stranger than paradise

mein freund

it’s easier to leave than claw your way back

your morning faces on the train

stumble dad you’re 6 feet tall

the dust rising through the ends of my fingers

what grows through you? rises through to the roof

faces perhaps

but really, more internal irrelevant

churnings. eyes closed, walk through

you collide with

ka-os, and

his estonian robotmaker

hi i’m bengali i’m german

i’m black and white and still i can’t see you

where is my war? we pull up to a cop station

a gas station

a petrol pump

we pull up stoned looking for ice cream

for chunks of chocolate spoons hidden in cups

ridged ends of spoons for my fat asian hands

we pull up, shiver

potbelly quivers

eyes narrow, eyes meet

alarmbells ring: you square your hips and shoulders, walk towards me i keep the car running

strangers rape in stranger’s cars and strangest of all

the paradise that you and i are here

my rape has happened: we were born to it

little girls on laps wet kisses in oily corridors

tears rise screams between my ears

ma, help

this mans fingers are running down the line the separates my buttocks

his arm has an iron rod, i wonder if that’s what makes him broken inside thats what makes

his touch so hideous

my rape happened, where were you?

trapped in elevators

while on escalators

a woman squats to pee

it trickles down towards me, waiting

for a bus in the night

waiting for groups of men

waiting for groups of boys

men

boys

men

--

no i will not go softly

into the night

i will stay here, eyes shutting in sleep

i will stay here to watch

the exact way your fingers curl towards your crotch

flicking from left to right

your testicles

i will stay here and stare you down blood rising

From forgotten meetings, May 17th.

dry, sunday night

here are the small flowers i rescued, stole, grabbed from the dining table,
I don't know their name, they droop
 but sometimes  they waft their bouquet towards me, and i catch it, despite my burnt lips and dry mouth, itchy face
 it transports me somewhere where i understand 
the value ma and manna would place on things like
that shade of green, that song, that painting
I nod wisely if I squint, just so, I can see
those flowers are arranged
just right
 --
dryness become a state
 like the faded blue velvet sofas, it holds so much in its discomfort
just clean enough to remind you of the dreams of the sombre bihari boy who cleaned it, who toils endlessly, draped in the chemicals of dry-cleaning, 
just soft enough to sleep on and wake before your drool spills onto it, just full enough to wonder what weight fills out a second hand sofa
--
sometimes things evaporate at just the right temperature for us to dislike each other instantly and for eternity, or is it just that i am poisoned
--
i am tired of watching what i say tired of making sense
i just want to slip into the comfort of words tumbling out of me slipping out in a noose a mattress a hammock and hammer words that fumble together hold onto each other break away just for sounds fuck all this meaning

my art is here to help us forget

remember,
vandalise! force your art upon the world!
 forget for a moment, that so much of art is vandalism, just by existing, not even the pleasant kind but just the sour fart smell of vapidity, like bad shit as you told me that floats on top,
art is meant, i thought,
to shake you to the depths of your soul. i use remember, as a command, not just a place holder. we talk about sticking ceramic tiles onto the cityscape,
using the city's fluorescence to chip away at it, reminisce about the lack of gloss as we watch our reflections in more glass and chrome -- use this to be that! hello, good bye. 

read more, consume, slowly, paste precarious ceramic tiles onto our mindscapes, slowly move through it, you can't airdrop onto everest. rub texturize annotate the
 create hooks, smother
 with araldite, putty, industrial mixes of cement and glue, you now know blutack to be the tacky, capitalist dream of a childhood spent in government houses, of posters that miraculously stay on the wall and yet leave without a trace, like grey chicken soup out of a packet, at once existing and not.

paris special, or why it stank

how softly that city kills! do you remember? we met at dusk, i was waiting at denfert like you told me to. an old drunk man tried to talk to me, je parle pas francaise i mumbled. then you arrived, drunk. we kissed on the train, i wore my new red lipstick did you see it? it was a paris special. 

you left for work, we slept apart. i walked onto the street outside your apartment, terrified someone would talk to me. three euros 

don't get you very far. i bought a baguette and ate it on the train, it was dry and plain, the train smelt of old cheese. 

on my way home i stopped at a vintage store, breathing in the musky hopes of african immigres lost in cold winters 

then it was time for you to return and i brought you red flowers i found on the road. 

i put them in a jar, i took a photo of us, i watched you talk to computer, dressed up, talking fast. i wore my special dress, did you notice? in the mirror behind you, i watched myself watching you,  

that cat looked best silhouetted against the sky, upclose she stank, that apartment stank. (later you told me eric kept her litter carefully stacked behind the machine, why was that?) 

i tried so hard to be a part of that house! i swept the floor, used that little trickle of a shower, bought overpriced strawberries. they were so sour, do you remember? 

that city stank. only the buildings sparkle in the night.

meanwhile american tourists line up, grumbling, gypsies reach out, grabbing, old men walk by with postcards, hustling. i was broke and hungry and it all stank, except that hour before i left and you held onto me, sobbing. 

house help, part one

basanti was the magical one, the dreamer with the slow smile, her hair wispy and unkempt, skin mottled with unfinished thoughts. she was beautiful as she floated through our rooms. we shared our dreams every morning, as i sipped my green tea and she chopped and diced for our breakfast. mine was a recurring one of being chased by wild animals, meticulous panthers and rhesus monkeys that would appear and chomp my arm off after a short chase. hers were also recurring, alwayz about struggling to fly, as she ran away, from animals and from  her mother, who chased her with a stick. when her mother came to visit from the village she was tiny, no bigger than her 3 year old grandaugher, and i couldn't imagine how she'd infected her daughter with a life long fear. 

but silky was different, much more pragmatic, poring over the hieroglyphics in the kannada newspaper that came specially for her. another rape! she'd say with almost gleeful horror, he gagged her with an iron rod, broke into the house, you can't trust any one these days. I'd shake my head, tut-tut, and so the gossamer mornings were quickly burnt away into the banal horror of everyday life.

what does it mean to let someone into your house, to live your life just one degree removed from their skin? her hands chop dice cook wash everything that goes into your mouth. her fingers massage your head and back, fill rubber bottles with hot water in the winter and crush ice into glasses of iced tea in the summer, smooth over the creases in your bed every mornings, scrub your clothes, wring out even your inner clothes, your bras and underwear on days you're particularly lazy, hopefully your mother doesn't know. she hangs your bags, fold your clothes, pins your sari, give you sartorial advice on your new clothes, this is too wrinkled, that color is nice. pushes you to attend social obligations you don't intend to fulfill, but its her wedding how can you not go? 

But today there is a crisis to be solved. we need to talk, she says. she looks determined and troubled. i ask her to come into my fathers room, this house is all windows and no doors, voices travel through it like the gust of wind from the gigantic cooler in the summer. maybe this is why things just go missing, because the borders between being and non-being are just too porous.

her eyes quickly well up and her voice rises, shrill. i come here to work, she says, there are both of us, and yet i hear things, i heard from the garden bhabhi asking about that girls clothes, but i don't wash them downstairs, i finish the work here, and then i was upstairs today and everyone knows my name has been mixed in the mud and my son, i can't lift my head with what he did i know what you all say about me and i ignore it but it can't go on like this i can't live like this. i cant live like this. i move uncomfortably towards her, pat her shoulder and quickly take my hand away, unsure about how to comfort someone when you're the source of her misery. she's miserable, but there's something unsettling. even marriages break up, I tell myself, mothers and daughters vow to never talk to one another. but something here isn't right. I mumble about trust and the lack thereof, the funny thing is how often this word is thrown around in my life. speak the truth baby, says ma, and this dicta is my heavy albatross.i drank with a friend later that night, and he laughed at me, what is this christian attitude towards the truth! do what you have to and deal with it later. but, and this is the power of imagery, ever since I couched this feeling in colerige's calamitous metaphor i feel the physical weight of every untruth and half truth.

what is it about little lies that is scarier than big ones? i can't tell, can't tell if she's a hounded animal, back to the wall, snapping at every movement towards her in the only way she knows, that acid sharp smile and crisp denial, banking on the dreaminess our heads are wrapped in - or if this is calculated, and we're too busy to notice strings emerging around us, tightening to draw us in. like a bond movie! don't be idiotic. but the signs are there, i saw her fight once, like a panther at her door, sinewy and snarling.

I don't know why you're waiting, says achiles, waiting for a real calamity to jolt you.  

do these things happen? the world is a strange place, I can't forget how boring and brutal it can be. we  lie and cheat, steal and hack through relationships and lives for opal rings and for our muscles to contract in orgasms.

hello, this is a tabli

you show off, trying to turn me inwards
but see
the game changed suddenly
you looked at the music, all of it, filling my room
forcing your way inside my head.

here's teen taal, think of one beat today, the next tomorrow, the infinite moments in between
each beat, flat, and yet

dha - dhadakkadhin
dha dhin dhina dha

you say it's poetry, my fingers can't move this way, my bones don't keep time
this is alien to my flesh and yet I feel
we're all parts
perhaps bits of a longer day

locking horns

And we fight and we end, like always,
With indigestion, mine
And sleep, yours.

You insist, I rage
Grind teeth choke back salt
Feeling through our thoughts and wants
like blind rats in the rain, confused
moving towards a dull longing to be warm and dry

knowing all the while to become so
is to be so alone