Smoking Blues

I wish you knew

every breath of that white soldier you take

who stands by your hands 

waiting to carry you closer to his nation

and further away from you

I wish you knew

what Id do to be in his place

Gently being held by your fingers

Fiercely lighting me up, igniting.

Placing me at the perfect pout of your mouth

Sucking the life out of me

With your breath you turn me

into another form

Bit by bit,

you let me go

Bit by bit,

you let me flow...

~ Ray

Now he knows

Their nest

is his mad eyes

her unruly hair

Her strands of solace

feed into

his parched eyes

Bit by bit

they exchange

killing and creating

Fears of yesterday

cringe and give up

Death.

Wonders of tomorrow

erupt out of this unison

Creation.

Everything coming

in the way is crushed

Wine.

Little toes

tip-toe into each other

Dance.

Blind tongues run

after walls to find light

Explore.

Her thighs

on his lap 

Home.

His arms

around her

Home.

He leaves

wondering

what she would write of?

Now

he

Knows.

To Hyderabad

It's hard enough when you fall in love with souls that come and leave, it's harder when you love a city with a fervor you never knew you held under your breath waiting to burst into screams for its soul to show up so you can have one look into those eyes... But she won't come, she doesn't need to. You've been in her all along.

 I've blossomed in the lap of that city, amidst it's green hills and yellow suns, run in between summer, rain and winter.That city embraced me and became a mother. Now as I soon return, I may drift away... Cutting me off the divine umbilical chords with pain but always leaving a mark on my belly.. I will return because in you I have at last found home .

Silence

Does this silence, here and now take you to where we used to live ? 

Away from the world and the pain of being an organism with a heart left unused? 

Away from technology and the crutches of its dependence?

Away from the agreement for peace and into the 

Only way of love ?

Does the silence after the explosions of this storm 

take you anywhere ? 

To my Moonflower

And I will miss waking up and finding myself tangled in your curls for a change, been swimming in mine for far too long 

and then slipping into cotton fields where you are the white

And I the brown soil

The world asks in silent stares what is between us?

My smile tells them 

There is no room for anything in between 

There is only Us.

As I set out to fly away

You must know...

Ever fragrant when the moon shines, 

You are the moonflower

In our garden of love

Cause of chaos

You've successfully created a circle of chaos

and you are standing on the periphery

adding fuel to its viciousness

blowing secret ingredients into its momentum

you are there yet you are not colored

colored by the words flying around

the blackest blacks and the whitest whites

you still stand on the edge 

occasionally placing your pinky

in the movement

the creatures of your making

cringe

scream

laugh

judge

howl

cry

you still stand outside

with a sense of accomplishment

but you still can't tell

the noises from one another

you will never be able to

because you are still outside,

still the other

maybe a father,

but not the mother.

Wonder

Oh dear

I often wonder

what they mean when they say

'you are so well endowed ,

you must have been the Gods favorite'

I also wonder

what they mean when they say

'poor thing she is so little'

frail as an empty plastic tea cup 

fallen on the parched midnight pavement.

I wonder if the size of our breasts

are directly proportional to the men we will meet? ( if at all we want to even meet men!)

inversely proportional to the women we will be friends with?

They seem too needy dear and I just can't keep up with: 

chasing the hair off my knees

the sideburns on my cheeks

concealing the burnt marks of cigarettes and tears on my lips

the frizz in the hair 

the endless spots far from letting me be being tamil-brahmin-fair?

I wonder who set such moulds

I wonder why we should try to even fit

It isn't enough to just wonder

so I have most definitely stopped 

to

try

/ musings of a yatri /

These are facebook status updates on the go during my travels in Andhra Pradesh, India

/ poetry, won't you let me sleep? you burst into being and surround me as infants want their milk...now that you are conceived, I must feed you /

/ into this night, I blow away every memory of you hoping they would become one with the sand and hard to trace back to ever but when I walk back into the sandstorm they will come back and touch my ears and my toes and find their spaces back into me without me even knowing how / 

 / After a long night and a day of forgotten dreams as I returned back home, I saw you entangled in the dream catcher on my wall and I knew then who painted my dreams white and kissed my bruises purple and turned it to brown / 

/ oh night ! How do you paint me and turn me into the exact shade as you ? /

/ sinking into an abyss...becoming the abyss /

/ and this morning my nose was inspired. It ran like Bolt /

/ sometimes you dance in a known ignorance through the fire and look the silhouette smilingly in the eye hoping that the Light doesn't shine through and let the truth show itself / 

/ Barefeet, I can feel the breath of the earth and the fluid skies. They remind me, that just as them, I may be splashed across everywhere but still never too far from being a whole/

/ sitting in the dead of the night , body in shambles/ and a soul striving to put it's pieces together / I wonder what this journey is? I wonder where our Caravan lies hidden? / To be found by Us and taken into a dawn~New /

Rachamma speaks...

You are my dried flower petals, secretly pressed between the musty smelling pages of my being. Withering a little more, and smelling a little lesser of you and more of me ...

There is a beauty... In your secret smile, in your hands away from mine but just at the correct amount of distance, in your feet walking not beside mine but always close, in those eyes seeing without looking... In us just being without trying 

~ Being Rachamma in Hyderabad,