different strokes

sketch me one of those easy afternoons
-a charcoal sketch- of old friends sitting
together on a day that has not yet met its
expiry date, a time before companionship
became subject to first come first serve rules,
across a makeshift table with chairs dragged,
borrowed and stolen from other clusters
when they weren't watching, having
unassuming conversations over expensive
lunches nobody really paid for, laughing at the
stroke of two when the pull of rajma chawal
was greater than mandated duties, perpetually
planning escapades born of quixotic ambition.
beyond the borders of the canvas sit strangers
eyeing wistfully a camaraderie that is theirs
in some other sketch of some other memory.

Paint me a barmy evening with watercolors
- running into monsoonal excesses- of a walk
through potholed paths and shrill cries for
attention from cars and bikes while cyclists fall
off the edges of a world, theirs only in its periphery.
A piece of discarded blade reaching through worn-out
kolhapuri chappals bleeds alta on the road home
across alleys embellished with trampled flowers
and dog poop.The white churidar stains a muddy red
in response to questions the empty house never asks.

Write me a poem of a reluctant night heavy with
the aching humidity of accumulated pain,
blanketing embittered dead stars in a cityscape
of loss made of concrete, longing for a respite
that is possible only among mountains, rivers and
crickets, where in the breeze that becomes breath,
the space for the 'I' is undone.Write me a(n) un-i-verse.

mirasmus

When did you last let yourself go
on a wooden swing whose creaks
have coloured memories older than
you, reminding you unwittingly of
the things you used to fear. height
wasn't one of them.back then.now,
so many things are so different.
age creeping into your knees.metabolism.
the scramble for company.ear wax.
glass shards in your eye.sudden noises.
Fashion sense.unborn daughters.

swinging to these rhythms of change
life catches up with you in the name
of the holy spirit,the watchman
telling you of the curfew on swings
in this community park, free for all.
Not after 11 pm. (children get
preference all day, giving you a window
too tiny to climb into and make it.)
Reflection is not suited to LED lit AC
rooms, you want to tell him. That the arc
of oscillation is ready to reveal a potential
secret and you are fated to receive it, here.
now. But the haggard man in uniform
helpless to follow administration's orders
expects compliance.and pity, not sure for whom.

The open doors of your house greet you
with a warm stench of something rotten and
the irremediable hope of pushing your fears to
the pit of your stomach with the force of old
over watched sitcoms, where they will lie until
5 am dreams regurgitate them, leaving you
wakefully suspended in mirasmus.
the prisoner of a war of your own making.

mirror mirror

Every morning, you stand before the mirror.
You look at your face, but never closely.
there are things for dryness (your nose tends
to break out into little white flakes, Dead skin),
things to smoothen and hide 'beauty spots',
You recently bought something for the little bags
collecting darkness under your eyes, harvesting a
fatigued view of this world.
the liner keeps you from unwanted questions,
the new kohl pencil justifies a watering that
just cannot seem to catch a break. Salty.
the lips are allowed paleness. sometimes their
fruity flavours help change the now homely
metallic taste in the mouth. From too much coffee,
or a long pending root canal, or certain kinds of days.

in the day, you can hide inside a mirror.
it gives you an outside face you can carry
around for the world. But as night falls,
the mask melts, wears off. Even for the
bipolar mirror. Embittered by its own
hypocrisy, it will force you to come closer.
to look at yourself.shorn of comforting narratives.
and when silver truth peers at you,
sleepless nights are a foregone conclusion.

mornings must find you once again
before hallucinogenic mirrors
glossing over your losses,
making up for things that can never
in truth be made up.