That Poem

Do you witness?

the warm, close knit thing?

The periphery of wrath? 

All heads and knee-deep doom
in bloom

the fate of 

a windmill

tied to their arms
Hard ciphers 

coagulating in rhythm 
as the flamingos 

herd to 
Siberia


if i ever live my death
dont bury my stars under the water of sorrow
or any nostalgia
that was found in my skirt

bury me insane
and
fluttering
with my indignation
written underneath the eyelids
taking gasps of immortality in
the hells of God's gardens

The 4th Rib

Scheherazade

Your chest

holds flowers and tattoos

near the skin.

Bold long feet

and ascetic hands

that were made to

cook shyly.

Eyes

that never wander

the lengths

of a woman's body

and lips

of a Botticelli

smoker saint.


Your clothes

never smelt

like any other man.

Not like lovers

or fathers

or brothers.

The last time

I folded them,

they blossomed

in my hands

as if your own threads

rubbed their scent

onto these palms.

Neither are you sex.

Nor a wild slash of the wrist.


You are a quiet sweat.

Between my breasts.

A way of silent

bedside goodbyes

each time we meet.

I always did want to answer

the question

on your calf

with my tongue,

But then I was grieving.


A mad widow takes no former lovers.


You were meant

to be hung

by those lips

on my wall to touch.

But

I never told you

how you were

an earlier lover

and will always be.

Découpage

While men lay like
Serpents in Hera's
Kingdom,
The sky remains blue.
And tooth-aches still
come to children

What omens did you see last night?
What language in its bloom?
Some untruth
or the mad woman's
run across the temple
with her small lover?

In some of the holy nooks,
erections rise like magnets and yeast
while in your own hair, lies air,
and the fragments of a strange place.

Now
Then
What do you do
with yourself and
this man's breath?
Except spreading it like a prism
over your body.
Each ray-
poet,
filth,
monkey,
ringworm,
television,
deity,
equus.

When the sun has left the eyelids
only in the cadavers
of these tides
that flutter swallows deep inside you
will you find them.

Like
answers that were 

strangled young.

Spit

Always left the streets with poets
no wait
there was a dancer too

but love
never finds its way
In these names

Always we sit
you
me
her
that one over there 

with her fifth smoke
screaming break up and blood
at anyone who cares to fuck

there is a sad way of things
deception 

in the breadth and lengths of history
a hospitality 

in our beds
as if we could
shut ourselves
to the horror of regrets

For 

this is what happens
when you hang words
on the window,
in the closet
between you and space
on some God-forsaken drunk night
or non-drunk night 

(for those of us who cannot afford it)

between the woman
and the pockets of the boy. 
my boy
yours
ours

does it matter
if we run our fingers over his
body?
If we moan like all the others
or bite like all the others
but never cum the same
or NOT AT ALL

does it matter
if i kiss you kiss him he kisses her she kisses me to kiss her?

***

A circle
of lovers
a halo,
a wreath,
a cuff,
an altar 

of beds,
laughter,
faces,
shirts, (with buttons)
to merge into each other like bad stories
never to be seen with my eyes open

or to fall into accidents of the anatomically correct heart.

To let a clam spread over your back,
like the wings of an angel, dead to the world
is a wonderful thing.
To sit without floods in your eyes,
and soft soft lips,
is too.

I wasn't calm 

as the words 
died in my palms - 

my mouth shut softly.

The taste will fade eventually.
So will the face.

I wish I was raised differently,





and taught to spit.

Legend of a Suicide

Sun pools of light
under the eyes
noses for beaks 
made from untruth
yes you are human
Yes you are flesh
but no ordinary man?
Poet.

What mortal creature
created you
My man, 

for you no longer stand tall. 
Taller than the rose-bushes in your mystic domes
Taller than see-sickness
Taller than the red hills
at night
scattered with pots of ghosts
taller than your father's Kashmiri village

In the long snow... 
Dewey with
guns

I saw you
fish
I saw you
soldier
army boots
dancing
in a poultry farm
singing

coloured
beams

I wanted to touch you -
innocence

(Even in my dream, i run,
to hide from a poem or two)

and wipe on my
stomach, 
the snarl of an angry lip,
curling 

My lover is
not mine -
none will be.
I lost you,
I lost all...

and have
since only wanted more loss.
someone says, 
i fear too many things
And I lie and say yes, I do.


***


Come back in flash floods
in Tsunamis
let me tremble 
inside your words  
And long-dead letters
let me be lonely 

as I always was
a saint, a holy grail, a lost moonless light with soft blood.
a tired tree with five thousand nights

All that i am not anymore.
Why?

Let me be
let me be
let me be
let me be
let me beletmebe let me be
let me be

please leave me

I cannot be awakened
with your demons

I want to die
before I see you
again.


I was a hero.

My man,

Will always be
a coward.