लोचन | lochan

they say pluck the weed by the roots,
pull, pull, pull. an unclean growth
cannot survive.

hair.
unclean.

unclean
is the only one
that is always covered
unless in solitude
like my intentions
which only i can disrobe

a blindfolded man in
another house pulls for pain,
they say when one does not see
what is pulled, it hurts
less.

will it then be clean?
pluck pluck pluck

the jain monk has auctioned his hair
for a hefty sum, the one whom i had asked
in childhood, “show me god” and he
said, “god cannot be seen”,
but i have seen him dancing
in people’s eyes as you
enchanted them with
a lousy trick and i know
a broken monk who had
‘asked’ a child to pull
the ‘celibate’ penis
until it broke.

clean is my armpit
unlike your destroying
touch.

ps: lochan-a practice in jainism where monks pluck all their body hair as a mark of renunciation.

#NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo

her sari will be my skin

my mother never told me of how the night was a lack of a shadow and how
the block print sari is something she has wanted since a while, blue indigo
disturbed with a white, the shade of non-humans, the shade of clean walls,
the shade of a white canvas placed in an exhibition as is, the making of these
is not an art. her blue sari is awaiting the touch of the palms which will carry
them over to her. wooden blocks shaped and sold cannot speak of the pain
of moaning communities, unlike privileged unskilled hands in the cities clutch
the blocks in palms and try as they may, to become the may day survivors

my mother never told me of how her work is never an eight hour job and how
may day is a day she has never celebrated. i am not a full time cook but i turn one
four days a month when she will not wear the indigo blue sari disturbed with a white
lest the white be bloodshed, her blood that is not me now. the sari has not reached
yet and i am waiting for the day she does, so, one day, i will be sure, my skin too
shall quench the thirst of a hidden secret, now revealed. only women, until now
have fought for inheritance rights. being the younger son, i will cry for inheriting this,
like i always cried to win in childhood and someday, her sari will be my skin, without bloodshed.

Ps: an oppressive definition to a Sari-a garment consisting of a length of cotton or silk elaborately draped around the body, “traditionally” worn by “women” from South Asia.

#NaPoWriMo #NaPoWriMo2017

Day 2 poem, based on a prompt to try out a new form, the anima methodi.

the phallus refuses to be erased

an early morning,
dressed in bloomers
and an old hand me down girl’s top
and me aged not more than 7 years

a fancy dress event
when the body was asked
to be what it wasn’t, a vagina
presumed instead of a scared penis

and the only right then
was my mother’s red lipstick
to make me look a girl, did i feel
stuck in this boy’s body then already?

my father says often, “i’d have
liked you to be a daughter”, mother
says, “at least she would have helped
me some with housework” and even while

i feel suffocated in my body,
there are nights when i want to
go to her and say, “i peed in my pants
on the way to school that day because i was ashamed”

but what do i tell them
of the difference between
sex and gender, where i feel closer
to my mother than my father, for how

do i tell them that it hurts,
that i will never be able to be a mother
and that my biggest fear is
that i will become like my father?

maybe that young boy dressed
as a half nude girl and red lipstick
on his lips only remembers the shame
that wet pants felt safer than a hidden penis

maybe
the phallus had already become
the lord then, it grew inside and latched
deeper, firm now, never possible to be erased

#NaPoWriMo #NaPoWriMo2017

on paper, a home means nothing

1. i never knew

   i could be a home to another
   or maybe,
   i was so busy looking for a home
   for myself
   that i never realised
   you had made me a home.

   “your body is a home to me”
   “a home is always there”

   home.

2. i’d never known home
   until my feet stepped out
   of a door i thought was a wall

   i realised, a home
   always has doors
   to walk out of

   a home
   never binds

3. my mother was
   the only home i knew
   for as my body was
   cut from the umbilical cord,

   i was out of it, but not in another.
   other umbilical cords
   still forced them on me-
   a plethora which came as one.

   and like a full stop on paper,
   they stamped my skin.

   is the body still corded?

4. if i had scissors to cut them off,
   which are the one’s i would choose to?

   or does cutting one, mean cutting all?
   and then, what of the wound? without
   a home, there is no first-aid.

   home was actually a shorthand
   to healing the wound. home.

5. but what of the violence
   which is a synonym i have found
   to home

   unnamed violence
   like unnamed files
   stored on the desktop
   we do not delete
   because we do not know
   what lies inside

   unquestioned violence
   like unquestioned silence
   that waits to be a ceiling
   that needs to be broken
   and shattered enough
   to see through

   what of the fractured walls
   we do not notice, the leakages
   we do not repair, not unless
   the water leaks onto us
   or unless, in case, it is
   a new home

   new homes
   too
   do not come
   with warranties
   or guarantees

   after all, in the face of a
   fired missile, a dropped bomb,
   homes break.

6. no one leaves home
   unless it breaks or maybe,
   was already broken

7. every body
   leaves home

8. i too have found homes in
   ships which are lost in the sea

   i want to be attached
   to their anchors now

9. how long did you take
   to find me? i am no home. it
   scares me to be one. for home
   is only violence.

   maybe, this is the reason
   why the dead are taken
   from their homes to …

10. find me a home?

    Terms and Conditions:
    i will not shave my beard.
    i will not marry.

11. home is the dream
    we choose to go back to
    after seeing the sunrise
    tearing the dark sky apart
    and pregnant women
    who are all waiting along the shoreline
    to drown so they feel like the babies in the wombs
    and new born babies
    whose first cry is the crescendo of every orchestra
    and chirping birds

    chirping birds

12. home is a silence
    which chooses not to be
    a cracked mirror

13. home is a friendship
    the sound of which
    is never longing

14. home is the sound of a slap
    being replaced by
    the symphony of a hug

15. home is people
    people is home

    i am your breath
    inside out

#NaPoWriMo #NaPoWriMo2017

you own a bit of me

with your consent, my skin wants
to be the papyrus for your poems

the copyright could be yours
and maybe then i could say,
“you own a bit of me”

there would then be the act of printing
and for toners, all we have is
fingers and nails which could
dip in the only colours available now-
there is the mud and the blood

but i want to live
and so we choose the mud
your fingers in mud

your fingers in mud printing this book
and there is just one copy
we can print exactly as is.

would you like to keep it?

the poems are waiting

there are poems waiting to be breathed out

not a calm breath
but a breath struggling to take its full gulp
of air, the air that struggles to live
as easily as it did a few years ago

this air carries the stench of longing now
and these poems could never be inked on skin

but
there is a script
to the language of touch

a grammar to the language of taste
and now, probably
colours will punctuate our giving.

all else is insignificance?

i feel like
living in between
the lines of your poems-
if you’d let me-

like the page in your copy of
neruda’s poems you have marked
by folding it, for it speaks of how dark things are to be loved

like the frequent occurring
of the word ‘loneliness’
loneliness
loneliness..going
loneliness..love
loneliness..empty
loneliness..love
loneliness..you
whenever ‘love’ is uttered
i find it difficult to not think
of loneliness

like the hair
on your skin

like the pauses
between our slogans

like the editing
of our desire
that happens in the gut

as real as these are,
as really do i want to be
in between the lines
that come through you

we mourn the death of a republic

today, this country i’ve
had to call home,
celebrates it’s republic day
for ‘we’ gave ourselves
the constitution of india
a few years ago
and while then
it probably seemed
to be the most
radical step to take
through articles guaranteeing
social justice and equality
banning every act of untouchability
expectedly leading to some more
equitable distribution of property

fuck this shit

the same articles are now used
as knives, courts use
the blunt knives to kill
secularism and the blood runs
now in the gutters of democracies
where the nobodies live
and all i see now are articles
guaranteeing an abuse

did you hear the court just granted bail
to 3 hindu murderers who literally killed
Mohsin Sheikh. Yes. A Muslim.

“The applicants/accused had no other motive such as any personal enmity against the innocent deceased Mohsin. The fault of the deceased was only that he belonged to another religion.”, the court said

so tonight let us burn these articles
that now seem like prophecies
which came after a struggle
of the many many people

lest they be found
by the murderers
and used to kill
the ones who owned them.

and while i may seem
too out of my fucking minds
i would also request you to
think of article 370. Abused.

also think of article 21. Abused.
also think of article 14. 16. 19.
and now think of Kashmir.
think occupation.
think resistance.
think PSA.
think torture.
think disappearance.
think half widows.
think dead children.
think pellets.
think blindness.

now, think army.
think police.
think immunity.
think rape.

What the fuck are we doing
waking up at 7 am, getting
ready in white clothes
for flag hoisting ceremonies,
becoming a player in their
nationalist india? maybe,
mourning the death
of a republic called india.

by the way
happy republic day

cremations | we have died a many times already

there is a fire in my gut
ashing in your absence

i want to feel you
skin on skin
to drive the darkness
hidden in my mouth
when it is closed

but love
the sun on your tongue
could burn me whole
when you come by

arched backs and tree-trunks

when i think of seeds
i often think of my feet

what does it mean to be grounded,
for feet to disappear in the sand
and let the moisture in the air
turn to dew at dawn watering
my dreams? my body craves
for the back to arch
so i could reach
the sky

maybe your touch could help me there