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.

four degrees of separation

dream

Stream your fingers
through the flames
of a mid-morning dream

and see how broken glass
broken bone
make perfect symphony

the walk

many walks
over many a earth
were made
to reach this place

many journeys

heartbreak

the dull, aching pieces
of a tornado
coming together

measly
are the allowances of the heart

for when you ache
you are to break

shuddering
in the slipstream
of a very cold laugh

another dream

the thing they call warm love
is so liberating;
so caging

where slivers
of your razor thin selves
gather
over an offspring of feelings

© Rochelle Potkar

we once watched the sun together

Just like you allow the hills
to seduce you
and have cold winds wrap
around your shoulders

Just like you match
every heartbeat with
its undulating echo
across the valley

I crave the beaches
- my home -
where the warm waters lap
leaving me shivering
I lie in the sand
watching wing-flapped screensavers

I remain as still as a rock
just the way you do
on the cliff
wishing,
releasing a silent prayer

In that quietness
as the sun sets
We both can feel
the earth has moved

© Rochelle Potkar

(to VP)

a day in life

It was an early, rainy morning and the sky was painted a dull grey.

I had placed my mirrored bag and transparent umbrella on the adjoining seat and had just fished out Pamuk’s book to read while at the wait, when he arrived.

I wouldn’t have raised my eyes. I shouldn’t have raised my eyes. Because I lost the paragraph I was, just a moment ago, concentrating on. In front of me just a table across he - dressed in a lose t-shirt and lopsided jeans with chappals - settled, doing a customary round of nods. The girls in front of him seemed unperturbed.
But something inside me quickened, thickened, melted like cold drops of frozen water sliding across the glass of cold coffee.

I quickly bent my head, tucking a wisp of hair behind my ear, trying to trace over to the paragraph I had last left the story. I was going to appear cool, no matter what. He must have looked my way because there were few other people in the café and certainly no one like the girl-woman dressed in a white t-shirt and rolled up jeans, hair flowing to the beckoning of the wind, one hand heavy with copper bangles, so deeply engrossed in reading her book that she did not even stir when the rain announced another hiccupped bout of its ferocity.

The tiles on the porch caught the glint of drizzle. I could sense the bristles of rain wetting my toes but I managed to keep my body very still and breath low and very ordinary.

I read a paragraph thrice noting how unbearably elusive its meaning was getting.

He moved suddenly to answer a call on his mobile and that was the chance. I asked the waiter to get the bill and without stopping to look or think I lifted my things.
I had to find myself a place of reclusive safety in order to preserve what was happening inside me from getting outside.

I reached the warm insides of a new place and searched it. There were people playing in the bowling alley. Two turned conscious if I was watching them at their goal. I smiled and quickly joined in.
Anything to wade off that energy.
Anything to de-mystify.

How funny thoughts are, even for the very same person. You may think one thing of the past and miss out the thing happening in the present, though my thoughts were more on a tangent, going awry. I never thought that he must have searched for me when he came back to the table wondering where that girl-woman so deeply engrossed in reading should have disappeared.

By this time, the girl-woman was heaving a blue ball, her fingers tucked in its grooves, towards eight dancing white pins. She was taming the growing violence in her body with each move, her face a thousand shades of crimson.
A man and his little son were looking on nodding encouragingly every time I knocked down those pins. My scores were quite good said the scorekeeper.

By the end of it all, I was spent. I leant toward a pillar breathing lightly.

A glance at the clock reminded me that the festival was about to start. Totally oblivious to the heavy greetings of rain, I exited the alley.

The boy at the café was hurriedly shifting the tables and chairs toward an inch inside. I studied the way in which the rain had invaded, caring least for man-made boundaries.

Just then I catch him watching me with those drunken, lustful eyes.

He: where did you go?

Me: where do I go now?

He turned to continue the conversation he was having with someone and my eyes caught the nape of his neck that the breeze revealed when it blew his hair aside. The urge to bathe his neck with the warmth of my breath was too much. I stood in the corner wishing the crowd dissolves me.
But every time he turned, his eyes found out mine, utterly disregardful of the people he was with.

I was recording how helpless and weak I felt.

The only other thing gaining power that day was the rain.

© Rochelle Potkar