You could be just another statistic sprayed on the sidewalk. What’s to stop me from cupping my hands around your fragile flame? What’s to stop me licking your gummed flap and sealing your envelope? My sweetest sorrows served up in a silver salver.

War Comes To A Home In The Country (A Script)

Duck: DUCK!

Duck (2): “WHO’RE YOU CALLING A ‘DUCK’?!

Duck: …. Too Late.

[The End]

They say man is imprisoned by legends and he seeks unity within his own legend. If I look at life, it slowly crawls towards the end of mine. Will it be the end of time or am I just a man out of time? Would you forgive me if it was the other way around? In either case, I am still watching the evenings come and go, unrelenting against half standards in a crowd. Shaping my thoughts with repetition; spread-eagled eyes on a sore back pitted again with remorse. Stark thoughts brush my feet in descending flurries.

1

Sparrows bursting from the bush ahead like buckshot from a shotgun.

2

The only kind of saddle that can be fitted onto the man-animal is the kind with wheels behind him.

3

They made and remade the promise of better goods in the market.

4

Early Flight: I trilled my wings to gain height.


5

Ganpat the eunuch said, ‘Aise bewde toh maine roj theke pe mare hain.”

6.

He lit up like a young snake w(h)etting the back of his fangs with a forked tongue.

7

You’re like Kashmir to me; I keep hoping there’s no foreign hand behind you.


8

Why are gentlemen fascinated by the stuff that comes out of the center of the corner of their eye?


9


Only a snake can sleep with the children of the sun.

10

Yon Pari (depends on how you spell it)

Give me someone for the truth and some one for the pain, and someone for what comes after tears run dry. Like a sandbar on a jagged coastline reef with water foaming on rocks all around, whenever I feel strong I put out poems in bottles. Each next morning, the sunlight glints off the broken glass on the rocks.

She left it behind and I figured her thoughts had turned from priests and religion to suitors and sex. After all, a woman approaching 30 has to think!

He checked his watch, 9:30, it said and hugged his ribs. “I wonder how it ever became so finite,” he wondered, “Come evening and I begin to feel my limits. Wonder how did I get to become so finite…”

Delhi Indian Summer

Anyone who has hacked it in a single room tenant-ship without a cooler in Delhi summer will know this. When the heat grips you above the hairline like a numb skullcap, when matka-cool water seems incandescent because it is less turgid than your blood. When lying on your mattress on the floor, you see the heat beating out your bowels and the food-you-had-no-desire-to-eat within into a liquid patina that runs into the bathroom while you lie there dourly. Waves of thoughts beat upon my mind in the dark where I can lay out my prayer mat in the shadows of my skull. Giving thanks to creation which gave me sensitivity to my condition; in time I was to realize that I was in time. And that was the big one.

Life is made up of crabwise movements. With each calamity (mainly emotional) I gained greater understanding. A sum of experience that totals up to experience itself, “Yes, I am and I have been…”

A stupid, young, over-smart friend once told an equally stupid, young and over-smart me that I reminded him of the sea and fisher women. He then went on to make it up to me by telling me how ‘sensual’ they were when they walked or moved.

My blood is going to seep out. It is gonna spread. It is going to wet this bed. Everywhere sheets a closing red patch. Each little bit that pours out could have still been inside my warm skin, trying to live.

I waited till the winds hollowed out my chest. Until I felt nothing but the vibrations of those around me dance through backbone to ribcage. Oh! it started off in the usual enough way; with a hole where my heart used to be.

Malekut's Story

Malekut stood facing the mountains and the sun showed up just in time to catch rainbows off the falling water. He’d driven off the telephone and into the drink. He’d developed a wide shoulder and decided to give it a break. Raking furrows into his painted face, the light inched across the open glade. Pianos played rolls in his head in accompaniment to the smile on his face. The treasure chest besides him smiled back in the sunshine.

Reflected opinions on a dusty screen;
My waiting gets the worst of me.
I leave, she follows me asking,
‘Where have you been?’
I listen silently, inside I grieve.
When distances become reason for doubt.
Where do I go and what shall I do?
When I can no longer pour it all out.
And when I finally answer her,
I half expect her to say, ‘So, what’s new?’

I've Been Speaking Wi' Tha' MAN!

I closed my eyes and floated up to my Maker. My Maker said,

"Son, there are wonders in heaven that you cannot comprehend. Things that make spirit, stature and imagination grow like freedom for the brave. Things that must be blessed with peace in your grave for when the final veil is drawn, you’ll realize that you never really stood alone. If you did; t’was because your creation wore a frown at the ways of man.

“So put your precious future in my open hand. Don’t hesitate, for we both know my victories were sweetened when your feet beat a retreat. Well, get out; get out of my kitchen if you can’t take the heat. Energies pure and twists of faith will always combine. Just as you think bottle sunshine can be hidden in dark wine. So too shall glory spread its breezes and fan those who choose to walk along the land.

“I never really believed you would consign a part of your future as mine. You made your choice, chose of your own will, to test it thrice. Thus too, you shall reside where your eyes beckon with calm each sunrise and dissolution depths in each sunset -- so too in my promise to the wise. All things were created equal; but have you looked into your own eyes and seen the squalor of your self pity blanket every mechanism installed by me? Yet you wish to live with regret because in your mind, you are surrounded by a curtain of incompetence. This is where your struggle begins and ends!”

My Maker just is like that with me; has a strange way of talking too.