Blood and Rain
A View from an Ex-Aristo (Mumbai, 2014)
Mother of God!
There you stand
tall and proud
the blade across your torso
angled
like a grey black sports bra
but you have no breasts.
Why no breasts?
Only straight lines
running true
without curving
without bending.
I stand for my turn
sometimes sit waiting
always waiting
for you
to christen me again
your pen
writing my name
in blood,
in drops of red ink
rolling,
rolling with my severed head
across the floor
my thoughts disembodied
stuck in limbo
for a soul to pick them up
somewhere
off the mainline.
I think they've lost my number
I've been waiting for hours
the never-ending minute
seems to stretch across eternity
like a rubber band
carrying within it
infinite tension
never breaking
always teasing
just a little further ...
Your blade is dull today
it carries rust
there is no one to whet it.
We are saved by gravity alone
Madame la Guillotine!
May Thou always be
so merciful.
Hallowed be Thy Name.
Sand and Yang (Mumbai, 2014)
The safest place in the universe is the eye of a hurricane. Walls of steam rise up around me making havoc of buildings, trucks breaking trees like pencils carving messages into uranium reactors that pop and fizz like corks and balloons now spurting blood as if some wrathful Goddess eyeless in the steam-colored garb of Isis drawn like oil paintings from the wells of fantasy threw a party for a fan following of misshapen clowns and half-baked misanthropomorphic entities hanging out the bored masculinity of the ancient desert having been assured that there is no water on the red planet and no little blue men worth waiting for hooded or otherwise. The balloons we live in are fragile and yet the storm protects us for the whirlwind has no center. His dark anger spins Him in the vortex of memory. And who are you to talk of fantasy said He you who live in the land of Bell Curves and Sorting Hats?
August (Philadelphia, 2002)
As you walk by the air becomes so heavy I am pushed against a wall Is it you or is it just the heat of August? Hiroshima breeze you are so heavy I am hanging like the leaves on the drying summer trees pulled down towards the earth Is it you or is it just the August air that makes me droop with so much longing? The August sun was always known to burn us lesser mortals with his august glare We sacrificed an apple for the rain I kissed the earth I heard a little girl cry out as if she knew the presence there If August comes creeping like a whisper through the hollows of your mind tell me, love then does September trudge behind? If you were a pebble in the walls of Jerusalem would they come crashing down? Is it you or is it just the mushrooms clouds of August? Sodom and Gomorrah lifted out like mushrooms from our lore, our fantasies borne into reality and christened Hiroshima, Nagasaki ... hanging heavy in the firmament laden with their sixty years of ripened weariness your glance is heavy as the August rain shining through them and the trees. The stares of the undying lifted through the skies reflecting points of consciousness the dying steps of the millenium now reborn into the new thunder like the heavy August rain and you.
Waiting for Rain (June, 2005, Mumbai)
Climb, gaze up where the steeple meets the sky scribble someone's name into the dust-filled clouds. Casino in the heavens lit by lightning somewhere the westerly wind sits poker faced covering diamonds about to be scattered wait for the sparkling rain.
Shards of Light (October, 2005, Mumbai)
In the shredded darkness of this night dazzled and undeafened stupid stupid, staring eyes stuck in the stupor of unceasing sight the heaviness of nothingness plodding through tortuous miles of wakefulness and twisting arms of time tick-ticking through eternity. Arise! Awake! Shake off your sleep! You swept through the room in all of your magnificence. An army of rays assailed us nailing me to shadows that have dared remain. Eyelids jammed are not like doors the lock of sleep cannot be forced with chisels chisels are at work carving out my name into each terrifying minute.
Acknowledgments: I have quoted song lyrics by Iron Maiden and Megadeth in some of my verses.