Parthenogenesis

Ensconced in the cold comfort
of moonbeams and the wild woodlands,
I bury myself in the vinca growing wild.
Star-kissed moments of exploration,
a life far beyond my own. Drawn far
from my fraternity, pulling against heartstrings
bound to to graves halfway across the world.

Step into the nests of carrion birds -
vultures in the inky sky, scrambled eggs
on the steaming earth. Little bits of plastic
floating on the night breeze, morse code
of a pulse dangerously close.
Gleaming against the dark earth,
rice flour artwork, intricate spellings of
"W-e-l-c-o-m-e" unchanged through generations.

Hidden mirrors where the dryads comb
their hair, rainbows trapped in cobwebs
and cocoons. Drip me a caress, a kiss,
and one night that never ends.

On Being a Poet

I wrote this about a year ago, as a part of a self-exploration process. I'm posting it here in response to a question on Brenda's blog - What is the role of a poet in changing society.

A flame was lit in my soul by a Higher Flame, years ago when I was born. I write poetry. I use words to paint a tapestry of colours and light. Even darkness – I see in the darkness because of the flame burning inside me – it gives me vision and light. My mind clothes the thought that was born in clothes of words, and sends it out into the world, where people can see the light I saw. They can feel the emotions I felt, not because they were mine, but because these are their own feelings.
I’m an artist - amateur or not – I’m the expression of a silent society. I feel deeply everything that goes on around me. I feel for people. I feel their feelings and put them into verse so that they may feel and accept these feelings as their own.
I have been through good and bad, and my heart is scarred from bleeding and crying. But it was made sensitive by the experiences. I learnt to read into good and bad. I learnt to read people’s emotions.. I learnt to discard the mask I wore before. I learnt to look for the good in people. I learnt to look out for pitfalls in my path. I learnt that faith will be tested by a baptism of fire. I learnt that asking for help is not shameful. I learnt, most of all, to call my feelings my own.
I express for people their feelings as my own. They read the poem and tell me that they could feel my pain – but that is their own pain they finally accept. I took on the responsibility of expressing for people their own feelings unknowingly and unquestioningly, when I started writing poetry. I’m a pillar of society, where the feelings flock. My job is to make people face the realities they deny. Yes, I write my poetry as my own feelings. But I throw up questions others would not dare ask. As a close friend once told me in a conversation we had, “Questions that we dare not repeat, because our masks float away, and we are flawed and standing alone in Eden once again…”
I live in a farcical world, where appearances are superficial. They are deceptive – they are a lie – they are a mask. They are what hides the true force of feeling in the heart and soul. They are what people use conveniently to deny their feelings. Denial is a rule of survival, and feelings are for wimps. The heart is an inconvenient appendage to an otherwise fit-for-survival person. But the heart is not silent. It finds expression, maybe not in tears per se, but in other ways. Hearts reach out to hearts in silent communications of emotion. Society calls it “instinct”. I call it humanity.
I belong to this world of shifting depths, masked realities and people who have been programmed for generations that feelings are for wimps. Where the objective reality is masked for a presentable image. Where society frowns on any expression of feeling. Where society regards fear as unreal. Where we form this society. Where we stitch masks. Where we force the mask onto an innocent child, until he believes he cannot live without it.
And where I have chosen to tear the mask on Me. I have chosen to wear my heart on my sleeve so I can feel. Feel deeper, feel truer, feel closer. To myself, to my people, to my God. My courage comes from my faith and my love. For, a flame was lit in my soul by a Higher Flame, years ago when I was born….

Zen-ing

Hand-me-down molecules from
the millennia before last, each one
a prostration of the fourth dimension.

Intention is a world away from
perception. Just as you are
your own world, and I am mine.

Sixth Sense

I stand beneath streetlights
agog with fireflies who do not
know fear in their passion for light.

Molten light snaking into my lungs
while I hear exasperated nuclei
in the throes of a nicotine death,
I feel the touch of a scream on my neck -
this must be the kiss of death.

And yet, tomorrow I shall awaken
to the taste of plasticine faith,
the ultimate proof of surrender.

Surrender, to the sixth sense

Sunspot Scrolls

A resplendent shade of magic
like the first leaf of spring
tentative on the lips of a breeze.

Papyrus tales crumbling in the
ancient soil will someday form
a part of me.

Goblin fruit under marshmallow clouds
slowly filling my beer belly as I lie
on ochre grass somewhere on a sunspot.

Chartered underworld somewhere
in another galaxy stolen from the light
rules in forgetful command.

Dessicated wheatgrass on my
armlet laughs at the anklets on
the feet of a cloud, chains
extending beyond my imagination.

Discolored

And she stood there, watching,
as the faeries raped my colors.

She looked like she ate
strained turnips at every meal –
severe, spare and squally.

Her prim lips
squeezed into a face high
on economy, emerald eyes
with no reason to sparkle.

She held my vocal cords
twined around her little finger,
my brown eyes squished under
her bunny slippers.

Fleet-footed with shimmering
wings, the faeries danced across
the silhouette of a sunset
from the Iron Age.

Multihued creatures tumbled out
of her ancestral hat, a fat rabbit
out of its witch’s pointy end.

She swallowed my silence
like castor oil.

My heart doing the salsa
against my chest – it might
even have been
seductive.

My spirit in every butterfly
that ever flew in the sunshine

My mind splattered
in a thousand letters across
a page in a poet’s mind.

My body at a pinnacle
where pain married orgasms
in technicolor.

The daisies later rescued my
shades and laid them at my tomb
when it was found.

My tomb – the body
my soul resides in today.

I met her the other day.
Apparently,

All she can conjure now
is a night only she can see.

The night she killed Me.
The night, the faeries
were raping me.
The night I lost Faith.

(Untitled)

(a work in progress)

Galvanized bodies, flying sweat, doorways
too small for four but holding six.
Sighing mass of exhaustion crammed
armpit to armpit, stale perfume mingling
with perspiration and flowers falling
from gajra's in loosened chotis.

Spacelessness comes at a premium – space is
as outdated as handsewn clothes on a baby.

Assembly lines for families silhouetted
against a sky the color of an old bruise.

Indifferent little stations with straggly passengers,
a family of Rottweiler-ish street dogs.

Important stations with milling crowds,
yelling vendors, haggling customers,
the all-pervading smell of illegal fish
fresh from the Arabian Sea.

Bombil, prawn, lobster, crab -
all nourished on your own effluent
and the occasional oil spill.

Tired voices in the cacophony of
tonight's menu, nagging schools,
chilren's artwork, not-too-healthy parents-in-law,
loss of pay leave, new sarees,
flying dupattas, irregular periods, wedding plans.

Taking turns on the one available seat,
a group of working mothers.
A baby sung to sleep in a collegian's lap
while her mother relieves her tired arms.

A group of women passing out small
bottles of water to everyone. A young girl
learning to knit from her neighbor.
A drab lost-in-the-crowd face brightening up at
her first sale for the day.

Girls poring over notes on the journey home,
group study on the move, making space
for a pregnant lady, an arthritic nani-ma,
a breathless asthmatic.

The essence of humanness reaffirmed
with the only thing that counts - One Heart.