Flame Tree

It’s the dog days of summer,
the foliage is on fire.
The ground below 
is carnage, 
a bloody battlefield.

Patterns

I love
my milk with cookies
and the splatter of rain
on fiery red hatchbacks.
I love
patterns - routines, rituals.
Most of all,
I love the unfolding of patterns.
 
I patiently wait
at street corners, bus-stops,
metro stations, playgrounds,
streetside cafes,
abandoned constructions.
From my vantage point,
patterns appear out of the noise.
 
I pick my favorite color
from the spectrum.
I pick my favorite tune
from the chaos.
I pick my starling
from the murmuration,
my sardine from the great shoal.
 
For months,
I patiently wait
beneath the murmur,
inside the shoal,
among the noise—
to pick my next victim.  

She fell in love
with the boy next door.
She fell in love with his mischief,
how his laughter
sounded like the anklets
tied to a galloping calf,
how he smelled
like the mud on a riverbank,
how his smile
held the innocence
and eagerness of a mother bird
opening her eyes to the first rays of the sun,
how the grip of his hand on her waist
unfolded the wildest desires.
 
They ran after each other,
played and loved passionately,
on the sands,
in orchards,
in ruined castles
and the secret passages underneath.  
 
She was unaware
of his origin story,
his greatness, and his miracles.
He preferred to keep it that way.
He doesn't want her to love him any other way,
or to worship him like a god.
He wanted her to love him like the boy next door.
He was her mischievous boy next door.
 
One summer evening,
resting on a low branch,
he played the flute
as she playfully etched her name
on the sole of his right toe thumb
with a peacock feather.
As the feather's touch
tickled his skin,
he flinched
and jerked his toe away,
reminding her of a deer flicking its ears.

For the gods,
the music was otherworldly,
the essence of the primordial
which weaved into every aspect of creation,
like a soothing echo
of the afterglow.

For him,
the music was an escape.
It’s an expression of the divine
carrying the weight of humanity,
bearing the burden of being human,
the pain of attachment, love,
and the loss of love.

For her ears,
the artistry and wizardry were muted.
The music was the chuckle of flirtation
which flowed through
the undergrowth and the canopy,
bathing every bud, leaf, and bark--
to usher the birds and beasts
from their hollows and burrows. 

Engrossed in the trance
of such enchanting music,
she told herself
she can't love him any other way,
not as a beloved,
not as a wife,
not as a partner.   
She’s his eternal lover,
the inseparable part of his soul
till the end of time.
In this life, she knew
she would disappear like the morning mist.
A discreet tear
trickled down her tender cheek. 

A hundred years passed,
and a thousand tragic stories. 
In the unfolding age of doom,
the grandiosity of the music
was muted.   
Wearied and resigned,
he laid on the forest floor,
on a bed of dried leaves.
While in a dreamlike state,
he felt a feather tip
on his bare sole.
He twitched his big toe.
A hunter on the prowl
took the fatal shot
thinking he had seen a deer flick its ear,
As the arrow
took away his final breath,
he smiled thinking
of the fragrance of her body,
the sweet nothings
whispered into his ears,
her delicate love bites,
how her passion melted into his.
A discreet teardrop
trickled down 
his leathered, wrinkled cheek
when he thought
of the sweetness of her name:
Radha.

Devi

The worlds
tremble to his tandava.
His thundering feet
dance on a cosmic battlefield
strewn with beheaded torsos,
crumbled stars, and deflated egos,
an ocean
churning with fire and blood.
 
Out there in the middle,
born out of such chaos,
raised
by the gods of the apocalypse,
she emerges
and dominates,
riding the king of beasts.
He closes his eyes
in silent submission.
Like a thousand lashes of lightning
flashing against a boiling grey sky,
her dark, shining complexion,
contrasts
his ash-smeared body.
Her bloodshot fierce eyes
radiate wild splendor.
Her heavy bosom
heaves to a primal rhythm
as warm blood
slithers down her serpentine tongue.
The beast
swallows
the sun, the moon,
and the constellations.
 
As she tames the chaos,
as the music fades in her mind’s sanctuary,
as she swallows the darkness
and the darkest forces,
she transforms
into the final embodiment of tranquility—
the eye of the storm.
 
She closes her eyes.
He opens his third eye.

The Sky People

They don’t pull the strings anymore.
They don’t perform those miracles anymore.
They are not amused anymore
as we continue to cling feverishly
to our mortal shells.
 
They say
they’re all around us:
in every dust mote,
in every grain of pollen,
in every drift of sand,
in every devastating cyclone
or the most silent whisper,
in every act of kindness
or the loudest whiplash.
 
They say
they gloated at their creation–
the grand spectacle beneath their feet.
 
For millennia,
every prince and pauper,
every man and child,
every wailing mother
who lost her dear one
to the cruel twist of fate,
and every woman
who never had the chance to be,
looked at the skies
for a bead of sweat
or a glimpse of hope.
 
For millennia,
we had questions–
about life, and its purpose,
about hatred, plague, suffering, mortality,
about death, silence–
your silence, your inaction.
But these, and countless more,
were never answered.  
 
We languished. We perished.
Impaled. Trampled. Run over.
On riverbeds. On battlefields.  
In a lover’s lap.
In the warmth of a mother’s bosom.
From flesh, lust, and bone,
to rot, rust, and dust.
Like the fate of an anthill in a cornfield,
you mow us down–
our spark…our sting…our spirit,
to prepare the ground for the next crop.

Is higher consciousness
so utterly cold, unfeeling
and incomprehensible?
Each of you
with no face, no soul, no passion,
no ticking, no kicking, no tingling.

Is our existence on earth
a mirror of such soullessness
that you so despise to peep at?
Are you too scared
to witness such horrendous ugliness--
a product of your own wily schemes and devices?

The Desert People

Beyond the badlands
is a sea of white and gold.
A shard of the sun
melts into the mirage,
the cloudless sky
silenced for too long.
The eastern winds,
deafening guttural whistles
from the thorny acacias,
flow into the unforgiving landscape.

A lone traveler 
is drawn
to the sands of the wilderness,
to the radiating heat,
to the glitter
of the stretching miles,
to the tiring nothingness
which refuses to yield.
Like a drug,
like a death wish,
the desert sucks him inward
and consumes his soul.

In the evening hours,
the bedouins
dismount the humped beasts
and gather around the crackling fire.
A mute old man
points at the bejeweled night sky,
makes grand gestures with his dancing fingers
to perform for his wide-eyed grandson
the story of a giant bull
which gored a hunter in a thousand-day battle,
and stranger tales
about dwarf-like, honey-eyed creatures,
custodians of the bones of time,
dreamcatchers
who live, love, and ‘let-be’
in a labyrinth of tunnels
beneath the sands.
 
At bedtime,
the boy peeps out his tent,
and feels the space
between the sky and the sands
close in gently.
He stands on the edge of the dunes,
spreadeagle,
and basks
in the majesty of the moment.

To Swallow a Whale

To read Nietzsche’s overpowering arguments
under the towering trees of a forest,
to ponder
being and non-being
under the starlit night.

To recite Bukowski
in the pink haze of a smoke-filled room,
as he bares our dirty desires,
our filthy excesses,
and other vulgarities of life.
 
To witness Frida’s tropical flourish
in a seaside town
as she toys with animalistic symbols,
inner conflict, defiance,
and the lost art of introspection.
 
To be awed by Zimmer’s magnificence
in the trenches of life’s battles,
to transcend
the utter powerlessness of existence
and the dread of infinity.
 
To peek at Giger’s otherworldly demons
in the dingy slums of an apocalyptic world,
to witness the crumbling of faith
and the slow demise
of the old gods and new.  
 
To stare deeply into the void of the heart,
the palpable nothingness stares back at you,
to live one day at a time,
to lose a thread of yourself
one day at a time.

To stare deeply at whatever remains --
a dark unswallowable lump
more fluid than Van Gogh,
more dense than Joyce,
more unsettling than Munch,
more absurd than Duchamp,
more rebellious than Banksy.

Sita

Born of the shudders of the earth,
she's the plough that tills the soil,
the green blades of abundance,
and the silent labour
of the wriggling worms
and the marching millipedes.

She's the wick,
the dance of a flame,
the tongues of an engulfing fire
which consume forests whole,
and its ashen grounds
from where new life awakens.
 
She's the vessel--
the water inside,
she's the million waves
which kiss every beach,
she's the wild of the sea
and the calm of the deep.
 
She's the howling wind,
the tinkle of the chimes,
the carefree spirit
of an unleashed kite,
she's the soaring wings,
and dreamy romances.
 
She's the spin and the scent
of a potter's wheel,
the rumbling rage of the planet,
its voracious appetite that swallows
every king, every army,
every hubris, every past.
 
She's the being,
the vast nothingness,
the before, the after,
the now, and the sweet hereafter,
every fleeting moment,
and time itself.

Animal

Chapter: The Worship

We don’t dress up for the men.
We dress up for those scanning eyes,
the envious looks we get from other girls.
Most men don’t give a fuck.
Their intentions are primal,
their approach, medieval. 
But my man’s different.

He cares about every minute detail,
every color of every thread of a fabric
that’s a mismatch,
every strand of hair
that’s out of place.
He kisses my forehead,
paints my nails,
sucks my toes.
He mulls over
every crease on my dress,
every crevice on my body.
When it matters,
where it matters,
he takes his time.

He’s my baby, my darling.

Chapter: The Wreck

I smell my man from miles away.  

I see his silhouette against the roaring sea,
I see his outline through the translucent curtains,
I see him naked through the cracks of my mirror.  

My raging bull
paints the town bloody red,
splashes my canvas
with glaring yellows and looming grays,
at times, mystical and deep
like the giant trees of a forest,
but mostly shallow
like a puny puddle.
 
He whispers sweet nothings
in the silence of the night,
he screams in excruciating pain
at the horrors of the eclipse,
jumps off roofs,
sprints across orchards,
dances under the lightning,
wails under the neon,
wallows in his own half-baked philosophies,
laughs loudest at his own filthy jokes.
 
I taste his thrills,
I taste his wounds,
I taste his flesh and salt. 

He starts fights, starts fires,
taints spirits, shatters glasses,
plays dirty, talks dirty
punches mean, punches hard,
explores me, exploits me,
moves like an animal, 
fucks like an animal,
lies through his teeth,
hides behind failing masks,
worships me like a goddess,
shatters me like an asteroid,
takes me on wild rides
in the steely rain,
rolling on the asphalt –
triggering my pleasure and pain,
consumes me whole,
strips me, eviscerates me,
and vomits my pulp –
decimating my identity.  

I smell his highs, his high notes,
I smell his sweaty fears,
I smell his fading shadows.
I smell my man from miles away.

Tat tvam asi

When a star moves around a galaxy
it carries with it
the planets, the moons,
the comets, the stardust,
the trespassing assassins,
the mountains, the music,
the storms, the wildfires,
the thunderous skies, the embers,
the stories, the legends,
a trillion possibilities,
and a whisper of the glittering magic.
 
Every speck of dust,
every photon of light,
every snowflake,
every philandering particle,
here, there, and everywhere at once,
every silence, every scream,
every ought, every naught,
everything that is,
everything that is not,
reaffirm
in the ever-expanding wilderness –
'I am that!'