If I am slippers, you are hands for me

If I am slippers, you are hands for me.
If I am a nose-pin, you are like feet.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

If I am ketchup, you'd be khichdi.
If I turn vegetarian, you'd be the meat
If I am slippers, you are hands for me.

If you be a broom, I'd be a clean dormitory.
You're the last person in an empty room I'd greet.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

You might be honey, I ain't your honeybee.
I am a red mark and you're a clean white sheet.
If I am slippers, you are hands for me.

If I am fire, you're definitely not ghee.
If I'm a sweater, you're the scorching summer heat.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

I now suggest, you let this matter be.
I hate it when I have to repeat.
If I am slippers you are hands for me.
You're wrong my darling, we aren't meant to be.

OCD

Who put my honour between my legs?

I'm sure as hell I didn't.

You know my OCD quite well

and I expect you not to fiddle.

I assigned it to my indestructible head

or my fiery heart within.

But never did I place such a valuable thing

in my flimsy sheet of hymen.

I want to write a verse today

I want to write a verse today.
Art wishes to run its course today.

I want to break the boundaries of this cubicle.
This computer feels like a curse today.

I want to paint these blank white walls.
I wish my colours would disperse today.

I want to break this deafening silence.
I wish to freely converse today.

Don't want to deal with numbers anymore.
I wish to play with words today.

Change in Hanuman

Have you caught a glimpse of Hanuman lately
on blackening walls and the back of cars?

Oh man, has he reinvented himself or what!
He just does not seem like the Hanuman I knew as a kid.
The one my mother told me to look up to.
The good-humoured one
with a humble smile
and gentle manners.

Now he looks like someone I was warned about.
More butch
and somehow, more angry.
Blood shot eyes
knitted eyebrows
a threatening frown.

It almost doesn’t seem like him.
Maybe this one’s an evil twin.
It looks like the dark side caught up with him.
Or maybe it’s just protein and gym.

Whatever it is, I have to warn.
The Hanuman we knew, is certainly gone.
He is offended easily and losses his calm.
He is out to slay his “enemies”, or well
Ram’s.

Coffee Mug

Early soapy bath
out of the cluttered sink.
One teaspoon sugar
Two tablespoons milk.
Some scented brownish powder
water up-to the brim.
There now,
I'm ready for our morning kiss.

How to get ready for a date

Treat it like a performance
you got to play your part.
Make sure
you take a longer bath.
Scented soaps, scented sprays
a neat and tidy bun
no hair astray.
A skirt above the knee
a lacy prickly bra
Hide that zit!
It won't take you far.
Conceal the razor cuts
and you're good to go.
No, not that red a lipstick
you'd look like a whore.
Practice your smile
don't make it too wide.
And DO NOT forget pepper spray
it's late in the night.

It's Not Love

It’s not like I love you or anything.
Don’t get me wrong
and don’t freak out.
It’s just that whenever you are around
I suddenly become fifteen again.
I become the one with floral frocks, falling fast
for the first time -
in confusion (Not love, it’s not love).
It’s just that whenever my phone blinks
and your name flashes on its screen
something somersaults in my tummy.
But don’t get me wrong.
it’s absolutely nothing romantic.
Maybe it’s just hunger you know.
A hunger for your awkward and slightly slanted smile,
the one that squints your tiny eyes almost completely.
It’s really adorable.
But wait, I don’t adore you per say.
It’s really just the smile.
Well sometimes the crooked nose.
But that’s just general.
Nothing deep.

I don’t want you to misunderstand so I’m making it crystal clear
it’s nothing like one sees in cheesy movies
or reads it corny novels.
It’s just that mostly I don’t feel normal when your fingers brush my skin.
But wait
that can happen to anyone per se.
So
It’s not you.
It’s certainly not love.
But I do love your red tie.
It does something to me,
Something that would ruin the innocence of this poem.
.
Do you understand now?
It’s not affection at all.
No romantic feelings.
It’s just that I feel fifteen again
and end up writing
teenage love poems at twenty.
Oh Crap!
Not Love.

The Universe

The Universe;
With each subtle breath the humanity takes,
It grows a little.
Can you imagine
The empty spaces
Accumulating between the fingers
Of planets, moons and stars
As they move
apart
inch   by    inch?

I sit and watch her
From the west end of our dinner table.
Is this the reason we are drifting
Apart?
I see the entire Universe between
My chocolate muffin
And her blueberry tart.
To my dismay,
It’s growing quite large.

Home Less

A building demolished;
A case built from its wrecks.

Allah and Ram
Now wander homeless.

I'd like the Breathing to Cease

The spotless white walls
the smell of disinfectant.
The beeping machines
and the deafening silence.

I look at the hospital bed
from the visitor's chair.
I look at the skin that once was chocolate

but now is raisins.

I sit and count the wrinkles around the sockets
that had eyes shimmering with purpose once.

Now

There are hollow grey mouths of guns

shooting out vacant stares.

I wonder
how long does a day feel

when the breaths you take are fabricated through machinery?

No words for months,

No songs,

No fights;

Not even humming.

Breathing

Beep

Breathing

Beep.

I breathe twice instinctively

amidst every beep,

first for her,

then for me.

But I sit and wish
for days at a stretch

for the drowning to be complete.

Not UP

Not UP

Eye of the cyclone,
Calm and Kebabs.

We’re from Lucknow,
Not UP Janab.

Excerpts from my Letters to You

23:05 hours

Hey you,

Remember Van Gogh
the one who swallowed yellow paint
to get happiness inside of him?
Silly!
I used to think.
But I gaze at a picture of my heart that is grey
made of ash.
I stare at the squeezed tubes of water paints
yearning to mix yellow with my grey.

00:00 hour

The moon is high up
and I sleep like a seal at sea with one eye open,
dreaming to rest my head on the land.
I recall your touch.
I recall transforming into a cigarette
that you put to your lips
And its body burned.
Now
I’m an ashtray.
I put out cigarettes on my wounds
hoping what my mother says is true-
“Fire purifies darling,
It gives solace to the dead too.”

01:21 hours

I tried to be with Mr N.
and H and A and H again.
But I tried to turn them into you.
They all ended up
Just passing through.
Rehearsing to unhook a bra or two.

01:30
The earth was flat once
and I was happy.
Then someone bent it
made it round
and I got lost.
Now, he pretend to sleeps next to the crumpled sheets
while I hit my pen on pages most nights
my words become his gaping wounds.
He tells our son he knows exactly why
swords are blunt
but pens are vile.