Snob

Baby, your drug-phase was hardly one,

A fling with laced Ganja,

and psychedelic trance is not

the same as its crackling,

simmering, spinal shiver that once

had generations hooked, and

governments fretting.

Bob, my love, is an eternal epiphany

of sun-locked dreads

and no, he is not the same as hip-hop

and yes, he is dead in a grave –

google him – that spans

many worlds

of islands and mountains

He hardly ever used ‘booty’.

Darling, the UK is not the final word

on everything,

certainly not on bhangra

a DJ is not your source on Mirza’s story.

and Kargil was not the only war we fought.

Don’t wear saffron so easily, and talk about

your caste when you run out of

conversation

Leftists aren’t lefties.

I can hear your car about now, my precious,

that large, glossed machine that sounds

like a tactless orgasm when revved up.

careful when you inch the road

behind my house, it is filled

with potholes big enough to swallow

affluence and stupidity alike.

Whims

When you said you liked to travel

I became a tourist for you,

slung my camera sideways

smoked in front of churches

pretended I didn’t already know

all the dark secrets of my city.

When you said you liked irreverence

I cursed you in front of your friends

bad-mouthed family, spat paan

around teachers and said loudly that

god and gandhi were both fuckers.

When you said you liked boundaries

I drew so many my chalk was soon powder

and I danced madly in the lines,

fenced the garden

and divided our bed into four equal squares.

When you said you liked metaphors

I wore glasses, breathed ideas into your ears,

and described everything

using “ten thousand gazelles

running on endless grassland..”

When you said you liked all things fluid

I had you watch me pee with a grin,

I played with water, saliva

and drank rum, tea, and

learnt how to swim.

Whatever took you so long

to say

you liked poetry?

Two pictures of the reading