Category: Poems

What someone means to you depends
On how you make these choices few:
You think of them or think for them,
You speak of them or speak for them,
You tire of them or tire for them,
You die of them or die for them.

My words are sticking to the page
As rain drops on the lotus leaves
She wants her farmhouse pool to have.
No matter how my palmate feet
Keep frantically iambing,
They fail to hold the ducklike calm
She wants her farmhouse pool to have.
Ideas shining on my face
Are also tanning all the joy
She radiates when grumbling clouds
Arrive on cooling winds of bliss
She wants her farmhouse pool to have.
Today is not the day to write
But watch the lines being written in
The full attention of her eyes
She wants her farmhouse pool to have.

Some days, the bravest thing I do
Is fold the sheets I’m folded in.
Some days, the bravest word I say
Is “Help!” instead of giving in.

Some days, the kindest thing I do
Is give myself a little break.
Some days, the kindest word I say
Is “Coffee?” to my crying self.

(After Charlie Mackesy)

It takes two Yeses for a We
And just a No for You and Me.

A nod is not a Yes unsaid.
It’s No with barely-passing grade.

I cannot pick a poem book.
No sooner do I open it
Than words start slipping down the page.
Forget attention, they can’t hold
My patience when I lick-stick it.
The pages have grown lazy now.

Some writers sprinkle poetry
In novels that go nowhere good
But somehow make the journey fun.
And midway, when you realize
There’s half a book no more ignored,
You know this writer earned themselves
Another little bathroom break.

But now I’m writing poem books
Where words are slipping down the page
Because I cannot bring myself
To stitch some chapters, leaf by leaf
Into an Indian feasting plate
And sprinkling dew drops, freshen it
For serving out a buffet spread.

You sure your gloom is coloured “blue”?
Go see yourself speak out the word.
Do lips not pucker like a kiss
You blew into the one who sits
Across you at the pizza place?
And is the exhale of the word
Less gentle than the breath you blew
Between two fingers stretching out
Their wetting, hurting, flapping eye?

They welcomed back the man and wife
Who as a boy and girl had run
With all the gold and cash they had,
And left them shameful more than sad.

They welcomed back their daughter-son
And daughter-son of daughter-son,
And in those milk-teeth smiles they sought
Recompense for the years they fought.

Except, it took a single night
Of drunken ego spouting spit
And splitting headaches morning aft
For heads to split to cycle shaft.

We watched the blood and mangled vows
Being washed by urinating cows.

A knot of sparrows hopping round
Like handful marbles overspilled.
Emotions scatter like the birds
And crystal thought solidifies.
Eureka brings an equal high
As beauty of that tweeting lot,
Because, perhaps, the both of them
Are equally endangered now.

In rains, it’s only crows who hawk
From door to door their caw and caw.
And like the women, basket-crowned,
Who will not even turn around
Before the seventh “No!” you plead,
The crows will caw and caw their need
Until you roll the seven dice
Of tempered daal and steaming rice.

They go on Sunday fishing trips,
But do not “harm” the fish they fish.
A selfie of a flapping kiss,
Then back to watery wilderness.

They say they only like the thrill
To bait, to wait, but not to kill.
They say it takes a greater skill
To trap someone with tenderness.