Here i am having fun all alone
With my best friends
Yes , My music and phone
Dancing on own
hitting the damn floor
You heard someone knocking the window
Maybe i need their company
Welcome sunshine
Let's play some shadow games
Oh my stomach hurts
I get it , let's have some food
I hear Angels singing
Fell on the heaven
With my little teddy on side
Slept a happy grown girl
Some people admire my signature.
I too do.
The sweeping strokes
The V like the prow of a racing snake boat
The aerodynamic slant to the right –
It looks like a Roman galleon
About to ram into the midriff of an enemy ship.
I love to scribble my signature.
In bits of paper, in office vouchers
In letters to the editor and beg to submits.
Every signature reflects my mood –
Angry, tense, happy, sleepy, sad, content
Confident, shaky, casual, sharp -
The swirls and whorls, the strokes and strikes
Wax and wane in the tides of my mind.
Every signature screams - look at me, look at me
To bite into a chicken’s fried leg
And tear it with a twist of the head
Lick the morsel stuck on the cheek
With the gravy dribbling down the chin…
To light and draw deep on a cigarette
And watch the plume rising
Or the rings reluctantly vanishing
Gazing at the clouds rolling by…
To fondle a glass of whisk y
And listen to the ice clinking
The nip in the air fading
As the cool breeze waltzes by…
To stretch back on the park bench
And ruminate on nothing
Content, still, fulfilled
And admire a young girl passing by…
In the claustrophobic cubicle
(the reason none other dare use it)
That is my exclusive toilet,
At the stroke of midnight
We engage in a silent conversation.
I sit on the seat, hardly a foot away from her.
Twisting myself awkwardly, I strain to focus.
in the dim light, her eyes twinkle
As the light of the headlamp lights her up.
I have known her ( or her ancestors) for long.
Very polite, seemingly embarrassed
Having to witness my nocturnal
Passage of the bowels, she pretends
To be busy with cleaning herself up.
Observing her through the camera
I am reminded of the many lonely nights
Why do you, Toad, look at me
So impassive, so self-assured?
You sit - no, squat on all your fours
your warty skin, wrinkled and ridged
Your glands swollen with poison -
Think I didn't know?
Go forth, be not afraid of me!
Go forth and procreate!
For you and your kind, here -
A blade of grass, a dried leaf
A twig to play with -
The shade of the great trees -
And over there, Kunthi, for your children!
Happening to glance at my left forearm the other day,
Dark brown skinned and hairy
I notice that more hair have turned white.
Someday, if I live long enough,
My left forearm would turn all white
The darkness of my brown skin,
but not of my mind, hidden, hopefully.
Looking at the tuft, the bushy growth of hair
On my chest ( ah, not on my head!), again white ( why grey?)
I wistfully remember how, dark, how black it once were.
I hardly need a mirror these days, having not much
On the head to comb and pat them down.
I cling on (and at times nips at)
The vestige of my manhood, my moustache
Bristling, drooping bicycle handlebars,
The beard I dare not grow
Borderline is a thrilling word
Borders between countries
Evoking images of the drama at Vagha.
Borderline is ominous
The borderline between
sanity and insanity.
Borderline between friendship
and intimacy,
Bringing into focus
And blurring your vision, the line you step out
From restrained emotions to riotous expressions
of love.
To stand on the borderline
Is to hold your life in your hands
To decide to cross over or not.
Borderline is an exciting place to be -
When was the last time
My privates pricked, playfully
By the teasing raindrops
Splattered by the wind?
When was the last time
I stood in the rain, nude?
As a child? No, mother would have
Frisked me away and gave
A slap on my bottom too!
Once I stripped on a beach
Blushing at my lesser size
Than that of the tourist by my side.
Played, all dangling,
Jumping and rolling,
Bewildering unfamiliar freedom.
It wasn’t raining then, though.
At the bar, nursing a Romanov - or two
Sometimes three or four
I am forced to look into myself -
Not a pretty sight.
At the barber, as he twists my neck
Left and right, up and down
And then firmly upright
I am forced to look at myself -
Not a pretty sight either!
Lying beneath the ceiling fan that pummel me
With gusts of hot air that refuses to leave my room;
Sweating, half-asleep, I swap at the mosquitoes biting me.
It is midnight or so, but I wake up; my skin burns and itches.
Switching on the light and switching off the fan
I scan the room for those bloodsuckers and hit
At one or two which lie on the floor.
I have the immense satisfaction
of crushing them with my toe
Leaving a smear of my blood on the polished tiles.
Sitting on the floor cross-legged, in the nude
I watch a mosquito landing on my thigh and stick its proboscis into me.
I could imagine her stomach billowing with my blood.
He climbed up the ladder, one, two, three
The ground fell lower, three, two, one
The sky came closer, one, two, three.
Up went the kid, four, five, six
Down went the ground, six, five, four
Up was the Future, bright and bold
Down was the Past, dull and dead.
The kid sat at the top
And the slide took him down
In one smooth rush,
On a roly, jolly ride.
The wind hit his face,
The ground zoomed up -
And thud! He was back where all it began.
He moved swiftly, through the little gap
Between the door ajar and the wall
Hiding then, behind the desk, presumably
Catching his breath - but soon as I pulled the desk back
Like lightning, he took cover behind the pile of papers.
I grinned at him, he was young and little, a juvenile, and said -
'Gotcha, my boy' and with a quick brush of the broom
Escorted him out into the glaring sun.
That was yesterday, that was when I felt I could not stand
This suffocating sensation, the revulsion of solitude,
Yet shunning company, sans I am, of love and friendship.
Now, defeated, depressed and disconsolate, I welcomed him
As he skulked in a corner, nodding, licking his chops clean