A Voluntary Exile Remembers
Around the round fountain the noon sun circles. Some women in a huddle are talking. (Elsewhere old crones sit on deserted village streets, watch the dogs and mumble toothlessly) Their hair forms a quilt of black and yellow.They are smoking and I know I had left you behind.
A jet streaks a minimalist sky, with it's white smoky fingers. I don't know it's destination, it's headed east, should I persume that you still are waiting somewhere for my return? Would you recognize me if I did make a journey to you? And more importantly would I recongize myself in your eyes?
I am forgetting you slowly, as they say here, just like an ex. Many things are now different, I just can imagine how you smelt after walking in summer rain( dark earth, spices of Malabar),the clarity of your eyes(humid old starlight) and your cooking( just like my love which was and is suffocating).
But when you cross me second hand, in books( the colors are orche and saffron),in dark eyes( of women with brown skin) and in words of songs( Meera's bhajans); inspite of a quickening of breath, I don't stop and turn around. You are but an echo imprisoned in the chambers of a nautilus, shell upon shell that Time has built, whose whipsers I now ache
To hear.
2002:03:23 17:45 Atlanta
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Beware of the Body
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This body covered with matted hair, this body that smells of old sweat, this body is an instrument of dance, this body that stood like a tree in the whites of winters and greens of monsoons, this body on which lines have been craved with chisels of words, kisses, lips, tongues this body that grows taut to beautiful music, poems, certain voices and skins this body that races on pavements, this body which knows deep pain, which wears a gaunt face and tired eyes, this body which loves rivers, old railway stations, sunsets, wild flowers growing on roadsides, moon hanging on the firmament and stars. this body that is the sea that keeps crashing on the drakness of the incoming night, this body was born as an mysterious smooth egg, now its shell is craked, just a glancing touch of a stranger sends it into a hysterical pain, this body is an yellowing newspaper with news that has gone stale, this body is now a figment of you limited imagination, this body once or twice almost stood at an altar of pure nakedness and said "I do I do". Now I do I do kill it every evening and every night. Die Die Die. It waits for a needle to pierce the views, a blade to slice, dice and chop the viens, it rolls in sleep, a ship sinking in unfinished promises, a cur scavenging in these grabage dumps of dead dreams. This body knows and this body will remember you, you and you, this body was a weapon that sliced through you, this body was a tatoo that you can't ever erase, this body is the eclipse of the sun to come, this body is the growling wind of death, the invisible jail in which you will lead your small life, buy your clothes, wear your lip gloss, go to your balls, your dreams, this body is the sky that is slowly seeping through this hole into the whole world, the smell of ash, the taste of sweet plums, and the sound of hail on tin roofs you would sleep underneath all your nights. Beware Beware Beware. This body is an explosive. Beware of the body! ------------------------------------------ 2002:05:30 19:30 Atlanta |
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Talking to Mud Walls
You talk to the mud walls, entreating them with pleas. And tonight you will be awake awaiting your Love.
Tonight the hennaed sky will be calm till you meet him. He has promised to come, but your lips quiver, "Will he?"
You had travelled high and low looking for his magic, you have seen Mecca, you have seen Mathura searching east and west for him.
You skin has whitened to the color of bleached whale bone, your eyes have gone dry. But tonight he will come and color you with himself.
He will pour one color after another onto your burning skin with his cool hands, he will smile at your mock anger and wash you with his love.
Tonight the darkening sky will rain: only after he meets you in Paradise. He has promised to come but you still fret in anxiety, "When will he come?"
So you talk to the mud walls.
2002:05:18 13:15 Atlanta
Inspired by a qwaali written by Amir Khusrau, a Sufi poet and sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
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