Disclaimer:
I have lost the ability to write poems long before I could ever write a real one. It feels manufactured now, I feel bitter if anyone comes up with a poem, a real one. If you have ever written a real poem. I HATE YOU
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“Writer’s Block”
I think too much to write down a sentence,
I fear it will go to waste,
The weather forecasts of a stormy week ahead,
The office cubicle remains lit.
I wonder if my boss cried to his sleep last night,
Or anyone in this office did.
Prashiddha shed tears on a corner of a restaurant yesterday,
I listened to his muffles as I ate my lunch,
The patters on the roof start drumming right then,
I realized I had forgotten my umbrella again
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If I tell you about my job,
I write speeches for a five-foot-three-inch millionaire,
I still think too much to write down a sentence.
This week also marks Simran’s one-year death anniversary
I remember it being as rainy as today.
I sighed with relief this morning,
when J’s STD report came back negative
one good news to this gloomy day
the weather reported a 60 percent chance of rain
I swear I didn’t forget my umbrella today,
I just must have left it on the shoe rack while I was slipping out of the house.
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A good poem is Amla Fruit (SO FUCKING BITTER)
A good poem is
not a pebble, not a marble,
But very planet-like, even though tiny
The surface isn’t tough, glassy, cold,
If you bite on it soft enough
like a hickey
it seeps green fluid, a bitter spill
the tongue’s floor rises and then falls
like tide, like disgust
stuck out of the mouth
flipped off
like a finger to a face
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More fucking angst (MFA)
The snap, crack of an ankle
You are then out to a crowd clapping for you
In the last few months, I have figured out that I write extremely long sentences without correct grammar punctuations fuck balls shit and dare I correctly use commas,,,,,,,,,,Now you’re in one of the book launches
Your jaws are tired of holding a smile or an accent
You are hugging a white girl
Four times in the same conversation
Because you’re glad that she shit on some canvas again
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You lie to people that you have a job
You say things like, “Money isn’t an issue”
You’re hiding something –
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You giggle mindlessly in a conversation
You congratulate people sounding like an orgasm
You correctly pronounce sky-fi as sci-fi
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It’s been a while since you last said sorry
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My writing voice is a scared one.
Whenever I read something good
the writing voice lead me
smooth and gliding, deeply affectionate
letters of scrambled ink, the steely towers of Telecom
clank a sound so daft that it rises and falls like curtains on a windy day
if it had a face, it would look like someone who can play the flute,
not too wryly
trustworthy like a confidant and kind like a lover
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the writing voice is a bright circle
from a throat, purging out beautifully
a shoal of migrating fish
flourishing like a burst of cloud,
a paintbrush dipped into water.
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i wonder if this is a disease
and i am looking for a cure
in books, in between the little triangles of A’s and the flat surface of L’s
my half-written sentences
a half-born child,
there is no voice but only cries
scared and wet
like a mouse in a drain pipe
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poem and nosebleed
(nosebleed isn’t a skill to be acquired. Doesn’t come to you often, even with practice)
An hour before evening,
The day was left to simmer aside
like a hot bowl of soup.
neck stretch, a long day
Something deep in my bones grunts back
With spontaneity
A red trail of blood trickled
from my nostrils
red polka dots of medium red,
drop, drop, to the page on the table
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I face upwards the blazing slate roof,
I am unsure what happens to the blood
If it ushers back to the trail, flooding my skull
but what I’m sure of is-
If The Noseblood was a poem
I would wait for a humid day, head down
with a measuring cup in my hand
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A good poem is Amla Fruit (Reprise- anecdote of sweetness)
A good poem coats my taste buds, bitter and sour. I’m jealous I’m jealous. The bitter coating awaits for a washout, some water/saliva. My tongue shriveled and colorless longing to feel the presence of not-bitter taste, now flimsy, grainy, ghostly, and translucent.
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When the water washes out this bitterness, I’ll feel it right there, not the wetness of the water, but the aftermath of it, an intrinsic warmth from the alcove of the tongue’s pores. Not the stark foreign taste but a feeble built-in sweetness, like coming home in a dark night, and not missing a step of stairs.
lalahang 