i am a dilapidated house you shall not stay in

before you begin, i should warn you

we come from different galaxies
you haven't seen me at crossroads, my toes
burying deep into the hotsand as my head
swells up ready to burst and balloon up into the air.
you couldn't​ stomach the blood i bleed on my bed
even as i chew on nightmares for breakfast,
clutch the bedpost and darenotunhook my grip

the reality's​ slipping underneath with

memories closing in

i can cut your throats to show you

what red smells like, the blood will then not

make you retch
nail your tongues that carelessly lick my wounds

with half-chewed words. no,

you haven't yet seen this glorious mistake

the earth bore out,
nor will you ever witness such colossal depths

in your safe cocooned happilyeverafter lives.
my poetry won't please you, my words
won't be the ones you'd listen to on lazy sunday afternoons,
i did not learn this goddamn language to wish you

sweet-dreams
they will pull you down from your high towers, and boy,
they are the fall when your dreams jolt you, know–
they will leave you splattered all over my pavement

like dissected frogs, and

i won't bother covering up. i won't dress you,

my mothers did not raise me to nurse men that happen my way
what will it take for you to see, i shall claw your eyes out–
you wear them like buttons anyway!

i will not stop midway,
this roadblock, these lanes, tree-lined avenues, not a

sightseeing landscape i will dig until the rocks lie upturned and

the brown sand burns your eyes so used to seeing sepia
and pink tinted postcard lives. my body will drill its way up

like an earthworm squiggling up your dining table,
cream white napkins, frosted cakes, and

neatly carved people,
i will crawl further up your face and bite

those pleasantries off of you. the stories i tell you
will be what your nightmares are made of. my presence

an eyesore, my words will scorch your tongue, and
you will fidget in your ice-cold chair, and i will still speak of it.

speak of it all until it

echoes in your grave, until the rivers
carry it and the leaves rustle to it. i will still speak of it

to the stones, your bones and see you lie

stone cold and still.

you should know by now

i am half-beast, meant to hunt your rats of privilege

you have gotten used to living with

for years. if you think i am civilized,

think again- i have learnt early
civilization translates to taming, you cannot
trap me inside of it. boy,

by the time you were learning to tie your shoe lace,
we were learning to cover up our knees.

you tell me now, 'make love not war', and i could think of a thousand tales
to show you how they are one and the same.

the land where i come from blood runs brown

and bruised. we are not soaked in turmeric

like your legends believe; we're baptized

in our own blood. grit and soil adorn my women

clenching beedi between yellowing teeth even

when rounded fists thrust our stories back into our throats, we spit-
we spit out saliva mixed with war and lust

and blood and semen our mouths
and minds could not un-taste. i know
they were all warriors before me, those women,
we would not have survived otherwise.
so when you come by me, you should know

i will be a wilderness
you will lose yourself in, a mess

you will get entangled in. enjoy sinking in
for a bit until you find yourself neck deep in chaos, revel in here

as much as you want to,
live inside my body as much as you want to,

peep into that well of a mind, take a sip of
my heart, but do not for once

try to overwrite me in your own tongues, i will pluck you

like a tick and blow you to the breeze; keep your knapsack packed.

because at nights the tears, the blood and hair and all of me

you did not want to see become mine again. all the stories of
heartache and cries will echo into my own ears

even before my lips stop quivering.
they are mercilessly mine and mine. alone.
and you cannot purge me into a cleaner mould.
you will downsize me to fit in your brain. boy, i am only meant for your

heart, you never learn that. nobody ever learns that.
no, i will not bite into that equality chip you offer. i know my
legs will forever stretch beyond your bed. and i know also

you are no Robinhood to chop them off.
i am a glass shard of a million galaxies, the
memory of a billion wounds, my tongue will cut you, again and
again and again. and one more time if need be. because silences
are our godmothers' softened breasts we have snuggled ourselves in

for too long. and outgrown from way longer. and if
you still try to fit me in your brain box, know that i am a shape-shifter

i run faster than quicksilver. my words in your ears

would be forever the distant hum of nightcreatures

you mistake for silence. now, you too shall leave.
well go now, unlearn me like your every yesterday

– i am a dilapidated house you shall not stay in

i wanted to tell you

talk show host, you ask me to stick to
feminism. do not talk about lesbians​, you say,
stick to feminism.
i see feminism is hotcakes now. or do you prefer it be
women's empowerment? 
you've sold women's bodies for years, now
you sell us our rights
you've decided to give us freedom in
installments, a piece of pie we should be
grateful to bite.

i wanted to tell you i cannot see one from the other i cannot
remove it like a slice of tomato from cheese sandwich.
they do not bifurcate like your hypocrisy
and liberalism; the feminism i know is a hot pot mix of
race, gender, sexuality, caste and all of my people's voices
you've hushed in everyday holocaust. i wanted to tell you
i cannot pluck the odd petals out because you
like your flowers clipped. i cannot pit
one woman against another like you want me to,
the way you've done for ages.
weigh one more because she sleeps with
men like you unlike the other who prefers your sister.

i wanted to tell you lesbian women aren't werewolves,
dark sinister beings bent on snubbing
your manhood, burning mankind,
they're not nymphomaniacs you've heard
titillating tales of, or
fantasize and get a hard on when their
bare bodies blaze your computer screen for
sizzling minutes before vanishing
promptly into their mythical worlds.

i wanted to tell you, they're my sisters, my mothers, my grandmothers, my daughters, me,
with our sceptre-willed bones, mottled skin,
flesh and hair weaved into tales,
hearts grazed by terror, blood sucked out, living, breathing,
gasping in this sulphurous void you've created
to please your own sex, build your empires
for progeny on progeny so you can continue
thriving. cockroaches thrive i wanted to tell you,
you live off us, you've lived off us, made our
bodies yours, our minds yours,
our love yours,
our mouths, our tongues, our aeons of lives, and
even our stories of births and deaths
yours.
live off us, emptying sperm after sperm into
all of those wombs you've no right to and
casually call it a Summer wedding at the plaza, and then
tuck us into your attic when we shriek your madness out.

i wanted to tell you your race is doomed the moment
you started seeing​ love
as the hallway to marriage.
i wanted to tell you that we will no longer
cut ourselves to fit in your trash box
you call equality, for
we're not plastic figurine for you to make
legos out of our limbs. i wanted to tell you
anonymous was a woman for hundreds of
years and yet she survived. so go,
take the back seat now, feminism will do
just fine without you, i wanted to tell you

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.