in the ghetto

in the reflection of the window
of a city canopyed in red wine
the black men with crooked teeth
all love me- my ghetto body
and mouth full in the freshness
of the subcontinent I descend from
the smell of their smoke
is like the smell of mine
they shout in the streets of blackened beauty
I love you
come back
I love you
cackling like rolling dice
their teeth like ancient tobacco
laughing as I laugh away
into the cavern of the blessed ghetto
the chutney house glares wildly
the music blares obscenely
as I sway in a lamp light
the dimness smiling in my diaphragm
as I stretch and sway
in the ghetto

your skin

Your skin
Stony bricks
Burnt in age
Ridges of sand
Hilltops faded in brushstrokes
Painted in skin and blood
Torsos branched like autumn trees
The indecency of metal sculptured like memoirs
Across their barbed wire stomachs-their children in my stomach
Kicking and laughing and singing inside my virginal rubber womb
Ponds of mischief expanding like a rushing geyser inside my body
Learning to talk and walk across the fleshy orbit of my neck
Reading the words I read, speaking and feeling like me.

Your skin
Rests beneath my skin
Kicking and laughing and singing with me.

hello

Skin stretched in black tights
Across the panoramic shoulders
Of a man in faded denim
His elbows resting on the back of his seat
Nose hooked in ambition
Eyes sliced in almonds of graphite
Pale pouches of sheltered wisdom
Hanging like half eaten moons
In the humidity of the night
The neon noise of the train
Speeding from east to west
The sorrow of the city
Between our feet
He asks for the time
Almost a whisper
With a shy wave of the hand
Only to say hello
Only to have someone
to say hello to.

todays silhouette

Sour tongue of sandpaper
Curled in the vapor of dawn
Stretching and scorching
Through vertical blinds
Carpet salted in the debris of limbs
As I stumble into yesterday’s clothes
Stained with yesterday’s sweat
Yesterday’s body clothed in todays
Unguarded silhouette.

she goes

She goes to buy milk and cigarettes
Her cardigan, wool of charcoal
Dropped from her terracotta shoulder,
Her shoulder, slight muscle of fragility
Exposed between blades of silver grass
And shivering ash.

When she returns, she will have stories to tell
Missing earrings
Jin and schizophrenia
Caffeine withdrawal symptoms
Separating the veins of her skull
With her cigarette like Moses’ holy staff
Ash like congealed snowflakes
Garlanded in her hair
The forlorn Ophelia
Drifting in a pool of her incense.

Blasphemy

Spring hibernates in the snowy clasp of winter
Green apples shying in the ringed womb of naked trees
The seedy yoke of cherry blossoms
Interrupted by the jagged jaws of pine
The thorn bushes rise with iced smoke
Breathing like a blown out candle past midnight
Hot wax staining our fingertips
Dripping in the scent of paraffin oil

The diameter of our skulls
Pastured in shards of purple
A sunflower for each caved socket
A monument leafed in vine for each heart
Binded books of rust to feed each tongue
Grinding gasoline into blood
Hoping to diffuse forlorn liquids
Mechanizing in aqueous agreement

Spring lays encrusted in blizzards
Pouring like frantic pigeons at breadcrumbs
So I still search for my itchy woolen hat
And your red woolen sweater blended in polyester
Bukowski’s wrinkles on your pillow
His mouth inside of my mouth
Reciting his life lessons to every shaken spirit I meet
‘Your life is your life’
As winter blasphemes against spring
Pollen sculptured into snowflakes
Corroding on black pavements of deep tar.

after the monsoon

languid skin marinated in the salt of other skin
remaining mildew crusted in the crease of the storm
the earthworms’ tips hanging in lazy affection
waxed eyelids resting in humble submission.

A poem about poetry is the worst thing you could possibly do.

Nothing is ever worth writing a poem about.
A poem written about poetry is a poem damaged,
It is a suicidal process, the act of scraping out ones intestines,
All maroonish and bewildered with a kitchen knife,
That was not even that sharp, the same knife you chopped onions with,
Cutting up the pink factorial rubber of you bustling gut,
This universe of potential with the same pair of scissors,
You used to trim your pubic hair.

It is the amusing act of a politician declaring his wish for peace,
In a country piled with the skulls of dead children,
The wonders of the world they don’t talk about, they don’t vote over,
(Behold! The eighth wonder of the world! Hallelujah Amen)
Unlike the Taj Mahal and the Eifel Tower, holy and untouchable,
It is the vulgar act of chiseling lions out of stone upon monuments,
In a country where lions never roamed, to take the lions out of Africa,
And make a badge out of them for the pale faced wanderers of the world.

It is being caught naked in a public toilet by a stranger,
Who sees the pale yellow piss zigzag from your genitals,
Like watching a child watch a wide eyed cat being fucked by another cat,
Twice its size, its body pulsating, grizzly fur clambering over nervous ivory fur,
It is like sitting on someone’s semen at a bus stop, and then getting on the wrong bus,
That takes you the long way home.

It is like waiting for literature to come save you,
The way they thought feminism would save the rape victims,
That communism would protect the laborers,
It’s like touching yourself, and being told that you’re touching yourself the wrong way,
It’s like biting the corner skin of your fingernail that sticks like a plastic thorn,
But peeling away the sandy ridges of your skin instead,
The part where you can feel you epidermis cringing under your gnawed teeth

It is like writing a poem about how horrid it is to write poems about poetry,
Only to realize that you are now one of them,
The freckled boys and girls with divorced parents,
Who sit in their rooms and play bad electric music,
Creating art for art’s sake,
The perfect little boys and girls,
With rivers in their brains and forests in their hearts,
And razorblades clutched in the tender flesh of their hands.

tuesdays

His mustache was perfect,
But for a single gray hair,
Shunned away from the hedge of black grass,
Protecting his thin upper lip,
A burqa for half his mouth.

The silver hair stood alone like a shy albino child,
Fluttering desperately as he exhaled,
The rim of his glasses, shadowing his nose,
Like two finished glasses of wine,
Gloat in the early escape of the sun.

His book of fat fiction sliced in the middle by a bookmark,
Was always on his table,
600 rupees spent almost every week,
To hear him talk about the importance of breakfast,
And a good posture,
And to drink milk every morning before going to school,
With my starched uniform and corroded backpack,
My thumbs looped through the straps out of habit.

His eyes like black Saturn widened,
Like a daft criminal,
Beneath his boyishly curled lashes,
Every time he asked why,
His scholarly fingers gripping his ballpoint out of habit,
As I watch the gray hair jabbing feverishly,
The wayward rascal of his mustache,
Sustaining the urge to reach out and pluck it,
From his fleshy mouth,
Glistening in dry saliva.

Elizabeth

With the dilated pupils of a Siamese cat in concentration,
Over the lingering thread of a spider’s web,
She digs her bitter fingernails into a mouth of vapored nicotine,
Her rustic lips circularly fleshed over the rim of a plastic bottle,
Her name and a 45 ml dosage printed across clinically,
Well-meant and thorough,
She shakes the methadone to her lips till the last drop,
A baby at his bottle,
A lover at a protruding breast,
A junkie on a joint,
Seeing a blurred vision of me through her eyes,
A professional sales girl, pony tail, glasses,
A baby giraffe in the vicinity of an elephant,
She wipes her mouth with the back of her yellowed hand,
As we corrupt eachother with our brief gazes,
And I wash away the last drop she could not obtain,
After sniffing her breath of drugged disappointment,
Over the rim of the reusable plastic bottle.