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Vishnu came to earth once, dressed as a whale who swallowed whole floods and blowholed miracles like showers of youth on a parched man who would become everyone's forefather.

Vishnu comes to all mothers once, and sirens with the pain of a hunted 60 footer as they howl and we click and their waters pour ahead every thing that moves and has struggled to breathe.

Vishnu came to me once, dressed in a dream singing like a humpback to bellow hope and grief into my numbed straining ears to seize me to appease me to release me.

Vishnu came in the blue, all golden. Vishnu came in the black, all shimmering. Vishnu came as a whale, all mortal. Vishnu came as a whale, immortal.

#original poetry #poetry #writeblr #writing

Lightning lighters and lightening nights,

I'm dreaming of home and funeral rites.

Pyres and piles of ash on ash,

Stacks of wood and a cigarette stash.

Quiet contemplation and secondhand smoke,

The weight of the words nobody spoke.

A litter of filters, a chain of butts,

Another round nobody rebuts.

Quickening breaths and a quieter dawn,

I'm dreaming of leaving and being reborn.

Hesitantly taking a single breath,

Of air that isn't scented with death.

#poetry #original poetry

If you love her, my maybe lover,

If you really truly love her,

Then I let you go,

Like the winds that blow,

In the air above her.

If you hurt me, insincerely,

If you hurt me cavalierly,

Then may she rain,

Great sorrows of pain,

As she does most severely.

But you do love her, don’t you lover?

You love her truly, dearly,

Then take my blessing,

With genuine professing,

And love her most sincerely.

#original poetry #writing

Mother, nobody back home, Can seem to say my name. But neither can the people here, Who am I to blame. Mother, how I weep for you, In my solitude, in my shame, The regret is a tarry pool when you say, It’s about time I came. Mother, they cannot say it, So won’t you speak my name. Say it like you always have, I know you’ll love me just the same.

#poetry #original poetry #writing #writeblr

There's something so novel in your evil. The quiescent evil, the gentle ill wishing. There is no macabre theatrics, no real violence. There is just your insistent whispering, your nails raking down paper dry arms. No screams of 'a thousand plagues', but the murmur of 'a little sickness'.

How then am I so afraid? You do no harm, and yet I grow deranged with fear. Is it the threat in your eyes, like a gun cocked, an arrow strung?

I hear canons when you speak. I smell gunpowder in your cologne. I see blood under your fingernails and shrapnel in your hair.

As you breathe, I feel the air leave my lungs.

Aren't we a morbid pair?

You, the coiled serpent basking in the sun.

Me, the mouse sent to feed you, waiting for the day I will watch you swallow me whole.

#writeblr #writing

Darling, as you leave, shut the front door, I can see your shadow in the eave, while my heart's on the floor.

You're not coming back? Tears galore. Turn away while you pack, all my soul in your store.

Footsteps receding, like tides from the shore, and no goodbyes are bleeding, from you anymore.

Did you love me at all? I can never be sure. Yet I loved with an all, I'd never given before.

My lips are chapped, and my eyes are sore, I feel I've been slapped, to the thud of the door.

#poetry #original poetry

I write anonymously. I have played with pen names all my life. Melpomene used to be my favourite. I toyed with the idea of writing as Mynah ( she appears as a character frequently in my work). Every year I think of a new pen name, and every year she leaves me like an autumn.

I sometimes wonder why I am scared of writing as myself. My name is not precious, I am not special. What I say has been said before, and everything I write is blasé, passé, done-to-death-move-on-for-God’s-sake. The human condition? Magical realism? Political rumination? Sad poetry for failed romances? I am every writer I’ve read, but shabbily reconstructed. Nobody reads any of this; I have minimal reach. And yet, I have folders and folders on my laptop. I can point to each and say “That’s Melpomene, that’s Mynah, that’s Nimmi.” Nowhere do I say “That’s me.”

#writing #writeblr #writerslife

“What of Art?” “It is a malady.” “Love?” “An illusion.” - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Recall these words, and I think of both. I think of Lolita.

Love is an art, a maddening art that strips you of your dignity. And art? It is a love that grants you dignity. I stand at the altar to both, the sacrificed, with my dignity in one palm, and my humiliation in the other. Lovers, lovers. Fleeting notes of music. “L'autre soir un air froid d'opéra m'alita”. Lovers, lovers. A single seething shriek to break the impasse.

“Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry…” -W.H. Auden, Lullaby

I have loved, yes. But what of the lover? “an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds.” There is but a single thought, and it clouds this hazy consciousness. A memory, of hands clasped. A genteel whisper. A long, low breeze. Certainty, fidelity, the genteel whisper. The lover is in the low wind, passing by with a ruffle of my curls. I am the hands clasped around the fleeting memory. We are at an impasse.

I have created, yes. And what of the art?

“I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.” The lover consumes the art, the art consumes the lover. I am without my dignity now, as it lays at my feet crooning to me. “Write”, it says, “so that the indignity may never leave you.” “Okay”, I say, because what else is there to say. I live in the malady of the illusion. The long, low wind blows farther, a rustle on the russet ravine. I sit still pining for yet another breeze, and with me are the whispers of the lover, the loved, the maddened, and the disillusioned. And in my clasped hands, growing warm in its shame, sits the art. We stand at the edge of the ravine, and in our slow beating hearts we know that it takes one step to break the impasse.

*Note: All italicised texts without credits are accredited to the colossus Vladimir Nabakov, drawn from the unforgettable novel ‘Lolita’.

#writing #writeblr

Touch me, I’m cotton, I’m a cloud, Vapours across this cyan sky. White jewels your eye, I am fading in the headwinds Pale but paler still, ivory over snow. I unwind in ribbons, Streaks across this lapis lazuli sky, Kiss me goodbye, Condensation on your cupid's bow. I disappear like air, Nary a thing across this navy sky, And thunder in your aching cry. There's the rain i never promised. Come the dawn, forever reborn, Echoes across this indigo sky, Of the waters where I lie.

#poetry #original poetry

My coffee tastes like ink, And it's all I'll ever drink, Till my tongue is tipped like a pen. Maybe I was born to write, I know I'll die to write, And beg to be born again.

#poetry

I have such strange intrusive thoughts when you're with me. I feel your fingers on my arms. That shivering, shimmering skin under your digits cries out for you to press down harder. Harder still, till you breach it. I want you to touch my bones, scrape your oval nails across my very structure. When we kiss, I feel your teeth on my tongue. My shifting pink against your steady whites. Bite, lover, and I want to kiss your harder amidst the pouring red. Put me on a table and cut me open, won't you? I can never be vulnerable enough for you. I'll convince myself that you know me, as you peek into my ribcage. Watch my heart, pulsating faster for you as you lean over me. Maybe I want the quiet violence of you gently peeling me apart. Maybe I long to be laid bare and lie still. Maybe, just maybe.

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Why is love unrequited?

What I’d do to be acquitted!

Cupid and his arrows catch,

The most unsuitable match.

Making eyes like a guppy,

Like a lovesick little puppy.

Blowing kisses, asthmatic,

And sweet nothings, automatic.

Truly sad, how truly tragic,

But it disappears, poof, like magic.

#poetry

The French Press

We brew revolution in the French Press, in black pools of coffee to invigorate nothing but conversation. We swallow our righteous anger with a little milk and sugar to soften it. What then? A war is being fought beyond the window, and we put a little more coffee into the French Press. Pass me the milk and the sugar.

My mother once put a money plant in a wine bottle. It wasn't an expensive wine, no, just a cheap red. You find them a dime a dozen at any liquor shop, lacking nuance or subtlety, and packed into bottles with very thin glass.

Ma put in that money plant, and everyday it seemed to expand. It curved and arched and curled, its stem reaching out like an entreative hand. It grew till its roots pushed against the glass and one day, as she was changing the water, the bottle cracked and broke. It came apart in ma's hands in a blizzard of shining glass, and those guilty roots lay in the sink as it rained diamond sharpness on them.

I think about that sometimes. I can feel myself clawing at cheap glass. I feel like a fresh stem arching towards you, while I root myself deeper in these aching sentiments. One of these days, at your touch, the glass will shatter. I'll lay guilty and yet freed all at once.

As I lay there will you pick away the glass? Will you put me away in another bottle? I want you ground me in your Earth, so we can taste the same dust, so I can flourish in your burning sunlight.

Buy me cheap wine, won't you? I'll find a money plant.

#writing #writeblr

So, Penguin is my go to publisher for classics, because their notes are undeniably the very best. This poem was referenced in the notes of 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' by (the magnificent) Thomas Hardy ( Reprinted 2003, Introduction by Margaret R. Higonnet).

Angel references Tess's smile with the old Elizabethan proverb of "Roses filled with snow"( Chapter XXIV).

I think I'm in love with this book (and maybe with Angel).

#tess of the d'urbervilles #poetry #thomas Campion

Pollen and ink

His fur is inky black, and shines in the sun. At night, I can’t make him out from the dulled shapes of the world, obscured as it is in the dark. But his eyes are like little suns. Bright, golden yellow, flaked with little strokes of a sap green, his eyes are a tempest. In the day, his pupils are slits, and he looks perpetually unimpressed. The sun sinks, his eyes glow, and his pupils dilate. Then he looks so intriguingly peaceful. Wide-eyed and, why, starry eyed, is my little boy in the evenings. He is mercurial. He bites and bats, and shrieks with venom, but he cuddles and mewls, and loves with abandon. Some days he is cold and unloving, slipping into shadows and hissing if I approach. Other days, he’s far too loving, slinking around my feet, tripping me up, arching into my hands, mewling for attention. Some days, if I pick him up, I wonder if he’ll do away with my eyes in his rage. But catch him on a good day, and he melds into my arms, pushes into my heart, till all I can see is his inky blackness and those pretty eyes. I clean him of blood and dirt. He’s a fierce thing who won’t back down from a fight. I’ve felt his claws, his teeth, and his anger, so I don’t worry about him. He sits still, with his tail curled around my forearm when I gently bathe his feather soft fur. I feed him, once a day, at the edge of evening at 4:30 p.m. sharp. He likes cat food, is partial to milk with rice, and tolerates yoghurt. I love him always, even on bad days. He’ll hate it when I ask for too much affection, but he’ll tolerate it when he knows I’m sad. Or perhaps, I’m delusional. Either way, if he sees tears, he stops protesting when I hold him a little too tight. He’s a handsome thing. He has perfect posture. I’ve told him that the Egyptians would treat him like a God. He flicked his tail when I said it. I think he’s happy where he is, even if we gave him a terrible name. He has been dishonourably christened “Chewbacca” or “Bacca” for short. He came at a terrible time, really. We were in the middle of watching the movies when he walked into our lives. Could we really be blamed? In a flurry of laughter a friend told me that “Bacca” means ‘stupid’ or ‘idiot’ in Japanese. When he fell out of a flowerpot, I giggled and cooed “Bacca” with all intention. I can’t say I regret it, but a creature like him deserves a better name. “Adonis” maybe, or “Apollo” for his sunny eyes.

We walk together, often. He prowls like a little demon, always looking for birds to kill. I walk knowing there’s a warmth in my heart. It feels fine. In the evenings, when I sit out with tea, he’ll curl up at my feet, and we’ll look out into the streets and watch the lights come on. When night falls, he curls up in the little box we made for him, looking as innocent as a lamb. The wicked little creature he is fades into this small ocean of tenderness, tides thrumming in the rise and fall of his chest. I think I love him best in the night. Life has been turbulent, but he’s my little anchor, with his exact feeding time, and the need to judge his daily temperament. Today we walked out into the setting sun, and he looked wonderful. His whiskers were to priming, and his fur was clean. He rolled about in the grass, and I whispered, “Bacca”. He paused and I looked at him, with specks of yellow pollen in his fur, his eyes ablaze with dilated pupils. He didn’t protest when I picked him up and cradled him. I walked like that, with this beautiful creature staring up at me. From somewhere away, a voice in my head started singing.

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, Smiles awake you when you rise ; Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby, Rock them, rock them, lullaby. Care is heavy, therefore sleep you, You are care, and care must keep you ; Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby, Rock them, rock them, lullaby.

Touched by whimsy, I sang for him, and I placed him gently in his box. He fidgeted once, twice, and then within minutes became still. The moon is a crescent and the night is splendid. I’ve been awake, and dawn is at the heels of the stars. He’s still curled up in his golden slumbers, and I think that life couldn’t be sweeter.

#cats

Society #3

“If things were different, how different would they be?” He laughed, and said, “Remarkably.”

#poetry

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