broken womb of thoughts

The Concubine's song

2009-11-07T15:02:00.001-08:00

Between us
There is neither
The void of a lusty night
Nor the fulfillment
Of a love filled kiss

Yet in this lost
Moment when you
Sleep upon my bosom
Curled child like
I wish in the debris
Of what was once
My heart

I could decide
If I want to stay
Or to leave.

Flutter

2009-07-28T00:31:00.000-07:00

With the monsoon clouds
tucked behind your ear,
piling away more that await
to see themeslves in your eyes,
You sit there not knowing
if I still breathe.

And I,
the one who kisses
the ground your breath touches
still long for the day
you shall see in the corner of your eye,
what a mere flutter does to me...

Monsoon windings.

2009-07-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

As the children squabbled over the marbles
That squeaked the now broken sunlight.
Hiding behind the twinkle in the eye,
was what I called us.

Below a banyan, with its roots breathing a sigh.
where the wind kindled the tips, till it almost sneezed.
Was us. Another whimsical us.

Cluttered by children clambering
up and down in the wet sand
Leaving behind footprints like a flock of hen,
Was us.
The silent, resilient us.

But as the rain drops fell,
Birds onto their nests swelled
Where did you run away?
Leaving behind the banyan and its wet hair,
The dancing children and the monsoon fair,
Where did you run away?

Where?

Losing it

2009-03-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

I lost it
That which I never hoped I had
But in secrecy knew I did
I have lost it

And yes I feel empty
When the breeze tussles my hair
As they fall loose, disheveled
Like a cascade of mourning
Limbs of a obscure octopus
That now has taken over my mind
I feel occupied
By the emptiness
That haunts me.

At least then there was you
And your chai stains upon my desk
Where you left that cup every time.
At least then there was the ghost of you.

But even in this loneliness
I cannot remember
If it was you who took it away from me
Did you drag it by its hair
As it screamed and kicked like a child
Or did you simply hold its hand and guide
It through as it hesitantly waited by the doorstep
It was you wasn’t it?

And yes now am empty

And have been so,
Ever since your ghost had
Set me free.

Empty.

I remember

2009-01-18T03:56:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I see you in a tune
In flesh and blood
Like a musical note that gave birth
To the symphony of memories that
Once remembered how it felt to be touched.
I play the song again and again in my nights
I sing myself to sleep.

Sometimes a falling leaf reminds me
Of how you fingers gently
Tumbled upon my skin
And I like a idiot
In the middle of the night
Press my skin against them
Just to see if I still feel,
To see if it was you who brought sleep.

Sometimes the howling wind
Reminds me how your tears felt
Crushing against my breast
As you softly wept.
Sometimes I feel the autumn rain
Thrash against them,
Just to see if it feels like you.

But to tell you the truth
I have no use for you
As long as I have a tune, a leaf
Some autumn rain,
I would be happy
Just with the wad of things
That reminds me of you

Left Behind

2009-01-18T00:05:00.000-08:00

By the peeling paint I sat,
The rain water seeped through the old wall
Dripping like tears of the temple
That was left unnoticed to ruins by time
By the ruined temple where we once met
I decided to look for your mark.
The puddles have washed away your footsteps
The water too refuses to dry up
I even wanted to wait to dig up your footprint
Only to let a gravedigger steal it away from my hands
What’s a dead footprint anyway,
When I cant see them dance?
So I sat and cried another puddle to fill your empty grave.
When my footsteps left the ground
I hear yours ring a bell
From the locked church tower in the misty eyes of god
But what can a feet less cripple do
But hope that may be someday
Ill find wings in the passing wind
So that at least for a second
I could see your reflection sheen upon the ringing bell
And sigh to myself of what it was.

Fireflies

2008-10-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

You who infest the cities at night

With your endless fiery eyes,

Burning away into the cold streets of

The city which never sleeps.

You with lithe metallic sheen

Upon your back, blurring away

With your bustling flicker into the

Eyes of this wayward drunkard.

You! How could I fathom you?

For often when I slip away

From the city’s maddening day

And let myself be enveloped by

The coldness of the night

I see your flicker waking my stagger

Swarming in like a mutiny,

With a prickly warning for everyone

Who refuses to see…

Tell me oh firefly,

When you storm across a homeless kin,

Thrown on the sidewalk to die for the night

Do you feel it ebb your soul?

Do you like us have learnt

To compare and reason why?

Answer me dear friend,

For I am just a drunkard

Drunk headlong with the moonlight

Wishing I could see the see,

And you with your flickering light

Has given me my endless nights,

Pervading and often serenading me

With the sweet resonance of light…

Alas! How ghastly has this become?

For me to realize that such a wayward drunkard

I have become, suckling upon this tinsel town

Learning to dance to the tunes of this dreary life,

That I can no longer tell,

The difference between cars and fireflies…

The difference between cars and fireflies...

Smoke

2008-10-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

Of all the things I gave to the wind,
It was you, who left me empty.

The burn embers of a dying cigarette,
The lost ashes of what was once human,
The weary light of a candle just before it dies,
cries with me.

Often upon the winds feet you dance,
enticing me, whimsically teasing the doors of my breath,
mocking me, singing a song of warmth
and asking me if I still remember?

oh how could I tell you in my life's desperation
how much I still remember how you once felt
between my fingers,
breathing life into my being,
awaiting to be blown away...

Oh I still remember.

Your memory haunts my lips
making them quiver for another mouthful of you,
for your life to exorcise my soul
and in second make my eyes teary in ecstasy.

And such is the torment I live,
unknown to your dance, but you still
with your elusive smile taunt me such,
reminding my soul how it was to be holy!

Oh torment me not now,
for everyday is beginning to be just
a pain stained memory of how without you
we are but ashes waiting to be be.

PS-

2008-10-30T04:28:00.000-07:00

Finding my feet - part two is still in the cauldron but I couldnt stop myself from putting up these two poems i recently wrote.

Finding my feet - Part 1

2008-09-07T04:40:00.001-07:00

The last month crashed down and I dint realize when it did. It had tumbled down and I have to say it was a joyous tumble. A tumble the gave way for growth, understanding and self actualization.

I traveled last month. Finally found my feet as they walked where time my companion took me. From sacred grounds on earth to more sacred ones in my soul. Things are definitely not the same in my heart and I definitely have grown immensely in the last one month, regaining authority, choice and understanding of my very being.

Bihar where Laloo sits below a tree spitting paan, where the uncouth people carry guns, a foreground of crime and naxalites, this was the picture the media had painted for me. But from the minute I arrived in Patna, it was the beginning of the end of such baseless accusations. With every second growing I felt the green breeze of warmth, innocent people smiling, amused by a city girl in a villager, the children naked playing ; it was a exorcism of everything the media made me believe Bihar was.

I stepped into Patna unsure and anxious to be embraced into comfort as family by a home I now call mine.

Sitamadi- finding my foot back to home
The memory that I cant shake away of this place is the emerald green lake where the Legendary Godesss Sita was found by her father King Janaka. It was at this spot my eyes stilled with the beauty it held the green serenity of this place I now called home.

We traveled a grueling 8 hours a 4 hour from Patna to Sitamadi delay due to the floods in Bihar. From the window of my car, I witnessed natures gallery of lush green bamboo thickets that stooped to kiss the lake, children with smiles that were still so pure it could warm your eyes, the sound of their laughter as their foot kissed the earth as the ran naked, banyan trees with their tresses swaying in the wind, young mothers with childlike faces battling with love with their crying babies… it was a flickering flashes of beauty.

Men crouching on top of buses, the narrow careening market ways, the roads where cows slept, more images, just more to see.

Strange realizations come to us in unexpected times. It was in the days I spent in Sitamadi I rediscover what I called home. Amidst the green, like a child walking barefoot over wet grass. I understood this is what home means.

My travel took me yet again to the holy city of Beneras. The trade city of everything sacred, the city famous for its saris,the city where ganga speaks and the ghats lead you to she.

I found friends here.

The days I stayed in Beneras this time, made me understand how lovely it is to find and bond with people you meet unexpectedly. Vishal (the sane one) and Siddharth ( the stoned one) have become so close to me that I feel life has its ways of finding the brothers you dint bother to see. In a way, in my constant search for family, I have found brothers of my creed.

It was in this city, in the bustling riot of colours, where paanwalahspunctuated every street and every corner you could see something holy, splashed in the saffron, I fell in chaos. The beauty of madness overtook me, the serenity it gave as we sat by the ghat listening to people sing in a distant corner, watching a lamp flicker across the ganges, smelling the scent of marijuana in the paan stained streets feeling the breeze as it ticked the flower garlands on display, I realized it shall always be with me.

All of it. I shall return I mumbled to myself, when it was time to leave.

I shall return to join the music of the river and find where I can rest free.

To be continued...

The Mirror

2008-08-24T03:28:00.000-07:00

And onto the window pane her reflection fell,
As the rain trickled down to caress the images in between.
Beheld in momentary realities, the images slowly slipped away
into the abyss of existence.

I peered in to see.

The frosted glass where people left their images
to be blurred and contorted to its fancy.
The pane where images stilled a while
Before vanishing into the pelets of fleeting reality.

I stared right at me.

Consumation.

2008-08-24T03:25:00.000-07:00

Surrounded by you,
Consumed by you,
Eveverything becomes reflections of you.
Your eyes, Your soul, Your scent
Prevail like ghosts that fumigate my very being with you.

I lay there by the window of truth,
overwhlemed with the happiness your presence gifted to my soul,
whilst you in you in your peaceful sleep
whispered music as breath to my awaiting ears.
it was there. Wrapped in my arms, you lay silent as your sweat kissed
my skin,trickling down from your brow to my bossom,
as you lips tingled by my barren chest,

Our fragrance was born.

And turning coyly in your sleep you snuggled
as you squeesed my soul from the palm of my hand
onto yours,forever for you to hold
Wandering with your soul, and you mine
waiting for life to unfold, here you are
my father, my son, my lover, my glorious surrender.

Bitten And Tempted.

2008-07-07T01:46:00.001-07:00

What would I be if I had not seen thee
Heard thy whisper by the forbidden tree
What would I be if I had listened to thee
Imprisoned in paradise a mere she.

And now that I did pay heed
Tempted to bite.
A life does beseech me.
What had I bitten?
It was life indeed.

2008-06-19T04:36:00.000-07:00

Bite the hand that feeds

I beseech you hurt me!

This unwinding will

has withered coyly into a pod

like a newly blossomed pea

that was devoured too early

from the comfort of its womb

the will has stopped to breathe

oh bite the hand that feeds

help me see if you can wake

the ones who forgot to breathe

In search of blank

2008-05-29T00:12:00.000-07:00

My head turned left, down into the broken alley. Gandhi ngr, a street which has tumbled into ruins. Gandhi ngr, where now a lone beggar in rags was rolling a joint. It was just two of us now. Me and you.

The beggar somehow wasn’t present, nor did the ruins of the flats and multistory, and the occasional mew of stray cats preying on the torn rats of the ruins went silent. It was still. I do not know if the lone beggar was intoxicated enough to reach this level, but I knew I was.

No, it was not a materialistic intoxicant. Not cocaine, marijuana, nor was it the petty pills of ecstasy or the rather elaborate LSD. It was different high. From my childhood, I used to get dizzy abruptly. I was six years old when I felt dizzy and fell off the rickshaw to school. I never could explain it, till I was sixteen. Now I slip into this intoxicating highs every once in a while, this happened when I realized what these dizzy spots were actually. I slowly turned it into my pleasure. I was proud.

I dint need alcohol, or any earthy intoxicants. My body devised this method, where I could get high anywhere but anytime was still out of my reach. So here I was high at work, high at lunch, high at a professional meeting, high at a date, and now high at Gandhi ngr ruins.

So this happened to me on October 22^nd. Though I had lost track of dates or dates, this date stuck onto my head like a parasite feeding on my lost brain. I was at a lunch date with yet another weird man I had met at work. Yet again, he had asked me out, and somehow as declining a client was never on my agenda I agreed. So here we were at a fancy Chinese restaurant whose interiors were designed to give you “peace and relaxation”, where new age music of the sea played all the time.

This was the day I remember as the last day of my life as a socially acceptable me. This was the last day as the advertisement producer, who laughed and breathed the fake air around her. This was the last day for rules that chained my wandering soul onto a broken electric chair, my life. I broke free.

I was free.

So here I was in the ruins of Gandhi ngr, may be a fortnight after I was freed. No, I am not sure. The days now only dawned and sunk into the night unnoticed. In a way I hadn’t the time for time, place or for any worldly placard. I was free.

I squeezed the card in my hand harder, it seemed to now disfigure and ooze into my moist palm. Yes! That’s what I wanted. I wanted to be one with what was on the card. Let me describe the card to you. It was a piece of paper I found in my jacket on the last day I left. I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know what it was, but somehow I thought it was my commandment. In bold letters the card read “BLANK”.

This is what I was in search of. Blank. But it was not a search like the ones I have had before, when pressure and tension abused my body, and time crept in as a silent rapist to remind me of my deadline. No. It was nothing like it. For here there was no dead line.

No pressure or tension and more surely no concept of time. I lost “time” when I walked out of that Chinese restaurant that day and haven’t bothered to look for it ever since.

So here I was haggard, on steps of a ruin, not wanting to look back or turn to my kingly parasitical past, still high without an intoxicant. I turned. I saw him. He was a tall burly man of forties, who could camouflage into the ruins.

“So”, he said. “You are here”. I stood there still trying to get out of my avid high. “You finally found me ah” he sniggered. My lips for some weird reason broken into a smile. Not a sarcastic one, not an egoistic one. Just a smile, like the ones when you were a child.

For some reason then I broke to tears, I cannot explain why for by now I have stopped explaining things to everyone around me, even to myself.

Then a silence fell. “You are free” he said. “Ah” I replied. I was in loss of words, not like an Alzheimer’s patient but seriously dumbfounded like a breast feeding child. “Are you ready to meet BLANK”, he asked.

My mouth opened but no words came out. I was breathing cold, yet my body was heaving hot. My tongue which had remained dry now salivated. Here I was starved over a fortnight, with my clothes now in rags hanging loosely around this thin skeleton. Here I was ever ready.

“You shall now be liberated” he said.

My eyes closed. I fell onto his feet. I didn’t squirm. I didn’t feel the pain. In ecstasy I found it.

I found BLANK.

The oblivious beggar now noticed, a woman in her mid thirties, clutching the lamppost. Her guts bleeding. Her body cold. Her eyes closed. Liberated indeed.

Liberated indeed.

Indulgence

2008-05-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

Strolling in a conversation with the wind

The waves played with my hair.

And the pebbles rolled by…

Kissing my feet

Worshiping my heel

The pebbles rolled by…

Resurrected by my finger tips

Dying as they fall into the water

The pebbles rolled by

Fishes consuming my toes

And with sand that held onto my heel; jealous

The pebbles rolled by

The wind suddenly stopped

Scooped to kiss flowers in my hair

And the pebbles rolled by...

Swept by a instant I gave into the caressing waters

And gave myself to the wind to devour

Far beyond as the cosmos sat to drink my soul

The voyeuristic stars peeped to feed their lusty eyes

And the skies darkened and cried

And unnoticed the pebbles died.

And unnoticed the pebbles died

She

2008-05-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

With a waist like the beak of a swan
she sings to the silent winds
seducing the lost reason
to kill itself without rhyme

lips locked in the splendor
of maze like eyes
she invites a subtle
wind to lisp her heaving breath
and to her arms I surrendered
a child coyness sans
in her supple body
in the sweet torment pangs
I felt at home at last.

She was the song
I was a mere thread
she was the melody
I was what her eyes said

her smile kissed the planet
and a distant labyrinth it began
a kingdom far away
a fairy’s lone land

and in that flower kissed arms I lay
afraid to breath lest it killed her sleep
and in the dew kissed flower I sang
afraid to dance lest I should wake her feet
and in that lost moment
this life strolled away in wanderlust
and in a flash gave away what I felt inside!

naked

childlike

lost

adoring

the beautiful mist

called she.

Five

2008-05-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

A glint across some wine.

“I am done” he said. “This hangman has to quit”, he said; as he slammed down his fork in the middle of his cold meat, which very much looked like him raw, unclean, half baked in parts, and covered in precocious layer of blubber.

The plates clanked against a wine stained table cloth, then momentarily stilled in her pupils.

She turned and the flicker of candle was gone. Someone breathed she thought.

No she was wrong. He just walked away.

An empty room and a skinny woman, lone on the dinner table with a half eaten peach rotting by the plate. She slid another oreo cooked down her throat. it was her regular fifth, the one before what she called the threshold, rather the one before the one that breaks the threshold to hold it in. But today five was a good number.

Five fingers down her throat.

She followed her ritual.

Her ribs ached to be covered by the nonexistent flab only her eyes saw. And this was the story of a chubby little girl who refused to grow up.

Five did it today.

He left five minutes too early.

She collapsed 5 seconds after her 5th ritual of the day.

It was all like black jack. And suddenly five became the lucky card that could draw it all. These unrecognized fateful events like a join the dot picture.

A picture of chubby girl and the man who left home 5 minutes too early.

Song of the wind

2008-04-27T23:17:00.000-07:00

By the glorious rays of the sun

I was born naked to kiss the joy

The world once drank out of vials of petals

Kissed by the ordained joy I began

To listen the larks sing the lullaby

Of death ever slowly hissing in the wind

It was then, one fine day in paradise

Our eyes did meet and our hands

Held what we fostered as life as

The nomadic wind that led

What was to be.

In sporadic breath we lived

In subtle intimacy like such of

A honey seeking bee and a

Torn petal pollen laden on the sea breeze

To us the children are but a fruit

Who know not what the future holds true

But by the seed buried deep in their hearts

For the awaiting earth to bide in as roots.

To us we are but speck of dust

That the dew encased as the dawn broke out to smile

But what are we?

What are we if the wind decides to die ?

The Woman

2007-10-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

He turned to see

What he had made of her

As she awaited by the banks

Of the sacred river

Her vermilion etched forehead

Crept by the moving window sill

Of his rickety old motor boat

As she disappeared into the horizon

As a faint dot, a fading flame.

By the endless fish drenched ocean

His sweat rolled by the sun’s lust

Morbid fell the fish amassed by his net

Empty though was his heart that raged

By old rusted window sill

Dawn to dusk, week to week

He sat there in the sea

Wondered where this woman

Who’s vermillion etched forehead

Rested safely by his hearts cease

Had burst out of the little flower girl

Who sat coyly by his side as Agni

Announced the couple to be

And blessed them with prosperity.

He sighed another sigh

As his hands withdrew roughly the net

He so carefully scattered below the sea

Quivering to his sight as he closed his eyes

He saw her willful entity

As she burst open the doors

Of the flower girl who once wed he.

Her lips stained by his teeth

Her breath heaving silently

Her arms tightly around he.

She surrendered for him to see.

As the net he laid brought back bounty

The knot he tied got him she

Not the flower girl.

But the woman whose vermilion etched forehead

Told the world, that there was he.

So you have walked away too?

2007-09-16T12:03:00.001-07:00

Alone I waited, in the red mist of existence

Waiting to bring upon an identity, assurgent

I waited pining in pain pregnant with desire

Yearning you to life, as you died in the hands of your mother

I waited long for someone to hiss my spirits to life

I wanted long for someone to walk my side

Then you came along, suddenly gave me life

Why then did you run, even for a moment

From the flamen ashes you spilled upon my heart?

Why then did you not answer, neither recall

Today when I stand alone by your ashes

I have forgotten how to weep.

Its just a mother washing the bones of a still born

By the holy sands refusing to seek

Under a blue sky

2007-08-28T23:28:00.001-07:00

I stand under the moon
Where the umbrella man
Holds up the blue blue sky
With little moth holes for stars
A old handless pan for the moon
I stand under the moon
Where the umbrella man
Holds up the blue blue sky.

The stars shine, bright, fine
Where I drink the moonlight
The stars shine bright, fine
Where my soul rests tonight
For I stand under the moon
Where the umbrella man
Holds up the blue blue sky

The pathway is closed
The stairway to fish to the sky
Is the only given choice
Should I stand drinking the moonlight?
Should I touch the hollow inside?
For I stand under the moon
Where the umbrella man
Holds up the blue blue sky…

Naked Identity

2007-07-26T04:22:00.001-07:00

Sheltered by his shoulder
Craved by his eyes
There in his arms, life began.

I was a naked girl
Walking by the beach
Where the shores trampled
Across my bleeding feet

I was a naked girl
Walking by the beach
Where the adulteress sky
Slept with the sun in the dusk
Making her lover the sea weep.

I was a naked girl
Walking by the beach
Till your hands held me
Taming my bleeding feet
Gave me my identity

I am just a naked girl
Walking by the beach
Where the waves clashed
To meet the sultry rocks
Whenever in bed eyes closed
Lay we

The beginning

2007-07-26T04:17:00.000-07:00

In loss of words
I sang
Lost my breath
Yet I ran

In love’s sigh
I lived
In his whisper
I cradled

In his yearning hands
I sank
A sailor without a life jacket
On a sinking ship
A wanderer without footsteps
In a pathless ocean
A mother without a child
In a heartless world

I began

I.

Began

Ode to the free children of Mumbai

2007-07-26T04:14:00.001-07:00

Lost like the swaying
Roots of a banyan
We clung onto life
As the transient winds
Kissed our feet

By the doorsteps of chance
We ran like rats
Screeching coyly at
The sarcasm of life

Here we were
Here we are

Worlds lost children
White souls dipped in fluorescence
Here we were
A tomorrow yearning to be.