Don’t lie to Kathmandu.

Don’t lie to Kathmandu: it’s a dot in your large cunt of states,

and dots never did hurt, unless they became ovaries.

Don’t lie to the smiling folk, warm like palmed coins,

because you already have your own roll along

coastlines, forests and muddy plains.

Don’t lie to Kathmandu - you’ve lied enough.

Played with its ease, tossed over its ramparts

and ruffled its antiquity.

Don’t lie; look, even boys with low-waisted jeans who

smoke on the streetsides ignoring the goras,

have come to loathe you. (Worse, be bored by you.)

Don’t lie to Kathmandu; they are already calling its

girls whores in your PGs, and charging them double auto fare.

Don’t lie; even your films have. Under its

warm filth is your own city, with newly installed

women cops and cratered roads.

Don’t lie to Kathmandu, it blots into a country

of people traipsing up mountains with fridge

and beer on their backs.

Don’t lie; it doesn’t ask for nuke-treaties

and will nod to playing second-citizen.

Don’t lie to Kathmandu, because lies echo everywhere,

in Guatemala and Mexico and Jamaica

- and then-

poems begin to write themselves.

Don’t lie to Kathmandu if you don’t want a poem.

J.

When he strokes you with four fingertips and half a thumb,
lets your cheek quiver under streetlight, smoke and catcalls,
know that it is his mating hoot.
If he allows himself the drag of your cigarettes, and boogies
to thumping hip-hop in your car, he is letting you know there
is possibility. Wild eye-beam swapping suggests there is none,
because he thinks it's all too easy now.
If he is staring at your chest hair and tilting his head in the
direction it curls, he will write poetry about - wet and alive -
but you may not hear the passionate metaphor.
When your legs are locked at dinner, and you wish to exchange
spoons and tongues with him, he'd like you to say so explicitly.
If he is dull, still and drunk on fine wine from '69,
and all by-lanes lead to your hotel, please don't treat him
like the hooker you take up to your room.
When he is in your bed, and his skinny yellows have slid
off before the whiskey, weed and biryani have arrived,
know that the revolution has gotten off its hind legs.

Just like the hours

what was it like to wake up, again
and again and again
no vein loving bone
no blood spurting fountain - just
waking waking again, again.

one white Saturday morning
after another, born in bare bathtubs
eating brittle toast from the time we were five
always Sigur Ros playing always them saying
you love death - maybe we did
so we walked into a lake
and called it a life.

A Ghazal In Autos

(A Ghazal I wrote five, maybe six months ago. A bunch of problems with metre, etc.)

A Ghazal In Autos

A good part of our waking-lives has sighed in autos.

Cities have been and gone, fleeting guides in autos.

Yellow and black - a magical machine, in which tales were spun
cigarettes smoked, shoulders dusted, make-up applied in autos.

A room of my own, a room for two, perhaps. A warehouse of desire,

And a temple at the time of the day I feel like your bride in autos.

The flat of your palm felt gentle on my stomach. And so steady, I grew

giddy with your smile. One second, then the next I lived and died in autos.

Can you recall how it felt? 9 p.m. - Pavarotti's voice it was I think

resounding, fading. It was for a night like that we should hide in autos.

Summer came. You were gone. I didn't dream it. Not even once.

rain fell sparingly. From that day it was only low-tide in autos.

I think of you often - at traffic signals, over speed-breakers and potholes

and treacherous curves and on each of the fifty roads that I cried in autos.

I am unconvinced of you; I am angry and I have no more to mourn,

Be gloved love, the next time such frail knots are untied in autos.

To the lady in the burkha at Jenny’s parlour.

It is only hair, only your snipped hair

that has quieted the madness of your

mad tangle, your unbathed stench

fermenting under layers of black

it is only hair love, snipped hair only - that

I watch fall around your grey, slight curves

frantically gravitating into the folds

Of the floor, because gravity works fast.

Only hair that you have

Begun to accept the absence of,

and learnt there is more anatomy

more lust more more heart in ear-lobes

gone waxy covered in

dizzy dry curls and

in your baby side-burns often left

unnoticed. It is all lust, all heart.

Hair like yours, only snipped hair that causes

Your eyes to wildly gleam at the

Thought of a cigarette in your hands,

Maybe a glass of whiskey, in a disco-cab

Racing to the beach.

It is hair, snipped hair in the sea,

That is being carried away to the

amused horizon, the myth

the sea created to escape?

It is hair, just floating hair,

that will swim till late-afternoon

like your salwar-kameez

like your peeling skin and

your burning nail-paint.

Well. Some good news. And even though I promised myself that there would be only poetry on the blog (for the 2-2.5 readers that it has, and I hope that number includes strange Amish Mulmi) I am tempted to say other things.
One is poetry related - straight out - I won this poetry contest, which was part of the Prakriti Poetry festival, and may even be reading at their festival next year. So, yes, joy and shameless sharing of self-promoting news.
Next, I cut my hair really short. Like really short. And after a little getting used to, I think it's a refreshing change.
That's it.

Poetry, soon - very soon.

K. Selvam and Company

K. Selvam had known he was
Hindu from the time he was born
but he had not understood it
well enough because he was
chasing after burkha-clad
women at Ghousia Ploytechnic.
He dreamt of
a certain Miriam’s appled thighs
and milky torso
Miriam’s appled thighs
were bruised the night she tried
to jump the iron gate
when her brother locked her out,
because she looked at Shabbir
and didn’t bat her mascara-dipped eyelids
not once
for a very hazy minute she had thought
her brother watched “Friends”
discussed football and women
with the colony boys
and so he wouldn’t care if she ogled.
Shabbir had sat through
psychology class staring
at the small of her back
her small small back that
made him dream of creamy coffee
and rainy days and no college
only only walks and bike-rides
and a dance-sequence. If she thought
it was cool then
he thought it was cool.
When Sonia brought home
Her small back after college, she
saw grave-looking parents,
a pregnancy test in their hands
she thought she had hidden well
There was talk of pastors, marriage
homosexuality, the pope
But I didn’t hear very
much after that.

I think they broke
Her with a Bible that night.


(Written September sometime. )