Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Offering

Offering

The first offerings to the rains
Are always from the trees
Trembling and shivering in the wind
They bow their bodies, drunk on showers.

After them, the world changes itself
Into a series of small pools and rivers
Afloat on the pitted brown bodies of roads
Tossed across each other like fallen tree trunks.

Red buses roar across them ceaselessly
Like healthy animals, careless of
Lesser creatures and indifferent
To the clean shine of their own hides.

And from me also the rain plucks
An offering like a jealous goddess.
At first, she touches my brow and lips
Ever so gently to remind me.

Then she rakes cold fingers
Down my chest, across my back
Paints my skin with shivers and
Waters my eye with reproachful tears.

She plays a silent music through
The narrow flutes of my veins and arteries.
My body thrums to the silent music -
Alveoli puff like small balloons,

A few explode like raindrops and
At the end of a coughing fit, I produce
Two red spots on a white handkerchief
And the music is allowed to subside.

My body is bowed like a tree leaning
With the weak branches of my arms
On the impatient flank of a waiting
Bus that soon departs belching ridicule.

Plastic bags like leaves float by
In colours garish in the gloom
The first offerings to the rains
Are always from the trees

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

A Plastic Flag

An I-day post -

A Plastic Flag

This year I bought it on the street again - a plastic flag.
Orange and green leaking onto white in a small stain - a plastic flag.

Tacky? Yes. But cheap, waterproof and flag-poled
By a thin straw, it flutters gently in disdain - a plastic flag.

The chakra - count the spokes for every dialect and sub-dialect,
For every fence and flavour - count, lose count and count again - a plastic flag.

The future after all always comes neatly packaged and labelled -
So put it on your desk, no need to explain - a plastic flag.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

From another letter from Lesbia

Written in reply to a Dorothy Parker poem From a letter from Lesbia

From another letter from Lesbia

...While Sappho watches the Soaps my boy,
Listen carefully to the tip of the day
Love any lass you like, be she bold or coy
But not a poet - you'll wish you were gay.

You'll be up all night, while she
Works on her blank verse novel
After that, she still won't let you be -
She'll feed you each stanza with a shovel

If you're lucky you might get to see
Films that aren't sub-titled or slow
And you might even not have to be
At every single Vagina Monologues show.

Stay away, even if you yourself write verse
Even if she's sweet, supportive with differences few
For to put it in a manner most terse:
What if she's better at it than you?

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Distracted

Tonight your eyes,
are pools I can
no longer drown in.

Conversation lies beside
our fingers like an
untouched appertif.

Your moisturizer protected
palms on the table lie
like two white napkins

or envelopes of
questions but I can
only stare above you

A painting of a
girl too innocent
to have applied

the Kajal herself has
her pallo round her head
and tween her teeth

She's coy, but papery age
has pulled a tear from her
eye that beckons me

And leads you to ask
my absent self -
"Whats wrong?"

Whats wrong with the
flavour of my lipstick
stains on your neck

the spice of my scent
that you wear like
an afterthought

the waft of the gold
highlights in my hair
that light your eyes

And I have to honey
my voice and say -
"Nothing. Nothing at all."