उट पटअंग

my friends my arms my worker limbs
black strands all in a row lined up like soldiers rising when its
cold
flowing fluttering in the breeze

Why don't you write any more? There where I can read it. Instead
you wave bits of paper at me, black letters like flies attacking my
eyes
they scare me these lines most lines

but you know when i sat down behind a bush to pee
red pajamas fluttering in the wind
and that maddenned cow ran at me
i didn't move, i stayed and watched
because her spinning swirls and grumbling furls
reminded me of you and your chest (is it larger now? did my memory
fade?)
emerging out of the inky night the kind of night I wake up gasping
screaming and choking and your back faces me and
and somehow
somehow this pure adrenaline
this I might die impaled on this cows happy horns
makes me yearn for the fright
the fear
the terror
of waking up
and finding you gone.

busdays, kota.

Her skin was stretched tight across her expressionless face; feet splayed and knees barely supporting the gigantic watermelon held in by her yellow sari, bobbing on the edge of her seat.
In this bus you’re suspended in mid air no feet no hands just the rhythmic push and shove to and fro equalised sardines in a hurtling tin can
I wriggle my feet, looking for the corrugated metal floor, plant them around an old woman huddled up on the shuddering ground, fingers are blue, grasping the overhead bars. I’m twisting and contorting, trying to avoid the ocean of sweat running off the slick tonsured head infront of me. It is a beautiful head, shiny and dark; and I’m mesmerised by the unceasing flow of glittering beads. My arm is soaked.