Masscult
Elation about well-timed ascendancy
has a certain piquancy. It extends to
those not affiliated to it. When *M C
Sher’s flowing tongue capsules his
long haul his happiness is mine, tap-
ping into frozen areas of my campaign.
In rooting for this Gully Boy I begin
to rekindle my abandoned side.
*Siddhant Chaturvedi in Gully Boy, breakout...
Before
I spoke their language as a philosopher.
I assumed harsh consonants accidents.
I stood in long lines at their communions.
They laid hands on. I listened bent forward.
I sat under their lectures, taking notes.
The seemed clean, free of the stain of questions.
They dressed so nicely, invited me out --
Beerhall nights where we...
Yarn
I.
Spread out like a tangential curve,
perched on window balconies,
I would stare at each abraded line of the sun
The sky was my favorite thing, how if I lay
horizontally, departed from the forces of
gravity and the will of life, everything was united
A quiet murmur would rush across the diaphragm,
knots and levers humming slowly...
A Dream of Youth
When we meet, we’ll fly together
caressing each other
with our enthralling beak,
We’ll sing the half-elapsed song
Twitter, twitter, twitter...
We’ll territorialize the sky,
Colonise her spheres,
Our wheezing would form thunder.
We’ll bathe in the rainbow,
Suck the evening twilight,
Soar down to nestle in
the unfamiliar nest of opportunity.
We’ll mouth each other’s adventure,
Will laugh...
11 243 Meters, Purple Mediterranean
The airplane wings draw new summer fragrances
in the fogs they’re expected by tomorrow's smiles
like a dawn or maybe a dusk
with a calm, lazy eyes the day
can witness the providence through all the blue truths
the winds lose their hearing with the speed of a fatal...
On the Crossroads
O’ father,
hold my fingers in your firm grip
and help me cross the road.
Suspicion
I’ve burnt myself half, fortuitously.
And deliberately, left the rest unburned.
Bike Accident
Helmet transforms into a skull.
The road runs as usual.
Insomnia
Night burns into an ashtray.
I fly to you with the wings of ashes.
Heirloom
When your mother raises her hand; earthy
brown, skin cracked open—
sun parched field—
iron hot temper
and hits you
the pain melts your
flesh,
bones,
marrow.
When your mother raises her hand to
strike you
the pain bites (your pet rabid dog).
She throws the foliage of her swallowed dreams—
barren land that was hers
and her mother’s
and her mother’s mother
who couldn’t...
Paradise
lonely feet on a subway train
at half past midnight
she misses paradise
where every day she would
collect a pocket full of shells
why not give her home away
for another trip to the coastline without a name
our lady train rider flashes back to the nights
where she would stumble drunkenly with
another girl who split...
A Fever of Living
Some nights step lightly,
like lily-shadows in blue water-
apparitions in transit, between dreams.
She awakens in a translucent purgatory-
a tread from an incipient dream
to a feverish slumber, to a body -
a map of nocturnal metamorphosis,
lacerated fish belly sewn with orange seams,
eyes like butterflies in rivulets of pee,
unmade and...