Month: February 2023

Genetics is genetics was.
Mutations occur rare.
Mutations occur and survive?
Rarer than the rare.

A werewolf breeds a werewolf too.
The werewolf gene survives.
So, even ones who do not bite,
Are loath to take up wives.

Our bubblegum relationship,
Its flavour dead by seventh chew,
Is down to simply chewing on
For sake of simply chewing on
This bland pastiche of sweeter times.

Except, perhaps, when asinine
Emotions make us blow up thin
With airs that, silent, stay within
Until they tear us with the pop
Of pistols at the Shoot’Em shop.

Perhaps, it’s time we spit it out
And stick it up Society’s seat.

She opened shop at 6am
And sat in there till ten at night.
You went to her for bidi, paan,
Suppulu, daantikili bites.

You also went to her for sass,
For, man, she had a saucy tongue.
You went to her for asking who
“Forgot” to clean their cattle’s dung.

For that is what she did the best.
She monitored the street entire.
She knew when bulls were in the heat,
And men had groins itching fire.

You often overheard her tell
A pregnant, newly wedded bride,
“You have to let him do you more.
He’s started sprinkling walls outside.”

You often overheard her scoff
At men who bragged of honest work.
“If I start selling alcohol,
There’s not a day that you won’t shirk.”

She’d seen her husband die of lust
And lost a son to spurious drink.
She saw a grandson smoking up
And tottering around the brink.

On rainy days, you saw her cry.
The pattering unnerved her so.
But even on the cyclone days
She wouldn’t close her shop and go.

For nothing waited back at home,
Except a silent misery.
Her living son, a beating brute.
His wife, a pot of trickery.

And so, when age caught up with her,
When she became banana-shaped,
When walnut lids restrained her eyes,
She planned her terminal escape.

No matter what she tried, alas,
Her son, his wife, would foil her plans.
They lived on pension she received
For government service of her man.

And that is how two decades passed,
Until she couldn’t hear or talk
Or see or feel or eat or sleep
Or even get up for a walk.

Whenever there were drums of death,
She’d feel them shaking up her bones.
You’d hear her scream into her dark
And shiver at her drumming moans.

Tonight, the drums are all alone.
No scream, no moan, no wailing voice.
Tonight, at ninety-three, she passed
Amidst a soundless raining noise.

The pill that holds the pain at bay,
The one that drowns the voices loud,
It also keep my muse away,
No poem passes through its shroud.

The doctor says I should not write,
At least, on days I take the pill.
The doctor says I’m wasting time
In sharpening a useless skill.

It’s easy to get “serious”.
They teach you that in nursery
With rulered hands and fingered lips;
In jobs, with carrot-coloured sticks;
Online, where everything offends;
On TV, where they all defend
The shaming of the “too relaxed”.

Pretending to be stressed and taxed –
Though everyday we do the drill –
Is not a differentiating skill.
It does not catch the pretty eyes,
Nor give someone the butterflies.
It does not earn revered trust,
Nor give your loved ones needed thrust.
It does not help them understand.
Instead, it shows that you demand
Their latitude, while you have none.
That you’re the more important one.

The rep before the failure,
The mile before the fall,
The breath before the peak –
They matter most of all.

These lines I write between my pukes,
My hormones out of flow,
Hallucinations running wild –
I hope they help me grow.

They say he spent a night in jail
To write a thief into his play.
They say she learned to sew up wounds
To write a nurse in Mandalay.

But what do “method” writers learn
Of day-to-day-to-day-to-day –
The tedium of everyday –
Their subjects play, replay, replay?

No novelty in novelty.
No certainty of certainty.
Except the boring cruelty
Of same cliché, cliché, cliché.

In fleshing out these characters
We sacrifice the people who,
On seeing highs and lows, respond
Okay, okay, okay, okay.

The cylinders of oxygen,
Compressors, nebulizers, vents
The shop displays in lighted glass
Aroused my ghosts of recent past
That made my eyes go fully white
Until I sat down, clutching tight
The heart that seemed to beat for two.
“You did whatever you could do.”
And yet, it feels I let him down.
He’s everywhere around this town.
The streets evoke the walks, the talks,
The powdered stains of coloured chalks
That always marked his pocket seam,
The pride in striding on – full steam –
The swinging arms, the upright back,
The people stopping in their track
To bow to him in true respect,
The pocket smile he always kept,
The one he had that final day,
The one the pyre burned away.
“You did whatever you could do.”
I got up, thanked the people who
Inspected me with lazy eyes
And continued to munch on fries.
“You did whatever you could do.”
If only that sentence were true.

So, what does one at thirty know
That one at twenty merely guessed?
That Time is but entropy loosed
From bowstrings of our trembling self.
If all one is is porcelain –
Another person’s precious prize –
Of course, the piercing thunk of Time
Will make one feel irreparable.
Instead when one is Infinite,
When Worth is not Attention’s alms,
Then Time is just a name for Now,
And everything one does is Wow!

I flinch at mention of “deserve”.
And more when prefixed with “did not”.
But most when suffixed with “because”.

“Deserve” is for the ones afraid
To stay detached from fruits of work.
“Deserve” is for the ones afraid
To love their fate, no matter what.