these bleddy women don't have tongues

these bleddy women don't have tongues
their belief they speak is
their​ first illusion

i find my tongue tied to
adam's apple

the bowl he gave
homes a crack
do you hear it drip drip drip...

all our blood
into the sea of silence it is red

"take these words and
barter us back
our wombs, you morons"

those verbs don't work
nor does his adjective
clauses or nouns
proverbs mock us
and some stand dumb at our feet
like his many hapless children

i pick one
out of hunger
and my eyes squint at
the sour grape, i throw it

we learn
the day is never born
in his orchard
we persist
ape, try and ape
play-act
it still bleddy won't.

i watch
two white birds dissolve
into the blue

and orange
swallowing the sun

frustration
rapes our nights, and
the old hag hides behind
her veil of clouds, dumb

and moody,
one of us:
her many daughters

... without language
this moon
has led better lives.

we go about pocketing words
like orange pips
believing we need them...

until someone says,
"but hey, there is no more magic
anywhere.

the trade is treacherous, and
war is rotten.
Let's just spit the orange pips
up his face"

the end will not be flamboyant

the end will not be flamboyant
the night will not gobble me up
the frogs will not sing goodbye
and no rose will be hustled down the lane
the petals would remain fresh untill the vase is changed
as the morning returns
into newer hands and a newer face and a newer sun
the man beside looks tidier than the other.
the bed will be made, the house will be
spread, the walls painted
there will not be a trace of how
you sneaked in
there will be no broken windows,
no twisted doorknobs
not a blotch of red
nor an empty glass of wine with a stain
there won't be anything unsightly, I assure.
just lullaby with the breeze
to the whiteness of my curtains,
and let me fall asleep.

04/05/2017

my body smells of old age

my body smells of old age
and the odour that wafts through
abandoned towns

but mostly it smells
of just waiting.

my hairline recedes into the sea
swifter than an ebbing tide
and my mind traces the footprints of
senility on a trance.

i gulp a culpable amount of
time my throat could barely allow...
i breathe

filling my lungs with salty hope
i would go into the rabbit hole
and emerge an Alice, but no,

i fall deeper into my own abyss
toes sinking in a quicksand of
memories, groping for

a better hold, the sea awaiting,
i erode, sand, smell, memory and all
in a sea of light, as my skin
becomes​ the green of the sea,
i see

the sea too now awaits
your touch
and the green light smells of
eternity.

(03/05/2017)

Oh, I will be mother

My womb is a war ground

witnessing bloodshed

after bloodshed.

My vulva isn’t the one you might call

a sweet pussy; it is

a frothing bloodhound.

If you dare listen to it

Somewhere deep within is an urn that hisses

Voices of dead children.

Do not ask me to bear any. For,

i’ll mother skeletons,

crush them in a mortar and

spread them across this brown land of yours

until all its cracks of hate is filled,

sealed and satiated.

Oh, i will be mother.

i’ll draw with my blood a crow

Or let my lust take shape

of a vulture.

Someone should feed on the corpses

you ceaselessly dump in my yard.

Oh, i will be mother.

i’ll birth wolves

that shred your maps

cutting people, scrape your

last dregs of power, and

tear the tongues of language

Oh, i will be mother.

i’ll bring forth witches

who’d hunt down every hate bone in your body

burn them until it splinters.

And i’ll dance around

as the charred memory of our oppression

goes up in smoke.

Oh, i will be mother.

Sorry i’m not your fertile land

But darling, i’ll be the burial ground for

maggots that prey on

the mangled breasts of my daughters

You leave half-eaten.

Oh, i will be mother.

i’ll pour out lava

Consume men like wildfire

And when all the walls you built,

the lines you drew, the books you writ

crumble to ash,

when this earth no longer remembers words 

that once reeked of

religion, race, colour, caste, creed or sex,

Maybe then 

i’ll spread myself and celebrate 

motherhood.

And this earth, too, will thrive.

Oh, i will definitely be mother.

But until then

Remember, even wildflowers

Do not grow on war grounds.

The Dinner Table

(Lately, I have been dabbling with Spoken Word poetry, and here is a recent one)

A divorce would have curbed

the bickering at 60.

Trust me, a divorce would have curbed

This bickering at 60.

The day’s follies

with too spicy a rasam

and an unsealed pickle bottle

douses her mutterings of cardiac pain

she is rambling, anyway, I can hear him think

from across the dinner table

And as the daily ritual of muttering

Under the breath begin (that I have long back stopped caring about),

The dinner table is filled with bowls of hatred,

anxiety, disappointments,

dreams gone to the drains,

complaints,

the day’s weight of waiting for nothing,

and the angry faces of the mundane and monotony

And suddenly they talk about going to the grave, my mum and dad

My curious ears perk up-

A family trip is foreign, you see

I fidget in my seat, remembering Ammi cackling

to taxidrivers where she is from

the one time I took her to Hyderabad

She actually told the auto-wallah

she wouldn’t trust him

As she’s alone with her daughter in a new city

I wriggle myself away from the clasps of that

Embarrassing Memory

My mother… she’s still learning

How to talk at 60.

I see her picking words

Like napkins, one by one,

Pressing and folding them

Until they are fit to be placed at the family’s dinner table

And she swallows her words in silence,

sending each syllable down her foodpipe

The years of marriage have taught her one phrase though,

and she asks me that all the time, “What would your dad say?”

and I want to ask her, “what do You say?”

and she asks me back, “what will I tell him?”

You see, the anxiety demon inside her head

makes her cave in even before

My father sets the question paper

And I give her the answers and she’s not even

Memorizing them.

Her anxiety is the reason I never run late

Her anxiety is the reason I don’t talk back to my father

Her anxiety is the reason I eat when asked to

Her anxiety is the reason I have always hated him

Her suffering time has

sharpened my claws that I once

chewed with silence.

Everytime I wonder why she is more

Mother and wife than a doctor

I also wonder if I was the tumour

Growing inside her she never operated upon,

Letting me consume her whole…

Tonight, words fell thunder, and tears fail

to douse my hot flushed cheeks

I watch nonplussed the drama

Wearing Ammi’s night gown

So afraid I might turn into her one day

But for now, all I know is that,

I the fevicol,

I the bridge,

I the in between,

I the conjunction

is tired of holding up,

Holding together Mercury and Pluto,

fire and ice,

love and anger,

screeches and silence… all under one single roof, 

that I scream.

I scream to the people who’ve been deaf so long.

Knowing they’d not hear me, I tell them

A divorce would have curbed

the bickering at 60

because love, here, in this house,

is neither warm nor smells like

a family dinner.

For me, love smells of

Amrutanjan

On my Ammi’s pillow

For me, love smells of

Amrutanjan

On my Ammi’s pillow.

daydreams

memories