Upside down Songs from Mars

Somewhere near the mole on your ankle

If you find my evening lost, give her 

A cup of tea and sit down next to me

What if two pairs of moist eyes see

Your feet on mine on a windowsill

Lift them up to the sky and smile

You will see how far they can fly

Tonight, I will dream of yesterday 

Of Sirius, of Orion, of mercury's ring

So tell tomorrow to linger a little longer

On those ports where dreams anchor 

Before they soft-land their heavy sighs

Or disappear into sunlight 

While I go looking for you 

In upside down songs from mars 

Making of Memories

My memories are textured. 

Smooth scars, translucent moles,

foam-warm lips, sandpaper jaw, silken skin, 

hands on your chest feeling as though 

I were digging warm wet sand for treasures. 

Your voice, at once my memory 

and the making of it. 

Your eyes, like bubbles from hay straw, 

lighting up the evening, 

piercing through my being 

and landing gently 

on some side of my heart 

that's turned away from the sun. 

I miss you, 

but in all these textured memories, 

my man is next to me holding my fist 

in his perfect-fit palm. 

Just How?

If I can shut away the cynic for a minute 

Then, perhaps this world will dance 

With me to my tune 

Or swing me to the moon

Pray, how does one shut one self off?

If I can close my eyes to tomorrow

Then, perhaps today will be golden-hued

And paint your colour on my hand

Or fly me on her dreams to your land 

Pray, how does one close what isn't here?

All day long, I search among words

Those thunderstroms and volcanoes

All night long, I ward off waves of death

If I can drown myself in ashes of moments

Burnt by our bodies and souls together 

Then, perhaps, this story will stop to haunt

Pray, how does one seek a day without desire?

Let It Go

I took your name a hundred times tonight

Like Meera of a hundred dreams

Prisoner to her marriage of norms

Poisoned in her longing for you

And yet, Meera took your name

For a hundred nights and more 

Your breath, she breathed in

Your pain, she poured out 

Until you came to her saying

You are mine now, let it go.

And I wait now, to be Meera

Of a Krishna who knows me not

Fujisan, whatever version

Some pictures say more than what you and I can ever know

They speak of stories beyond men and women

Of boiling couldrons  of grief under a magnificent countenance 

And of a zenness that is afforded to those

Who truly know the poetry of time, 

Or do they lie? 

His heart is open to the sky and his body spilt over this earth 

As though he were their promiscuous Son 

Only hard to make them meet

They said he was born tiny and then he grew; who knew

In grief, in love, in vanity or jealousy, in strength 

Did grief bring him closer to the sky or love

Who saw his birth, who knew this girth?

They said if you listen closely, he sings for you, 

But if you want it too badly, he will close his lips

 Fujisan weave clouds as we weave our punctured lives into blurred portraits of lives that should be lived?

Do we like mountains, live in those stories of daily deaths and infinite moorings?

All of It

Does it all fade?All of this? 

Poems, words, moments pressed into time? 

Newness, oneness, togetherness in being-aloneness?

All of it?

It did, it does and then, it doesn't 

So what lives, what loves?

What craves for shadows to hold on to in sleep?

And how did you cross this river?

I rode it too in spate, 

But there you are, on the other side

Where it was gently swallowed by the sea

And all of me asks,

Will it stay with me, all of it?

All I ask for

This nose, this skin, this globe, 

this sand, this mirrored maze of my mind

I didn't ask for you, for mothers, grandfathers, 

for teachers, for bosses who betray, 

for friends who do not stay.

Did I ask for rain, for the sun, the moon, 

or the way my palm points upwards 

when I rest my arms;

And downwards when you lie next to me,

especially when you aren't with me?

Who asked for butterflies, flowers, truth and lies,

who asked for holy grails, coffees and walks?

All I asked for is that I wasn't made to be me

But that was too much to ask 

Was it?