i remember you - 2

i remember you
from the constellation of bindis
on the bathroom mirror.
(the dressing table remained
an unfulfilled dream.)
the round red worlds
of love and duty
in equal measure
(and often, not quite)
dotting an ever changing landscape.
i remember looking for you
in what looked back at me.
you were wiser
than making me
the repository of your
disgruntled desires
while all of mine
came down to
a singular passion
that survived the customary disillusionment.
all I found was
a face I could not recognize
but for the round red worlds
around which my
world revolved
like a moon that orbits its planet
time found its meaning
in a circularity that hoped
to reach back to you.

i remember you - 1

i remember you
from the constellation of bindis
on the bathroom mirror.
that’s how i learnt
the secret of the universe –
amid the dance of stars,
what else is it but a mirror
where we see ourselves
in the quiet of a solitude
as deep as life.

moment

a moment ago
i walked through eternity
looking for you
in the whisper of a dream.
the endless road
lit in memories of you
winded down to the same old heart
that has carried you
since time began.
our love a footnote
in this journey
that life was supposed to be about.

a moment ago
i walked back
from a dreamless sleep
where you were no more
the jaded pump had jumped a beat
i had thought.
but know now what it skipped.
 
a moment ago 
a moment ended
and another took its position
to dive once again
into meandering meanings
of the timeless.

hunger

I had poetry
for dinner tonight.
the gnawing inside
was not the stomach.

In the house next door,
a mother was telling her little girl -
Poetry doesn’t put food on the table. Perhaps I should meet
that little girl
i have seen her chasing her sister
on the cycle with her friends
in the evenings sometimes

The other day as I walked by
I saw her sitting under a withered tree
with a notebook on her lap
a pencil stabbed in her bun
staring at the lines on her palm.
I should have talked to her,
I meant to.
But then I heard her mother
politely asking me to call her
to finish her homework.
I should have said something. 
but I smiled a radiant neighbourly smile 
and went up to break the child’s reverie.

I think of her sometimes
when I read a good poem.
I wish to share it with her.
But all I have
is my old mother in the next room 
lamenting her old lament to an aunt
“Poetry doesn’t put food on the table.”
After some time, my aunt walks up to me
and asks me what I will have.
I barely hear her.
But after I have finished
Agha Shahid Ali’s old collection
I go ïnto that room of whispers
and tell them – “I am quite full.
Good night.”

proposition

they say life
is a loss making proposition.
we collect our sorrows 
strewn around the house -
hanging in closets
tied with strings in drawers
piled up on the side table
in the space between old books
between the sheets on the bed
freezing in microwavable bowls
in the refrigerator
nudging in cartons of empty bottles
dancing in embers of salt and pepper ash
nestled in playlists made painstakingly
on winter evenings as work waited
in the tinges of blue on green walls
by the door that creaks and never fully.closes
dangling with other keys for unopened locks
in carpet stains whose stories are avoided
on the masks hanging on walls
with webs of a baby spider's learning
crisscrossing the cavity of the eyes.
in coffee cups with broken handles
and blunt pencils wary of sharpeners -
we gather them all
to make space for older losses
that made wise and deep by age
wait patiently in the shade
of weeds growing generously
on dead soil in plastic pots.

when the prospective tenant
visits the house this weekend 
she will find it clean and desirable.
she will share her stories of triumph
and count this encounter as one.
when she will leave, satisfied and hopeful
we will sit down on the sofa
and tell ourselves with a wry smile -
the loss making proposition
has good prospects.

you

i think of you sometimes.
thoughts are allowed near you
now that they have learnt
not to dwell or fornicate with desire
and bear bastard expectations.

back then there was no time to contemplate.
love stabbed at my insides.all day long.
and i spent nights writhing in the pain
of the kernel of corn that never popped.

i never met you.
except in the need of a wilting flower.
the humiliation of triumph.
the fissures which once gave birth
to hot springs. 
in the crackle of trampled dead leaves.
the numbness of a familiar song. 
in the splayed vermillion mark of a new widow.

i never knew you.
except from stories trapped in unknown books
peering from windows of quaint shops.
in the cold spaces of a blanket warm
only where a body lies still.
at the zebra crossing awaiting a turn.
in the sound of boiling water
spilling over the flame.
from.blurred negatives of old photos
of things made useless.

now we sit across each other
paraphrasing.old.philosophers.
over steaming cups of tea 
you tell me of the great love of your life.
and i sit listening. Nodding.
and scalding my tongue.

love

there is peace here. there is calm.
before, during, after the storm.
the sun defines lengths of days.
the moon has its own reasons for being.
the notes on the fridge
are about food.
the silences are. just like words.
we are complete. we are unfulfilled.
but not through the other.

let us relish this.
it has taken time
(and what people call heartache)
but
love finally seems beautiful.

the making of a poem

a discontented you
walks out of the room
rendered cold by failure
to seek a faithful muse.
it surprises you, yet again,
the humility of winter night skies.
(how did we learn conceit?
you wonder)
the man on the moon looks on
holding the poem you just abandoned.
it seems complete
(though you cannot read it
from this distance)
he seems to approve.
(there is hope for you yet,
you think)
you reach out to him,
and just as you breathe in
the first waft of fulfilment
the treacherous rascal
flings it out into the empty space
nestled among stars.
you dive in unthinkingly
in a panic unsuited to the night
only to smell the familiar scent
of your putrid room. 

some poems are meant to be
the universe’s joke on you.

naming

how do you define this yearning
for the throbbings, the ruptures,
the disappointments of others -
the charity of what were once
your hopes, your desires
given away
in a gesture filled with
nothingness
indifferent to the orphaned corners
in which they now lie
sharing space and poetry
with other unwanteds
of the world.

love doesn’t even begin
to describe it.