ELEMENTS AND US

You are the earth

And I the sky.

 

You send me your birds

Every once in a while;

I give them the clouds

The Sun and the wind.

 

I send you my rains

Every once in a while;

You give them the thirst

The song and a Sea.

DESCRIBING

I'm trying to describe how I feel

When you take leave of me

At the end of the day

And I see a brown bird breaking

Out of lone clouds

With full throated calls

Wings majestically still

And my hands like ants' tentacles

Searching to comprehend the largeness

Of a strange thing that fills the void

Move up the air in front.

And I'm trying to describe how I feel

When you take leave of me

At the end of the day.

NAME

I hear you call it again.

I have lent it to some before,

Kept it from some,

And though rarely,

Even changed it for some.

I had put it letter by letter in boxes,

And made totems out of it.

But after the excursions

It always came back like

A sullen and silent child.

A history more proper than its bearers’,

An essence deeper than a lifetime of wear:

A name always keeps to itself half its secret.

Time in spate froths off its silt on a name –

A fine silt that glistens in the sun,

Throbs in the rain, and hardens in winter.

You weeded it

And sowed a dandelion;

See, it has sprung again – 

Each silvery down in its fluff

Alert, glowing, as you call it.

I hear you.

WRITE

The witching hour past, the night grows sane.

The wisps of yellow sun pulseless remain

Enclosed in bluish pods half-poignant:

The dreamless slumber of tired children.

Now, toss the amber bead of poetry,

Quip, exorcise the womb of memory.

THE NIGHT BUS

A street winked

Darkness

The fading smear of a wall.

A darting bridge.

A lonely dog.

Hurrying asphalt.

A company of smokers.

It is hard to come to terms with:

the world only absently watches

as I, windowed, nightwards vanish.

Out of the Sea

The wave of your silence crawls over

And bites

On the candescent sands

And ebbs –

                   With a half-moon off my heart.

MONOLOGUE OF A SUICIDE

I’m still

Hanging about (…to turn a phrase)

The scabbed walls evilly itch

ceiling’s sallow white.

I stir in my forever:

it’s time, again.

And this rugged iron-hook:

She’d meant to hang a cradle here.

When the sick-sweet blood

foamed up to my tongue

and icy snakes eased down my spine,

I’d vaguely felt the cradle

tugging at the hook,

creaking,

moving softly,

…

softly.

All that was

before I started ripping

the curtains in desperation

and mirrors cracked on reflecting

my light-passing grief-swollen void 

and windows shattered in my silent screams

and she (at least once a day) entered my vapour-body

and exited with the hair at her nape on end and cold sweat

and they came and packed her things and spiders and lizards

and roaches and the slither in the warmth of my untouched heap

of clothes coldly watched their van disappear whining and snorting.

I thought it was great

I could gather my guts and finally get it done

on a late afternoon, my favorite time of the day:

slowing Sun and glowing silence, an animal of an hour.

Till the two policemen who (after much trying, irritably)

answered their calls and came, disapproved of my choice.

Tough timing, they told the buzzed up crowd. The offices

where the body must be reported are all closed.

He cannot be cut loose till afternoon tomorrow.

The black sun beneath the back-yard bushes stirred in his bed of worms

and I felt it in my deadness and I stirred it shook the hung weight of flesh

and my toes, like dead mice, all turned to meet the balls of my feet,

ached to touch the floor tiles where like clockwork a shadow

traced the swing and turn: left right and left again.

So, I surveyed once again

Things I early put in place:

a brace of keys, a broken watch,

a photograph from mid-school days,

a diary with last pages torn

for suicide note, cigarette stubs,

folded bills in pocket purse.

All’s as I kept, as such.

I was kept as I kept myself: hung,

for a night and half-a-day,

an unsteady straight line

whose invisible ends

pierced the sky up and passed into the earth 

down and bent at an infinite horizon to 

thrust a colossal wreath on the neurotic globe.

From the mossy silence

of a flaked corner

I gazed at them

getting me down

the next day.

Later

it felt so lonely

I kept making circles

and straight lines in the room:

nobody came.

nobody came

for a long long time.

Among

the foliage of ancient trees

I sensed iron fingers

crunching leafy colonies

of red ants haywire,

bursting, spilling 

sour acid

on somnolent green;

sensed sand filling my mouth

when in need of words.

And

I learnt since to wait the true waiting:

to look at the balloon of time incessantly inflating,

every last breath spent filling it out a little, and a little,

every first drawn breath heaving, stopping it a while, a while.

It’s time. As was always.

To stand and die.

To mark the six vertical feet of air with a death,

rather than flattened earth.

To feel it coming from the molten brain

rather than freezing feet.

To take it heads high and not to lie.

A word clicks shut.

I stir in my forever.