he has not come

H E H A S N O T C O M E


“Bring me bright sorrow and plain pleasure, I shall partake of both”


He has not come

he has not come

for the rain

or hillmen’s songs

he has not come for my bosom

that my brown children clutch

with hungry lips-

he has not come

for the tinkling of bracelets

or garland-makers

or my hut of saree cradles

beyond our shores

swim the wicked fish

that ask to be cut

and led by him

on some waterway

where the ocean bawls

that majestic misery

our women cannot sing.

he has not come.

he has not come.

[“Seventy-two Tamil Nadu fishermen have been shot by the Sri Lankan Navy in the past six

months. Yet they keep going back to the same strip of sea”- Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 8]


Pārijāta

Maiden, have his basket pick

the pārijāta for a retreat

as you braid your scented hair

you may do as you please

Ask him not to look where the tree spreads

or in the branches, among her stirring leaves

at midnight the flowers spill

like pleasure that sings reprieve.

Maiden, reveal your back to man

and have him on your skin cascade

flowers brighter than jasmines

silhouette your lovely face.

Mock him first and turn to say

‘You shall not have it from me’

and in the gentle cusp of surrender place

your breast upon his modesty.

Dim the lamps in due time,

give him hair to decorate

where gleaming pārijātas will shine like jewels

when despair slumbers and passion wakes.

Find love where the blooms flow

like dancers on your stomach, bare

move your form to his heaviness

and from fetched fragrance, inhale.


Wedding Night for the Wodeyars

On the soil where you built the palace

I observed from my small window

a small child with jeweled eyes

my royal city-

today you are celebrating.

It is wedding night and I’ll wear my bangles

when our kings marry, the whole city strings mango leaves

Everyone from the lowland daasi to the hill goddess

Chamundeshwari

blesses you tonight with vermilion

sandalwood and jasmine

Let me bring the Aarati to your faces

and hold the radiant shyness

of love’s deepening colours

as tuskers riot

in the royal courtyard

[“The maharaja of Mysore in southern India, Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, has

married Princess Trishika Kumari at the royal palace”- BBCnews]


Memories upon the parapet

When i remember

in every caress

you are tiptoeing to the edge of the earth

and breath becomes rough syllable

an impolite asking

in the shade of all these trees

to richly summon the past of us

to wag the light away

where devotion and vice

dissolve

like monsoon on a tributary

your laugh. your teardrop.

a stern jaw that chews

this secret

a red mouth

stained

by last kisses

one too many

when you speak

sparrows visit the balcony

and squabble themselves silly

when you leave

there is dusk on the pillow

a vanishing.

a night in which

i am a scream

empty of words


How shall I spell this?

My language spills into all things

It is how a Rangoli slips into place

in the f

a

l

l

of flour.

It is how your

leaving

is a lesson

as imperceptible

as the camphor sublimating to touch

a temple ceiling.

When I tarnish it is a woman’s gold

dipped

in Ammonia water.

My language spills in all things

and sings

A leafbird folded into a croton’s crimson cheek.


Phasing

Draw ellipses on my body

until your fingers tire of tracing

the lunar lust

that betrothed me

(a moon soaked in fire,

a sun drenched in rain)


Faint

I am faint

in the manner that summer falls on things


Lovesong

When you came

home

like afternoon rain

dirtying the floor

I thought of winter

and the endless shore

of mist rising over the dahlias

on the hedge

an orchard of Kashmir apples

our house watched

and what a simple thing it was

to have my fingers dart to you

and rest there

like you were all that could

possibly contain me.


Giving

(i) Illiterate Mechanic

There are more troubles in this world

than you know how to count

give me your chipped mouth

reduced by the weight of the silences

you cannot spell

give me the grease. the oil. the machinery.

the world broke you

yet you repair it.

(ii) For the block printer in Jaipur

Everytime your hand slams

hard on that wood

you are explaining my heart (thump, thump, thump)

as the color seeps

loudly

into Khadi

my insides bleed into flowers

at your fingertips

as tubers grow into

brocade sarees

I celebrate lifetimes of joy and sorrows

Give me your calloused palms

that have worked like this

for fifty seven years

my eyes can thank with tears. I will show you love

and applause

The only performance

that my clean, conserved, manicured hands

can provide


Maid

on the terraces where monkeys pick

my childhood guavas

I cluck for the junglefowl

for my muddy earth

for my nitpicky, wormy hands

I toss the mustard

in frying pan

some turmeric too

i have a lowly kitchen

my paintings are in soot

my talk is for the market

where every vendor is

a money-grabbing

rascal.

I bring coriander in plastic

else the neighbor’s neem will do

for seasoning.

I raise my brats

on the street

and the community park

by the municipality.

and i exist-

here.

unadorned. unremembered. invalid.

a jarring sārangī

practiced by

impatient fingers.

and if you ask me if I ever loved this life

I’ll point to my kitchen

like the jump of cumin in embers, sir, I’ll say

like that careening flame that dances them


When it was easy

I would say its love

the answers, the glances, the coins

that lie wasted

on cheap flower

like

plastic.

but i am a little worn, you know

my body wakes knowing

it will be harder to breathe tomorrow

there are wrinkles, darling. so I’ll take you

pepper-haired, pimpled, too irritated

to shave.

a half-lover’s better

than loneliness. it will stop the

lust or the questions.

we aren’t young anymore.

I would say it’s love

but I have known love

I have known feeling like-

I couldn’t exist without him.

but what is life but a pittance

to the inventory of tremendous want?

we are possessed by need

until we don’t have to live anymore.

so

let me sing to the sky,

a shorn piece of wool

a lingering lie.

when all that i do

is advertise heartache


Sipping

Sipping from your mouth

is learning

the thirst that believes

it seeks nothing more of this world

Let my eyes exhaust themselves

in memorization

of your countenances

in the marketplace of all dancing shadows

because every other weariness

that the soul wears

is simply the insincerity

of a songbird’s ecstasy

(no, it’s the lure)

i want to drink from you

until my being ceases

and burrows its way into you

hiding like a tuft of hair

in some old wind

my soul tucked away

into the taverns of you.


Finite Flowering

If oceans were endless

without shore

there would be no music

of their handshakes with the cliffs

It is so with life.

Living by the ocean, I learn

that you exist in poverty

If you don’t crash once in a while

if only to make music, if only to know where you are: a finite flower within the infinite.


Sleepless

I have decorated the night

with luminous songs

and the hair

with flowers

From this bed, as the light moves

it is as if you breathe

From my sleep, as I rouse

It is as if I have never awakened and yet-

It becomes a surfacing

Another sleephour passed

In considering you

Because rising

is something like beauty

Here, we are a wide shadow

You spin, I flicker

And we disappear

To the trick of the night

Even the trees wonder

Where we’ve gone.


Archery

The easy grace

of your smiling eyes

is subtle archery


Feral

I will write once again

of being dogs

with an

exquisitely rabid quality

somewhere beyond the grooming

this (hunger?)

rouses the beast

imperially wild

let me remind you before

the muzzle

before the

taming

we were lovers.

lusting elephants

exposed claws

an entire country

of wounded soldiers

do you remember ?

the rough hurt-

gulped like fish

into each other

climbing you like

a tiger prepares for war

a mating dance

of weight and valor

undoing the spider webs on your back

until the feral snarled

and flooded the room-

with past light


I asked the sea to sleep forever

I used to think

with a mind wide open

how it was

to sleep and to really close one’s eyes

without the shame of

this thought that maybe

you didn’t deserve this

final mercy too.

[“Woman hacked to death in front of dozens of commuters at Chennai railway station: Before

anyone could react, the man suddenly pulled out a sickle from a travelling bag that he was

carrying and slashed Swathi below her jaw. She fell on the ground bleeding profusely. The

attacker walked away from the platform as no one came forward to stop him.”-The Daily Mail,

UK. 24 June 2016]


After

This morning-

hums loftily with sunshine

like the act of waking

from a sad dream


Narasimha

I wear your heat

like a shawl

the tremors of pillars

split open

I wear your growl

shaking the heavens

lion-face

and radiance

once, a saint

remembered you when

he made paste

of sandalwood

and Brahmins went home

with bodies singed

and here, like him

a lotus-hearted earthling roars

your phenomenon

to hold like succulent demon flesh

in your loving hands

her song and throat, her life and bone


Bhavajvalanmukhi

Come, fire-eyed child

rimmed with the light of volcanoes

Sun-chaser, dawn-eater, cinder-heart

flame and froth

come to me

eras crest in your eyes and molt

molten-skinned, magma-clad

daughter of mine

you are the moon in flames

let me place a hibiscus on your hair

and watch it bloom

a beryl


Kaikeyi

in the courtroom

I pass

my last years

I am compassion’s fire

outside, dew has died

over the paths my sons took

thick as young sin-

and I

old woman

boon-asker,

life-thief

have stolen this late wisdom

for safe-keeping

in the places where

chants sleep in the quality of my corruption

as cruel as penitence

how long the ignoble suffering

of those primordial mothers

who mouth the genesis of epics?


Folded Lotus

you have folded

like a soft tantrum

panting into the tight decorum

of symmetry

Lakshmi’s lotus.

without breath

to talk of the mischief

of goddess feet on your

sieving heart

oozing flesh

To laugh.

You have folded

the musk of you

like incense

White elephants

swim by

but you live lifetimes-

on fluid ground

never yours

Oh, the soft flower of infinite petals

do you remember the tenderness

of fingers

that do more than hold?

Do you remember that you had once bloomed too?

As red as blood

that soaked her veins.


Rice Water

reaching for you

is dipping my hand

in rice water

smooth food at the bottom of cold rivers

your red flesh, my wet blood

an entire village sings

the love

you planted in me

bitter

as a neem tree

***

When it bites-

I recommend gooseberry

guava, ripe chilli

a pinch of elaichi

powder-

for the face, really

your teeth have better things to do

than fray the language

in bite-sized portions

***

I eat like a South Indian

with an unapologetic hand

and with full use of thumb

sweeping entire banana leaves

clean

I eat you like a snake

whole, urgent, ardent

only a lover will know

that my hunger is hammering on tin roof

that your widowed memory

still exists like a lake of 9-yard sweat

over my sari

dipping these hot, burning fingers

into white, starchy

rice water


Snakes of Monsoon fever

Babe, if you bought me poison

I’d spit at you too soon

a cobra’s got venom

in every fang, so you

can kiss me but

you best remember this too

my attack is art

defense? We got to move

like snakes, when wasted

the world won’t last another second

you are bitten

by the love bug

so smitten

you look like the moon.


Slowburn

Burning down the hours

With my nails painted blue

Bruised by slacks

A little hurt would do.

A little tight right here

Turn up the heat, its cool

It’s a little hard to hear

What did you say you do?

I don’t really glow anymore

I’d take one more shot, you know

I’m turnt

Just a little song and I go

Tripping like I know

How to do this right, imma

Drama queen that’s right

Hold on

Burn the night with me baby

You the moonlight in my head

Catch the fever alright

Listen well. Come on

Let’s turn to ash now.

Wear it all proud so

Let’s fuck it all up

They’ll ask for the story

We ain’t got none.


Shreyas

i think of rooftops

air disturbed

rattling on the buildings there

conch eyes. silver. fingers curled

like hair.

left

open and hopping on a fold of a song

i think of trances and low-lit bars

and dancing couples

and absinthe.

i think of lipstick

erased

watching you play

i think of mornings

shiny with the worry

of grace.

i think of you moving

ruby-red slender pulses

around the neck

and below the water

slippery as soil

wet in rain

i think of how my mouth is ghee

waiting to melt

how your hands are shells

beside me

settling somewhere

rice-water. tamarind. an oiled plait

on the nape.

an archipelago of secrets

i wear

like smooth pebbles.

i think of sinking

in blade

of grass

and I like how it’s said.

Shreyas.


Taming

Sweetheart,

this world has done you wrong.

Come rest with me

where the wisterias weep

and I will wrap you in birdsongs

and their supple warmth.

You do not deserve me, I want to say

this world does not deserve you

but even gods walk their exiles

and demons mount the thrones

there is time for everything

and now is the time

to cleanse

close your eyes to the hurt

like knowing you will wake up

to feel

that the poetry of leaving

happens like a puddle of water

everywhere on a rainy day

and gone to the sun.


Self-love

Forgive me

for how large my love is

how it sustains itself

like the light of the sun

how it hurts

burning cigarette holes

like comets

that pass too fast.

Forgive me

for how my hands fit

best in my own

fissures.

Forgive me that

no hug could hold another

as graciously as my heart does

this world.


स्वयम ्प्रकाशि

On this day when the slip of my saliva

beneath my tongue

does not feel my own

When my mouth does not

taste my own

I tell the world that

I do not feel myself.

They ask me if I am okay

like being unlike myself

meant illness.

‘I do not feel myself’

Like I knew what I was supposed to fit into

Like I

was merely an idea

capable to the confinement

of definition.


Surviving him

I will break again-

Now when my name does not leap

from your throat

I have lost my tiger stripes.

My body is pulverized.

My heart, a hollow tree

a relic excavated

a lifetime ago.

It took me time to remember

that even hollow trees

can house.

In me are hornbills of irreducible wings

nesting

with frenzied love

their passion

keeps me up all night.

They are the

flight. hope. greed.

of irresistibly iridescent beaks

that do not know how to kiss

the sweetest ruckus.

Now, I welcome their gaudiness

in the parts of me

that knew finesse

in the abandoned temples of me I hoist-

prayer flags. Flippant. Earnest.

translucent embryos of unrest

where my potential slumbers

like birdeggs.

I will break again-

but this fissure

will crack with life

My soul will be their first flight

surviving in the forest night

when hatchlings bloom into being

with cobalt-blue eyes

and learn to fly above the canopies.


My life is their life

clutching my song in their beaks

carrying the steady heartbeat of me

in their new forming breastbones

My fast recovery in the flap of their wing

when at last they circle high

and glitter like nightsky.


ಜನನಿ

When I write to you in a language that is not native to me,

And when you read me in one,

know that this voice

is accessory.

My language wears me

like an open wound

it is the mess of childbirth.

My language is mother.

So here, I have polished

my secondaries

in the cold laboratory of foreign home

inevitably

for lack of a better word

for lack of a same-tongue-friend

for lack.

So when I speak at university

know that my talk

is an act of borrowing

My native tongue is breaking in

a plundering

a howling, garrulous laughter

sweet with loudness

and natural to me.

My language sings ancestors

and bamboo baskets. and areca nut.

and tastes like warm ghee.


Separation

Our paling is not subtle

It is moonlight

Our fade is that grand melancholy

Of photographs.

This separation is a tear

As loud as the one the poor man wears

In his eyes.

A brokenness so real

That is is unavoidable

The distance so angsty

That it twists it’s hurricane fingers

Like the fringes of your curls

When you grow them out.

So now when your mouth is your mouth

And mine is red

I will see us separate

Like how the threads of time

Unspool

To bare you

To brilliance

Of a love that leaves

With ceremony.


To my writing hands

I question these hands

When they write tragedies

These hands. These hands.

Made with love and flesh

And mistake.

I ask why they write so gravely

With life and grief

Your stories are not your stories

They tell me.

Your hands are not just meant for you

In your palmlines is a generation’s struggle

Your ancestors live in the pores of you

And pour like sweat onto your writing hands

So don’t you ever say

What you write is yours

What you are scripting

Is the massive history of your people

A history that will outlive you.


For the love of southern languages

( i ) Kannada

Mother.

I take to you like a child to a breast for milk

Like I know nothing else.

Mother.

The first word that I leant to write was not mine

But yours

The first utterance, the first sentence, the first crude syllable

Was yours.

Sweetly rough

You are jackfruit

Sliced right

A strung twine that labors

in every arkavattu of my making. And uktalekhana. Dictation.

Mother-

Of memory and hope

Who had me spell you in dirt and chalk and small disgraces instead of the big spaces

You made me home

Before I knew shelter

And I made you mine

Before we were together.

Tongue that is mine,

Tongue that is life

Tongue of ancestor

Flow true in me. Like Kaveri.

( ii ) Tamizh

You are love to me

A ragged lovemaking

Brash and unapologetic

Right and meaty

You brush me like I am crass

And in need of educating

You whip my tongue

In taming

Me. A song of

Margazhi.

You awaken for now

In dazzling poetry. Ninaivu. Memory.

Like maddened birds

Of your ancient, secret courtyards

You introduce me

To the zhas of phonemes

You are love to me.


A surreal bravery.

Thalattu

That leaves no breath to speak.

You are affection

That brings back

A delusion

Of intimacy.

Kanna, inga vaa, I call

To you-

Love of me.

( iii) Malayalam

How can ferocity

Be anything but honey

On stone cold cinnabar lips?

Lovely and distracting

And new

Like Vishu.

How you glimmer and greet

In gold and white

Complexity.

A clean shimmer of

Something beyond the blue skies

Of Malabar

Nee ende maatrumaane.

Somehow mine.

Ever elusive

Everlasting.

Like a quick tap of tongue in palate. Like a sudden benevolent shyness

That skips a heartbeat

In the monsoon

Over your wildflower hills. A wilderness trembling leaves.

( iv) Telugu

Sugar water. Soothe. Balm

To the unexplored mouth

I half read you

In movie posters

And cajole you

Into meaning.

Bomma. Chilaka. Jivitam.

Your words light or dense but together. Shape-shifter

Of significances.

Sometimes a small toddler

Stuttering on herself

And sometimes so weighty

That you strike like the tang

Of the spices on your

Tamarind lips

You are delicious. You are nostalgia


That brings

Schoolgirls to sing

Of how villages bloom

In your suprabhaatams

And you live

Enshrined and in reach

Of my loveliest tantrums.


Here where we weep gently

There is exquisite grief

In the death of a moment

On the verge of

Slipping away

Tears-

Like how a sea slumbers

in skyless coves

In my country

even decay sings

love stories


ಛದ್ಮವ ೇಷ , translated

A droplet has dissolved the entire nightsky

in its curvature

even this magic can become myth in a second

to the heat of the sun.

in its likeliness,

we held our disguises.


We once had love

Let us speak of separation

between your lips and mine

so much space between

what I utter

and what you do not say.

So that we may sing it to our rifts

We once had love

and we may love again.


“All of us are majestic loves that endure past their own fracturing”

he has not come

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