Volume 1 : Issue 2
ISSN: 2454-9495
Three Poems and a Haibun
4 Degrees of Separation
Stream your fingers
through the flames
of a mid-morning dream
and see how broken glass, broken bone
make perfect symphony.
Many walks over many a earth
were made to reach this place -
many journeys
Dull, aching pieces of a tornado
have come together over the measly
allowances of this heart.
When you ache for something deeply
you break,
shuddering in the slipstream
of a very cold laugh.
The thing they call love
is so warm and liberating,
yet so caging
that slivers of our razor thin selves
gather over an offspring of feelings.
Oil on glass
Balcony Seat
Footsteps echo over floors. The ceiling drips light in violin slurs.
On this 24th floor, lamps, chandeliers, chairs, stomachs growl in bass.
Smiles hiss on unfamiliar islands of faces, humming into waves of the curious.
People drone kisses, crooning in light embraces.
Outside, a muster of crows swoop in mezzo, doves fly contralto, an aerie of eagles glide soprano, mynahs float in medley,
a flock of parrots serenade in blue, sparrows burst in tempo,
flamingoes clang over faraway mud.
The wind breaks the chime’s silence. A patch of wet reflects sliding clouds. Chimneys flute in smoke. A factory at the sea’s edge turns into a French horn.
Leaves curl in celesta, a horse carriage drumbeats on tarmac.
The strangers trill into friends. Their hearts are string quartets. They shake hands like maracas. The table clinks over red wine, holiday-talk, economies, faraway snow, and the shapes of strange things.
It refills with rice, fish curry, mustard sauce.
The guests chew on bones.
The sea trebles out her plastic. Seashells rattle in wave cornets. A black cat pads home. Crabs marimba over rock. The eagle rings in dead fish.
Panes shudder to the Arabian sea-wind like harps. The sun exhales in tritone. Tectonic plates slip in piccolo. Worlds spin in oboe intervals.
The sea calms like a saxophone.
A boy shouts from a football field. The wind carries his echo in a cymbal, then a xylophone.
The storm strums in trombones. Rain peels in snare drums, timpani, tam-tam. The traffic breaks in cellos, trumpets.
A crab glugs in rising water. The sun refrains to its final cadence. Clouds thin to grey bassoons. Birds wing-flap in vibraphone, encoring under awnings.
Curries grumble in earthen pots. Chutneys prelude on hot plates. Mutton scales off spiced bone. Some interludes between the teeth. Fork, spoon, knife tinkle to pipe organ. Gulp, chew, suck, lick, swallow to a smile’s silence,
or laughter in triangles of names, lives, professions.
The tremolo in stomachs turns to belches. Its fullness grows staccato tongues. Sleep timbres like moonrise.
Rice octaves in sweet milk.
Birds register on telephone lines - a wet libretto on a stave.
A girl crossing under it dodges an unruly horse and spins like a false note, skids.
Her bones crunch under trumpets and screeching violins
- the road ends in her silence.
Roads are now twisted veins of clarinets, cellos, trombones, bassoons, piano,
burps, belches, heaves, sighs,
yawns,
a heart gasping falsettos - a bird winging fugue,
a large soundless fart,
and
a last breath.
Illusion
In this house, there are many walls with paintings
some looking left, some right, some straight of:
fishermen, lovers, temples.
Some receding with the sun on their backs.
At exactly 3 in the afternoon,
poets appear like dawn,
filling wicker woven chairs
with their bodies and expanding thought.
They tug at easels, paint like spit-silk,
Brush-stroking colour.
In this aroma of quiet, their hue-symphonies
fall like aged leaf through trees,
snowflakes over ground,
water over the jagged rock of canvases.
So low are their heartbeats, dim their sights
that the light pouring over the roof
on the lone ceramic pot in the courtyard’s centre
is the only illuminated spot.
If you descend through the door
that cuts out the green with a mesh
bringing in the bazaar-and-street noises,
you will miss hearing their inner cacophony.
Remove your footwear of varied distractions,
sea water, the wetness of shopping and river cruising.
Trudge through the corridor like invisible light…
watching these poets’ heads falling
over the hinges of their necks.
Behold,
let the scene unfold
in the sanctum sanctorum of their vision.
Tiptoe into the limbs of this 150-year-old heritage home
to your room
ordering garam masala chai.
The thought of them stung like spice over the glade of your tongue.
When you are back, all you will find
are circular marble tables,
paintings, easels, and dried paint.
Ask the houseboy who doesn’t understand your language.
He denies everything.
But you see there are some more walls now
with some more paintings,
some looking left, some right, some straight of:
fishermen, lovers, temples.
New feelings that create mirrors, and doors,
instead of walls.
Rain: A Haibun
I watch the rain descending in straight lines over the gobbets of the lamp posts. I think of my friend-filmmaker Ram and his obsession with getting fake rain to fall straight for our rain sequence. How much had he stared into nature to know rain and its mood swing, its exact expressions? Even during my wet hair scene, he shouted for my hair ends to be dripping – yes that is where water usually settles. . .after a bath.
I think of the way water works, and our minds watching this straight-laced rain over the lamp posts in the park. People with no umbrellas stand like me under the roof of the bench. Most of our clothes are wet.
The rain calls out to me. ‘This shot is ready’, it echoes. I walk into it, meeting its rhythm with my breathing.
Somewhere a traffic light turns green with a tick-tick-tick-tick-tick sound to guide the blind. Everything is linear like this sound, and direct from point A to B. But maybe it is not about getting to point B at all. Why do we fear the rain? When the characteristic of water is to evaporate and leave us?
I know the clouds will exhaust soon. The sky will deplete grey. A jogger has forgone the unwillingness of the others. He jogs drenched, his muscles taut, gleaming with every stretch and pull. He splashes water under his stealth.
The rain is thinning to a drizzle now. There’s water everywhere. I am stepping into a melted cloud. In the distance, a yellow plastic sign bobs: Caution | Slippery floor. Under this sign, I see goblets of 10 lamp posts floating away into the night.
winter mist --
heaven and earth
under the same quilt