Can words kill at dead of night?
Tightness in the chest caged in anger,
welts of anxiety brand with hot iron
till saliva in the mouth dries,
the insides like squishy seal falls apart

in your hands. You thump the empty cave,
muted cries fall silent in a dark well
as you scoop the blackness of night
for dregs of life at bottom of the cup
he left unwashed in the sink.

The answer slumbers in the dusty book,
at the edges thumbed by fingers now frozen;
voice crumbles as rusty iron in my mouth,
ashen in colour with the taste of love
that I hold in my tongue, and refuse to swallow.

The smoke reaches in vain for the branches,
like a dying serpent, prone in supplication.
Thread looks as if snapped, but like a spring
under sandy bed flows, likewise you
throb in silence, in the pauses between lives.
 
When does a poem become a prayer,
life a river that stretches in the faults of time?
Do you trace intersection of lives with a twig,
sit at the fork of the road arching in ascension
even as you pin a finger on my coil of grief ?

The shadow lengthens, breaks on the sugarcane fields
as the day advances. There is very little that I can do
before darkness settles at the corners of my eyes,
the cold stiffens the bones as indigo dusk deepens.

The footwear has worn thin doing chores, my palms
are a complex fold of lines, scales of skin and age. 
I have picked a lifetime litter of dry leaves from almond trees,
collected oranges fruits that hung like rice paper lanterns.

This is the last winter,  I stand before a hearth stoked by
strange hands and drink my tepid tea alone in a hotel room
that still holds warmth of bodies wrapped in swathes of  
Kashmere shawl as the moon froze  like a saucer of milk.

I remember the lives that started journey from my loins -
paths since covered in dust. My life map is a crisscross of transits;
at every departure a new passenger sat on the seat next,
telling not the stones I gathered on the way, but the ones I dropped.

Photo : Pete McGregor

Words hover in stasis, fall all over a little later
like knotted hair of an emaciated monk:
silence after the raging wind renders havoc.

The footfalls are covered by a fine dust,
the dull thud dislodges shell from the back of snail,
quietness like fabric covers the proboscis of senses.

Colors implode behind eyes, crests of mountains
get indistinct as viscous river of lava flows thick,
glues the lids and creates a rich firework inside.

The wakefulness remains unbroken, loud bur of images
like plague of gnats embed in the cornea of thought,
purple heart of candle lost in the glare of radiance.

Pinpoint of diamond where million paths of light converge,
cuts through the sheet of glass noiselessly, layers
like wafers are shed and what remains is emptiness.

One measure cane jaggery, half measure palm jaggery,
a jute bag of iron fillings. Add these into water taken in an
earthen pot, stir with staff from mango tree every two days.
Craft a bamboo reed into a pen, wind it with rags of wool,
read stories of gods for inspiration. Bathe in Swarnamuki,

make an offering in the temple before holding the pen
to dip in ink (settling at the pot like dark thundercloud)
and trace the arms and limbs of gods. First stroke is a messy line
 – it’s meant to be that way, a lesson in humility:
bamboo reed is only a simple tool, an artist is not the Creator.

I brighten my backyard with pots of dyes, fashion linens
with pen craft, make panels, tapestries with tales of Gods,
incarnations of Vishnu in indigo, madder and turmeric
that I let soak into cloth. Layers of colours breathe life -
red, yellow, blue – as the Lord’s eyes open and fix on me.

(Srikalahasti, in Andhra Pradesh, is famed for Kalamkari art)

Even tamarind trees
have significant blossoms,

but not dusty almond trees
on roadside in my town.

The pale-pinched flowers
like viscous milky secretion,

are white dusts 
that carpet footpaths,

cling to shoes. The flowers,
were they buds at any time?

a protruding bone on the neck, mole under the nose,
lines around lips like paranthesis. Memories bear scars
like river beds where crisscross channels of desire.

The copper glint on skin exposed to sun, hair behind ears
licked by sweat are seen on things wholly unrelated -
born from a mind that has lost count of time,

when present slides into past. I hear a voice in the mall,
I search in the crowded elevator, in the billing counter,
in someone who slants her head in a particular manner.

She stands with her hand on the door,
the lines on her skin scaled with flour dust
in patterns of hard toil. I plead with her to come,
sit across the table, chat as she kneads the dough.
She walks past me without locking eyes,
a trail of jasmine flowers on scrubbed floor
from her hair styled with fragrant oil. Space
between us is hallowed by her silence. I feel her
in the smell of freshly baked bread sitting on
my counter warm and crumbly in my fingers.

As he feels the mole above my lip
his senile mind wanders to the escarpment
he sat me to give my first fishing lesson.

He cannot halve the blessing the way
he sliced mangoes further, even further
till he believed he was fair to me.

I stand watching him die, he gives me nothing;
not taking my hand that I hold out for him,
where he had traced lines to places they did not go.

I ask him, don’t you have anything to bless?
His head slides, eyes half open hold me in glance.
When they die even fathers are mortals. Know that.

She wants many sons
to test if she would love one more
than the other: the one with freckles
on the skin, self conscious
as hair grows as fine down
on the chest into the hollow
below the rib cage.

***

Then she (Rachel)  said:
Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her
so that she can bear children for me and
I too can build a family through her.
(Genesis 30)

She wants her husband
to take a woman
(better if she’s a servant)
to test if she loves him enough to feel
pain of loss, especially after she’s
become indifferent to sex and
stopped shaving her legs and armpits.