Buttress Mattress.

It was a pattern that killed her in the end, suddenly she could not breathe inside the tensilation.
(My mute fingers stick, they shiver in time to an unfelt cold. vowed to be shut for all of lifetime, but a green streak runs down my chin, a vomiteous tinge I can see you cringe)

The disruption in the routine made for greater stuff than even she, with her delusions of grandeur, realised. There was a young man in a beard. A little man lost in a cloud that she stared at from an awe-stricken distance: these were razor eyes, you could not help but melt into wickedwitchwater. Then the flygoblin himself, kind eyes that crinkle at the corners.

Ofcourse, we watch my school boy legs
in a choked darkness
a dirty stairwell, a backdoor leading to a backlane, a red door leading to nothing.
these dancing insects fly to die gloriously upright until they lie on my bathroom sink
oh to be a lizard under the light: this is the truth, nothing else.

her armhair rose as she watched them dance out their parts, from the corners of her eyes, breathing in the air: two parts silentdisapproval to one part blankfog

This buttress mattress reminds me of a floor chattai, here we are, like caterpillars waiting to hatch. How do I explain to you, your voice crackling across your flooded land, how I am not the one for you? Doori I say, desperately trying to mute out the foreign twangs my ears are drowning in. A wise man told me the difference was class, a wild man told me about classes (but he was just clawing his way into my elastic pyjamas). So I try to declass, but then here we are again, another phone call, again I try mutate my voice. It doesn't work, my voice breaks. I have nothing to say. Hello hello, Akira takes the phone from me, it works better in her floppy mouth, her pink soft mouth with hidden razor teeth.

Sex is in the air, there is a stalker on the roads. It's this time of the month, it's true. This time of the month old women give me their seats in buses, a blind man knocks his stick into me. I whiz past, suspended in rickshaw-midair and I see through smog a crotchscratcher with his tongue hanging loose eyes flashing at me comehithercomehither: I fail to understand this. I grimace and look away, is this what Dahl smells like?

Walking in the dark makes for winter loving but you walk alone it's true

good advice smells like this:

so what do I do?

talkfuck

fucktalk

ohdear

i mean

whatever

You Don't Say Much; We Don't Talk Much.

 

There is a scratcher waiting 

I stood just within his peripheral vision, swinging one leg off the low parapet outside the hall. Deliciously aware of a presence: of sweat beads and a tongue flicking over the edge of a glass.

 He walked across to me, my pulse raced, insides softened: and he walked past. I heaved a barely perceptible sigh of relief. A step taken too soon is a step not taken at all.

 "I didn't understand…" rumbled through  my hair.  I swung around too soon, lost my footing and staggered. His arms reached out, my fingers wrapped around his thin forearm. Nails dug into veins, thick veins, crisscrossing in a crude matrix across leathery exterior.

 He hadn't stopped talking. "…you left too soon! She was just getting there..."

 I nodded. My finger unwrapped slowly, mumbling baby what you want me to do.

His eyebrow rose quizzically. I shook my head, “Just had to leave.” A croak is always a croak, like how surprise phone calls always catch me off guard.

The bell went off. I blinked, smiled at his neck, too close for my eyes to focus on and jumped off the parapet. Squared my shoulders, went over the mental walk away checklist: lift knees, sway hips, shift like a car gear, one foot to another. Couldn’t help but turn my head slightly to see if he was watching, the mangy dog who stalked the backdoors of the kitchens shook her flearidden tail at me in a desultory manner.

---

Then the day starts shedding her clothes we get onto our bicycles and cycle off into the dusk. Feet pump, thighs stretch, chest thumps. The wind blows my hair into clumps of dust; blood rushes to my face, calves harden. We go past flushes of middle aged women in salwar kameezes and sneakers, clumps of children yelling around three stumps and a bit of plywood shaped like a bat. The birds cluster around their high roosts, screaming and shitting in exuberant promises of sleep. Car flick their headlights at us as we fly past red lights and swing into a corner, and then we come to a shuddering halt. There’s a gigantic elephant blocking the road, just like that. Lying on her side. He looks at me. I shrug, climb off my bike and wheel it closer to the supine mammal. She’s wheezing, heaving, her huge chest shuddering. Her mahout, a small sorrowful man in a red and green turban is squatting by the side of the road, smoking a beedi. The incongruity of the situation strikes me: there are no groups of people gathered around. We are alone. He is still standing behind me, his face pale, eyes ludicrously wide. “What is it?” He points to the tail of the pachyderm, ten feet away from us. There is blood trickling from under her tail: an elephantine pool that gets wider and wider. I’m standing near her head and her big eyes look straight out in front of her. Her mahout too stares straight ahead, eyes blank, hand moving mechanically, fingers tenderly cupping his beedi.

---

We walk out of the fair, our faces sickly green in the tube-lit dust. I hold onto your hand, avoid three men who sway past smelling of wood smoke and mahua. We cut across tents selling flea ridden dog collars and camel leather whips to use on their own kind. You pause to look at a brass bell the size of your fist, hanging from thick red and gold twine. You glance back at me, I shrug. "You know me better than to ask." I smile, digging into my pockets to find the small piece of hash I have saved to smoke with you. You spend an hour talking to the wiry cattle dealer, your tones stretching, mutating to match the cadence of his words. I sit by your side, just out of the harsh light, crushing the black tarry piece into smaller pieces, mixing crisp roasted tobacco, flipping the mixture onto paper. This is my occupation. I listen, I roll, I watch you play with people.

The music is ear-splitting and torn, any semblance of a musical note shattered beyond recognition by the trumpet shaped bomb-announcement speakers. We clamber up a hill, my salwar gets caught on a bare bush with thorns the size of darning needles and rips to reveal a gash of white thigh. You stop to untangle me, lightly scratch exposed skin with the edge of your fingernail and walk on. The wind whips us into submission and we stand behind a lone tree.

The desert is wild and stings my eyes, you know this desert; I stand cowering beside you. I light the joint, and we stand together, twisting to avoid flying hot rocks. The fair is spread out at our feet, but my eyes are hazy and all I can see is the electric green giant wheel moving in a slow eternal circle.

My lips are dry and eyelids scratchy. You don’t say much, we don’t talk much. We part ways at our separate doors, and when the silence is too much to bear I knock at your door, crawl into your bed and you wrap your arms around me, turning over to shield me from the beached whale sprawled out beside you

---

I prod to wake you up; you grumble and mumble, shifting out of the way. I swing my body to sit on top of you, kissing your neck and licking the hollow behind your ear lobe. The light from the new day has begun to seep into the sky, and I lean forward to open the glass window behind your head. The night wind, the dadoo, hasn’t stopped yet, and my hair is blown out behind me like a surprised parachute. Your hands move mechanically to hold me, fingers wrapping around my small hips. I blow on your eyelids, bite your cheek and you turn over, holding me under you, squashing the breath out of me. I blow spit bubbles at your chest holding onto your hair, tugging raspy split edges.

juice:

you must not talk too much. It is hypnotic: the instigator if there ever was one.
these words words and linkedin fingers
trickling down my throat to yours, warm
honey-peanut-jelly-fish-fisher
women, hypnotic shortstuffed ugly words-
I am an ungainly giraffe a nose a ring and a kitchen floor
but we will not speak of that.
I am breadcrumbs in a white paper napkin
but we will not think of that

I am warm sunter catseyes and oranges that smell of oranges an orange cat
a gin-ger cat the one that follows me, arching her back

I am bad advice and leslie feist, a festooned ship marooned on toes a neckbiter stewed child because alphabet soup misses the point, i am a phone call to a raincoat and a hysterical hypnotized hypocrite

I am a river and you can not step in me not once not twice not ever.