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Blurry Eyed

Some days I go blurry eyed

thinking about life.

and life feels so eccentric.

I wonder if anyone

remembers anybody

after they’re gone

to the afterlife.

My father lost

his papa

at the age of four,

and stood bravely

in front of the

funeral pyre.

I wish I could be like him.

I can’t.

There are days where

I write a thousand poems

all wrapped up in one

and all of it falls

into irrelevance when

compared to him.

My father is so great!

I miss the days where

I would ask him giggling

in the living room

which nail paint

should I put

blue or white?

and he’d smile

and say,

everything looks

good on you.

Some days I think

if all bad men were

like him – this world

then wouldn’t be such an

ugly place.

Some days I go blurry eyed

thinking about death.

and death feels like

an old friend or

a stranger at the

traffic signal

smoking a cigarette.

I don’t know

when will it come

to greet me or you

or anyone.

I don’t know

if when it comes

will light pierce through us?

or what song will the sky sing?

when we’re gone.

Some days I go blurry eyed

thinking about these

breathless moments

because

I am not strong.

I don’t know

how to prepare myself

when death arrives

or how does one

prepare themselves for

its arrival?

These are the voices

ricocheting in my head

making me alive. These are the moments playing,

in front of my eyes, whispering in my ears—

‘no one is ever

prepared when death arrives’

and then suddenly

I set myself on fire.

A Melancholic Dream in a Parallel Universe

Was life this painful before i met you? A thousand days of endless suffering since you’ve been gone.

In a parallel universe to this one, here we meet again.

We’re walking into the forest, inseparably. Eye to eye, hand to hand, tongue to tongue, dream to dream, in another eternity—another lifetime, lifetimes before just you and I.

“Parallel you holds my hand and says, “all the things left unsaid and asks me if i remember all the times we met, we were thrown out of heaven, into a painful universe of suffering––to find and heal one another.”

“Parallel me says, “What? Who? How? Where? When?”

I wish all things lost and found were so easy in reality. All I know is that I loved you. but our love became most dangerous place on earth and I have to forget you in order to live. and in the end, our hands drifted apart.

I still have nightmares of your hands letting go of mine...

A Wish in Despair

Day 68,

Truly, I have lost rely on the days any longer.

Early morning musings on my patio,

I see the brisk riser simply like me

I can feel something in the air.

honey dripping, sadness whipping.

Oh Lord,

please save us from this despair.

locust attacks, earthquakes, covid-19,

and, what not?

They say that

the pandemic will progress

into an endemic,

there's no hope, still.

How many more nocturnal nights,

where did the nirvana nights go?

Counting steps, counting days,

Tic tac toe, nonstop.

Nothing feels right,

however, something tells me

that some time or another everything will be just fine.

“The entire country abhorred him for being brown and queer, but the little boy cried wolf and meshed his reality into a weapon."

—Aditya Tiwari

a thousand poems all wrapped in one

i could never ask myself

why?

i had chills down my spine every time

you called my name,

i could never forgive you

for walking away,

honestly,

i don’t even know if i could ever

forgive myself

for

loving you

for not

loving myself

first.

why is it that the people

i’ve loved

always left?

and i suddenly forgot

how to love myself

in the recent years

and

turned into

touch-me-nots.

last night

i danced on my balcony

at four in the morning

blasting icona pop

on my phone

and

i kept dancing

even after the music

stopped playing

because

it freed me, it freed me,

from the chains

of the heartache that

have been

consuming me.

you see,

i used to be

a nobody

but now

i’m somebody.

i have seen and felt things

so deeper in this life

it could make

death

feel so small.

abandoned by the only two best friends

for being free in the 8th grade. “i could see how engulfed they were by the very thought of my freedom, because all they wanted to be was free.”

once at a swanky party set on a rooftop cafe in hauz khas, a young woman said, sipping her drink, you’re so privileged, it must feel amazing to write and speak about the things you do. i wish i could be so brave.

i wish i could tell her,

it’s neither privilege nor bravery, it’s freedom, the freedom for which i have been walking barefoot on fire all my life.

i wish i could tell her how the pain has consumed the parts of me i used to be the most proud of.

but i didn’t. i laughed instead.

i wish

the little boy

listening to “avril lavigne’s rock’n roll”

at age thirteen

knew

what freedom

tasted like

the little boy

strolling the streets

in the afternoon heat

wanting orange popsicle

between his teeth.

the little boy

fading into the darkness,

plunged by a chainsaw

by his very friends,

the little boy

eaten

plastic mouths

the world

always said

surrender

but

he kept fighting.

blue skies

the sky was

blue and bruised

and his eyes were

grey and ghostly,

everything around me

tasted sweet

like his mother’s

homemade applesauce,

the old year

may die – a dream

skin seared

with the blistering sun

the blue-sea left me deep

into pockets—clutching.

and my shadow

falls upon his damp ocean hair,

his mother didn’t know our secret; that we talked all night after the whole world slept, and kissed underneath the eaves, and tasted the cores of each other’s awkward bodies.

the sky was

blue and bruised

and i was on

fire–seething.

the night the sun came up on the upper east side

winter solstice--manhattan at twilight,

hallways in astoria,

screaming with your name

i gaze towards the streets at the park avenue

from my presidential suite—opened up a cabernet

from 1983,

and think of you.

what we had

has become

a souvenir,

lighting your favourite marlboro smooth 100’s, dancing all night to bollywood music , taking vanilla bean frappe from our favourite coffee place on broadway, eating the same pasta every night from carmine’s.

i can’t wait to see you

under the new york city lights

i wish i could tell it to my heart that you’re not the only one. i’ve never felt this way.

my mother’s old jade necklace

ever since i was born into this world

from my mother’s womb, i dreamt of her giving me

her precious old jade necklace, which she kept in her cupboard

where little girls grow into their mother’s face,

little boys grow with their father’s rage.

and in this brutal distress, in a world,

where people wait to scoop you from the inside

like a cantaloupe clean--hunt you like an animal in your sleep.

oh dear, nightingale sing so sweetly at night,

tell them--tell the world, that my existence is a just political statement.

where my heart is yearns with the desire of having children or a family--life ahead is just lonely.

i am exhausted, i am drowning.

where the chains of 377 have just been broken

it’s not the time for celebration because every day is a battle— our fights have just begun— a happy life is a lifetimes ahead.

to all my almost lovers

you are a hopeless dream, because almost lovers always do.

someone tell the world...

wrap me in satin—drip me in gold, sing along with me this heavenly blues, wrap my heart in the sadness of my mother’s old jade necklace tonight. i want to shine bright at midnight, lay my head on a bed of roses and sleep for eternity.

to be in limbo

these never ending days feel

like a lifetime, an eternity, a timid limbo

it’s 5:30 in the morning

i lit my morning marlboro lights

as i walk into the terrace

in crisp summer air, mid-april

as i hear the birds sing

a sweet melancholia

i drown into my thoughts

an ocean of deeper silence,

and there’s an ache in my lungs

as i realize how the world

will change after all this is over

i log onto my twitter

to see if there’s any news

about the recent deaths

and i wonder

how many days, years, moments,

will it take for the world to heal? for us to recover?

it strikes me

as i try to search for answers

do we have so many burial spaces to put all these dead bodies? can we put all these screams into one mouth again? do we actually know how to grieve? or will we turn sour by mourning?

where people play

their favorite games

am i really hungry? or just bored?

i think of the beautiful days

where we could go out

carefree, anytime of the day, meet our friends, our lovers, without the fear of dying.

while the virus

called covid-19

has exposed the

monsters out of men

the bleeding earth heals

from the outside as we heal

from the inside

let’s not forget that we are in this together; these are the subtle, yet difficult, yet, brave, yet impactful moments – these are the times of self-discovery.

the world was on fire and i was in love

the world was on fire

and it’s wicked

how time can erase love

the world was on fire

and it’s wicked

how all the good night kisses can turn into irrelevance in one blink of an eye - as if your heart’s in chains

the world was on fire

and it’s wicked what love

can make foolish people do

the world was on fire

and it’s wicked

that i always dream of

somebody like you

the world was on fire and

it’s wicked that

i’ve realised that

nobody loves no one.

blue skies

the sky was blue and bruised

and his eyes were grey and ghostly,

everything around me tasted sweet like his mother’s homemade applesauce, like baked dough,

the old year may die -- a dream

skin seared with the blistering sun

the blue-sea left me deep into pockets—clutching, and my shadow falls upon his damp ocean hair, his mother didn’t know our secret; that we talked all night after the whole world slept,

and kissed underneath the eaves,

and tasted the cores of each other’s awkward bodies.

the sky was blue and bruised

and i was on fire–seething.

an atlas of unwashed sins

they say the worst kind of goodbye is leaving in silence; it was the end of october, and later that night after you left – i touched my body as if it were an atlas in my lap, ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? it answered; everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. i wanted to toss all the hurtful things you said out of the nearest window but i didn’t. i went to wash my ears out to get rid of all the hurtful things you said, all the ugly words that have escaped your lips. you wish you could let water wash away all the pain you’ve caused all the hopes i have shattered. and start all over again and then when i was just about to crack open from the inside my body whispered i am the one before the one and that is when i realized i’m finally home again.

an ode to my beloved storm even if we never meet

there are days where lightening strikes me and i miss you so badly that i just want to stop breathing and creaking with desire there’s a hole in my heart wanting to be filled with a smoke veil or lukewarm coffee or salt water or acyclic paint or poison or maybe just love

i suffocate and my body aches with the hunger that is never satisfied, rather tormented i don’t want to cave myself with yearning, in those heaviest days; i lean into my chest, untangle my palms – say all the prayers, lay down my rain-heavy head on your favourite anthropologie pillow and think of you.

somewhere

oh, somewhere out there

i hope is where you are

watching the same blue sky, breathing the same crisp air

and i wonder how your day has been

what coming out meant for you - how your family is - if somebody complimented you recently, hopefully you’ve got friends to hug tightly

i bet you are sweet

that your smiles are all so unique

your eyes could tell me all the poems i wish i could write

everything about you is worth my love

even if we’ll both have our downs

it’ll be rough some nights certainly

but i can’t wait, i’m hoping

for the days of us curled up in bed

hello kisses, goodnight kisses

the feeling of your fingers with mine

i’ll not take you for granted

so wherever you are

i hope you’re sleeping softly

that things are okay, steady in your life

because if things go wrong

then you deserve the world

even if we never meet.

blood red lipstick

12:00 / midnight / bombay

you pour your heart out in a cup

drink it with four shots of whiskey straight

chain smoking like a chimney in your blood red lipstick and

a mean old twisted mouth because boys like your lipstick bloody red

boys like you transfix themselves at night; you turn yourself into something new. extra to extravaganza. every night you dance with the shadows of another’s, with others, dragging them to your wake. There’s ache in your lungs. Misery in your eyes. But you hide it all away with your tiny tube black dresses, red acrylics, cat-walking in your stilettos with your lipstick bloody red. cheekbones sharper than a cutting knife, eyes so sharp one look could kill

but all soft inside. you’re all sadness and bite and limpid starless eyes calling random numbers in the dark, so you can hear a new voice, just so someone call your name? And finally, you can breathe again, because you’re a person again…you’re not a who. you are not a mood board. you are not a trend, a moment, you’re a movement. You’re not just another story after midnight, not a wolf whistle, or a left behind, or an afterthought.

you are all heart and hands. you’re all deconstruction; collapsed stomach and lungs. Scowling whilst you apologize for existing; drowning as you look for warmth in bodies that do not belong to you.

Wait, I want to tell you stop smudging your eyeliner. Stop turning yourself inside out. Wait, I want to say to you, your hips are more than a hotel. Wait for it…your body is a place to stay.

summer days

you and me

gazing at the orange trees

far away from green lights and city streets

flowers in my hair, coconut sunscreen on my skin

life was so beautiful but now you see

it was where we used to be in bel air.

The night is for lovers - And the moon for poets.

the day is for the beloveds - the sun for the champions

the stars - for the dreamers

the universe / for us

we are in this together

self-isolation can be ones greatest power. if only one acknowledges the power of their emotions. in these tough times, people need to self-reflect on what matters and what their priorities are and just stay true to themselves. i feel very powerful when i am truly surrounded by myself. my thoughts and feelings amplify and leads me to self-discovery. everything becomes crystal clear in front of my eyes. who and what matters and what doesn’t. just pray and be surrounded by your loved ones. these are difficult times but these are the times of self-discovery.

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