Funny Ideas
‘I’m not okay’
barely slips past her lips,
and falls from her open palms into the vase of dried up flowers.
I forgot to smash the vase on the wall to empty them.
And how will you get better I ask,
with sharp, tender edge.
Her body, a tight, thick fistful of pillows.
Lips mouthing up a silent storm,
Her baby voice alone in frenetic sing-song.
Dying in her throat when I enter the room.
She’s been chattering away with them, 18 hours a day.
For 18 days now.
I lasted two months the first time watching,
I never thought my eyes would dart away as they do now,
16 months down,
my heart shocked for an instant when I do see her.
Pull all the reins of my shrieking horses.
Drop strings of should-beads that clatter around constantly.
I’ve slipped on them a few times
and smacked hurt into her distracted heart.
Her mind is a colonized land
from which she cannot be a refugee.
Her satyagraha never witnessed.
As much as I displace the pain of separation
that wells in me,
I miss the words that were hers,
emerging full from her lips.
Oh. I have not seen her smile in a month,
Only a flash of teeth, as much as she could give.
Now I am already night-dreaming
of abrupt seductions,
glances of desire,
unknown women
with faces and without.
It’s too early for that sign, I thought,
while uprooting the stalk of a chilli plant,
their spicy leaves ravaged by monkeys and whiteflies.
She has forgotten her body. So have I.
She cannot feel it. Neither can I.
It just jerks around, pulled by unseen forces,
like her twitching face and darting eyes,
pulled and nerved around by unheard diatribes.
But tonight, I lie in our dry bed,
I am surprised to see her body has thickened.
Her blood having jittered under her fingernails,
her eyelids, beneath her lower lip,
under bent back, quick slumped shoulders, hair askew.
She mouths their words. She mouths her words back.
Inside, she searches for the right phrases.
Excavates the right etymologies.
‘To calm them down’ she had said once.
What do you want from me? I asked in the pool.
‘Funny ideas’
Just two words that day.
I wait for her to want to get back to herself.
How will you get better? I ask.
And like she always does,
having turned avoidance into an art,
‘I’ll get help.’
An inflatable elephant ballooning across the room
The past, surreptitiously plucked
from behind his back
He whirls around
to the present
His table rearranged
a file where the newspaper was
fruit missing
a pen now a scissor
Snip!
neu ron sni p
sy na pse s nip
Snip!
Black holes he cannot see
nestled in his brain
thin, brown leeches
catching a seat
at the beginning of the day’s show
fat, oozing at the end
Pouring salt on forgotten reminders,
only turns his meal cold.
My father tries
he digs his teeth
into the apple
keeps it stuck there
Mouth wide open
scared to chew
lest he cannot
anymore see it
Scared to swallow
lest he forgets
what its tastes like
Tender or tangy
raw or rotten
he vehemently keeps
his eyes on his thought-apple
Lest it disappear completely
In his dreams he waits
lost
in the damp, dark labyrinth
for a passing truck to shine
an ephemeral beam
whose flash of resurrection
might leave a gasping imprint of certainty
in his whorl of immaculate confusion
Dawn is yet to break
he awakens from a restive sleep
Where is that sound coming from?
Ears become mouth
and the pleasant rumour
of classical singing
gossips to an imaginary whisper
inside his perplexed teacup.
An inflatable elephant balloons wildly
across the room into a miniature saggy mess
All he can do is sigh
And turn to look for his lists
Did I get them already?
milk, eggs, the newspaper
Is it yesterday’s or today’s?
And so he goes to search again
For the spectacles that hid themselves
For the piece of paper always flying away
For the pen that turned into a scissor
For the apple that always ever came to his hand.
Fall, Jump, Break
callused feet grasping rock edge
a finely graded plateau of basalt
stretched across its oblong frame below
dark water’s obsidian skin
entreated to act
by glaring sentient forces
I see nothing but feel
a desperate urge to fall
to act is to fall into the world
to fall is to leave it
blinking, wide eyes hold
a black hole sucking inward
young and dreaming on earth
like how one enters a room
forgetting one’s purpose in it
somewhere between falling
again, and again and again
through endless simulacra
suddenly I jump
my paws land quiet
on the shroud of my conscious crust
When shall I break the skin between worlds?
Ah, but I have yet to truly surrender.
