She said/ He said: A Mehfil with R.P
I can’t sleep. It’s a lot of weight to carry. You are as receptive as the walls. And that’s a compliment, I guess. You caught my heart in a jar - named it undisclosed. Why are you so restless? We spent that day in your room, staring at the ceiling. Guess you expected me to fuck you. I laugh and tell you that you’re not old enough. Your dad walks in a nasty suit. The garbage truck picks up your screams at the gate. Wish I could hear you the way the world hears you. But I am still wearing your pants from yesterday. All these things, all these genuine things I’ve collected of you, resound with indifference.
He says he rides sanity when bored. I say he rides if at all when desperate. "I am busy." He is beautiful when he says this, with his forehead tightly clenched by serious lines. His eyes, his brown eyes, ever so pensive with insecurity at his feet, silence at his lips. He is beautiful.
I trust the lake will send my garbage to the sea. He was born to contaminate free lot with rants. Don’t ask me to rise when millions before me rise to death. I just want to feel the lies, the crimson lies that adorn his neck. Don’t ask me to rhyme. I will fail miserably. This heart that is void of reasoning will not speak against truth in raised voice. He is not that powerful, no, not yet. He is but a mere boy, and calling him a boy is even so a stretch. I don’t know anything.
She knows nothing when she speaks. She is wise when quiet. That’s the way he likes his women, quiet. But she is not weak. Oh lord, she is not weak at all. She spoke against the gods when no rain would come to fall. Why do we complain when there is no storm? Are we so accustomed to blood-shed? I don’t know. Lucidity is boring. Man needs more triviality. I am tired. I am in debt. Leave me to the hate words that rest at mother's breast. I don’t know anything.
The world is lost. And we lost it. If there is a madding crowd, there is ignorance. If there is ignorance, the righteous intellectuals will complain about it. Silence gets discredited. How does it reappear without getting mocked? I don't know anything.
The day churns its sadness, lipstick on the lips of a woman, not a smudge. Is she perfect or just another extension of lust? Watching the ugly wind find time, seeds quicken into roses. Is this how the world is supposed to be? I don’t know anything.
When does the idea of the other Begin? On seeing, or on grasping With hands, with feet? Or is it A light turned on behind a high Window, a screen on which Certain shadows begin to loom?
I don’t know anything.
The world is populated. And we Populate the world: if there is A he, he will create a she, and if There is a she, she will complain About a he. Silence filling with Itself, how does it call itself?
I don’t know anything.
The day spools its light, a ribbon In the dark hair of a girl. Is she God or just one of his may lovers? Watching this tableaux for a long Time, breath is quickened into Speech. Is this how the world Is forever lost to me?
I don’t know anything.
Kissing her face between sheets Desire seeks repose. Happiness Flares. Glass throws daylight’s Last glints on the floor. And Then a night full of weeping. How does a tree grow from Just the smidgen of a seed?
I don’t know anything.
My Poems
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Sabbath Poem
On a spring Sunday, as flowers
Pick up speed amidst gathering green
Foliage,
And when heat is yet to course Down the back as sticky rivulets Of sweat,
Standing in a stand of beeches With freshly hatched leaves, A man thinks
Of a woman who keeps saying Life seems quite useless, and that Beauty is for
Poets or such self absorbed queers. She herself is quite beautiful when She says this.
He knows this: beneath her bronzed Skin lie seasons of blood and bile, pus And pain
Waiting to break over the coast Of time and occasion. He knows this: Transcendence is
Rarely a given, and love, much sought, Is found less and less by the starved And starving.
He knows this: before he reaches the end Of this line, hundreds will fall, with flies Settling over
The unburied, for always someone gets fed Even if others die of hunger. So what must Be done with
This knife, and this the vein, This flower, and this its vine, This living, and this its death?
for M.M
My Poems
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Few Hours After Waking
Few hours after waking, I sit
With echoes of dreams, in the shade
Of a sunlight tree, with a book
Of poems open in my lap, and think Back to what was showing on the subterranean Screen of sleep: a backwards shadow of the future,
Under which I found myself unfurling Explanations to the unfree, using semaphores? I am not a prophet, nor have any desire to be.
Yet what is a prophet but someone Who has seen a shining city, and thus runs Around, running at his mouth,
Waiting for mobs of believers to gather, And be led to salvation or slaughter, While the earth stays as constant
And as constantly changing as before? No. All I want to do, few hours after waking, Is to bring forth an utterance from silence, Which leads me, the listener, back to silence.
My Poems
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