Author: Minakhi Misra

I can’t be there
For someone else
Some days
The coffee’s not enough
To wake
Compassion
Empathy
Some days
The weight
Of unsaid words
Exceeds the safety
Limit set
And cantilevered
Measured lines
Constructed
On a steady page
Come
Crashing down
In quiet debris
I sweep the floor
Towards an edge
And sit on it
Alone
Awake

Another fallen fruit now hangs
From ceilings of unpollened gloom.
Its feelings, bruised in dull abuse,
Evolved in puissance through its youth
To thunder nuisance in its heart
And rend asunder part by part.

No more all-nightly talks may pluck
Intentions of untimely byes.
No more inventions of resolve
Dissolve illusions of the mind.
No more for who could take no more
Irascible insults, deceits.
No more for who remain for more
Occasions of redemptive feats.

“So, will you bring a book to bed?”
“Unless one is already there.”
“And will you take a book to loo?”
“Unless one is already there.”
“And to the dining table?” “Same.”
“And to the kitchen counter?” “Same.”
“And to the backyard garden?” “Same.”
“What if it’s raining?” “Won’t step out.”
“What if the book is getting wet?”
“The one already in the yard?”
“I got you there, now, didn’t I?”
“It will be in the tool shed, no?”
“What if it’s in the open, yo?”
“I doubt I’ll leave it out like that.”
“And if I leave it out like that?”
“It’s just a book. Replaceable.”
“And you won’t do a thing to me?”
“You’re just a friend. Replaceable.”
“I thought we were bit more than that.”
“I’d say we aren’t even that.”
“Your mother likes me. Gives me hints.”
“She’s used to disappointments now.”
“You know I’m quite sought after, right?”
“By fools who like a pretty face.”
“And you don’t like my pretty face?”
“I do, but not enough to woo.”
“So, you don’t want it just for you?”
“You plan to stay in ghoonghat, what?”
“You always bring comebacks like that?”
“Unless one is already there.”

“Arrange your face,” the master says.
“You aren’t actors on a stage.
Your business isn’t being plain.
Your only work is getting done
What needs be done to run this place.
Believe you’re irreplaceable?
Believe we care for broken hearts?
You show yourself unready once
And readily we show you out.
They challenge us with powered steam.
They challenge us with steel machines.
They challenge us with printing press.
And here we pay you twice as much
To wear emotions on your sleeves?
You roll them, roll them, roll them high.
You show them strength of men’s resolve.
You show them what automatons
Can never craft in Christendom.
To work, to work, to work, you men.
And may the Lord be merciful.”

“You rather well arranged your face,”
The usurer applauds aside.
“You seemed an actor on a stage.
And how with words you’ve learned to chide
These honest men their honest thoughts.
Of course, you have no use for thoughts.
No printing press will waste its ink.
And that alone does make me think
Of what at all I may receive
In auctioning your rousing words.
Perhaps, a fiction: comedy.
Perhaps, the truth: a tragedy.
I hear they’re printing stubs for pass,
At pence-a-piece for spectacles.
Do choose yourself some pretty words.
It’s been a while we nailed someone.”

“Le mort saisit le vif , you know!”
“The dead seize up the living? What?”
“The dead invest the living, bro.”
“And what of it? Why tell me that?”

“Because it’s law, you dim moron –
Continuous inheritance.
The moment someone passes on
Their assets pass. No dalliance.”

“We settled all the property.
So, why exactly should I care?”
“Because there are intangibles.
That you can claim as legal heir.”

“Intangibles? His writings, notes?”
“Why not? Compile them into books.”
“And why do lawyers get a vote?”
“To save you from the IP crooks.”

“The dead invest the living, aye!
My father vests his genteel charm.
Fuck off – you get no slice of pie –
Before I break your creamy arm.”

“He perished from his monkey’s bite.”
The hall uproars with belched guffaws.
He doesn’t see what’s funny, though.
He hmms and coughs and hmms some more,
Until the host enlists his cause,
“The poet has a word to say.”

He no-nos, smiles, and joins his palms,
But as they try to look away,
“Does everyone not die of pets?”

He likes it when their foreheads net.
They call him woman in their midst.
In this, at least, he lives his name.
Unlike their throbbing phallic jest
That penetrates without consent,
His humour is a welcome womb
That draws their naked interest in.
Or, so he tells his ginger cat.

“Does everyone not die of pets?”
He pours a glass to stretch the pause.
“Are vices not our dearest pets?”
They groan and retch with slow applause.

“We feed them, and heed them,
And constantly need them.”
The host is gracious with his pour.
“We hide them, and bide them,
And lovingly chide them.”
The host escorts him to the door.

“And what do they, but bankrupt us
Of health and wealth and calendars?
And once we cannot clean their shite?
Infect us with infernal bites.”

His “shite” is echoed round the room
And guffaws pat his leaving back.
He kicks his ginger cat at home
And throws at it a tampon pack.

She says, “You are the meanest man.”
l do not know which mean she means.

I’m meanest like the lowliest?
OR, meanest like the average-most?

I’m meanest like deliberate?
OR, meanest like the dullest bore?

I’m meanest like contemptible?
OR, meanest like contemptuous?

I ask her and she screams at me.
“Not OR. You’re AND. You’re ALL of them.”

Divorces don’t determine who
Were right, but only who were left.
And marriages determine this
Today and all todays still left.

For loving is a daily vow
To love the person yet again.
And tolerating is the same:
You choose to tolerate again.

He says we have no future here,
No fortune here, no scope of it.
He doesn’t see the thousand years
Of wisdom in these dusty books
That Father’s left behind for us.

For someone working from his room,
He doesn’t see that all one needs
Is laptop with a data card.
For someone always cooped indoors,
He doesn’t see palatial space
That this here house affords us with.

He doesn’t see the kinder air,
The sweeter water, cheaper food,
And simpler pace of daily life.
He doesn’t see that getaways
Are just as far from here as there.

He points what else he doesn’t see:
No hospitals of any worth.
No schooling for a curious mind.
No privacy from nosy tongues.
No freedom of immodesty.

And yet, for all he doesn’t see,
He sees at least one clearly:
For all romantic words I say,
It isn’t him I try to sway.

I’m often in a reverie
Of things I’ll do hereafter –
As if the deed’s already done
And I am merely calling back
A favoured, coloured memory –
Embezzling the impetus
That would have birthed the actual act.

It saves me quite some effort, this.
Were I to marshal energies
For every ping that shakes my heart
And makes me tap and pull and swipe
My faculties of fertile flair,
Would I not find myself in want
When on my desk I pull my hair
And nothing else will come with it?

If I can wrest contentment from
A mere hour of fancied flight,
And thereby save a year’s regret
Of why at all I started, right,
Am I not in the profit still?

Our culture urges urgent action,
Damning those who sit and dream,
And through the plastic dreaming, choose
The act that so consuming is,
It effortlessly overspills
Into the realm of actioned beings.

Who knows, perhaps, our culture’s right?
And you are right to call me names –
A lazy loser languishing,
A wise-ass wasting willingly –
And I am wrong to spend my days
In energetic ennui,
Denying all the professed fruits
Of my invested venturing.

But grant me this: do I not gain
A workshop from my idleness?
So what if it’s the Devil’s own?
Do I not get a place to craft
My fancies into daily art?