Loper, tum kidhar ho?

Anand and I walked all the way to Frendicoes at an absurd eleven p.m. in search of Loper. No sign of him, but found dozens of all kinds of dogs curled up on brown sack cloth outside the shelter. They were obviously puzzled to have visitors at that ungodly hour: some sat up sleepily, one started a dizzy squeak-howl, and another came testily barking at us.

A recce of the neighbourhood yielded nothing. Our only hope now lies in the enigmatic Frendicoes interiors. Tomorrow, as early as we can make it.

I miss that fat lard of lump. Funny, how affections grow out of less than sufferance.

Loper gone missing

Loper's been out of the scene for the last three days. Last seen, out of our 3rd floor balcony, being pelted by a young bonehead and fleeing to take cover. Not even a pawprint since then.

Is he dead? Lying injured at Friendicoes?

Just saw a white shadowy dog from the balcony and hollered "Loper!", but when the animal lifted his head questioningly, realized his form was too graceful and streamlined to be our quasi-adoptee's.

Sleep crawling, and something else

I'm filled with stones.
So many stones, round dark scowling smooth.
All those words flitting in my head,
- sentences - thoughts
all that I wanted to think through,
have suddenly left.
I'm filled with only stones and lassitude.

To R.D.

When my poems saw you date
your poems, they clustered up

fretfully trying to remember
their history. “We’ve never felt

so abandoned before! No dates
to tack on to, no chronology

to mark our growing.” I crossly
shot their discontent down.

“Excitable mongrels! Can you
swear to the day you were born

to? You revel in your polygenous
delivery, changing shape size

color often as may please. Shall
we lose that freedom to grow?”

I won't speak

My silence has a reason.
Why must I talk?
You hear the words I say and
make them who I am
You want to know
what I do -

when I had nothing to do
nothing was the state I chose.
amidst self-promoting lunches
and people with a purpose
I stayed silent
friends struggling to explain
me to the world,
my lack of industry
condemning me to an unsaid derision
a non-involvementa distance
skipping by

So time slips out of my hand
So evenings make me cranky for company
I will be silent.
You want the smugness of industry
A sum of achievements I parrot
am I?

I create
I convince myself I create
I doodle, I daydream, I feel
I sing, I smile, I love
This is my purpose

I am not until you see me
yellow post-its flagging

lawyer/researcher/feminist/poet

I ball my fists round who I was
who can I become?
I grab or do they cling?
identities we play with
dog-eared dog-clenched

My time was mine - not
productive for the world
still I asked endlessly
who is Me?

three months out of a job
so the money runs out
and so does bravado

We skip words till they don't even rumble

And now I work everyday
Mon to Fri, 9.30 to 5.30
Let the words vanish up a vacuum,
a mediocrity of everydays
lost for words, lost for conversations
the talk not me, or all me

The itch still there
I lie down and it wants a little scratch
something crawling all over my brain
sometimes I ball it in my fist
and crush it in a shape to fit a size
a fistful of rice, a fistful of flour
eat and clean and make love

and sometimes I write.

mera blog

After blogging daily for a week, I posted nothing yesterday. It’s back to one of those existential moments:

What is the purpose of this blog? What do I want to make of it? A record of my “poems”? Or also “ramblings” and “musings”? When does a piece of writing become one or the other – especially when most of my poetry is confessional? But poetry wants to veil and hint, not bare. If this blog, then, is to contain my poems, how can it be a notebook/journal at the same time?

What prevents, you ask, from it being everything? Nothing but an inclination for stubborn puristry.

Grand Avenue by Steve Breen

Revenge

I shouldn't, possibly, use words
to bare my anger,
atomize the public.

This is a form of
revenge
I've tried in the past,
only to cut myself up writhing,
for words written are blacker
than deeds
and skin you as much as me.

But when we've just made love
and are lying drowsy
in each other's arms

And you leave
to drink
with friends you haven't invited
and pass around riotous
opinionated talk

- I'm not sure if this is
overreacting -

I get upset
enough to throw something in your face.
These words.

Unstable

We balance on an eyelash.
The swoops of pure joy
swinging free between us
sag
without a warning.

Not even twenty four hours
to the cottonsilk clouds bobbing
between us in sheer
relief –

trust, the cold air tapering
between our teeth –

I felt a flicker of apprehension at the Distich,
(before dinner)
“When fortune smiles, beware lest some ill strike;
End and beginning often are unlike.”

The end comes too soon. We sink

Your words coming from cracks
in the earth

My furies without a parallel
spinning me dizzy uncontrolled –
my tongue does not know what to say
my ears, what to hear
where to find comfort
where to rest the mantle

Anger management? Are you serious?

The shock blanches me
I’m washed cold ashore
Has the mirror I hold been
lying?

It’s easy to elide my cherished wildness
into barely conscious hysterics.
You flow with more grace than I.
I’m still a thorny berry bush,
yet to grow the
vast shadow one can lie under.

You too, slip me out a hurt
sometimes.

In leaping,
to learn to hold steady
together.
We must.

Abrupt as a thief

Surely he can sniff out likely suckers soon as
they move into the lane. That friendly eye, pat
on the moon, occasional crumb. Encouraging
signs. He loops into affections nudging his white

misshapen body promiscuously against promising
legs, or winks up at you with eyes pink as desire.
We named him Loper, our interloper. Prescient
of his chosen life path, for he moved quickly,

as temperatures dropped, from staircase to
verandah, blue chequered floor cushion to settee
– belying his white whale size. However do you
keep the lard, Lopster, with your comings and

goings and humble street origins? This morning
he trotted the length of the lane behind me, dutiful
as a lover, till I got in the car and left. Carrying my
smell away. I can never be trusted again.

In chasing

It's amazing how one moment passes to the next, and we live, barely aware, inside burning dreams.

How does our truest self become a dusty, shapeless mirage – a door to someone else’s Zion?

How do we forget what fiber we are made of?

It's amazing what knocks us into shape are the unpleasant decisions.

Blogger's Dilemma
from Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons

Away

Of twelve days, a day barely passed
and your missing is sickness in my blood.
How do I bear the eleven remaining?

Breakdown

For children staying in the refugee camps of Gujarat, June 2002

The Elders' stories clang in your ears
the next morning. You are wood
a wooden wedge weighing
down your smile
you stumble into the mass of
liquid eyes pleading trust
pleading sanity
Their hands extended
tiny grubby hands
they hold together the shards of their laughter
clutching your arm
tugging your dupatta
knocking you about with the ferocity of
ingenuous needs
like disfigured dolls, like tin-plate soldiers
they slash your poise till you flee
in collapse
in impotence.