Atom in a Language Ordinary
We spend our lives growing up
following shapes of curved territories
uniting opposites, becoming eternal.
If we are mocked, we become still.
Never running through puddles again
or owning up to diseases with dubious names
or speaking English with vernacular accents
We treat our dead better, than alive
as though the dark heavy rest of earth
has luminescence now
as though the strong heaven movement
now carries a threat.
We want people around us
The way we want clouds — distant.
Raining someplace else
bringing the heady scent of mud to us
not the cloying rivulets.
Proximity is lethal
distance, benign.
Words are weapons when spoken
simmering volcanoes when suppressed.
We strain to collect
atoms of goodness in our bellies.
Strain to embrace that which is ordinary;
afraid to become like the fisherman,
who looks for water in the sea.
When the Zafar Mahal Was Being Built in 1842
this Deodar would have been a sapling
growing quietly towards corrosive times.
the Himalayan Fir would be soundlessly
groping for the memory of stones.
the Burma teak, losing a battle
in lending resolute patience to Buddhist monks.
the mangroves of tidal plains
cowering thinner against steel and concrete
the Kashmiri walnut, acquiring ring by ring,
the dark lustre of Kashmir’s frustration
Each tree
a tower of silence.
A mausoleum of words
that should have been spoken.
Dashain, Kathmandu
The final victory of the Goddess over Mahishasur
By the time the cleaver
has severed the buffalo’s neck from its body,
Kot Park has almost four million witnesses
to the slaughter.
Only minutes ago,
the man in the army uniform,
had indulged the animal —
thumped its flanks, stroked its back
as though being minutes away from death,
(aren’t we always?)
allowed for a softening of sorts.
After the slaughter, a river of buffalo blood
floods Durbar square.
The head, neat and precise on the pavement,
the body dragged to the butchers
amidst reverberating drum rolls, clanging cymbals;
useful allies in a ritual.
The slaying of demons has been re-enacted,
the earth rid of danger and mayhem.
The innocent slate-hued beast,
a close cousin of the sacred cow,
but not quite as venerated,
sacrificed.
Only the day before, it had
pegged water hyacinths on its horns
while wading in a pond
looking sweet and silly,
unaware that it was really a scapegoat
to appease a goddess
on the ninth day of Dashain.
Dashain commemorates the final victory of the goddess over Mahishasura, the embodiment of evil who takes the form of a rampaging buffalo.
Face Orogeny
From the small eleven between the eyebrows
to the bunnies on the bridge of the nose
from crow’s feet to nasolabial folds
lip lines to marionette lines,
the face is a drawing book.
Of all the 648 full moons I’ve seen so far
I recall the one that came a month after mother’s passing
a gentle smile in the sky
shining through the July clouds
glinting in the rain.
There’s a mountain beside me
made of the moss of broken thoughts
that I’ve culled from the grey mists of my mind.
I didn’t know the shade of mountains
could be soft.
I’ve felt my heart plummet so many times
that I fear it might need braces
to stop from falling altogether.
Something stays locked inside me
like a lift stuck between floors
like an image in an age-speckled photo
that just won’t clear
no matter how many lines I wear.
Let’s have a Conversation
My heart heavy,
I have laid children in their graves
their small bodies
slipping out of my palms tenderly
into helpless soil.
The loud and clear speech of guns
has numbed me to a terrible silence.
At any given point,
give me lips that
quiver with the shadows of suffering.
Oppression is a mask
and courageous speech
the dart that gores it
peels it, tears it, uncloaks it.
Revolution happens first in thoughts
then in confabulations.
Unconfined verses drip
like honeysuckle
or poison ivy
depending on how whole or torn you are
how trapped or exempt you are
how you are.
At any given point
Let’s have a conversation.
(These poems were part of May 2021 issue, which was delayed due to the pandemic and released on August 3)
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