Moon Over Still Water

I want to dispense with the lovers in my life,
Paramours of flesh and bone,
Tied to the dirt beneath their feet.
It seems too easy, this blending of souls
The ready matching of organs
This procreative mix of ejaculate.
Meanwhile, you wait tantalizing above it all
The original space tourist, my first nightly visitor
My man on the moon; misloved maiden’s man
Because every man loves a woman.
I ache with the pain of longing,
White and sun hot in my gut, But
Outside me because this others me so
And you stretch me to my ends, Until I am
Ready to burst from this monthly peek-a-boo
Does my urge to be touched lessen this love?
Is every man a better lover in mind than body?

Naked Schoolgirl Blues

I did not know you,
Will never see you again; Except
in your three minutes of infamy
Recorded, shared and stored
For countless replays to
Repressed, unforgiving eyes,
The sight of your virgin,
pubescent breasts burnt forever
into their gluttonous minds,
Your blameless naiveté
Condemned for their amorphous
sexual selves trapped in unending
dramas of utilitarian intercourse
And sublimated self hate.
But I did recognize
The light in your eyes,
The white of Icarus’s wings,
Flying free of the burden of consequence
At least Icarus chose his flight,
You, poor fool, only fell in love.

Relocation

Just started it... Nowhere near liking it yet. Must let this one percolate and grow. But it needs to be on paper and not in my head. So...

Relocation

The earliest I can remember

Is running hand in hand

From wall to wall,

So near they were then.

And you were young,

So young that nobody chided you

For the leaves and dirt in your hair

From lolling ambitionless in the sun.

Did we have to grow up, grow apart?

First Times

I remember that the alcohol
Loosened muscles and inhibitions,
That as you traced your finger
down my spine, I shivered
in the most unmasculine way.
Outside the summer night burned with
The residual memory of
A too-hot sun that made the tar glimmer
And your sweat-covered skin glisten
With the heat of my hurried passion.
I remember I fumbled with the otherness
Of your gentle undulating form.
Hot flesh hiding sudden little crevices
that could hold me folded, sated, loved.
I remember that when the moment came,
It was gone all too soon.
No violin flourish to warn of its passing.
Swept up in a rush of forgotten, unwritten histories
Of simultaneous other releases.
And later I wished that we had taken our time
Stopped along the way to smell, taste, see
The breaking of this shared mythical dream
Not raced to the finish, To these
bright celluloid castles that crumbled at first touch.

ode to grandfather

Not my newest poem in the sense that I haven't written anything for more than a month... But anyway here it is...

Grandfather

When you died I didn’t cry…
I really couldn’t think why.
How could I, When
on another gentle summer morning
You showed me a world
Cloaked in pre-dawn night, and still
Because even dark things need their sleep.
And when I fell because I ran when you said walk
You carried me, though the world filled with
The groan of bones too old, weathered too long.
And grown wise and distant in my eyes
There came the rude breaking wind
You said were invisible tree frogs followed us home.
Many days later, I cried…
And my eyes burned for it, my tears raw salt
With not a taste or sound of pretty pink ribbon eulogies.

Those left behind

I

(On the margins)

Yesterday, I did it…
Paid the last rupee.
Getting it was harder than life
(And I could tell you
A thing or two about hard lives.)
From an acquaintance thrice removed
Not apt to let affection affect business.

The money was got at twenty paise to a rupee
Not yearly, no, we live and work for the day.
The interest pulls at me from every side
Drawing flesh for money by the pound
But when the sun came out to break my spirit
Money was only paper that bought
This hard-fought square, my fortress in the city.

But that was yesterday, frozen
Forgotten in shadows of today’s dawn.
In debris of big decisions that claimed
My small walled hole, not hand to outstretched hand
Kept this billion square city from growth.
So when the clouds gathered to beat fury on me
My fort was only rubble by the roadside,
With cheap tarp and plastic roof over broken dreams.

II

(Loved, betrayed)

This was my city once,
Small and content, ends
marked, named and set in stone.
Its heart known like mine own.
Now it grows to where I cannot see
And it seems there is no space for me.

Years ago, father fought
To buy his place in this world
Could he know the world would fight back?
Cut away its middle class slack?
Forsake men that were here first
To sate ambitious global thirst.

Could I have known that rootless progress
Would pave its highways over the
rubble of my brick and mortar home?
Shift from straight and narrow for commerce alone?
And steal from me my rightful fight
With help from elected, ruling might
And cast me obstructer, villain to progress’ plight

III

(Alien)

This city is not my home
It is not my lover, not my mother
Not friend.

No lover could hurt me as she has
Forget me except when I must give a hand
Give sweat and tears and my youth
So she can be younger, have a new face
And shine like a new bride.
And when I am done,
Throw me away because
She cannot bear this blot on her fair face
This ugly creature, all hands, no brains.

I came here with the hope of new love,
Because she welcomed me,
Promised sweet joy after the pain
And now I cannot leave
Because I have nowhere else to go
Staying, praying that one day she will remember again
The hope she gave to the little people
Instead of the riches she gave the big and powerful.

Spring cleaning and new beginnings

Am back...

For starters, here's a work in progress...

Growth in my city
Is a niche activity.
Just ask the birds, the bees
The suffocated trees
Pruned to gothic parodies
Of themselves and this gritty
world of the young and newly wealthy.

This was once-upon-a-town
Both feet on the ground.
Before it Bangalored the West
And ran with the best
For their failed vision of yest
-erday’s tomorrow and its thorny crown
of the hard-fought age of the brown.

Pesticola and the New Salvation

Pesticola and the New Salvation

There’s got to be something in the drink
I can’t see any other link
The stuff that killed the loathsome, furry
rat is the least of your worries.

Why else do you walk the line?
Sell them your thinking mind
For eight annas and a dry roti
Or manna and the KS advised orgy?

Me, I hope pesticola kills me first,
So I don’t strike to quench this petty thirst.