The pillar is smoothly rounded by the girl
As she swirled with hands holding it tight.
Her eyes looked dizzily at the hot tin roof,
Her face in slant, at forty degrees to pillar.
She whirled around it holding it steadfast.
It is worn smooth with her love for years.
Grandmas cry from no salt in their eye.
They cry softly from waters in the head
Of memories of husbands lost in opium
Of sons and grand-nieces lost to moon.
They laugh toothless laughter in ripples
Over vegan jokes made special for kids,
Not fart jokes in high demand by them.
As they make hot noon snacks for kids
They rub the eye-whites, of blue smoke
We hear the deep throat voice of girl
Made faceless by unwanted acid love
As it slept on a roof under full moon.
Face book cannot resolve moon-face.
But screams are heard across all roofs.
(An 18 year girl has lost her face to a vicious acid attack by a spurned suitor)
It seems cuckoo returned this time
For mango festival a little too early.
Its calls coaxed rains to drop silver
Under an Ashoka tree in fruit fall
Recent yellow and ripe gray fruits,
Proving television weather wrong.
Raindrops fall upon parasite brood
Now a black crow’s responsibility
The black crow would raise chicks
From its monsoon indiscretions.
But koel’s mango song is so sweet
Around stones tongues lick clean
That wagging tongues skip morals
And forgive lack of responsibility.
The man comes back from the holy river
Where he renounced a certain vegetable
The bitter one had always tasted terrible.
(Please leave behind here for your dead
All you consider dearest to your bosom,
Said the muttering priest of an ice river.)
We say return from a river purely bathed
After you have done your hanging thing.
The naked men would come from hills
The purity not yet tested in natural sky.
(Here we write pure poetry in azure sky
About waters that washed down corpses.)
The corpses had renounced all the worlds
But their sun went on to rise regardless.
The naked men have renounced clothes
And now what to do with hanging things.
We have no tears enough to wet our eyes.
But we have genteel glycerine tears made
To stream down eyes and keep them wet.
But now what to do with hanging things
The women are at their frivolous pursuits
At lake, with shameless crow on the tree.
Soon the crow will be black in wistful air
With princess’ jewel, to women’s shouts,
Their delicate fingers pointing to the sky.
There is a Krishna- flippancy to the crow
That flies away with a jewel hiding shame.
The women walk on the hushed whispers.
The hooded man is a crow running away
With a princess’ beauty on rising bosom
That went up and down on golden jewel,
Bored painter of languid women of myth.
These women are figures from his canvas
Bored with pointing fingers at crows in sky.
(Raja Ravi Verma’s painting)
We will join ranks with them.
In return ,they will mourn us
When later , our turn comes .
The Rudali women have made
Breast-beating into a fine art.
They do it to some fine music.
The air is rife with fresh death.
Be assured that in the bargain
Nobody will feel unmourned.
In my moonlight,
My old God wears
An elephant head
Of all my old as if.
In my moonlight
I wear a forehead
Of a round red dot
Of my God’s as if.
In a dead grandma’s story, the ladder
Took kids to the sky roof for their play.
Old woman swept the earth of its dust
And found a low sky highly annoying.
If sky bothered her in earth-sweeping
She would push it up with her broom.
Kids could not come down from play.
Poor chaps had to turn sun and moon .
The ladder , now in rain and rust, lands
You in water tank with crows on its top
Trying old story trick to throw pebbles
To bring up water for their black thirst.
A ladder’s top vanishes in blues of sky.
It is where grandma goes and woman
Who pushes annoying sky up with kids.
We have not seen anyone climb down.
But we see the sky’s kids day and night
Playing in orange edges near the hills.
When it stormed in our childhood we used to
Call Arjuna’s many names on our tiny tongues
Rapidly moving , sounds hitting a deep throat.
Arjuna is thunder god’s son who could stop it.
That was how trees could be spared of deaths.
But next day we saw our palm tree decapitated .
Our words might not have reached dark clouds
Ere a random thunder bolt struck its head off.
A poet says we have not experienced thunder,
Except as words rapidly hitting the mouth roof.
But the palm experienced it in its severed head
Experiencing a cessation of experience in death.
The tree had no words except in severed frond.
Its charred stump stood tall with no death fear.
It did not have a functional head to experience.
Indian Metaphor 