pain

some do it quiet
like the mist atop a mountain
that spreads a girdle of thin cloud
over the mouth of a deep, warm crater

some do it loudly
like thunder that crackles
harshly, sharply on window panes
and makes deliberating drops of rain
tremble down

some do it inanely
like it's someone else's child
that they are cleaning, bathing

some do it purposefully
like it was the only thing
that happened between here and Big Bang
and it would be the last word in the Human Race

I do it quietly, noisily in my head, heavily in my heart
detached, disobedient and disarrayed
objective

hard

cold

real

direct

distinct
and I never use a pain killer
- that's an addiction
it's easier to consume it whole

that is an even better addiction
once you know how rusty it really tastes

-Rochelle Potkar

a letter to paradiso

Remember a faint Rembrandt
of how the morning had dawned
when you first set eyes on me

I had known that your voice
had many textures
but I found its sonorous quilt
the tassel of your mind
from where the spring arose

Remember how we played games
that were once reserved for all
and that now
closed in on us

We drew each other’s souls
in our breaths of hard tea
and matched our conversations
in smoked winter steam

How you painted my countenance
with rosy dew drops of sun
on a milky white morning
in a pink city; where

we left our baggage’s behind
and you carried but your flask
and I, my Pandora’s box

we played magic with each word
and stitched our dreams
with tacky, large-lettered desires

You used blotting paper
to wipe away the tears
that arose out of my eyes
from the chills of a man-pulling ride

how didn’t I tell you that
I had measured you shoulders
(bit by bit)
on the span of my hand
and found my name written all over

we danced in each other’s head
and drank each other’s wine

and see how these sublime spaces
these distances
these chance occurences
have spun themselves once again into a frenzy of time

(unedited)

If (unedited)

I allowed your love
to sink deep
like the bed
that gloats with the blood
of the river

See how it stays
like a worm, a fester
as I try to make poetry
of something that is an SMS
or a thought

You are living within me
Breathing
Growing
laterally;
disproportionately

Askance
as we lift our hands
Hold our heads
our pulses
our hearts
and look down at our feet
we will find
our footsteps
marking each others

When I was seventeen...

When I was seventeen, I made it a point to not sleep in the outside room of our house. The room which was my bedroom was actually a drawing room and had the vacuity of being one. Out it stared into a large verandah which opened itself into the night sky and stars that blinked for intolerably long.
How I wish sleep came to me so the tiredness could drain and how I wish I could be awake while I slept so that I could keep on thinking, looking, watching and observing the night.

These were the days when I wanted to break open from my body. These were the days I wanted wings to fly. My legs would form crooked commas as I lay on the bed with my head tilted and my hair reaching for the floor. Some nights, I thought of the future. The forced, picture-perfect future.
It was always like this. Let’s say a place in Dubai – easily reachable and also closer to home, where I would have a house of my own with a tiled terrace which had a rusted ladder going all the way up to a black water tank. When it would rain I would dance on the terrace and this was my idea of freedom and worldly-wise-speaking, independence.

This is all I wanted then. Independence. Freedom.

Now it is the words that bring me to them. Now that seventeen is long past.

The tiled chips on the terrace, the wrought-iron ladder, the septic tank, the rain; they have converted themselves into shapes and forms of words.

Even the night is a word and the unblinking star a phrase, like memory of faraway friendship on the verge of being strung together and discovered naked.

Seventeen, unbecoming as it is, is another word.