Meenal

 

Why is it that you always close
your eyes while we are making love?
Why is it that we are always crossing
swords? Why is it that I cannot write
to you anymore? Why is it that you
always get ever so lost in my coffee
drizzles? Why is it that I grow cold
even while tending your young and
supple breasts?
Why is it that you always
walk away during the sandstorms,
just before the rains would wash
down our orgasm? Why is it that
you make me forget all those lines
I once tried to write about you?
Why is it that you are one of
my unkept words?

 

memento mori

 

sunflowers outside these years are
now dead and Neal Cassady tee-shirts
are quite brazen against the days
and the nights
the grass was blue and the sky was green
the flush cackles all the while
in all those washrooms all over the place
the wash colors wearing a smirk
and an infatuation dead
with kaleidoscope eyes
she is wet in her laughter
and dead like nobody’s business
the day the music died
so bye-bye Miss American Pie
she was not really the sun
and nothing under the sun was
in a tune
the days and nights are making out
on the rocks across drizzles
and used rubber
her cheeks prized open
and her hands in prayer

Sacrament

 

You were running down the stairs
against a clamoring sky and
nearly the sunset was
so mindlessly red, dark and
clambering
I was going away to Sacramento
to keep a word, if that
really means a thing and
I spread my bleak, prairie
palm to receive the whiteness
of your blessings
our deaths and mindlessness
so there was nothing else to be,
to be conquests to be dreams,
and worlds of to be
dry stalk and debris sculpted
from our lovemaking
our once lovemaking and
a fire and not a bird of fire
to be again and seriously
chant Hari Om or even Maya!
we were talking but fairy tales

 

An Old Wife’s Tale

 

He was dying as I went to the clinic
and everything looked stiff
as we tried to smile
but it wasn’t easy and
we gave it up
winter was closing in and
the traffic was indifferent downstairs
the glasses showed lights streaking across
and we were restless
I was sweating in my perfume
and cosmetics
when he looked up
and mumbled something
yes, dear
I tried to reach out and
clasped his thin hands in mine
my lips felt chapped
he said I was looking great
just like the old days
and we nodded at our memories
that had been such a waste 

 

But Sincerely

 

She was spread like a fresco against
the rock as I saw her
and so lie down beside me
and we were a lay down one another
spruce with cologne
I like the way most young women smell
and snuggled to her and
circled her with my wings
scooped her out like dessert
and finally kissed her lips out
mounting her
my cheeks brushing her soft, tender breasts
our lips were smothered
and bleeding
and we were taken in for moments
eyes closed and serene
like parts of the everlasting stones
we necked and closed
and it was swell
we laid against each other
just like that
we would be walking away
from our lives soon

 

Songs

 

a sense of reflections and all the
rainbow children we were yet
to conquer
the years of weighing anchor and
kissing beddy byes
the prices of our sculpture and
pieces of desolation, like watching
a man broken and eyeless
murmuring promises to be with you
in a crowd, in the guttural squeezing
of oases jarring your sands
your white, virgin breasts
that need suckle ever so
around the darkening canopy,
the next step of desire
a sweltering sky that nobody
can help dissolve
and life adamant waiting to pssst
the Thames on fire
painting the town red
and going to a raped, disowned town
of hardly memories

 

Roopsa

 

Your face is all over those tea cups and
wine glasses and
acrid, honey laughter
Your Indian face and name
that I can write no more like
Indian rains and lightning
Your face is all over households that
hold their breath
in a silent prayer of nonsense,
chanting some litany or
other
for your return,
walking along the bluegrass
of Southern Avenue
as the rains tumble and fall,
as the rains and
your face and
the rains are all over the place 

Ice Ice Baby

 

I make love in my dreams as
I made last night, I took you in
my arms, unsolicited
and kissed the wet hardness of
your white unrelenting teeth
I kissed you with the doors all open
the room whimpering as if it had
a sadness of its own, a letter
being read, a pen that cannot write
anymore about orgasms, and
orgasms that do not rock
me anymore

 

* * *

I kissed the flower of your lips
and tried to reach down to the roots of
your wetness, your wet tongue that plays

so many pranks like the tip
of wild icebergs in heat, the tip of
your young and tender breasts
and the lush moist hips
swinging like no sweat
and quite dangerous liaisons

 

* * *

your useless shrieks
unheeded by deaf and desperate ears and
deft and sad hands of mine

 

Moments

 

I have come to you after a while
after the second coming of nothingness
I keep on dreaming of nothingness
and my fears and inanity
I think of lines that when written could
well have been formidable
but they don’t come back to me
like some women, like
some moments spent with them
that were never mine

 

* * *

nothingness lolls about in neck
ties and prefers gin
to tonic and
whimpers in its
nothingness nothingness
writes, makes love, makes
small talk
is jealous, horny, hungry
and sedate all at the same time
sleeping always with
the same nothingness
nothingness is always like
the same nothingness

 

Anniversary

 

Your going away like some fantasy
the Southern Avenue sky far away and
somber
like your wild, young and swinging
breasts
your calf muscles like egg shells
that run away to that tram
car and the window occupied
by all of Calcutta’s busy urban morning...
I light up a desultory cigarette
and
walked all those
uncertain miles back home
to nothingnes...
and yet it is morning
and yet Calcutta
is among the wild, wild
rains once again 

 

Marasim

 

Let us go away from all our women tonight
women are like waste lands
let us caress the fields of joy
where the hay stacks groan
and the memories
of all our lovemaking are rife
with agony
let us remember ourselves tonight
and the togetherness
of all our ghosts
of yesteryears 

Diamonds

 

diamonds are your eyes as they burn
me inside out in rage and
rage and walk in silence along
Park Street, Calcutta
into an evening that is raining and
dark and cool like
your eyes
like your fire that lash me now and
again like the rains
like being in your arms nestled
in the fragrances of a woman
possessed like diamonds, expensive
like diamonds and
having edges to her laughter
that are sharp ever so like
diamonds that can only burn and
can never cry like
the angry, desolate streets
of Calcutta 

 

Roopsa Roopsa

 

and this they said was life!
you should go take a walk down champagne alleys
before you talk such rubbish...
Presidency College was glum and desolate
in a May evening as we went down
together, clumsily hand in hand
with our rotten memories...
and yet they’d say this is life,
enjoy!
as the ravens fly back home defeated
against a drooping, hunchbacked sun
that’ll burn for years to come...
and you, Roopsa, to think that you
once promised to see me through,
guide me along the
unevenness
of your feline terrain...
and they call this life, they do
ask them to take a ramble along
all the champagne alleys,
through and through 

 

Konark

 

We were driving into utter sunsets that
make no sense
apart from nothingness and
our sterile memories
the temple rocks were blazing
in the dying sun
and the gods were so
desperately sad
that they were silent and
serene ever so
like your heartbreaking
going away
the magic of moments runs into
these years that have made
another you
no letters drop in our
cubby holes as I drag my
listless feet
high up and down the cobwebs
of fuzzy memories
I write the word nuances
in my nothingness diaries and
fervently pray for yet another
millennium that might
change the order
of things for a better you
the fever of the night
collecting in molten
drops across your face
wondrous and white
and black-blue kohl-lit eyes
burning like the reserved
anguish of centuries
of celibacy 

Desire

 

All the passion flowers of yesteryears
visiting no nonsense shops with you
your young and supple breasts
brushing tender across the lapel of my desires
and it was winter and
it was Calcutta
after the gods have taken
their annual vacation here
our new car and
the engine humming
our new car and the engine purring
and your feline smiles
crashing across the shore of my desires 

 

reading poetry

 

I’d go back to you as I must
go back like the river yonder
that runs back to the sea
I’d go back to you like the distant stars
that are lonely shining down
Park Street and an evening
when you’re nowhere,
no more sprawled against the skies
and the rocks for me
no more risking your chastity
for me, for me...
I’d go back to you as I must
like our lonely ghosts
reading poetry

 

Prayer

 

I fold my hands in silence 

as if in prayer, as if in recollection

of all the sunsets spread against

our sadness skies, skies heavy

with the heartbreak colors of youth 

colors of the morrow, and tomorrow

when peace comes dropping slow

like silence, and I fold my hands

in silence, as if in prayer

as if in recollection

 

Work Song

 

And the sky is blue now, and a new day is here

my hands ache and my heart aches to know

the stirrings of my hands, my heart, my lips

and my words... for I must stir and shine like

the new day and the blue skies above

skies as blue as my blue blistering lips in cold

and hot as the fires of labor that are mine...

I must stir and shine or else be defeated

on my shop floors of blood and sweat

and the tears like rains, silent

as they shroud the shies and the seas

like the sorrows of yesteryears

like sorrows galore

 

To America

 

You've taken my dreams away America
and pawned them on the streets of Manhattan
laid them blatantly across the hungry belly
of young and skinny whores
from Puerto Rico, and played god
when our children died in Baghdad ...
Where are you going America, my dreams
and my insanity? Won't you cry
for Vietnam, and buy flowers for the dead?
Walk hunchbacked in the memory
of all those men you've killed
around the world, and kneel down
to their children and say you're sorry?
You've taken away my dreams America
and soon you'd be walking alone
talking to yourself like your insanity

 

October

 

How would I really grow old?

Grow a beard, wrinkles

under my bright blue eyes

and a week-long stubble

across my sad chin

of yonder years

How would I really grow old

as the skies here in Calcutta

ridicule my envy

my rage impotent

like the clouds here in Calcutta

my beloved, that don’t burst

and smear a lot of sorrows

along the city highways

How would I really grow old

among my rains and my sunshine

and my bleak winter cold?

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