don't

sleep with your socks on! Ma always said. I don't care how cold you are. The thigh-length argyle socks, the red football socks, the pink spotted striped socks, the fur-lines plastic-dotted socks, the airline freebie socks even the yellowing school rejects would be tossed by my bed on wheels. Toes need to breathe. Toes need to think. And we can not think when our toes are gasping, gasping for air.
So partake of the bain-froid, the coldbath. Do not burn yourself to stay warm, instead freeze your extremities because your nose will redden and the hairs on your arms will not be enough to trap heat. So then wait and watch. Maybe sing a song. Sure enough a rabbit will come along, and your poacher ears and blackened heart will prick up and thump. Those long ears flapping. The wrongly reposed faith/ faitaccompli. I chose to squat here so you should climb your gate. The gate must be crossed, just as Akira scratches her tail. slowly, methodically, without the thought of animosity.

17.01/ static electricity

A collision of bones then?. we stop to look at the fire, our skin expands and melts into one another. and no, I don't really think of any of this, neither molten brown skin nor my cold nose streaked with this.. like those lined in my sleep. i think its ash. or just delusions of empires, monkeys and cats line up in my sleep marching in time to this operatic sound dawoomoomoom.

my shawl crackles and sparks. this is who we are, static sparks. going going nowhere coming from nowhere, just jumping off our electric clothes into the dry air.

But it is nice a scrunche-dup nose to laugh into

also a circus. circuses are nice.

A newer year

smells of? 

new bangles?

crispy paranthas/souring malai 

maroon fingernails

cold

 baths.

old people

new people

a peeling  nose 

same stories, some stories

daring to plan hoping it won't explode

another loss to screeching tires

old whispers rehashed

Another nil factor, revisited 

(this must stop)

tolerance

tears at the newspaper

videochat tits on parade

sickness in my stomach

children covered in rubble who are you and why 

are you in my house?

I live here.

no you don'

t

A newer year means

no, terrible!

this inertial wasteland

long drawn out facelifts, (the corners still look droopy) the
catacombs of your cluttered affinity mutually
exclusive thats why I'd say it's too late a nameless face is worse than this faceless name you left me with

this loving you

is burnt into me.

a surfacing like seaweed wrapping around my lungs
my face grimaces in granular slow motion heart sinks
et voila ! I'm sixteen again
and going green at the thought of this insidious like crawling up your nostrils.
this thought of you disappearing is dizzying

this loving you is sickly green and crawly

purple like the curtain fluttering behind your head of curls, like the edges of the sky curling into night darkness

this loving you is carried over from another world
its watching a red meter ticking away seconds pulses words im contorting to catch to spin into my hair to hold under my nose when I'm cold and alone

its climbing thinking listening being a receptacle
for you-thoughts

its burnt into my ankle, its here and cannot leave.

yahaan

Here he is, the thin man I know
he says he is of constant
Sorrow but I disagree he is here
Inside my head he buzzes something like the shadow Ma had to look for
When I saw it crawl up the stairs something like the sunlight
In your eyes when you have to squint
To see me dancing like I’m being hung
Upside down zero gravity trying to unhook my toes from
The mossy ceiling no
don’t look at my velcroed toenails that will make me flop

but then again the post man says he’ll be here soon so I sit
at the gate under the gate it is yellow this gate but then so am I so
maybe he cannot see me? They tell me that the beauty of the postoffice it is my duty
but I stole their stamp so they do not like me now, no

Here we are this is a green room. Why always this particular shade of pistachio?
My parents first car too was this anemic vomit but then here a girl danc
es in what is truly only a desultory manner
wriggling her hips and spinning on her toes waggling and my feet
now look like feet, curling at the edges because the girl I thought was a prostitute was just dressed to look like the sun.

here I am curled up on a window sill and I remember an apple being bartered for love, a vicarious love punctuated with winter sunshine and swirls of smoky hindi songs or am thinking of the mornings?


"unhone socha ki vahaan pe swarg jaise hoga"