Fair warning

Don't hold me too close to my words.

We are not in the business of confession.

Music, my muse

Gulping music
                     
                     down

with a glassful

of poetry.


Tumbling

         down my throat

words line up

with notes

         inside my belly.

On Not Being Able to Sleep

The rose beside
my bed
blooming inside
my head
furls dreams
around my body.

As I toss and turn-
on this pillow,
my fingers
stretch and yearn,

like thorns,
they leave
small holes
in these sheets

Alone in Delhi

I miss faces in the mist
as this fist opens and closes
deep within my chest

Promises of my profession

There are far too many

 aches

in this world

to be touched, flowered-

   de-flowered

tasted-slip of tongues

pressed, caressed- slide of fingers

and finally to be                                          loved loved loved.

To love an ache-

press that point

in your belly

to promise,

to keep,

how much longer will you keep?

until you become 

the ache, the ache, the ache

and there is no hand on a belly

to finally press you

into                                                                     itself.

Daisy and Violet

I find myself thinking about us all the time these days. I have fingers in my brain that won't allow me to let you go.


I remember, every day, that I am alone in this garden. In this garden, where you are Violet and I am your Daisy. You keep crushing and crushing and crushing me. I have these wounds blooming beneath my skin. I have often wrapped new skin around to protect you from them. I cannot tell anymore where my flesh really begins and the tumour that is us, leads. You are gone now and I am Daisy and only Daisy. People who pass by this garden usually miss me. I am plain like that. But when the sun hits me, my leaves gleam green, I turn translucent white and the faintest purple smudges glare softly out of me.  

Edit:: Blogger has failed me now too many times to count. Considering changing residence. Putting that aside however, I wanted to say that this is a work-in-progress and that I am and have been inspired by the story of Daisy and Violet Hilton and Marissa Nadler. As often happens when one reveals influences, I will fall short. But I find their story so terribly tragic and moving I must I must write about them. And us. One day, I will write (better hopefully) about us.

Still

Still,

       like when your hair

caught the sunlight

and

would not let it go.


Oh and how,

in that moment
         
            our breathing

gently

         froze.

Delhi

You are 

the 

       dust 

I taste 

on my 

tongue 

       

        when I
open
          my 

     
mouth to 

catch a 

little

        rain

I woke up this pre-winter morning with:

And I hummed to all my lost loved ones

this morning I feel you like I feel my skin. just there. 

And I steal this happily from Irigaray:

Already, I carry you with me everywhere. Not as a child, a burden, or a weight, no matter how loved or precious. You are not within me. I do not contain you or retain you in my stomach, my arms, or my head. Nor in my memory, my mind or my language. You are just there, like my skin.

                                                                              - When our Lips Speak Together

          

Hunters

They keep sinking
their fingers into my
wound,

searching,

they bypass the pus-
it is not even blood
they want.

Their fingers are too
deep now, my flesh
surrounds

them, my bone
is exposed- brittle
white

for their
           stroking.

Who? (What have I done to you?)

You as metaphor

 keep growing,

a plant-thick 

and strong-

        sometimes

cradling,

        sometimes

strangling.

You as real

can never

fill this room.

      

You see,

I fill         

             you.