[July, 2010]

on blue days,
ashen evenings i want
you to hold me,
our backs to the ground, our noses to the sky.
watch kites dive and swoop over old lahore.
on days with no rain you
and i will put the slow,
hungry earth to bed and
watch the tired ships slip
down, over the horizon.

hold me, i need your voice at my ear
your fingers in mine i want
you to point out the stars to me,
look, that one, asha:
we're so small
from where we stand.

we're so small,
unable to will this heavy world to
float. we're so small -
you, and i,
and hope.

[working, resting ]

moving out of the old house must have been really hard
because it seems to have taken everything
out of you.
you can go days without talking to any of us
or anyone else, either.
you're not there for me when i need you,
but there is always food. and light. and it's
not like there aren't four walls and a bed or two.
and you don't yell or scream or even
ask where we're going,
you'll live from one day to the next
in the same room. book in hand.
always either
resting or working.

It's not like I've been here before. What else do I expect?

[ Another fossil, dated March 2009 ]

it's over -
over.
There's nothing more to understand
no lines left to speak.
We watched the curtain fall,
the last act
of the season
and no encore calls,
not this time.
It's over, now and there
is no going back.

the play was a rotten
stinking thing
watch them shift and
wring their programs in agony
all through the final dialogues.

what's left to say?
and even if you were to
make your way
to the front of the stage,
look over the sullen seats and
soda cans and bray
"...."

no one's listening. no one cares.
It's over.

[ Lost & found: Dated Nov 3rd, 2009. ]

minutes past three,
in the room at the end of the hallway
a swell of voices breaks
the air and pushes mahogany doors
away, breaks
into the corridor,
notices pinned to a board
(Olmert tonight, 8pm at Mandell, JavaJive!,
want to make $20 in five minutes?)
rustle against the thunder.
surely they could've offered
poli-sci twenty-eighty: political parties in
a dying state, or
losing gracefully for nationalists.
i wonder what happens then,
to the parks planning board,
the municipal buildings and courts,
what happens to the constitution and the
lawyers who studied it.
surely nations deserve a pension plan
for historians.

*

poets,
in a dying world, are almost
immediately idiomatic.
their careers, thankfully,
are secure.

[ river ]

Heading north on the river, north-
west, along the dappled grey, drowning blue
wheels against the concrete, wheels chasing bridges
against the sky,
To find the end of the bridge, and
to sail across the lovely, looming arches,
because it would feel like
riding through the air then,
weightless, curving across the earth
silent, lifted by desire and
at peace, at last, at peace.
Even as
we rode past the kayaks, blooming by the dock
even as the tree-sweet silence rose around us
even when we threw ourselves down, thighs throbbing,
wet earth, this corner of nowhere, some-where branches
glop and sink and spiders walk on nothing,

that bridge, I said to myself. I want to ride across that bridge.

Turns out I had been going north, all along.

[ thumb ]

Bite the tip of this greenchilli
seared my mouth and you
kissed me, grinned
"I don't taste anything,
it's only burning inside you."
inside, your white meat cooked, I add
a quarter teaspoon of haldi, half dhania,
kali mirch. learn something new.
sink your fingers into the heat,
whole pieces rip apart easily,
draw together the rice,
"how do I..."
let me show you.
Push it with my thumb, like this
sigh appreciatively.
lick my fingers clean.
lick my mouth dry.

I didn't bite through your skin,
notice you cut through my heart
till you held it up.
The niwaala,
like a prize, and say this
is delicious,
do you eat with your hands
all the time?

[ monkeys ]

I like it when you touch me, you said
it's because we're social
animals like monkeys
bug-picking comforting
skin-stroking family.
I'll write you into
my story, you said
I don't think I'm exciting enough
for you anymore.
It's the other way around, you thought
I'm too damn entertaining for
everyone.
It's easy, you tell me, like math
and love. I can't do one and
I'm bad at the other.
Maybe I'll call you over
tonight,
watch your skin sleep next to mine.
Make conversation. Pick
bugs out of my heart.