Detective

#2 Detective

We thought you were dead
until they made us laugh at your joke,
you should not have done this.

You should have smiled ,
you should have left us a note -
telling us about this situation
after all we were all in the same boat,
a boat that floats in confidence
and sinks when you are over popular.

Now that the corpse has turned
and the shovels speak of an empty grave,
you have to explain the miracle,
we were born to believe.

He was supposed to

8^th February 2014

#1 He was supposed to

He was supposed to leave
a trace for every face in the crowd,
to believe in backward pundit lines,
like zebras on the pavement
gazing at policemen of the traffic.

He was supposed to linger,
coffee flavour in her mouth
reminding her of chocolates,
midnight craving for melody bites,
the usual and the optimistic.

He was supposed to position
himself between her eyes,
get shot from a distant bullet,
die from a different wound -
someone else’s pain
in a translated world of confusion.

Batman

17^th January 2014

#8 Batman

Once upon a batman, signals of the dark
there could be someone up in my room
going through my notebooks,
pencil sketches of cities that never existed.
Batman nailed my comfort,
tore apart my imagination,
no apple trees or cup cakes -
nothing tasted sweeter than the muscles.
Night-vision grazing past my bed table
stopping by my breath, caught unaware,
the picture of a thousand bleeding hearts
everyday they sleep with my child
of fantasy and bubblegum – blowing in and out.
They could have stayed on,
not finding what they had come for
my child of comic book heroes -
they stretch my days
longer than we expect,
I will return someday for another moment.

Bake my head

1^st January 2014

#7 Bake my head

Bake my head in an oven of thought
I like the disorientation of evenings
and the gradual prints of bed-sheets,
changing my posture, disturbing
the new year lights of a terrific city,
staying awake like a ribbon in your hair.

They drank too much to walk the road
to their houses or places they thought
they might be staying and then disappointed,
they raise their voices against the
innocent night and its resolutions.
I always hated the loud – brute force
and now even more, so bake my head -
it is disoriented and lacks the stealth
of a cheetah.

Growth

20^th December 2013

#6 Growth

Head below my shoulders
snow under my skin
its colder than you can imagine,
the spacecraft of my time.

Stations often forgotten
often ignored for lack of sleep,
too much intimacy
lost in fields of paddy
soaked to the roots of disbelief.

That’s how monsters grow
from shadows to another height
decaying slowly in our blood
like breadcrumbs on my table cloth.

Fragments of sleep

30^th August 2013

#5 Fragments of sleep

I gather my fragments of sleep
lost in aisles and window seats,
travelled midway through
sandwiches of day before
and fluctuating daylight.

Started somewhere between
hopelessness and despair,
my heart cannot change
just keeps repairing
bad weather.

Fragments of my sleep
knocked around by boulders
on uncontrolled thoughts,
rural roads of national disgrace,
I can’t cry like I used to.