the storm

He ignores the arid breath of Rajasthan

And the uncertainties of trees and love

He forgives the infatuations and the fears

And asks for the answers

He loves me so much and-

I abandon myself like an orgasm would:

He trusts that there is truth within me

And in that itself truth bursts forth like an ineffable spring

From the well of my indecision, he yanks out the water

From the stony and frozen base of my soul

The barren platforms of my freedom

I give up my knowledge of myself 

Assume the identity this loving passerby bestowed

I am a person who knows-

I abandon myself like an orgasm,

And tell him everything I can.

You could say anything and it would be The Truth.

The whole of life eventually collapses into one sentence.

—

A man bereaved by the push of the world

Finds not solace in flight, but in giving in.

I’m tired of this world and its clockwork suns

The dust of the stale, rotting alleys, that twist 

Till they come into themselves, like the sun

I’m turned to barely anything at all: happenstance 

That has come to terms with his forever only

Because he doesn’t know how to disagree

With existence. He’s a flower stashed on the 

Wrong side of the road- Not meaningful, 

But not severe either. Anything to get back

On the road. But behind the wheel too then, 

He sits deadpan- like indifferent grass

Letting rain slide off its automatic blade

He misses the exit, so he stops, writes a poem,

And finds his way back, deadpan again.

I’m listless in my chase. I put off the truth,

And it’s fatigue manifesting as a lack of faith

I blame myself not because I blame myself-

I blame myself because I’ve run out of other things to blame.

The suggestions of the whispers are jittery 

Unsure and scattered, they wet the forlorn air

The counsel of the nudges barely press my back

Sometimes only rustle my shirt, but persistent

I feel it like a thumb pressed to the base of my spine

A propellant that rests carelessly above my waist

Leaves me a clue-

Left like a wallet in cab, without purpose, 

Determinism as a lapse of care-

But even then, only that.

The sun is a faithful friend

As intimate as alarm clocks-

Will you go when I need to dream?