I want to dig open your grave I want to dig open your grave to smell you again. I want to carry your bones in my messenger bag, so I can look at them when I'm bored at the dentist's Or when I'm in a queue for my tickets at the cinema I want to brush the remaining filaments of your hair at dawn And wash them at noon And humor them at night I want to find an inch of your skin and sow it in your ceramic pot You loved it so; and it always yielded well. I want to bury your crippled teeth under my pillow And push daisies in the sockets of your skull. Now tell me, is it any good that you rest so quietly? Foolish are my feet to tread so lightly. Midnight come, and I will whisk you out Be equipped, my dear For we will paddle off into the moonlight like old times.

“Shery Beneavou, Sir. 24, in years. 24 years in flux. Kind hearted, with a gentle disposition and a tasteful genetic make-up. Ideal girl. She’d come home with flowers and chocolates. Balm to a tiring day. Rosemary pink in spring, sky blue in the summer. A-liners, halters and racer-backs. The usual girl. Movies and popcorn, apple tarts and cheesecakes with berries on top. A vague girl. Now, don’t misunderstand me, I pray you, but make an allowance for me to call her a floating paradox. A paradox of conceptions. A genuine, but ridiculous nevertheless, idealist. A cat in a bucket of water. It’s true, sir! A gnawing cat. A pretty combination, a doleful combination… Insurgent. Like a queer wave on a low tide day. By Jesus, the heroic misery in her voice! Carefully crafted stories of pittance. Careful, but flawed, sir. I could read them all. I could read her. Nothing in there. Stories give her purpose. Pardon me, sir, but these stories she weaves for purpose. For recreation

Fire God hath no fury Namo Namah Her surma-laden tributaries. The pious pundit rants Successive, dangerous chants She throws her head backwards In hysteria Matam ki khushi, matam ka sama. A thousand bowed heads A thousand devoted faces The blood-curdling jarring Of maha-ghantis Holy intoxication of the havan-kund But Dharma resides in only one. No, Dharma sees no one. Yagya karo, yagya karo Karna- the greatest danveer Comes down from the heavens today, they said He will prowl the streets in disguise He will have gold coins in his pockets. Heaven-manufactured, heaven-sealed! Who’s the holiest of them all? Bound to get lucky, that bugger! And then the men combated For the best spot by the fire And the women wore bandhinis and laheriyas The children cried. Dharma peeped from the window Karna tousled her hair. “Women have dressed for you.” He smiled.

Whiskey runs through your haggard veins  Your ashen face, still picturesque  Framed by gallant waves  Storm is raging, hush!  Hold on to your glass But you let it fall down your window pane.  Why do you pull that dress down your thighs, after all this time  Why do you grab a shawl to cover your breasts  The night that fell upon your sensual face  You kissed it fully, without another sigh Let me remind you  Of the palms that knew  Your blissful cries & kindled hues As the forget-me-nots woke with the drizzling drops I was Rain, trying to open you. Your eyes are worn out now Your heart has sunk The Marsala linen graces the floor My greedy eyes linger, behind the door All that is around us, is petrichor. My needs are no different from the wrath of the storm  Unfinished, Unfulfilled, Uncoloured  But your darkest eyes seek something else  And so I wrap myself up in our linen & drink whatever is left of you. 

While you were tying blue flowers to the clot of my hair  I moved about impatiently  As if it didn't matter  Meandering like a little girl  I swiveled through the gazing trees  Oblivious to the thread that knotted up our dreams  It was a dark night when the oceans called I was cradled in a bubble you had just breathed with life  Floating across our jittering timeline  It landed half shot into a mountain peak  What a pity, what a pity.  The bubble that carried purity was rendered bleak.  So when I fell, it took less than a moment You lit a fire to cook your meat I fired my parachute to pull me away But the voracious flames charred my feet What was meat, was I meat  You often whispered, you liked me raw.  You emerged like the mellow shades of morning  Resting on a street bench Hands stretched on your sides  Glancing, smiling  And I swam in like a sea of autumn leaves Rustling over you  Clogging your senses  Romancing your lit

They say perspectives can be many  What if the world is a playground  For Anamorphosis in another Where it all makes sense  What if our bodies  Are waves  And  Waves are  Only a fragment  Of a universe set straight  Which doesn't appear as universe Cosmos uncomplicated  Abruptly, kindly  What if you were to see The shapes that scattered stars  Slaved to arrange in constellations  In a simple upturn of earth  Postcards, trinkets and french plats Worn gallantly  By a mad man?  You would perhaps  Finally see your journeys converge Concisely, wholly  On a paradigm free of material  Meaningless, until placed against  The world  Won't you come  Set things a little awry  To set the reflection pondering About a fickle one's ambitions? Oh won't you come  Crawling  So the feet in your image wonder About a darers audacity. Your impudence will dance  But there, it will appear stationary.  You can look at it an

Once upon a time When you sat muddled, with stationery strewn all around you On a windy afternoon, the ferocious curtains behind you willing to sweep all of you away You had asked me what you must paint. And I had entered the room troubled, with my memory impinging on me I hadn’t a clue what you meant. One of your old records was ablaze in the living room Jarring the dinner table, the wall frames and the window panes Only faint sensations jolted us where we were One to the mercy of music, one to the mercy of wind. Something about your house was soul-stirring Maybe it was just you. Broken tributary amidst the rustle of purple papers Flying all around you, and you around them What must you paint. The body, used to cajoling and embrases Had grown weary of all the love. Yet the excrescent veins on the back of your hands Filled me to the brim with delirium You were the subject of my concupiscent dreams Wavering and disappearing like a nymph Leaving me hankering for

Oh, Velvet Your contradictions changed cyan to crimson And your root given threads embellished your petals  What makes you imbue this devastating hue In all that is ephemerally mine? 

I have heard too much, my love.  I have listened to verses plucked  shamelessly on strings which were once mine.  The beginnings of melody were given to me, all that was unsung lusted my voice, chaos found culture in my mind.  I imagined a Coruscating Cosmos.  Every vision had a wing, each thought had a tune. When the wind blew and the chimes jingled, a new book opened to give the lovelorn what he needed  Promises, Hopes and Dreams.  And he came to me, he came to me every starstruck night  With questions on his pensive face  like carvings in stone, craving decipherment.  I countered each promise, each hope, each dream with the songs hidden in keys and strings Until I became them. I could believe now, that my words were reminiscences of your endearment  My cosmos was resting on your body.  Together, we tried to create melody.  I had scars on my fingers from forcing it to take birth, I had distortions in my throat from crooning to you, words of love.

Marilyn can't sing so she merely looks on  At opera singers in middle of symphony  She has already gulped down  her voice, twice over  And she chokes at her inability.  The lower E and higher E  Starve for her misery.  Marilyn can't sing so she tries To compensate with her beauty  Dropping her eyelids to form  Better eyes, curling her lips  to smile pleasantly.  But when she opens her mouth she  stutters, for not a melodic note she can utter  So she watches her dreams  Sound in the air  Silently. 

Hindu Brahmin with a Muslim name, She was born to defy destiny. She fretted over the fas-fis of her silk dupatta flowing like the Brahmaputra, the Ithmid around her eyes dancing with every moment. Her dark eyebrows were wings to a big red dot, and her hair fell down like roots of the peepal tree. Dusky little dainty little dreamy little something. It often felt like she craved care Perhaps, of a man who would throw veils around her which only he could enter. The undertones of her profound speech about being powerful like Durga told them of it. The puny buildings of society tried to wash over the span of her bejeweled minaret,   atop which she screamed the ideas that were only her own echoing the same indifference. She spoke of Unity Rich with visions about tomorrow Wrote volumes, made paintings that conveyed extraordinary desires They laughed at her folly. So she threw herself in the books And found a Vedic Allah They pulled out h

One by one  Escape of essence  First, the vapor leaves it To meticulously coat  Realm by realm, new residents of the past You will feel it when you inhale  Dampness.  Second, the Amber in it's waves dissolves into Violet  And like two positives you repel each other from across the vacuum of a magnetic field  You will feel it when you no longer sense a simple butterfly resting on your eyelid.  Third, the brisk handshake becomes a sagging how-do-you-do  Graceless, until it loses its tangibility.   You will feel it when invisibility gropes Air.