How many poems does it take for the sum of grief and resentment raised to the power of loneliness and divided by the difference between joy and numbness to tend to zero?

There are days, whole days that go by without me thinking of her

And then there are days when I can think of nothing but her and how much I ache for her 

And honestly, I can't tell which kind of day is worse 

 

Peace lily is blooming in the garden, 

I watch it anxiously, expecting it to wither even as I watch

Peace lily is blooming in the garden, 

Its beautiful serpentine hoods raised, 

Its yellow-white spathe shying away from prying eyes

Peace lily is blooming in the garden, 

I water it cautiously, just enough, not too much,

Shield it from the sun, so it has warmth but not heat, 

Keep it safe from the dog and the children, yet let it stand on display

Peace lily is blooming in the garden, 

I wonder how anything so lovely grows in my garden, 

Untarnished, unsoiled, untouched by the turmoil here, 

Maybe I've forgotten what it's like to watch something blossom,

Maybe I've no understanding of things that grow more rapturous with time

Peace lily is blooming in the garden

Plentiful

The plentiful rainclouds have just passed

The air is abuzz with freshly hatched butterflies

Everything's dressed in sparling emarald

I stare hither thither... Entirely mesmerized 

This time of the year always reminds me of my mother

More specifically, of her dying slowly and painfully

In a way that no one deserves to go (least of all her)

This time of the year reminds me of how much I miss her

 

I am trying to remember the good times, the miracle she was

But everything I’ve come up is as frayed and distressed as the

Bottoms of the then fashionable jeans we had that she so hated

All I can remember reminds me of how much I miss her

 

Her smile—shy and quivering, like it was expecting to be scared off

Her long-slender-bony fingers—and how they felt on my forehead

Her voice—more specifically, her voice calling out my name

Oh and it hurts how much I miss her

 

Some days I fool myself with a fantastic mirage of her

Imagine walking into the kitchen to find her standing  

With her tall back to me, her long neck bent over some chore

I wish I could wrap my arms around her, tell her how much I miss her

 

I wonder whether those whose lives she touched ever think of her

Her way of taking on everyone’s aches and pains, absorbing all

And making it her own, of comforting those with no hope of comfort

But whether the world cares or not; I do and I miss her

 

My eyes miss watching her move around the house

My body misses those long ‘it’ll-be-okay’ embraces

My mind misses the belongingness it found in her

Every day, every day, every day, every day, every day

I miss her

Iamhatingthistimeoftheyear

Again

Itislikesheissicklyinginherdeathbed

Again

Andmylifeisfuckedbeyondredemption

Again

AndlikeIhavetostandbyandwatchherdie

Again

Endorphins

Sunset; sky turning pink purple

Legs hammering like pistons upon the path

Wisps of hair stinging like whips in the wind

Heart pounding; ears roaring; mind soaring

Sweat tracing serpiginous paths on hot skin

Face flushed enough to illuminate the night

Trees swishing in the breeze, whispering

Reaching out, fingers sweeping through leaves

Fluttering enticingly on the branches of the bowed boughs

Momentum propelling; pushing past everything

Of Bees and flowers

Hush now and let me sing you the song of your heart 

I'll sing and then we will sing together until 

You can sing it alone and I can find another 

You know what I keep wondering about

How most of us understand that life is a transient thing

A flash of shimmering, golden fish swimming rapidly with the stream

 

That ‘This too shall pass’ applies to almost everything

That any glimmer of permanence is a magician’s illusion

That we must eat change for breakfast-lunch-dinner (whether we like it or not)

 

For when we are elated, there’s a little part of us that knows it’ll be over too soon

For when we can’t stop crying in the shower, we are telling ourselves the pain will end soon

For when we raged against someone enough to want to kill them, even that dissolved all too soon

 

Yet

 

We seem unable to see that love (in any of its human forms) is no different

That ‘This too shall pass’ applies to OHHHH EVERYTHING

Instead, we latch on to ‘Forever’s and 'Forevermore's and ‘Ever-After’s

 

You see, I wish I knew it then

 

That last time I dropped you off at the airport… I wish I knew it then

Not because it was the last time I saw you (it wasn't)

But because it was the last time I couldn’t wait to see you again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe the difference lies entirely in perspective

I see the winter tree, seemingly lifeless and barren, a hopelessly sad thing

The tree, having shed all—leaves, flower, fruit, and burden—has never felt more free

 

Of late my heart feels like a house
that's been left locked-up and empty too long
Visitors appear occasionally
Some to see if they can live here
Others to satisfy some arbitrary curiosity
They leave marks in the wrinkle-less sheets of dust
Only for time to smoothen them out afresh
The ghosts of the past never leave though
They are here to stay and to drive the visitors away
They are the friendly kind though, even with their haunting ways,
They keep the ghosts of tomorrow and the marks the dust won't protect at bay

Gentle, be gentle

For everything moves when you do

As you forge a path among the slim reeds

Some bend and sway while others snap at the neck

For everything moves when you do

 

Gentle, be gentle

You are billions of atoms displacing hundreds of billions of them

Everything you touch or don’t is moved by your existence

The life you lead is happening to so many others too

For everything moves when you do

 

Gentle, be gentle

Everything you’ve ever said and done and thought

Everything you will ever say and do and think

Is an arrow shot in the dark bursting into a million more

For everything moves when you do

 

Gentle, be gentle

The hubris of brash youth, it may not seem a vice 

Putting yourself first, every day and every night

You leave prints, cast your shadow, a you-shaped bruise

For everything moves when you do

 

So gentle, be gentle

 

 

 

A debauchee’s ode to self-love

All I have known of loving men is emotional labour

And by that, I mean back-breaking, soul-sucking toil

Oh, the relief of carrying nothing but yourself

Oh, the relief of taking nothing but pleasure from their sex

So, I put on my scarlet negligee under my ‘third-date’ dress 

That hugs my ass and rides up my thighs and slide on

A miniscule thong and my reddest, wettest lipstick for him

To eat off my face like dessert when I meet him at midnight

We’ve only just been shooting words so far, and yet

You can hear the pistons firing from a mile away

There’s no shame; even a brief, sweaty glow of coital elation

What he lacks in niceties, he makes up for in hunger and

With his fingers and tongue and all that phenomenal foreplay

Even after all this is over, there is no sense of either longing or loss

(Bonus: I've always wanted to fuck to David Gilmour’s solo

You know, the transcendental one at the end of High Hopes?)

All the while, I keep myself safe; there is no danger of love

(No, don’t correct me; it’s a veritable fucking danger) 

But humans are creatures of habit; so, if we are doing this

It must be punctuated – by time or space or both

Or the new old(er) guy who needs to tell me I’m a goddess 

Although I'm already wrapped around his hips and wondering

How not to roll my eyes; instead, I roll away after I’ve had my fill

Leave the bed tousled and unmade and back the way I came 

The night air, cold and crisp, embraces me once again

(Just as he did behind the surreptitiously-held-open door)

Alone again, a giggle escapes my lips, waking the watchman

The jubilation of knowing that I’m my own and no one else’s

Deliberately marching only to the sounds of my mind’s voice

Heck…everything else is noise, everything else is noise  

I dreamed last night
Of being plagued by a stupendous

Hunger
And seeing the moon turn into a tangerine so

Ripe
Of plucking it right out of its silky, tousled

Bed
Of biting hastily into it, breaking past its taut

Flesh 
Consuming its innards, the sour and sweet

Juices
Spilling over the curves and corners of my

Lips
Tracing sticky saccharine paths down my

Neck
I wiped my overfull mouth with the backs of my

Fingers
Opening again to languidly run my tinging

Tongue 
Over its ridges and calderas, the untouched

Crevices 

Of inhaling the heady scent of its moonshine

Sweat
The sound of moaning and the mounting

Rhythm

Like drumbeats rising to a lascivious

Crescendo

My eyes flutter open; not strangely, I think of
You 

And so I drink all the poetry I can find,

Letting it spill and wash over me 

Letting the words reach the places I can't 

A Pinter pause

I’ve been holding out, turning the outside inwards

The truth is, I was (and am) trying to find the words

The right ones to describe what I feel

(Will I ever find them like I once did? I cannot say.)

 

Things without legs still crawling up and down my spine at night

They whisper things in my ear and fill me with dread and fright

I hum aloud and try to drown their voices and the noises

I scrub myself raw to wash off the feeling of them on me

 

I recognise the dissociation, the practiced breakaway

But haven’t you left bits of you in haunting places far away

Some distraction, some potion for forgetting

Some liquid courage, some warm body to lose yourself in

 

I’m a hoarder of memories of any and every kind    

They lie askance in the dusty attic of my mind

The proud stand centrestage; others lie shrouded like a life’s remains

That way I can like the world better, even like myself better

 

Poetry knows no pretense; these verses, they cannot lie

Thus do they betray me, leave me lying naked beneath the night sky

Like a great still lake, the velveteen expanse mirrors my darkness

Leaving me no place to hide, no place to run away

 

I don’t mean to eschew these feelings forevermore

Just some time, some silence to mend what’s sore

To take what’s left and start afresh, build anew

To reclaim myself, to be (maybe for the first time) whole and true

Blocked writer

All ye who love the written word

Has it to you ever occurred

A glorious vision conjures itself up in your mind  

A lacework of gilded thoughts of every colour and kind

Only to dissipate prematurely like wisps of vapour

Alas! Too long did it take for pen to meet paper

Yellow-white the sheet of paper
Stop running, it says
Drop the façade, hang up the cloak,
Sit, it's time, it says

I know you, I will see you
In your hastily pencilled (erasable) words
Some barely whispers and others gashes
I will take them all, it says

There's bloodletting overdue
Drain your excesses here, won't you
Tucked away I am from all and sundry
I will never betray you, it says

There's a stoop in your back and
A draw upon your mouth
The spark's been fanned into an inferno
Put it out before it kills you, it says 

Always haven't I been your receptacle
Give me your absolute truth, it says
I will be your mirror, your sanctuary or
your keeper forevermore, it says

A question of belonging

This land does not belong to me; It is not my land, 

Through no act of volition was I born here,

Instead of the across one of those concocted borders,

A chance event, nothing more; for better or worse, I do not know

This is not my land any more than that clear azure expanse is my sky, 

Or the sun that warms my bones this cold day is my sun, 

Or the wind that sweeps my hair into a frenzy  is my wind, 

Or the ocean that spiritedly spritzes me with salt and sand is my ocean, 

This land does not belong to me; rather, I belong to this land, 

This belonging, a roughly hewn and sewn garb, 

For here have I laughed, longed, loved, lost, lusted, laboured,

Here, on this land, is the only home I have ever known 

This land to which I belong never asked me if I have a god,

Where my parents came from; what tongue I spoke, the colours of my ensign,

What I put in my mouth to sate my hunger or what I drank to sate my mind, 

It didn’t ask me who I love; nor did it worry about the things I hate

Now you say that this land belongs to you, 

A you made up of those who raise these questions,

A you of who'd spill the blood of this land's children upon her, 

A ‘you’ that won't let there be an 'us', a 'you' that defines a 'them'

But this land does not belong to you, it is not your land,

And it's only time until you are extradited from the 'you',

By the very lines you are carving into her red-golden-brown-black earth,

By your flesh and blood, your kith and kin, your peculiarities painted onto your skin

And when it's your turn to lay claim to your home,

I bid you remember who threw the first stone,

Who off-ed the heads and broke the backs,

Of all those to whom their home belongs