Self-Preservation

Self-Preservation

I seek you within the pages of this book
I seek you through your words, I seek you
Through mine. I seek you within
An anonymous crowd. I seek
To resurrect you through memory
In flesh and blood. I type your name
In the facebook search bar, in vain.
And then I seek to believe in you
Through memory fantasy words silence
Dead, self preserving habit
Has made me say itsokayitsokayits
Okayitsokayitsokay for too long.
Because I know I must say
Itsokaytohurtallover
I know I can’t fuckyouoff
I can’t discard you like a useless
Scrap of waste-paper.
Dead, self preserving habit
Has taught me to smile.

Making Love

Making Love

I want to make love.

I want to make love
To the glittering, frosty edged moon
That cuts through the cold,nipping air
Like a curved sickle.

I want to make love to the full moon
I want to worship this purnima, I want to gaze
Longingly at this white misty dream forever
As it plays hide and seek with the clouds.

I want to make love to this lone tree at night
when its bare branches make love to the moon
I want to hug this tree, and rub my cheek
Against its grizzly trunk.

I want to make love to the whispered secrets of the forest
Aflame with pink, yellow, and orange
I want to make love to the firy red leaves
Of the fall, the hidden violets,the thickest green verdure

I want to lose myself in this green and make love
To the rhythmic beats of the barbet
To the golden notes of the koel, the red of the bulbul
To the magpie, the hoopoe, the jays and the squirrels.

I want to make love to them. I want to make
Love to this river, it speaks to me in meanders
Reflects my dreams and the leaves of the trees
The waves frolicking, carrying me, playing with me

And I want to make love to you
I want to worship you, I want to hug you
I want to touch your hair. Softly.
Making love to the trees and the moon,
The birds and the river was after all only
A way of making love to you.


I also want to cry.

Punctuation Marks

Punctuation Marks

You fill the empty pauses, you are
A comma. You are the parentheses
Of daydreams (this comes in useful
In classrooms, trains and market places)
You hover like quotation marks
Around every word I say,
The backdrop of this play.
My life is a story, it has coils of words
With events, characters, colours
An intricate plot and an open end.
This rapid river sometimes
Has lighter tones, which turn shady
And cloudy in places. But it has
No pauses, it is unpunctuated.
you are the colon
The semi colon which gives meaning
The genotext of this phenotext.
You are the accent, you mould
My pronounciation. Dot my I’s and
Cross my t’s, You are
The language of my imagination.
The story would still be a story
Without the punctuations, but it would
Be endlessly garbled speech
You, even in absentia, are just the full stop
I come home to. Period.