Display Picture

I compliment your display picture
and become a superficial spider
strung on the world wide web,
I don't tell you I want to trace you
in my words like I know your lacework,
like I know your baroque and grotesque,
I know the cipher to the divine in them,
I don't tell you I don't know you anymore,
The furrow beneath your lip hides lies,
I am not qualified to know them now,
I skirt your inside with patchwork smiles
and pretend that the gold was in your skin,
that my temples were made to your beauty
and all your divine was always in hiding.

First Times

The first time we held each other's hands,
I was counting infinity backwards,
making sure my brain doesn't explode,
Your hands were so much cooler than I expected,
but that's okay,
my hands must have been warm to you;

The first time I bought a rose for you,
I asked myself "Now what?"
as if the train ride between the florist and a bent-knee proposal
was too unromantic to exist,
I hoped I saved the rose
from being squished enough to say "I love you",
You didn't look like they do in movies,
I was disappointed,
You were just being yourself;

The first time I wasn't single on Valentine's,
I expected us to monopolise the day,
Apparently, it is the most suspicious day to leave home
and my parents still aren't sure about us,
I guess cartoons on Valentine's don't hurt either.

The first time we bought corner-seat tickets,
I realized that I am pretty good at being unabashed
I realized that courtesy comes easy when guilty,
I realized that corner seats are not good ergonomics,
but we did watch that movie twice
and I still don't know what it was about;

The first time you settled onto my lap,
you looked at me as if I had a degree in this,
I was surprised at how we pulled the stars into sparking,
I bit more than I could chew,
You looked like fruit-salad after,
custard and papaya,
You own a lot of scarves now;

The first time I wrote a poem for you,
I spent an hour trying to mix words into beakers,
distilling, filtering, titrating, refilling,
Your beauty was impossible to find,
but it kept laughing from behind non-smiles,
I revisited those evening walks like a homicide detective

and found nothing,
You were the one that got away.


Image Source: Tender Moments by Kim Roberti

Muse

It is August,
I was supposed to have forgotten you by now,
People tell me to leave you
like rice grains outside my threshold,
I tell them that you are my Muse now,
See, nobody questions an artist's sanity,
They are supposed to be bad for themselves,
When I trace your laughter on paper for the ninth time,
it is poetry, not an obsession,
My sleep-cycles resemble an owl on coffee
because the moon is my lampshade,
It is not my darkness looking for company,
It is not the chips of your bracelet on my ceiling
It is not the ridges of your neck under my sheets,
Poetry-writing is a montage of creative masterstrokes,
it is not slumping into pillows until I remember I need to breathe,
No, my metaphors were borrowed from the robins
that learnt Shakespeare over thatched roofs,
I did not brew these words between my teeth like a meth lab gone wrong,
I am definitely not addicted to you,
My smiles are poignant reminders of love,
they are not crumpled tissue-papers around my room,
It is all good art,
Thanks for staying, Muse,
I now know that art doesn't need to be pretty
to be beautiful.


Image Source: Kazuya Akimoto

Forgetting Our Anniversary

I try to forget the date but I know

you remember its rain just as coolly
as I do and your eyes are better
at lying than mine will ever be, better
at denying the hour I waited outside
the railway station facing our college gates
with the first rose I had ever purchased,
the easiest ten-rupee investment of my life,
and how you looked at me with guilt and
wicked amusement at making me squirm;
I would not let you hold this rose,
this rose was not yours just yet.

I remember the kilometer we walked
beneath your neighbourhood trees,
and although we spoke of everything
our eyes were filled with confessions
of love made the previous night
but our hands were not brave enough
to find each other's fingers yet.

I remember not wanting to look ahead
but into your eyes, eyes full of secrets
of life and poetry and easy promises,
O, those easy promises!
but I held my neck stiff so you couldn't see
my disbelief at calling you my own,
so you couldn't find the unworthiness
hidden in my nervous smiles;
I wanted to ask: "Are you sure about this?",
"Will you teach me to love you so that
I don't break you when I hold you too tight?",
"Can I teach our children how to measure
our planet with the shadow of a stick?
To ask questions that have no answers?",
but all I asked you that day was,
"So, what do you want to do next?"
and you found us the right kind of silence
around a park we loved to loiter about
and we spoke of everything, everything,
but all I remember is how beautiful you looked
when I forbade you to ever wear make-up,
and how you complained with a pout that
I was exaggerating your beauty, as if
the mirror of my soul was too much,
too soon, the mirror of my soul
is still too much for you, I know.

I remember you predicting rain and
how I half-worshipped you when the sky
surrendered its water and forced us
to run beneath the window-roof of
the old building next to our favourite café,
I remember broken stone against knuckles,
my faded jeans staining with brown
when I dropped on one knee and
tried to ignore the lump in my throat
as I asked you to be mine, formally,
the way they do it in movies I've never watched ,
and your body looked so small, so
precious as you stood overwhelmed,
even though there was no surprise,
both of us knew how the scene ended,
but the rose was now yours, I was yours,
and my fingers suddenly found courage
to find the spaces between yours.

I remember, I remember,  I remember.

Image Source: René Magritte