Posterity is a beast of burden;
stay yourself, beloved. The lenticheart, vast
Carries its home, with.

So much for the warmth and the bower of this warmth.
Mindmoves, sideways, its anxiety gone in your presence — 
love will remain indefinable forever, and indefinite.

Hold me here, poet-haven, kind and tender.

Habit and love are synonymous too.
Happiness… from that Florence Welch song,
in a frenzy around this nudewarm rock.
What is love, it’s not hereafter.
Hysterical mirth.

Love as a duty. Patience behemoth,
furbishing the blade of the surface of this lentic body
as it brims up, spontaneous, with water silvered by the Moon.

• Title after André Breton.

The readings are over. It’s time to weep.

A funeral passed me, you know, last evening,
I was by the pharmacy, a little procession of men behind the man carrying the little dead body in his bare arms,
air packed, shut tight, in a sack.

your life.

I am unable to shake the image out of my mind,
poets! I offer you my mediocre disquiet of bystanding.

There’s a prerogative in standing by the sidelines, watching.
I can’t let you be in a bubble!

You must change

In the shower, when the sun’s breaking in brightly
through the skylight & the water’s incessant upon you,
stare blankly at the dazing blue, you stare at that floodlit blue!

Later on, sit, let that sea of sad eat you whole,
you feed that god! don’t cry yet, don’t break yet,

torso of Apollo, caught in laughter,
deliver us!

• in response to Dermott Hayes' April prompt in Lit Up, Distraction.
• title after Ilya Kaminsky’s poem, A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck.
• the first two lines in italics are from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, Archaic Torso of Apollo (trans. Stephen Mitchell).

Lit Up — April’s Writing Prompt

The featureless face of God at his altar manifests in my own was originally published in Lit Up on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Deinos, said Sophocles. Also, says the heart.
Formless, eros has no structure. No substantial integrity.
Of course, just like that, it holds no standing.
& then comes March,
with its whips & ethereal bruises, running like veins, raptured.
& what weight holds the mind, one asks. Noumenal torture,
or like a picture stuck, cyclically projecting the self-same scene
of a winter from a would-have-been time
onto the mind.

One is always bored out of love. The end of it.
The primitive. Is this how you keep yourself alive at all times?
Mercurial god of envy, O! The splatter of watered-down passion across the temporal scene.
But, says one philosopher, it doesn’t change really— the past is the present is the future is one.
This fluttering, flickering flower, about to fizzle down into
the fragmented filaments of wanting
(the mutability is this)
ㅤ ㅤㅤ —I do not believe in you.

• Title taken from Anne Carson’s Plainwater: Essays and Poetry.

Humans in love are terrible was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

All my life I have been contemplating this—
went down that path, met an obstacle, sad & turned back . . .

tried to go down again, met another obstacle,
& saddened more & turned back.

The blubber of it was unrestrained, muffled

Nudity for the camera, yes!
& perchance the snake has no venom,
then let it writhe all over the skin too!

Tamed, vibrantly striking,
would imagine self to be brine born
& bask in its own mythmaking.

They’d come sensational—
the Polaroids, oh so subliminal.

Hope hits me suddenly sometimes, in the most absurd ways
I did try each thing or some things that I could,
I could not go down that path ever.

• after C D Wright’s “Approximately Forever”.

Proteus was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Beauty will only go downhill from here
It hits you really as some news
after so many iterations

You were expecting otherwise of it
or that you’ll be amberite!

Just look into a mirror (a great reckoning on a duplicated sur-face)
& close your eyes and accommodate & look into the mirror
& close your eyes and accommodate...

& in the grand tradition of Eavan Boland, call it an Atlantis

• for Eavan Boland, may she rest in poetry. (1944 – 2020)
• title from Wallace Stevens.

as if something was intended, you know, & then it intended something else for itself; muscle memory: praxis: memory with gym muscles.

ㅤ ㅤ eyesㅤ everywhere, you can find
eyes: a trait of eyes. of existence
& eyes—

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ can you even hold that thread of thoughts . . . it’s just impossible — ㅤ "I can do that too!"

ㅤ ㅤ suresuresureserursuereuresruso

so, what was it you were thinking of?
ㅤ aves, always, everywhere, like eyes

bird of fire, dragon-bird, one with a grass blade—

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ are you done?
with life, you ask? sure. I wanna do something awry though, you know;
the mind melts down on a canvas just like that

• more ekphrasis —

Pomegranate face mask

As if something was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

in alliteration. in an Anne Carson-cycle.ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ by not thinking about it. by thinking up about it, early in the foresight. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ by having breakdowns around it. ice cream of it. ㅤㅤㅤ having maniac looses about it. getting a tattoo before it. ㅤㅤ getting a tattoo for it. ㅤ in fear of it. in cherish. ㅤㅤ molding heroes out it. remembering the unknown, the un-met, for every moment onwards. ㅤㅤㅤㅤin Kafka of it. ice cream of it. staring blankly at the sour wall, letting it all hit. overwhelmed by it. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ closing the eyes quickly & deviating from it. ㅤㅤ more ice cream. then sore throat from it. ayurveda for it. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤwith love for it. living it up. in memory of it.

How to deal with deaths was originally published in The Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

the world of the conscience, he took away
all the sails with him he took away

what’s to be said, he was some sun
went & with him took the sky away

closed the book & just walked away
all the stories with him he took away

he used to love me havenlessly
went & took with him my life away

when I rose from the sajda no one was there
he took even the foot prints away

the edges have worn out, of dawn-o-dusk
both of my worlds he took with him away

ग़ज़ल #2

हवास का जहान साथ ले गया
वह सारे बादबान साथ ले गया

बताएं क्या, वो आफ़ताब था कोई
गया तो आसमान साथ ले गया

किताब बन्द की और उठ के चल दिया
तमाम दास्तान साथ ले गया

वो बेपनाह प्यार करता था मुझे
गया तो मेरी जान साथ ले गया

मैं सजदे से उठा तो कोई भी न था
वो पांव के निशान साथ ले गया

सिरे उधड़ गये है, सुबह-ओ-शाम के
वो मेरे दो जहान साथ ले गया

• translated from the book, रात पशमीने की by Gulzar, published by Rupa. Copyright © Gulzar 2002)

Ghazal: Two Worlds was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“whorled in white coverlets, / exhausted from yearning.”

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ~Lucie Brock-Broido

It happens usually at night, moths fly in,
& gather around the table lamp;
they listen, & lament
hearing the couplets of the ghazals
whenever I sit to read
Diwan-é-Ghalib;
in the morning then from the illuminated lines
gather their ashes I.

ग़ालिब

रात को अक्सर होता है, परवाने आकर,
टेबल लैम्प के गिर्द इकट्ठे हो जाते हैं
सुनते हैं, सर धुनते हैं
सुन के सब अश’आर ग़ज़ल के
जब भी मैं दीवान-ए-ग़ालिब
खोल के पढ़ने बैठता हूँ
सुबह फिर दीवान के रौशन सफ़्हों से
परवानों की राख उठानी पड़ती है।

Ghalib was originally published in The Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And the news in the hotel was your husband
has already arrived there via morning’s first flight.

So much was there that changed nightly.
You tried to take some pills on that night as well,

just like at the end of the movie “Anna Karenina”
she suicides, throwing herself before a train — !

In the last scene, wished to stop that engine,
my eyes shut, knew the ‘end’ as such.

The weeping music of the background told the result of the relation
we had tied erst.

Long gone night, there was the scent of ‘Worth’ perfume in the theatre.
If read the news, it goes something like this:

The possibility of war b/w Iraq and America has increased again.

That city of Baghdad from the tales of Alif-Laila has completely been destroyed.

News is that someone has invented a paste to grow hair even on bald heads.

Kapil Dev has established his record of 400 wickets.

News is Diana and Charles are now separating before Christmas.

Kirosha and Sylvania too are fighting to separate.

Taxes on plastic has increased by 10%

This all is the news of first of November — 
sequence where is going like this.

But nowhere is news that you are angry with me — 
how is the sequence going like?

real text, in Hindi, from the book, रात पशमीने की by Gulzar, published by Rupa. Copyright © Gulzar 2002

एना कैरेनीना

और होटल में ख़बर थी कि तुम्हारे शौहर,
सुबह की पहली फ़्लाइट से वहाँ पहुंँचे हुए हैं।

रात की रात, बहुत कुछ थ जो तब्दील हु,
तुमने उस रात भी कुछ गोलियाॉ खा लेने की कोशिश की थी,

जिस तरह फ़िल्म के आखिर में भी "एना कैरेनीना"
ख़ुदकुशी करती है, इक रेल के नीचे आ कर —!

आखिरी सीन में जी चाहा कि मै रोक दूंँ उस रेल का इन्जन,
आँखे बन्द कर लीं, कि मालूम था वह 'एन्द' मुझे।
पसेमन्ज़र में बिकती हुयी मोसीक़ी ने उस रिश्ते का अन्जाम सुनाया,
जो कभी बांँधा था हमने।

"वर्थ" के सेन्टर की ख़ुश्बू थी, थिएटर में, गयी रात बहुत।
निज़ामे-जहाँ, पढ के देखा तो कुख इस तरह चल रहा है।

इराक़ और अमरीका की जंग छिङने के इमकान फिर बढ गये हैं।

अलिफ़ लैल की दास्ताँ वाला वो शहर-बग़दाद बिल्कुल तबह हो चुकु है।

ख़बर है किसी शख्स ने गंजे सर पर भी अब बाल उगाने की इक पेस्त ईजाद की ऐ।

कपिल देव ने चार सौ विकेटों का अपना रिकार्ड क़ायम किया है।

ख़बर है की डायना और चार्ल्स अब, क्रिसमस से पहले अलग हो रहे हैं।

किरोशा और सिलवानिया भी अलग होने ही के लिये लङ रहे हैं।

प्लास्टिक पे दस फ़ीसदी टैक्स फिर बढ गया है।

ये पहली नवम्बर की ख़बरे हैं सारी–
निज़ामें-जहाँ इस तरह चल रहा है।

मगर ये ख़बर तो कहीं भी वही है,
कि तुम मुझसे नाराज़ बैठी हुई हो—
निज़ामें-जहाँ किस तरह चल रहा है?

Anna Karenina was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.