It circles alone across cyan skies
On spring noons, wings outstretched,
Looking for someone, anyone willing,
To give a big warm feathery hug.
We stare at each other every day,
But when I don’t open my own arms,
It pretends it was just practising
Posing like Shah Rukh Khan.
I opened my arms wide today.
Closed my eyes too, welcoming.
But it sat on its perch, head crooked,
Letting me know how it daily feels.
God! I need a hug today.
For every monkey visiting our street,
We have ten boys with little stones
Ready to apply parabolas
And projectiles
And point-body dynamics.
But pen-fights in Physics class
Get them a P for “Probation”
Because you look for performance
Only on paper but not in practice?
They know how different motors work:
Enough to fix your bike and car.
Enough to fix your water pump.
Enough to fix your kitchen grinder.
Enough to fix your ceiling fan.
But not enough to fix your idea
Of how much they can move the world?
They know how much goes into concrete:
How much sand and gravel and cement
Goes with how much water and time
For paving a road, for raising a pillar,
For spanning a beam, for laying a roof.
Yet you come to me and put them down
And cite my premier engineering degree
As some confirmation of mastery
Though I’ve never even held a plumb?
And you’re going to head the state’s
Department of Higher Education?
1.
Come as you are, she says.
All friends here. Come over.
Friends, my ass.
They eye my fraying shorts
That had once been my jeans,
And raise their noses to my hoodie
That has always been my hoodie.
Batman and Joker laugh together
At the baggy darkness under my eyes.
The werewolf and hobbit howl
At my bathroom-slippered hairy feet.
You’ve fallen pretty far, hunh?
Their smiles suggest.
What are you dressed as, one asks,
Offering my drink of choice.
The Creative, I say, the Creative.
And I take the water, thank you.
Who’s that, another asks. DC?
I marvel at his entrenchment.
No. Independent, I say.
They all say Aah.
Friends, my ass.
2.
When I tell them
Characters visit me
They nod like they know
I’m shitting them, but
They’re too high
Society to roll eyes.
They sit pissing smoke
Out of mouths, stinking
Of upward mobility,
And judge me.
So I tell them the lie
I tell my loony doc:
“Medication helps.”
That gets a cough.
3.
She snatches the book
And tells me to have fun.
I say I was, but she shrugs
And comes close, too close
To breathe a kiss on my neck.
Can your book do that?
She giggles and eyes me
And takes my hand over
To the middle of the room
Where others are dancing
Close to their partners
But away from the others.
I take her lead and move
My awkward legs stiff,
My awkward hands stiffer,
But she giggles and kisses
And I giggle and kiss back
And she jumps in celebration
And others clap and whistle
And I realise it was all a dare.
She joins her friends at the bar.
I join mine at the bookshelf.
Today’s belly doesn’t care
If yesterday’s got a meal or not.
Got to gulp one down. Again.
Today’s body doesn’t care
If yesterday’s got sleep or not.
Got to lie one down. Again.
No matter my state.
No matter my mood.
No matter the outcome:
Bad or good.
Today’s paper doesn’t care
If yesterday’s got a poem or not.
Got to pen one down. Again.
I look at the lighthouse and realise
It’s a whirling Sufi with a mining helmet
Reminding Almighty’s lost vessels
His light may not always shine on them
But will always guide them safely home.
I look at the moon and realise
It’s a Kamayogic infographic
Reminding dieting stargazers
How much to fill their dinner plates
To attract tides of wedding mates.
I look at the sand and realise
It’s Time on a Zen retreat,
Pausing from its on-the-go job,
Away from all the ups and downs
Of its hourglass office life.
I look at my glasses and realise
I see better some days without them.
They came wishing to lose some kilos
Of the low confidence on their waists,
Paying dollars to a swanky ashram
To do something called a water fast.
Water fast? What is that? I asked.
You eat nothing, you drink nothing.
Except some water now and then.
And maybe salt for electrolytes.
Himalayan pink salt, mind you:
It’s got Potassium ions too.
Must be very effective, I thought,
Since outside the ashram walls
Sat the professional water-fasters,
Skinny and confidently shirtless
With little drinking bowls in hand,
The water gone, but the coins left
From when someone mistook them
For wish-fulfilling fountains.
The meanings we find in spaces,
Between lines of poetry,
And strokes of paintings,
And moments of awareness,
Are merely leaps of chemical faith
That neurons make in spaces
Between axons and dendrites,
Across a polarized chasm.
Or so Science tells me.
They draw comic books on anger reds
And write songs on depression blues,
But no one really talks about
The Mood Magenta that permeates
When reds and blues come together.
So what if someone hangs themselves?
So many have died. What is one more?
Why am I so mad and sad?
Why am I so serious at all?
This is just how things always are.
This is just another here and now.
This is just the stuff that makes up life.
This is just another passing poem.
Trauma is born the moment you notice
Your warm helplessness trickle down
Your left leg to your school socks.
It grows every minute you sit
With the gross stickiness that follows.
It beckons to you that afternoon
When you suddenly stop
While passing the socks
Air-drying on the clothesline.
Despite the maniacal scrubbing
And the finger-skin peeling,
You’re sure you still got a whiff of its stink.
You check again, tentatively,
Bringing the socks to your nose.
Not all the way, but close.
You smell the jasmine of the soap,
Tell yourself you are imagining things,
And let the socks go.
The parabolic clothesline sways,
The socks on them swinging
Like your playground bully
With his you-can’t-do-anything smile.
The scent is back that very instant.
Full blast. And you run.
Trauma cries and mewls and coos
Over the next few days,
Clinging to your breast,
Mouthing at your embarrassment,
Sucking you completely dry.
Every night you go to bed looking
At the light bruises it leaves behind.
You hope it doesn’t wake you up
In the middle of the night.
Of course, it does. It always does.
Trauma eventually learns its manners
And no longer calls you wherever you go.
It makes itself a nice cubby hole
In your private wardrobe drawer.
Every morning when you open it
To get ready for school,
Trauma says “Have a Great Day!”
From inside the jasmine-scented socks
You had helplessed into.
You pick another pair. Always another pair.
Trauma pulls your family in one day,
When after weeks, your mother finds
Burnt socks in the dustbin.
You tell her how they had flown away
Out of the clothesline and into the stove.
She looks at the room’s geometry,
The position of the open window,
The angle of the clothesline,
And the four inches of brick and mortar
Separating these from the kitchen.
You realize you hadn’t thought this through.
You shrug and run away.
But she has a crease behind her bindi.
She comes back from office that day
With a smile spread on her face
And a fresh pair of beautiful socks
With miniature polka dots
Of Mickey Mouse silhouettes.
You look at them and realize
You’d have jumped with joy any other day
Had these not been “the socks
That replaced the socks I helplessed in.”
Now she has two creases behind her bindi
And a hundred rupees fewer in her purse.
And you have two socks in the drawer
That you can’t throw out. For years.
Trauma laughs from your bedpost
When you wake up in the middle of the night,
Frantically touching your pants to see
If you’ve wet them again.
It laughs louder when you turn on
The flickering tubelight to double check.
And it just about rolls itself to death
When you walk to the bathroom
To wash your perfectly dry pants.
You know your mother will have
Another crease behind her bindi
When she sees them on the clothesline.
You don’t care. You can’t afford to care.
Thankfully, your father is oblivious.
His deliberate indifference
Is the last thing you need anyway.
But you learn from him this skill
And deliberately ignore the one
You’ve birthed with someone you hate.
Trauma knows what you’re doing.
And also knows what to do.
It has seen you do the same things
When your father did what you’re doing.
An impasse: Always was, always will.
As unresolved now, as it was then.
You try to acknowledge it as it is
And try to try and let it go,
Even in the twilight of your twenties,
When your parents are changed people,
But you still wake up from a dream
Where Trauma comes to meet you
And whispers in your waking moments:
You can’t do anything.
I want to do a thousand things
And want to do them well.
But I have time for just a few
Before I go to Hell.
I don’t know yet which few to choose;
So many to resolve.
Should I just pick and run with one,
So long as I evolve?
I’ve done that with my poem streak,
Though not so well, I guess,
For now I find it competing
Against my fling with chess.
My body wants to get in shape,
My soul into zazen,
My mind into more languages
That I can someday pen.
It’s good that poems write themselves.
I just have to make time
And show up at my writing desk
To catch the passing rhyme.
The rest I have to sequence, though;
Can’t work them all at once.
Let’s exercise and meditate,
So others stand a chance.
When soul and body are in place,
As fit as they can be,
The mind will be more productive
And have more energy.
Of course, I’ll touch the hobbies still
For daily minutes few,
Till such a time when I can bring
The effort they are due.
Minakhi Misra 