All the beauty of this satin, crushed in a capsule
When this heart ends- is it the end of love or of pride?
echoing agony
Some call it Bath, some say it is Paris
Architecture of the music

The one who steals language
Owes royalty to the bridges drawn
May they be of slavery or of death

Who built these large windows? Men?
You tell me they knew despite the draught, looking out is what we needed
Or do windows have more meanings – to these men who built the world

I dissolve in every poem I write
Leaving behind thousands of myself to mourn
Yet a million of me laugh after I have gone
Like gossipers of an era bygone

Twisting ends of a road, when the journey is over
One stacks destinations to give travel a meaning
Reaching and knowing the end way before the planning
Thus language performs to the beats of only one that matters

Aesthetics of medicine

This empty land that belongs to all of us — is adorned with two corner homes of these artists. One too cramped and the other too stark, yet both equally comfortable — equally disturbed.

I am an intruder or a guest of these homes — for them it is all the same.

“No point in arguing. But of course I argued.” – Dovlatov

Mohamedi didn’t argue — she wouldn’t care about pointlessness as well. Despite their seeming bipolarity, I can strongly feel the line that connects these two artists; but if you would ask me to draw it or even imagine it — I don’t think I would do too well.

They suck all the poems out of me and flood me with poetry instead. On their land, the writer isn’t a notable form anymore — she is barely a cactus to this world. Her long flimsy thorns shed in the dust-wind of artists.

Dovlatov’s pointed cynicism, mockery contrasted by her expanding wisdom. No matter the extremities, they both introspect to the same depth drilled by the tired nails of their minds. They walk towards the same wall in different universes. They don’t shake hands or even nod when they cut across the wall and pass by one another. They calmly walk away like a magnetic principle gone wrong.

I am perpetually the distance (as air) between these two artists. I don’t connect the two, nor am I pulled to one or the other. I am simply alive just in that space and dead even a point away from that locus. A similar line was drawn between Vonnegut and Virginia – where I had found myself but then I lost Virginia - consequently Vonnegut flew away. I now find him in the shadows of Dovlatov and have slowly come to the notice that they are but the same being to this land; where my cactus has been too busy in its anti-growth.

I have so much to uncover in this land — it keeps itself a mirage and I keep becoming a city girl against its geometry. My four artists spin as reflections on make-belief water. I focus on the glint they produce together. I am but that fleeting sparkle made and destroyed in the world of these bygone artists. What can one take from a life that has never dwelled in one’s city. What does that cactus-body know about thrusting itself in packed buses or pulling heavy grocery trolleys through busy alleys. What does Mohamedi know about dark offices and ugly-uncomfortable ergonomic chairs. The ones that never seem to adjust to this cactus-body. She didn’t have to endure this chair for years to one day walk off to the sand. What do my dead artists know about living in the world of cuboid architectures and strange gymnasium rituals. What does Vonnegut know about my land when all he does here is sit on a shelf occasionally pushed and pulled by alien fingers.

Is there an artist of the city that I can call upon this land. Please plant your house near my cactus. Catch the thorns that get turned in the wind. Observe me as I observe you through the house’s windows as I draw more lines between the art and the living. I don’t ask you to become a cactus for me – be the city dweller that you are, but reside in this sand where –

Art doesn’t die.

The echo takes over every equation made of this land. It shakes my eyes. I see nothing but the waves of this land / resounding.

Here —

bloody bushes hide silicon flowers
their light is devoid of nature and
 — magically independent of assorted metal

the cactus sings out phrases hidden between emptiness
 — seeks amrit in the lines crossed between the two

images of this land — the wind, the thorns, the fallen barks
gather symmetrically to explain your presence
 — and your unwillingness to show yourself

Here —

my fingers crack- submerged in sand
my mind freezes inside the cactus
my bones assemble to your attention
my lips rub against the dust
my shoulders rebel to your music
I guide myself and my parts to an absent home in the center

I refuse to be recognised
and that is the only way I have learnt you would see me

my earth mother made of the lines drawn, written, spoken and withheld
by my art mothers. A child has lost itself in you and by the time she discovers
 — her chance to be dust will be stuck in her thorns
 — drifting in the winds of this land

Dovlatov and Mohamedi was originally published in Kohl Rivers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.