of vanilla scents and blue hair grips

In the name of the Bartender. Amen

2005-06-19T21:50:00.000+05:30

For Shruthi :oD

In the name of the Bartender. Amen

On the eight day
the Bartender created
a bubble.
Warm and fizzy.
The bubble gurgled its way up
and detonated with a cheery bang
that escalated you into the fifth dimension.

On sunup of the ninth day
crawl out from under the table
feeling like a just-born Giraffe.
Now repeat after me:
I will never spike my ninth Vodka with Rum and ketchup with my left toe on my right ear and my right toe Heaven-knows-where at 3:27 a.m.

The Karmic Bartender knows best.

Om.

2005-05-27T14:29:00.000+05:30

i know i'm infinitely screwed when i start posting academic writing on my blog but i could'nt resist after all that talk about abysarika and vipralaptha on my scrap page!

The Ashta Nayika’s in Classical Indian Literature and Performance Spaces in the specialized context of Jayadeva’s ‘Gita Govindam’.

Somewhere in timelessness a dancer whirls, caught in a hypnotic trance. She, like a marionette in the hands of some unnamable sutradar is in the hold of some ethereal deluge of emotions that transport her into another realm. In a space of around two hours she takes her audience through an entire lifetime’s reactions. Such is the authority of the rasa in Indian performance traditions and the woman who masters the nuances is the nayika, an intellectualization of a state of being.

The naiyika or heroine of Indian performance and literature is a woman separated from her beloved. In most cases the beloved is a metaphor for divinity and the nayika becomes the jeevathma or soul yearning for the paramathma or the universal animator. On the other hand it is imperative for one to realize that most Indian art and literature is essentially erotic in nature. Eroticism does not mean sleaze and c grade pornography; Indian literary theories celebrate sexuality and the body as hallowed space for union with a higher spiritual energy. Indian traditionalists classify these heroines into eight. The ashta (eight) nayika’s are the sentient force behind most classical Indian art and literary practices.

The Gita Govindam is an eighth century poetic work by the poet saint Jayadeva, a contemporary of the Oriya ruler Lakshmanasena celebrating Lord Krishna the embodiment of love in various moods. Radha, the nayika of the treatise is regarded as the mahabhava or personification of all moods and emotions in perfect tandem and harmony, in short inspired perfection. Taken in context it is very possible to attempt a deconstruction of Jayadeva’a Radha using the nayika tradition.

Beautiful Radha, jasmine-bosomed Radha,
All in the spring-time waited by the wood
For Krishna fair, Krishna the all-forgetful, --
Krishna with earthly love’s false fire consuming—
And some one of her maidens sang this song:--

The first nayika is Vasakasajja, who like Radha in this verse waits ready to receive her beloved, oblivious to his gallivanting around town with other women. She adorns herself with painstaking love and ever has her gaze fixed on the threshold of her dwelling searching for signs of his arrival. She is the nayika of excitement and young passion, of longing and hope.

A padam (dance piece) which goes “Dari tzutzu tsunadi nidu priya” (watching for your arrival your beloved with the quivering eyes, the young maiden waits. With attar of roses she sprinkles the bed and decorates it with flowers.) in Telugu centers around Vasakasajja.

Say that I -- Radha – in my bower languish
All windowed, till he find the way to me;
Say that mine eyes are dim, my breast all anguish,
Until with gentle murmured shame I see
His steps come near, his anxious pleading face
Bend for my pardoning grace.

Next comes Virahotkanthita, the distressed. Radha suffers by being estranged from Krishna and is disturbed in her loneliness by thoughts of him. Every waking moment is distressing as it reiterates the absence of Krishna. She is anxious and sends messengers pleading him to return. A traditional portrayal of this nayika shows her as being exhausted, discontented, trembling with grief and tearful.

A Tamil padam “Netru varen enru nayamizha peshi acar, ennalum varakanene” (He said he would come, speaking honeyed words he left, but he still hasn’t come) is another excellent example of this nayika.

O angel of my hope! O my heart’s home!
My fear is lost in love, my love in fear;
This bids me trust my burning with its memories, drawing near:
Lift up thy look, and let the thing it saith
End fear with grace, or darken love to death.

In the last canto of the Gita Govindam Krishna sings these lines to Radha. Radha here is the third nayika Svadhinabhartruka, a woman whose beloved it completely enamored by her. Her lover is ever at her side showing complete subjection to her will. She is the nayika residing in an enchanted state of newly in love bliss and is the object of every other nayika’s jealousy. This nayika speaks with all the freedom and assurance of one who holds unconditional power over her ‘lord’.

Another example from Gita Govindam goes to further reinforce her teasing control. “Paint again these long lashes of my eyes with collyrium darker than bees.”

Wind of the Indian stream!
A little – oh! A little – breathe once more
The fragrance like his mouth’s! blow from they shore
One last word as he fades into a dream;

Bodiless Lord of Love!
Show him once more to me a minute’s space,
My Krishna, with the love-look in his face,
And then I come to my own place above;

Kaldhantarita is the nayika who rebukes and sends her lover away in a fit of rage and then is filled with remorse. Radha after admonishing Krishna for his infidelity sends him away. No sooner than his back recedes out of her view she is filled with compunction, awash with yearning and desire.

“Ela tiruga pommomti namma televi okari soma” (Alas, why did I tell him to be gone? Why am I so thoughtless?) a Telugu padam articulates the state her state of being.

But wilt thou plead, when. Like a love-verse printed
On the smooth polish of an emerald,
I see the marks she stamped, the kisses dinted
Large-lettered by her lips?

The while they very lips are dare to teeth
With the dye that from her lids and lashes came,
Left on the mouth I touched.

Khandita is enraged and offended by her debauched lover who comes to her bearing marks of another woman’s caresses on his person. Radha addresses Krishna thus when he comes back to her in the morning, having been away all night long on some fabricated pretext. Tradition shows her as being restless, acerbic, sorrowful and insecure. This nayikas’ every word drips sarcasm and sharp double entendres.

“Ethukanum indha shathurya varthaigal inge nadavathu pome,pomaiya,” (Why these deceitful words? This will not do! Go, please go away.) a Tamil padam showcases the attitude of this nayika.

‘Tis too heavy, lacking him;
Like a broken flower I am –
Necklaces, jewels, what are ye?
Yami he kam sharanam!

Yami he kam sharanam!
The sky is still, the forest sleeps;
Krishna forgets – he loves no more;
He fails in faith, and Radha weeps.

After her comes Vipralaptha bearing like a pregnant rain cloud whiffs of disappointment and disillusionment. Unlike the mordant, caustic Khandita she is gentle and tearful, given to sighing and swooning. Radha’s pining after Krishna and his love is probably the most oft quoted example of this nayika in Indian performance.

“Valli kanavan perai” a tamil padam where the Nyaka is lord Muruga and the Nayika is a nameless young waif in love with him is a four strophe song of adoration describing the intensity of her love and his prowess before culminating in “ kattu kodi padarndha karu ooru kaatu kulle vittu pirindhanadi kiliye, Khandan ennum perondai, kiliye.” (In the middle of a dark, sinister forest my lord Muruga deserted me). Even as she talks about something as heinous as this Vipralaptha nayika is incapable of vengeful vocabulary.

The last two classifications, Proshitapriya and Abhisarika are inapplicable to Jeyadeva’s Radha as he does not fix her in the necessary context. Proshitapriya is the naiyika whose husband has gone abroad. She is emaciated, neglectful of her appearance and counts the days for her return. A Telugu padam “Emani telu pudu nelagu taludu” (What can I say and how can I bear this separation?) is an address by this nayika. Abhisarika is the woman who boldly sets out to meet her lover braving all. She is the nayika of “Valli kanavan perai” who sets out to meet Muruga who is already wedded to Valli in the middle of a scary forest.

The nayikas are not literary conceptualizations divorced from a routine human context claiming essentialist specifics to aesthetics and literature. Rather this tradition draws from a vast repertoire of human emotions, psychology, physicality, sanctified sexuality and the warmth of human flesh and blood. The naiyika’s are isolations and representations of emotional states that every woman goes through. What is interesting is the fact that the ashta nayika’s occupy an unprecedented place in world literature as being totally in control of the texts that feature them. All the padam’s that have been cited in this paper are female-centric with the naiyika and her moods being pivotal. As the dancers chalangai (anklets) rings in synthesized concord with the cadences of a divinely touched music the nayika travels the world of human affections and elevates it to quasi-divinity and a tradition breathes on.

2005-05-11T09:42:00.000+05:30

Chocolate sun simmers
trickles syrupy
dark sticky sweet chocolate
on a marshmallow spring yellow pink
butterscotch flowers and jam tart lips.
Bleeds liqueurs bitter warm
dripping stillness into the eyes
of a mad old dog with liquid brown eyes
like molten chocolate cream.
Baked dog with a bald patch
brown and crusted over with sugar crumbs
shuffles on candy cane legs
melting in the heat of flaming chocolate
leaving camouflaged paw prints on black licorice tar
howling in crazed silences
waiting for the white chocolate moon to congeal.

2005-05-01T08:00:00.000+05:30

* Just done reading Desiree… (Don’t know how to get accents working on a comp)…Napoleons first love. The very idea is so poignant and poetic that I makes me want to sit and stare at a grey wall for the better part of an hour and let it play itself out on the walls…

* thinking about Baricco. About to read City. Hoping City will end what silk began. Or take off where Silk left me and I think I need to take a long walk…

* appas first train jounrney in 30 yrs. Looking forward to an old timers tales of trains in the good old days and probably remind him of the time he sole,nly resolved not to tcommute by trains again. Hehee. Toyota has managed what my mother couldn’t.
* “you are and idiot. You don’t know nice guys when they’re handed to you on a platter” was it really 3years ago? I’m learning. Takes time…these things…

* is there a fundamental problem that is being disregarded when one decided to read Lolita for the 5th time?
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo.Lee.Ta.”
I was a very precocious child as far as my reading goes. I read Lolita at 13 when most kids my age were content with pulp fiction. Perhaps I too would’ve grown up very differently if I has read sweet valleys then…possibility that life might have been a tad easier and I wouldn’t be where I am today…

* I’m home. With 2 dirty jeans and 3 shirts. Don’t know how I’m going to manage coimbatore and kerala on that. Well I do. I’ve done worse. Appa’ll probably impose a life ban on me if I insist on getting into his car in my dirty jeans…hey it’s not like I’m doing a fourteen day trip on less than that! Trust me. I’ve done it. He refuses to be consoled by the fact that I have plently of clean underwear…

* I read too much…..

* must must must must must learn to brew coffee…

* Innova…green…mum wanted blue…Qualis….red…appa wanted silver…
it’s funny how that always happens…hehee

* spent the last hour or so sitting with appa and deciding on accessories for the car. It’s amazing how many important policy decisions in the family have happened that way…from deciding against rear spoilers to painting my room pink. Yes! I’ve managed to...eerr….convince Suru. Hahaa.

*Strangely of late I don’t feel an incessant need to incinerate kids in industrial size furnaces anymore…feel quite kindly towards them actually. Think I quite like them…not a patch on dogs of course, but not too bad in the reckoning.

*this cow that I bumped into…don’t know his name; we were regrettably not formally acquainted, looked like he could be related to mixy! It wouldn’t be very surprising if mixy were a cow himself…but mixy is my youngest dog…

*think it’s time for dinner….

*the redemptive power of orange boxers with white polka dots is grossly underrated.

*ginger says hi. Ginger is my stuffed raccoon. He has a fat striped tail.

Tatha

2005-04-16T03:10:00.000+05:30

I finished reading ‘Monsignor Quixote’ by Graham Greene last night and it’s a fabulous eponymous account of a Catholic priests’ travels in the company of a Marxist mayor… and it got me in some nebulous way thinking about my paternal grandfather who died last feb. I’m often wont to think that my obsessive reading habits are part of a larger genetic inheritance or possibly a hand me down tradition from my grandparents. Graham Greene got me thinking about this tatha because I suspect that if he ever wrote his writing would have read pretty much like Greenes’, light and profound. It’s taken me a little more than a year to write about him, anything about him really, my last attempt to think on paper left me with surreal reams on nothing palpable…

The death of a grandparent is especially raw as it not only physically ends an association but also leaves truncates pieces of the past, cordoning them off forever. Memories that can be revisited, seen through diaphanous knots of translucent mist trails but never re lived. When grandparents die they take with them an entire way of life, something I for one grew up taking for granted, lulled by the ostensible permanency of a childishly tacit wish. It means among a lot of other things that the next time I have a fight with my parents I can’t run to tatha for support. I can’t push him off the sofa anymore or try putting little coloured clips on his balding grey head. I can’t slide down his ‘easy chair’ pretending I’m a dog in the park or pilfer his book collection. I can’t go back to him and feel like I’m three years old again. Its only after he died that I quite realized that I’m never ever going to trust in anybody else with all the faith of a three year old like I did in him.

When I was growing up he was always around. Even after we moved away I saw him almost everyday. After shifting to madras there were always holidays and paati’s elai vadam to go back to. One of my most enduring recollections of early childhood is of sitting on tathas lap officiously trying to read his book, reiterating my position as favourite grandchild won after arduous combat with Suru. :o) I also remember the music teacher I used to hate! Now, its almost customary that Brahm kids learnt paatu and dance, dance I quite likes but paatu class was a different deal altogether. The fact that I did not particularly like my paatu teachers face did not aid matters, as a kid I was eeerr…hypersensitive to auras and things ;o) and unerringly, five to six minutes after the initial ‘saa paa saa’ I could be relied upon to feign a stomachache, if the frequency and concentration of my aches were anything to go by the pakatathu maamis hypothesis that I seemed to have a worm factory in my stomach would have been an understatement. Point here being, after stimulating the dying throes of a duck in pain I would crawl to tatha and start sniffing pathetically with the haggard paathu teacher crawling behind me in vain hopes of saving herself from my mums and paatis exasperation. Tatha defended my cause as regularly as my stomachaches and nobody could say anything after that. Paatu classes always ended on an amicable note with Suru turning pretty shades of red and purple from suppressed passions and me sitting at the other end of the hall making faces at her. I mildly deduce that tatha found the paatu teacher a tad odious himself.

I don’t think I can ever go back to his house, the house that Suru and I grew up in without feeling a petrifying sense of being alone. Maybe this is what it means to grow up, to feel the transitivity and fragility of life succumbing to the oppressive weight of human association. If only one could forget…negate eighteen years of what must have been indulgence. Forget that ‘I’ am today because of all that has transpired, all that has been learnt, all the cuts that have been bandaged and all the evil music teachers who have been driven away. Forget myself.

La scum ces't moi....

2005-04-11T12:31:00.000+05:30

Maami: Oh my god!!! Look at how much the kids have grown. (Well yes…like Topsy growed.) Suru must be around 20 now. What is she doing?
Beaming mother: she’s leaving this fall for a PhD. (At this point one has to note that Surabi is a traditionalists dream come true. She dances (classical of course!). Can hold a note without pawning identities with a frog choking on saw dust. Can speak without yelling or resorting to profanities. Doesn’t hold the general opinion that kids ought to be incinerated in an industrial size furnace. Socializes with Mylapore élan. Is refined. Is at no time reprehensibly attired. Can cook. Is very clever and pretty. And most significantly studied HUMAN GENETICS. And uses punctuation. The maternal cup slurpeth over.)
Maami: that is fabulous Seetha! My son is 25 and he moved to Seattle last month, he just finished his PhD from boresville u.s.a. (With a smile so loaded that she’s in flagrant danger of over turning under all that weight. And of course it’s imperative that the world sees you’re son is twenty five! Did you ever stop to think about the possibility of him being in love with his flat mate? Male.) and aaru? What is she upto? (as an after thought of course.)
Mildly distressed mother: eeerr...Aaru is going into her their year b.a. Literature….
Maami: (oh she didn’t flunk 10th math!) oh you poor dear. Its ok. These things happen. Not all kids can take the pressure…some kids are…well differently talented I’m sure…(yes I was born with fifteen feet and an extra large ear in the middle of my forehead. Oh and did I mention I can grow horns at will? Extraordinarily talented. And of course the usual dawn chorus of twenty five Asses braying in orchestrated cacophony heralded my nativity…. and I have pink hair, acid green skin and teeth a particularly volatile shade of electric orange)

I realize I’m at a very precarious turnpike in life’s post modernist meta-narrative. I don’t know what’s for lunch tomorrow…

Person 1: so what next?
Moi: (with all the enthusiasm of late childhood. Last week to be precise.) Dance and write.
P 1: no I meant what do you want to do next? Like professionally…(euphemistically and politely articulated how do you propose to occupy yourself the couple of years from now to when your family manages to con an intelligent brahm boy into marrying you. Shouldn’t be too difficult if they manage to keep you from talking art and poetry and ban those dinner table conversations where you end up saying things like… ‘I think it’s crucial to recognize the rights of a third gender’. )
Moi: well, to begin with, an m.a in performing arts and writing, and then a phd in dance perhaps…by which time I hope to publish.
P 1: what? Anyways you’re a girl. Guess you can get away with doing nothing. (Really now. thank you. I feel so much better!! Will you marry me? Bloody patriarchal bigot. Go drown in a drum of idly batter.)

And this is precisely why I find myself respecting and sticking to people who do their own thing despite all odds. Like D for instance. Now D is single, somewhere on the
other side of 30 and just settling into his first ‘job’. He’s spent more than a decade doing what he’s great at. Theatre. And he continues doing that. I think his family disowned him when he was 16. Hehe!!

Intelligent person 1: awesome!! I think what you want to do sounds incredible!! What kind of papers will you be doing?
Moi: stuff like the Foucault and the body in performance…history of art….culture studies…dance techniques….blah blah blah..
Intel 1: brillo! Sorry to be such a wet rag, but who’s funding?
Moi: (Very brightly) daddy!!! And also this aarabi welfare trust thing into which each earning member in the family and a select few friends will deposit money every month towards my creative up keeping.
Intl 1: or marry a rich investment banker.
Moi: to begin with lets not get carried away. No rich investment banker with a modicum of sense will marry me. And he is not staying rich too long if he marries me. It’s a vicious circle of sorts.
Intl 1: anyways you look like the kind of person who will have issues with marrying for money.
Moi: yeah, absolutely. Have ideological issues with most things really. I’d rather marry a german bartender. He’ll be immensely talented atleast. Anyways I plan to live in a commune.
Intl 2: no bumble…actually he would because you’ll be a personal statement. Investment bankers aspiring to page 3 acceptance and ‘cool’ness will want to marry us! We’ll be radical yet pedigreed accoutrements to social ladder hopping. (Yes. Just stick a price tag on us and don’t forget the branding iron boys!)

I’m quite convinced that after all her non conformist extreme ideologically issued painful adolescence aaru will quietly settle down and live happily ever after…hahahaaaa. FINE. DREAM ON DARLINGS!

Sharing my rung, which is the scummiest, tiniest and last one way down the ladder is the family's resident art historian S.
Civilian: So what do u propose to do after this phd?
S: I really don’t know..teach…
Civilian: (blithely ignoring it) get married…
S: why thank you? That’s been my only agenda in life. The sole purpose of my creation. Express marriage and brewing a mug of filter coffee. Where oh where is my confounded iyengar software engineer?

I leave myself with langston hughes and visions of harlem. Keeping the dream alive…

Gather out of star-dust,
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust
Not for sale.

om

Adi again

2005-04-05T08:30:00.000+05:30

This is my 2nd Adi story written for the British council college level writers prize. It made it into the top 7, but didn't place. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day though. The very ability to write is in my eyes a huge blessing...and yeah the story had to begin with 'there was no possiblity of taking a walk that day'.

Adi (for lack of a better title!)

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Not because it was raining or a whole horde of Assyrians were stampeding down the lane or anything, but owing to the indelible fact that I was locked up in a something by something room with a couple of comic books, one old teddy bear that everybody thought I had thrown away and a conspicuously glowering dog regarding me with brown doggy eyes full of mild menace. Wimp. I didn’t really see what his issue could be. He needed a haircut anyway and he got it done for free. Some creatures are so unappreciative that it infuriates me. Well, it was a beautiful evening, the sun had set as it usually does but only that day it went about its business with a pinker glow than usual, like really pinky-orangey. I stuck my hand out of the window and watched it turn a stunning pinky-orange, and as I watched it turned darkish and purple the first star started twinkling in the northern sky.

I looked out the window thinking of all that I could have been doing right then if I had been intelligent enough to have learnt to pick locks. I could have walked down the road all the way to the park and back with my arms around M’s shoulder. Aww…maybe not shoulder lets make it waist. That’s infinitely more romantic apart from camouflaging a slight technical hitch. I can’t reach her shoulders; she’s taller than me. The dog was thawing a bit now. His ominous mien was being replaced by a slightly sympathetic, patronizing look that seemed to say, ‘Dude you blew it. Kabalooey!’ I know dog. Trust me, I do! All that could go wrong in the life of an eleven year old, look- into-yourself (I forget what they are called) type of boy had very docilely and obligingly gone so.

It all began quite pleasantly actually. It wasn’t really the day your dog decided to maul the newsboy, the milkman and plumber all of whom parted with dire threats of dragging your derriere to court. Hey, I didn’t try eating you it was my dog who did. Drag him to court if you can. It was bang in the middle of the summer break and the dog and me were all alone at home. After an hour or so I got tired of watching adult movies on TV and was desperately looking for something productive to do. The dog was curled up next to me on the couch. He’s a hairy dog and he looked uncomfortably hot. So I decided to bail him out, give him a haircut and make him look attractiveish to members of the opposite sex, a veritable canine Beckham. I hunted around for a pair of scissors and finally found one in the kitchen. I was thinking of this cool spiky do like these ultra awesome futuristic comic heroes. So I went snip snip snip in trendy uneven layers, found my moms hair gel and spiked the dog’s hair up. Woaahhh…he looked amazing! Oh hell, something’s missing. Gotcha! I found some red hair colour that belonged to my mom and dyed the ends of the dog’s hair red. Perfect!

I was seriously considering giving myself a similar haircut when by pure accident I noticed the time and realized the conveniently missing paternal and maternal components of our happy family would be back home soon. Super-cali-frajilistic-espiali-docious! Great. I had this sneaky suspicion that they weren’t going to be very pleased with the whole dog affair when ‘bang!’ they arrived right in the middle of my sentence in a thick purple cloud. I tried shoving the dog under the couch but that silly coot had to howl mournfully. Stupid attention seeking git!

All hell broke loose as Captain Adi the Awesome geared up for battle. The evil Mutant Frog Princess who had established her maternity over him was closing in on him, her red eyes goggling and her purple mouth blubbering. Adi looked around for the nearest fire exit but her husband, Captain Underpants, blocked it. All escape roots cut off; our hero braced himself for defense armed with a pair of Jedi style laser scissors. His lethal weapons glinted in the harsh lights of the subterranean dungeon. Swish swoosh, his trusty scissors flew in all directions decimating the ranks of the enemy. He was doing damned well for himself till he paused to wipe his sweaty brows on his shirtsleeves. Just then Captain Underpants swooped down on him and caught him by the scruff of his neck. Captain Adi tried to wriggle free but Underpants’ iron fist held him in tight in its talons. Our hero was caught like a common mouse in a trap with The Frog Princess waggling a red painted claw in front of his face. In one final superhuman effort Captain Adi blindly slashed his weapon across her face. Time seemed to stand still and all nature waited in agony to see what Fate had in store for the valiant captain. All the while Fate stood in a dark corner with a smug smile. Now she laughed sardonically. She didn’t fancy bravery. A lock of The Princess’s poisonous hair fell to the floor. Adi expected her to strike him dead but no, she had this oddly set expression on her face. He at least expected Underpants to strangle him but Underpants spoke in a scarily even voice. ‘That will do Adi. Give me those scissors and go to your room now. Take the dog with you and don’t you dare step out.’ That was that. Adi withdrew with the grace that became a superhero. He knew it when he was licked.

I retired to my room and that’s where my story begins. I was looking out of the window thinking about M. I suspect M is not an ordinary human kind of girl. She surely has to be an angel. She is so terribly attractive that it hurts me to look at her. She’s the girl I want to marry, grow old with, watch sunsets, get drunk on the porch and do all those things old people do with. The dog looked a little pathetic and sorry now. The hair goop was all melting and dripping down his face making him look like a punk rocker whose c.d’s didn’t sell anymore. I think I love M. She is two years older than me. I also think she doesn’t even knows my name. But that’s ok. Ill wait for her to grow up and shed her layers of silly girlfriends and bevy of admirers. Ill wait for her to know my name. I have all the time in the world M…

I knew there was no way I could take a walk that night. Not without my parents flaying me dead at any rate but I decided to give it a shot all the same. I don’t think I walked. I definitely remember soaring through the night dodging errant stars with the light night wrapping me up in its wispy folds. I climbed out of the window, slid down the pear tree. I scraped myself in a few hundred places that night I reckon. I flew all the way to M’s house, hovered under her window and serenaded her. I made up this lovely song completely impromptu. I think it went something like tum-ti-ta-ti-tum la la tum. Nothing happened. Nothing came flying out of the window. Nobody called the cops. Nothing.

Just when I was contemplating slowly slinking away the curtains parted and M’s angel face peeped out. ‘Oh Adi, this is such a surprise. Why don’t you come in for sometime?’ I didn’t care about what Captain Underpants and The Frog Princess will do to me when they realize I have broken out of my room. I didn’t care a fig about my scratches and bruises. It wouldn’t have been too awful if I just dropped dead from some kind of blood infection or if big pus filled zit had erupted on my nose right then. M knew my name and that’s all that mattered.

Adi

2005-03-31T22:41:00.000+05:30

i wrote this story almost a year back. 'adi' is the very beginning of everything. hes probably my favourite kid in the whole wide world because in him i've created a whole new private utopia...here goes...

Adi

My name is Adi and I turned thirteen last month. I’m old and incredibly wise with a remarkable vocabulary if I can say so myself. Dad thinks I’m precocious. Mum thinks I’m a rabbit. She eats like an anorexic rabbit and believes that food comes in three varieties: green, fat-free and rare. Insists that animals and cheese upsets one’s spiritual tandem and diverts one from self-actualization and realizing one’s karmic pre-destination. Truth is she can’t cook. I’m not a sexist dogmatist. I’m anti-Nazi. I promise that I wont wrinkle my nose in disgust if dad cooks. Mums of the world need not cook. Dad’s can cook, I’m perfectly o.k. with that. But at least one responsible adult in the family should consider trying to cook. Mum says I should think of the poor mal-nourished children dieing of kwashiorkor and beriberi on the streets and be eternally indebted for every morsel I consume. Dad eats out. It’s technically impossible to weigh eighty kg’s on just rabbit food. He wouldn’t weigh that much if he thought of kwashiorkorry boys on the streets before gorging cheesecakes. Fact remains, I don’t have very much to be indebted to.

I’m lean and sinewy. Not one of those misanthropic depressed couch-potato boys perpetually craving potato chips that are featured on “Detrimental Adolescents” cover stories. Mum is some sort of an activist and theorist. Probably fights for the rights of mal-nourished children. I don’t know what dad does.

Our family was featured on the cover of some magazine. It was all about how famous working couples manage their homes, careers and parental requirements.“ It’s all about organizing your resources and realizing your priorities. Mine were always very clear. The day Adi was born I decided that my precious child and his needs would always be my priority.” Liar. Oh mum and dad are famous, sort of. Mum’s controversial and dad lounges around in her reflected fame. And there were these idyllic photos of me sitting on mums lap and dad standing behind us with a benign smile on his face, one arm territorially over mum and me.

Our family meets once a week for dinner. There’s mum, dad, the dog (he’s a basset hound with extra basset houndy eyes) and me sitting solemnly at the table. The table looks like a felled tree. The conversation is mind-blowing creative.
Hi.
Hi.
How was your week?
Average. Yours?
Pretty good.

One conscientious parent turns my way.
Sweetie how’s school?

Yeah.
How did the ballet performance go? Did you have photographs taken in a tutu?
I don’t dance.
Oh.

I’m not a ballerina. Even if I was she’ll see me in a tutu over my dead body.

Parent 2:

How’s tennis practice coming along son? Lets see you playing like Rafter soon.
Cricket.
O.k. Tendulkar then.
Right.

Silence. Even the dog doesn’t say anything. The atmosphere around here is funereal. The foliage is dead. Everybody mourn.

Sweetie. Do you need any pocket money?
I have enough. Thank you.

Parent 1 to parent 2:

Darling one believes that one will be in Czechoslovakia next week for a human rights convention. Hence one shall I’m afraid, be required to miss one’s family dinner next week. Adi baby what do u want from there?
One wishes for Road rage six: Attack of the mutant ninja bikers.

We don’t live below the poverty line like beriberied kids on the streets. I’m just a poor little rich kid. Privileged underprivileged. Moneyed deprived. Street children get to spend quality time with their families. I wish we had more dinner table conversation and not politically correct discourses.

I hate school. I go to a terrifically snooty school full of spoilt rich brats and delinquents. I don’t approve of them at all. They all look like uninspiring soggy balls of cotton candy with expensive cell phones and fake American accents. I’m an austere minimalist. I own one functional pair of serviceable Nike shoes and an antiquated Nokia phone without a colour display and camera. School is overflowing with masquerading extraterrestrials. My math teacher is the green polka dotted purple kind. I saw her detachable teacher face on the staff room floor once when she was tweezing her upper lip hair.

We have a swimming pool in school. The extraterrestrial commander-in-chief assured my parents that the pool is religiously drained and refilled twice a week. I saw the caretaker fishing algae out of the pool last week. And when the pool is drained at the beginning of every term the water is poured into the drinking water coolers. Most of the boys pee in the pool, retribution of making us swim in algae ponds and drink eau d’ algae.

The only reason I drag my butt to school is L. L is sixteen and an angel. She has curly hair skipping over her shoulders and eyes like melted dark chocolate. All the boys tell me she has sexy legs but I’m a well-mannered sort of guy and think it’s coarse to mention legs and chests. L is extremely popular and has a lot of friends. I don’t discern why, but not too many people find me cool. Intellectuals are always misconstrued and undermined. It’s my destiny and I can’t escape it. Intelligence is like the sword of Damascus, one can’t slip out for a quick pee without it coming crashing down on one’s skull. I love walking down to the extra-terrestrial commander-in-chiefs office because it’s right next to L’s class and I get to walk past her class. L sits near the door in the first row, delicate lips pursed in concentration, fine lines creasing her alabaster forehead, curly head cocked disarmingly to one side. Every guy in school has a crush on her.

L has an atrocious taste for losers. She’s seeing V the captain of the school basketball team. He is seventeen, hairy and stupid. He once lost a quiz contest with a starfish. I’m serious. V has some kind of hormonal imbalance. He’s been shaving from the time he was twelve. At thirteen my face is still as smooth as a baby’s bottom. I personally don’t like babies bottom and all. It’s just an expression. I saw them kissing in the auditorium yesterday. I was so furious that I wanted to punch V’s ugly zit ridden face to pulp, but I’m not fighting type of guy. Besides V is as tall as a skyscraper and outweighs Godzilla. I’ve been in love with L three years now.

K found me scribbling L’s name all across my math book last Wednesday. K is my only friend I guess. He’s pimply faced and picks his nose all the time. He’s a nice sort of guy once you get to know him. K thinks I should come clean with L, tell her about my undying devotion. He says he will, if I don’t. That is suicidal and offensively unromantic. I don’t want nose-picking K playing cupid. Maybe I should tell her. Get it out of my system, but I can’t bring myself to. I think I’m scared. Four years is a long time. And in the nights when V is asleep I date L. I don’t want to tell her and wake up.

I finally decided to tell her and I did. L was sitting in the canteen like an ice cream cone in uniform. She was surrounded by her usual gaggle of admirers. I felt like a low life walking up to supplicate to the Queen Empress. V stood with one simian arm around her shoulder. I decided to propose to her if it was the last thing I ever did. Kill me V. you’ll never get past my mortal body. I’m normally incredibly articulate. But L left me so awestruck that all I managed was an appallingly clichéd

L I love you.

Amused smile. V glares in the backdrop. Adi is a class A ass.

Will you marry me?

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to marry her. Or marry anyone at all. I don’t know any happily married live people. But I asked her anyways because I couldn’t think of anything more innovative.
She smiled again. She looked like a doll and V like a glowering troll.

You are really young S. Ask me again when you’re older.

She didn’t hoot at me. She’s real sweet and thoughtful. And she didn’t say she doesn’t love me. I felt like a euphoric cloud pretending to be a super-cloud.

You little twerp, I’ll bloody kill you.

V was verbally challenged and had no panache. I’m dying. God please exterminate V after he kills me. Smack him down flat with a super-sonic nuclear thunderbolt. And write to me wherever I am.

V, leave him alone. I’ll breakup with you if you lay a finger on him ever. Do u hear me? E-V-E-R.

That was L defending me. I think Ill wait and ask her again when I grow up and become an underworld mafia don.

Mum and dad aren’t quiet as insensitive as I thought they were. Yesterday overwhelmed by a wave of confessional feelings I told them.

Mum, dad I’m getting married to this amazing girl called L.
What?!?

I told them all about L. I told them I love them. I think I do.

They took it like good sports really. Dad didn’t threaten to divest me of my inheritance and mum didn’t swoon and emotionally haggle over her dead body like movie parents after the hero has announced his intention of marrying the help. Dad’s a nice guy. He smiled and said “Good guys finish last.” Mum just hugged me and said, “ I’m proud of you.” I don’t know why she said that. Good guys finish last, or they just keep running on hoping to finish sometime

A teaspoon full of choma.

2005-03-27T05:00:00.000+05:30

I would call this post a teacup full of choma but people know her will find the very idea verging on the absolutely ludicrous. Fact of the matter is teacups happen to be incontestably too large for her and the odds of her losing her way around one are very very high.

Last night Sowmya ‘choma’ Rajendran, the protest poet who articulates her self suffragist ideologies by writing anti institutionalist poetry every night before going to bed displayed essentialist anti mice tendencies for the world to see in a shameless display of her vocal prowess in association with Ms. Saraswathi Datar who one has grown to expect to react with such comportment (or lack of it) whenever confronted with small furry moving things.

The poor wayward mouse under discussion was unfortunate enough to find itself trapped in the same room as five girls in varying stages of advanced madness edged with more than desired helpings of homicidal tendencies. It scurried around the room on short paranoid legs and somehow had the misfortune of being spotted by Saras who started yelling like she was being forced to sit through three straight hours of Ame Lit lectures with Neckless Becky. Choma adding her own share of pained noises soon joined the general choral carnage directed at the victim. All this was ok considering it isn’t everyday a mouse decides to visit. What was quite...ahem...interesting was the way she ran around the room putting the mouse to shame with her incredible speed and dexterity. She ran round and round the room with the terrified mouse at her heels till she grabbed Saras for moral support and ducked into the nearby room closing the door behind her feeling extraordinarily intelligent. But the mouse seemed to have developed an odd affinity and fraternal love for her following her into the room, squeezing through the gap between the floor and the door. I suspect her grew to look up to her like some sort of wingless guardian angel.

All creation stood indented in hyperspace for a split second as the mouse looked up with baleful eyes full of brotherly love and awe at choma’s guardian angel eyes frozen in mid whoop. Silence swooped down on the pair as they took the other in and then…it was all done.EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKK…choma incidentally was louder then the mouse drowning out his cries for immediate help. She actually managed to shriek him out of the house.

Oh really…I wasn’t scared! I didn’t want to step on the poor thing. That’s why I squealed like Brittney Spears in Crossroads…seriously…

Oh the impossibility of being choma...

I found Neverland

2005-03-25T02:30:00.000+05:30

“The magnificent boy I knew is gone. Sometime in the last 30seconds you’ve grown.”

3 years ago I promised someone I’ll never grow up. Never grow tired of butterflies and people. Never let my wings be clipped. Never pass by an extra helping of chocolate cake with ‘oh, I’m on a diet’. Never refuse to play in the sand because I don’t want my clothes dirtied. Never forget how to build sand castles and live on clouds. Never close my eyes to the magic of life swirling around me in glittering spirals, swooping and fine…

Yesterday ‘Sunshine’ Subramaniam decided to wake up and come to college in time for the last hour, which was free anyways and the menagerie quickly decided that it’d migrate to sathyam cinemas to see Finding Neverland. Now Finding Neverland is probably the most beautiful movie I’ve seen in a long time and I sniffed through most of it like some dysfunctional mop. Ashamed and red eyed I realized that half the theatre including Noddy and Lady Prudence were sniffing as well. HA!

Finding Neverland is about daring to dream and to believe. It’s about hanging on to that precious intangible something that makes life worth living. I remember someone telling me it’s odd the way I get excited about things like glass bangles and pani puri. Frankly I don’t see anything odd there, because that’s what keeps me going. It’s that little something that kicks in reserve when life is slowly roasting me alive on a blue flame. My mum still calls me Alice in Wonderland (she chooses to ignore the whole druggie trip behind the book though…hehehe) and I can see her point, really. Almost all us have a trusty pair of rose coloured glasses that we fall back on, some rosier than the other. On a scale of 10 mine would by 9.85. I was one of those children who believed in Tinkerbell without trying to deconstruct her. Now I’m 19, I’ve deconstructed Alice, Tinkerbell, Willy Wonka, Peter Pan himself, Neverland and Wonderland and I still believe. Stronger and deeper than ever before.

Intermission.
Me: sniff…. that was so beautiful. I’m hungry.
Noddy: BUMBLE! (that’s me) NO! You can’t possibly manage 2 puffs, an iced tea, a tropicana, a big bucket of corn and large butter popcorn in half a movie… and stay hungry.
Me: yes I can!
Maria: hey I want some of that.
Me: get your own Maria!
Maria: you think.Ha!
Me: aaaaaammmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…….

Before one gets completely carried away the collective presence of Johnny Depp and Dustin Hoffman in the movie cannot be negated. It’s hard to decide who’s hotter though.One might go as far as to call them both delectable!The second half of the movie was spend alternating sniffs with sighs. Cheerful applause when Kate Winslet died. And Peter was so cute. That from someone that hates kids, who thinks kids ought to be incinerated in an industrial size furnace is quite scandalous. I don’t know if I’m mellowing with age or it’s just the movie.

At the end of the movie Noddy and I almost choked. Choma had her ‘it was a loue’ expression, Sunshine was hugging her knees with her usual grin and Maria was gawping at the screen with ‘I shall not cry’ valiance.

Tinkerbell smiles at me, a little conspiring smile saving me from cynicism. She’s perched on the left hand corner of the board blowing fairy dust into the cloyed air, reviving it. As long as she lives I stay a child and she lives as long as I stay a child.

I’m going again. Today.

2005-03-20T23:30:00.000+05:30

I’m thinking…
**
I need a certain degree of academic intellectualism to do regional theatre. I can only work with people who talk Foucault and the body or regional identities. I’m just another elitist ***** on my way to joining the milieu of page 3 events.
**
All I’ve done this semester is perform onstage. It’s a lovely feeling.
**
Every performer is inherently narcissistic. I can’t even smile without an audience.
**
I’m wearing panchakachams (the dance variation) to college next semester. They are easy to wear, incredibly comfortable and look exciting.
**
I will learn kalari sometime soon and stop faking kalari moves on stage.
**
I mustn’t eat so much…might turn into a big bowl of fried ice cream myself. I shouldn’t be able to out eat a 14yr old basketball-playing boy. I see something going a tad awry here.
**
Clubbing in a saree is a good thing. I love these political statement making days. I think the intellectual regression here is palpable and the whole bunch of you happen to have a collective IQ of –3.
**
I hate dance makeup. After almost 16 yrs of it I still can’t get used to it.
**
I think I’ll switch to kuchupudi or odissi. The costumes look interesting.
**
I solemnly promise I will not try singing again.
**
Punctuations are redundant and I don’t know why I’m still using them.
**
I don’t like clean jeans. They are slightly scary. Ideologically flawed.
**
I got a new bag. Its white. I’m going to make it terribly dirty.
**
I love people. I’m not a misanthrope.
**
Postmodernism…
**
I need food. NOW.
**

2005-03-15T22:30:00.001+05:30

Night winks at me
like a solitaire eye
on the flickering visage
of a straitjacketed man.
Everybody tell me he’s mad
but I know for sure
that he holds time
in the creases of his lashless lid
and it’s day when he shuts it.
It drips with staccato plops,
water cupped in the quivering palms
of an impatient child.
Drops of darkness spill
into a hundred droplets of
condensed night mists
and miniature worlds
of beaded pleasure
lit in his cackling eye.

the gods are drunk at home

2005-03-14T22:41:00.000+05:30

I’ve decided it’s time I write something about this alarming accelerated exhibition of Vaishnavite fundamentalism in the household as explicated thorugh daddy dear’s recent behavior. To begin with the long neglected poonal has sort of magically headed out the closet. Think it hasn’t seen daylight in 20 odd years mum? And so has an ultra funky naamam in the mornings, all that’s missing on the accoutrement side is a kudumi, but sorry…slightly not happening and not for lack of trying. (Somebody call him Desikachari quick!!) The kovil azhwar for one looks like IIT during saarang (HIDEIOUS! APPALING! DISTRESSING! AESTHETICALLY CHALLENGED!) with FAIRY LIGHTS in hapless clusters around it. Wait there’s more…the ground floor sit out off the dining area has been redone to host the saligramam, which means I’ve been displaced. So I either pick another floor or the lawn with my canine counterparts. I understand the saligramam has been in the family for a hundred years and it’s a legacy and cultural symbol and all that and actually I’m a kinda relieved that my room hasn’t been converted into don’t-enter-sans-baranyasam zone or something. I must admit though that appa’s perumal dhertham is supercalifragilisticespiallydocious. It’s almost thirupathi range. It sort of hits you like dhertham shouldn’t, considering it’s just spiced water. Terrific, potent stuff. Could get one pleasantly high. Should try it sometime when amma’s being particularly disapproving. I’m quite positive it’s been spiked though he refuses to confess to having done it. Last time I was home I say an industrial sized bottle of Absolut Currant in the cupboard and since appa doesn’t quite enjoy vodka he’s probably tipped it into the dertham. I know it can’t be the Remy Martin or the Sake…appa don’t try getting paati drunk! She commends and lauds your bartending…errr…dertham mixing skills. (Yes ladies and gentlemen he bottled it and sent it three hundred kilometers to madars.) The crux of the issue is, one shouldn’t be deluded into thinking that the house has been converted into some kind of ghastly my-worst-nightmare-just-said-wassup prohibition area. Evenings and weekends are official holidays. The saligramam are expected to peacefully sleep through them or do they? Thinking about it we probably have a gang of verrrrryyyy tipsy family deities considering they sits in on our collective inebriation and debauchery all the time. Drunken divinity. COW (I’m off swearing)!! My alliteration’s workinggggg!!

Kung fu and Noodles

2005-03-14T09:15:00.000+05:30

Apart from the common ethnic parentage (oriental) kung fu and noodles are as relevant to each other as say George Bush to Whistlers mother. (No she was not Sadams nanny!) It’s decently well established that noodles are edible, belonging to the ‘yummy in my tummy’ genre and popular assumption that kung fu fighters are not chocolate covered peanuts, in other words, not gastronomical supplement. The transcendental theorist on the other hand, knows that kung fu, noodles, chocolate covered peanuts, not to forget nuclear weaponry are all manifestations of a unilateral cosmic creative force, very similar to the same daddy, different mummy situation. Self-actualized souls (like the authors for instance) have assimilated the reality of this ethereal bond or have learnt to fib convincingly.
Clearing away the cobwebs of time and technical hitches like geographical displacement, as I always do when I run out of creative surprises, history becomes a veritable scrapbook of illustrations of the kung fu-noodle connection. The 3rd legion of king Kung Pao’s kung fu battalion razed the Mongol troops to ground, all for the love of noodles. The army is said to have cried aloud, “the Mongol ee ees deaaadddd. Let us be eat noodle!!” soon after the carnage.
Snapping back from the compost mode (like decomposing. The good old days) into the ‘now’ mode kung fu and noodles are as innately oriental as ISKON and ganja are Indian to an Euro-centric audience. The tourism department for instance has adroitly exploited the commercial potential of this pair. Kung fu and noodles are almost cultural icons today, ambassadors of the orient in a world of bacon and eggs. Nike should consider making kung fu and noodles their bran ambassadors. Not a very absurd notion, considering it has a forerunner in Reebok paying Shakira to sell shoes.
Kung fu and noodles have sustained a massive cut of the food industry in the private sector in semi-urban/urban areas. I for one, have lost count of the number of wannabe Chinese eateries with terribly creative names like ‘Chin-chin-choo’ or ‘Ming-moo’, drawing in droves of ill-informed suburbia, all taken in by Bruce Lee glaring fiercely at a bowl of noodles on the hoarding above the fake Chinese door! Kung fu and noodles have rescued a whole expatriate community of Sino-Tibetan and Mongoloid daspora from unemployment and averted serious anomic in the social infrastructure.
Kung fu and noodles have established an egalitarian model, in which “ All slant-eyed people are Chinese” which facilitates their employment in the aforementioned industry. Finally a workable Marxist model, unlike the usual dysfunctional utopian ideals. The model authenticates the slant-eyed millions, making them Chinese to suit its ulterior motive: adding verisimilitude to Chinese restaurants.
Consider ladies and gentlemen the significant role played by these intellectuals in society. They promote tourism, market regional cuisine and defend a strong socio-culturo-political Marxist ideology!
To conclude formally, it is irrefutably evident that kung fu and noodles are inextricably tangles in each others private lives. Kung fu and noodles are as symbiotic and the yin and the yan. As socio-culturally bound as movie theatres and popcorn.

2005-03-12T09:45:00.000+05:30

Dream child with a vision
of unborn histories in your veins. Dream on
to the distant lands and winds that bore you
fragrant with the steely love of
generations that augured you. Smile on
as they smash your face on the
cold cold concrete and perforate your being
with a thousand coloured needles. For the blood
of a legacy sleeps in you. Spill it
to animate the frozen stone floor

of the earth. Flower child with music in your hair and
poetry in your orchid eyes
walking barefoot on the blistering tarmac
mind not the furuncles that pepper your raw feet
for they will drain by themselves as you walk on
to your destiny etched for ever
on the cheeks of an everlasting youth. Beat child,

with the rhythm of a million dances in your sole’s. Ray
upon ray of undying sunshine floods through the bars
of your narrow cell sending the floating grit scurrying
in harried alarm, lighting up a square patch
of undanced cadences on the dust grey floor where
you lay stone dead yet aching with life
dammed up, only to explode
into a contusion of confetti
ringing with the defiance of staying alive.
Alive.
Om.

2005-03-11T01:46:00.000+05:30

Why did you do it? No,let me be politically correct here. Why did it have to happen? Or is it did you have to happen?

1

My head nestles unpracticed
into languorous slide of neck.
The hollow of your bleeding chin
bleeds me red.
Face fits into the little dip
between the slant of bare collarbones.
Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle
align with engineered precision
airtight and secure
with invisible locks…

I sat on a rocking horse
painted bewitched colours of love.
Of falling in love.
Falling…
Scraps of tattered newsprint
sodden with salty rain,
print runs in river’s
of rocking horse wooden tears.

You carved poetry out of soap.
Blocks of white misery,
perfumed misery in a tub
of boiling
hard
hardened water.

You whittled on…
Hurried soap shavings
littered the grass where I lay watching you.
Your sharp, pointed knife dug
deep and assured, carving days
of gossamer passions
fifty-five in all.

We blew soap bubbles to the sibilant evening,
painted leaves yellow and green
on winter bare trees,
chiseled joyful madness out of
black focus and conformists.

The knife worked steadily away.
Short, stunted strokes
jabbing, gouging and scooping
in unheeding violence.

The knife carves,
uncarves
the arms and grooves of a soapy jigsaw.
Into vanilla days,
vanilla nights,
walks under scented vanilla red moons
hand-in-hand.

You carved away
and not much remained…

A little girl, hair ribbon’s bright
sits at a huge brown table:
old oak.
A jigsaw of leprechaun gold,
enchanted nights,
a prince in glittering chain mail,
vampire bats and swollen leeches
spread on the table.
Rapunzel’s hair turns grey
and the puzzle refuses to lock and fuse.

You carved too much away
and she sits unaccompanied
hair, neck and skin smelling like vanilla.

2

Bangles of amber and red glass
burn on my arms with a bright mirrored clatter
and your face weaves liquid lines
on the uneven ripples of their reverie,
ducking in and out of the shadows they drop
shattering on my brown irises.
Like the blaze implied
in the whimper of a reflected flame
I see my afterimage in your amber eyes.
Your fingers grip my arms
with the excruciating force of adoration and lust
and colours run from the bangle’s
like dye washing off a newly bought kalamkari saree,
red’s, amber’s and nothing’s
till they mirror the colours of your breath
and mine…
of us in a harem of earthy glass panes
tossing silhouettes of twilight kissed glass skies
into the ochre beams of eternal moonshine.

I’ am shadow less with nothing left to throw.
Our glass house is heavy with misted breath
and reeks metallic from the powdery magnets
emblazoned with the invisible searing brand
of your name
carved on shell, strapping me earthward.

A fissure deepens on my smooth glass arms
and I pretend not to notice
the blood leaching from under my thin skin,
escaping in feeble gullies
corroding and diffusing forever
secret walls and
candied dreams of serendipity.
Blood pulsing beneath an amber world
contained in your apathetic eyes.

Bangle’s break into colourless rapier’s
and dazzle with the soreness
of broken glass digging into slit wrists.
Eyes run. Days crack under the pressure
of lips chewn to whiteness with barely contained screams
bursting on a deaf man’s ears
in the middle of the highway at six in the evening
till they smolder red again.
Red with the blood on my fists
And shards of drained amber glass eyes.

p.s. i'm going to stop swearing.