Landed Notes

"It's about stuff you know like everyday excesses, mulling." She replied enthusiastically, "Why, of course, with a dash of citrus."

[teaquests]

Contrast

a little tinge of the green flickers like a sharp tongue tasting the words tumbling out of her mouth, in her eyes, in her eyes your smile is trapped and you sit like a captive, smiling the colour blue of complicity, she speaks of the quotidian and makes it her regal minute of the day, contrasting sets such fleeting intense joy belonging to the present of another while yours is a distant relative   besieged by the drought of memory

[teaquests]

there is a pleasure in the inches between desire and gratification

[teaquests]

An ode to change/changing seasons

look. look. love says it's coming. in the pleading and pleasing-- a short distance between peppermint breaths, and mosquito-pinched swollen, itchy hearts, corporal arousals aside, it says it's pouring some fresh rose-tinted syrup over bland coffee-like distaste, to rinse out the botched up stains, instead it offers to churn some rainbow mix tapes in fall's cantaloupe brochure, some forest hues to minimise the greyness of the skies, some magnesium spirits flitting across melon shadows, a little walk of indigo white to elbow some breathing space, such colour, such compositions, more than fluff, yet even the earth and its seasonal mugshots take months to recite the difference, much like love, it says you cannot yet see me but you feel my strange intimacies, I'm arriving.

[teaquests]

The colour green

to renew what once was, old but not the same, there is a bit of undergrowth in every feeling as we grow, it never is the same, love never happens the same way— twice sex too— no sameness, is there a reason why of all things, envy feels the same, every damn time, perhaps hunger too.

[teaquests]

Fever

Love, This is rapturous, wreaking havoc on the neat lines of life you patterned to snort, This is inescapable, it moves along with you as thick as your drooping shadow, This is terrifying, for its not snowflakes and gazebos, it's the damn blizzard, and with it comes the howls of the wolves and the extraterrestrial, This is the invisible hand, dealing chances to everybody at the party, cursing the optimist, rewarding the fool, This is the colour purple shaded over by neons, a bright sophistication that masks a deep, deep lethargy of the soul, This is a fever, it feeds on passion even in the bare cribs and off foul mouths, You aren't watching your steps, it is a futile exercise, your steps, mismatched, melt in the surrounding gloom and fire, Leaving your search reeking, this doesn't care. This love, never did, It never sought permission, Neither yours, Nor mine.

[teaquests]

stepping

everything here is a quarter filled and there's so much more room step in through the backdoor the one that looks all formidable, with bolts and nuts and the stench of rusty dimpled browns on its scaly iron skin all strong and formed but don't the best slip through these, in and out, in and out, at random it may seem but the backdoor is always a plan, indulge it, backhand a wish you don't see coming, let it in through the portal and watch the stars dipped in your light emit hope, primrose size, as you wake each one of them with the gusto in your eyes

[teaquests]

vertical

maybe this time you won’t be able to say what you want to say, the rhythm of your words might be held back by a green light of gushing emotions, some thirty odd at the rate of a second, one falling, overshadowing, necking, chipping the other, can you teach them, can you teach them, the blunt, the sharp, the waning, the ineffable, to leave some space for a few dewy breathers, puff, puff, poof, pooooof, between their constant pitter-patter? and soon, we need some calibration between these well-oiled, upward moving catastrophic refluxes, to be jettisoned from the mouth in not-so-comfortable hordes of rolling utterances, only to forget our own intentions, the place that we started from.

[teaquests]

journey

a mile more it seems from where I stand not too far, little steps on this long stretch the roads are naked and baked on a bulky sun’s grill toasting the many that walk it some for a while, some more a conundrum for how long, how long must one be on the road

less than a mile it seems from where i stand not too far, inching close cacti have rescinded under surface their spikes, an occasional foot bleeder, with dried blood stains, we walk this path of perseverance, we walk as before;

to the right, to the right a signage brakes your rhythm, with flashy lights, pin-up spirits, I wonder is it too cowardly to stop? to wait, rest, stretch? the little plucking in head demands a bit more, a bit more, now inches away it seems from where I stand but how do I know? how do you know? there is no map

[teaquests]

embodiment

you live on a springboard of poppy-fumed imaginations twisted with cacti tear cuts, slender and floating like stray cotton in dry summer towns, the ones that graze your shirt pocket before falling to the ground, waiting for the wind to waltz it away, on raspberry nights, you sneak up like nocturnal breeze and wake the quiet with your ferocious howls, drowning the ballad of the neighbourhood crickets, you are as willed in p a r t s my happy, my petunia, my bluebird, my last evening cup of tea through seasons, you see, you are as I saw you as you made me feel as we laid and laughed wept and choked we, always, are this and that and the sighs in between

[teaquests]

dipping toes

taste the water with a dip of your toes pass the porcelain surface prismatic in the noon light as if it were scared to part and devour you to an ocean granule yet it implores you to touch, to fawn, to tickle its mirrored curves play, play, play, frolic too much frolicking stiff feet in watercress crisscross either way the pain is for both to bear and balance

[teaquests]

flows/pauses

dreams fade into days seamlessly

in its unstitched, untouched unhurried jaunt a little peck of the sun’s nose a turn of cheeks to the lips slow they roast these midnight blooms

in hide as in seek shine as shine may in the vicissitude of blanketed skies a morsel less and strong holds the light a morsel more and its an affair overcast

heedless the rhapsodic sun grabs them by the neck the face the tendons oh, the ache— s p l i n t e r e d

— spent turquoise glint punctures almond eyes to look at caves within caves and ask when next can it rest

[teaquests]

Deep in gallows Weighed in tears Flourishing in discomfort Stay strong, little heart The birds of morning Shall carry the eastern winds To soothe your aching eyes And after a long time You will sleep The sleep of roses Nestled in scarlet buds Perched above thorns And the wide green sea Stay strong, little heart For memories of the nights Now tinged with undone fragrance In the sweetness of the cornered Lies your brevity It is not for others To hear your soft cries Stay strong, little heart

[teaquests]

a time gone by

afternoon snow In pastel softness, I laid down next to you under a pine-canopy as gentle birds sat around us chirping in soprano hue a glorious yearning, nature’s minstrel choir, all the while, I sensed slim threads of sweet sweat running sequins on your forehead squeezed your cold palm in mine felt your deep breaths rustling my hair placed my head on your chest lost in a foliage of thoughts, this sleepless spring though I wonder how did I miss the hesitation in your heart

[teaquests]

A change of seasons

when spring the branches tall and strong look at the leaves flitting in the wind like they are magic come autumn the leaves take flight and fall the branches tall and strong  still in the end it all meant so little

[teaquests]

There's a sophistication With which pain crawls Into the facade of armoured words, And I call it sophistication That fails Because you can still smell the raw

[teaquests]

defenestration

I was the rose that bled blood in your heart in your castaway hours when a single sigh came by a pitch too high

now crushed by the weight of the pages you don’t open brittle bones turn pungent while you run after veils in meadows too far

leaving behind a silence I can’t breach

[teaquests]

~

Then one day everything stopped— Being the way it was but it took over a year to realize like frilly increment waves washing against the rock shedding its coloured remnants until it no longer resembled ‘the rock under the bridge’