Poetry Post aka FB is an asshole
Note: I have copyright over these poems. You’re free to reblog but do not repost without credit AND explicit permission. Any form of sharing without explicit permission apart from reblogging counts as copyright infringement and the offending party is liable to be sued for it.
Schizophrenia
I keep losing people like coins in my pockets.
They get stuck in washing machines, disappear into pavement cracks, and end up in vending machines.
The absence of their weight is a sharp reminder of what I had and what I don’t.
But sometimes sometimes I end up missing coins I didn’t have. I hallucinated their weight, their clinking, their sharp edges cutting into my skin. I don’t know when the sense of their loss hollowed me.
But I was so certain I had them. I swear they were right there. I was so...
Cartography
I could only foray into cartography, but even then, I have always failed. I can never find America, or draw the line of division between two torn-up countries. I cannot pick up a pen to sketch lines that demystify our existence, that bring us to the edge and push us beyond-- going, coming. There’s a blur where my memories are supposed to be.
Time passes and I am in the eye of the storm.
*
We seem to have slowed down. I have begun to sketch you tentatively, wanting you to become more than a mess of colours. I’m not very good at it. (But there are lines, there will be demystification.)
The comma’s missing.
Stay a while, though.
Ouroboros
I can't watch you lounging in your chair in only a vest and boxer shorts and not feel like this is it.
I am made of desire and it swallows me whole. It never ends.
Confession of an Outsider
Your crevices are choked with smoke, with empty cups of tea, with the constant, lingering smell of petrichor, sweat and dog.
I despise you for your classes full of shit, for your buds of drama scattered across the AV room, for materialising that godforsaken coffee machine right out of my memory, and for tempting me with the bad coffee I love; It is cheaper—it offends me.
As soon as I arrived at your doorstep, I knew I’d never belong to you.
I sat against the ledge, writing an answer on Hope, and felt like I could be one of your dysfunctional cells: I can’t—my home resides in my head; I'm dysfunctional differently.
I found love lurking on your rooftops, photographic metaphors for poetry I identify with— “...like two strangers after a long correspondence, finally meeting.” Bits of home-that-was found me here and left again, and for a while, I was grounded in the corners that were yours but changed, different.
I learned not to be afraid of dogs, I learned to make Vitruvian books, I learned to breathe without choking on the cigarettes I keep trying to quit. I never learned how to be yours.
That puzzle piece that never fit anywhere in the jigsaw is me, That mime on the stage is me, That alien taking the last UFO out of this world is me.
*
Es regent stark, Und ich werde dich vermissen.
Of Leaving
It's a story we've all heard: it's a story of leaving people and places and towels behind to find new people and glamorous places and fancier towels.
It's always been about opportunities for you— you reach out for them, and I don't reach out to you.
A Chennai Afternoon
On a hot, sunny afternoon, my brothers got lost at the Chennai railway station. The sweltering heat left me dazed—half in the bus, waiting for them to turn up, and half on the railway station, searching frantically for them. I know not how the hours passed and I don't remember anything except the station master's hazy dingy little office, where the twins sat on a table, swinging their legs, their mouths stretched in a lollipop-sticky grin.
Sometimes, I wonder if my parents lost them forever that day, that I'm the only one who can see them now.
The City
It is always so humid here, My body feels wrong Trapped in this godforsaken city Of concrete, of weed, of smoke Rising up in the sky from thousands Of unsuspecting killers.
Beg to report, sir, I don’t like it.
The sky is sometimes the blue of your eyes And within that moment Lies peace. But that moment is always blocked By telephone wires, By broken balconies, By civilisation. This will never be home.
Smoke and Rain
It is raining here And my lungs are dying for one cigarette Just one And the good hurt of missing you Has gone bone deep. It verges on the edge of being painful But nobody ever said I wasn't a masochist.
With the smoke of a cigarette Memories of you will rise in the air But I do not want to exorcise you
So I sit here and write this, Wanting you, wanting a smoke And having nothing.
Displacement
I am not where I am: I left myself in McDonald's last month, Sipping ill-advised coke While you scarfed down three Big Macs in less than fifteen minutes, And the constant whir of the coffee machine Kept reminding me that I had places to be. But when we got up to leave, I left myself in McDonald's With an absence of you.
The Autopsy Report
It's hard for us to swallow that life isn't what it is in the movies. We turn bitter as pills when people we love don't love us back and no amount of cough syrup consumed can make it better.
All the MRIs are useless because they can't tell why our bones feel so heavy and an open-heart surgery reveals that we have a heart but we can't feel it beating.
All this—all of us are drowning in translucent anodyne.
Title under Progress
"...I want so desperately to be finished with desire, the rushing wind, the still small voice." ~Boston, Aaron Smith
You're finished with desire And the desire finishes you. I seek to articulate loss of what I never had, never owned, of what was never mine to begin with.
I cannot own time, nor moments spent together. Seconds slip through my memory, fade away, until they finally disappear.
I want to be done with it: this all-consuming desire, before it is done with me-- before it finishes me.
But I am already burning.
What We Mean
What we mean Is not to be articulated Because words aren't enough To accommodate meaning. Not even the ship of poetry Can bring meaning home to you. Why, then, do we speak at all? Because being human means Being doomed to persevere futilely.
Poetry
Reading poetry is like Living a lifetime in a Few seconds till its over And it’s not going to come Back again and you go back To the start to feel how it Made you feel before you started Destroying yourself and Uncovering the uncomfortable Truths that someone taunts you with And sometimes its better not To know Better not to read about iron cords Setting you on fire Better not to take your pain away And numb you till all you can say is I know.
Exorcism
I have been trying to write this poem for 3 years; I no longer care to count the months and days. This uncaring has been hard-earned, And it still isn't perfect: You were there and then you weren't. There were moments of self-consolation and self-condemnation, There were months of Schrodinger's paradox, There were years of trying to chase your promises being you was almost as good as being with you Until I could stop myself from being defined by you. And it still isn't perfect. * In all the time we spent together, There was one moment where you cared for me: It is enough for me to let you go.
Retribution
"तो फिर बचा ही क्या है और बोलने को?"
Our words don't seem to move you; You're lost in your own maze of words, Turning the truth insidious enough To be the plot of a horror movie You rip apart Our sense of worth, which has always accommodated you, And our love, which is our hamartia, By misdirecting guilt, shame, and blame Our way Is paved with the barbs of your disbelief And your condescension of our desires But we will walk no more.
We have no words to give you. Take our silence at its face value. Fuck off.
Road Rage
I quit driving because of bad timing: I couldn’t brake fast enough. ‘Slow down,’ my dad would say, and I would stop abruptly instead. I do not have that gear.
*
When you said, ‘Let’s take it slow’, I was already at the altar, waiting for you.
Our car crashed before you could make it there.
Silences
I battle many monsters in my head, each a Hydra, Medusa. I can’t wrap my head around the heads to be beheaded without turning to stone.
Nietzsche lied. We have gazed into the abyss long enough. And she has never not even once gazed back.
