My Body is a Letter to God

my body is a letter to god,
on days, when i write to her,
she snoozes her mailbox
and sends back unlearned
birdsongs to sing, when i
mess up the rhythm of the
songs, my body hibernates
like god for several seasons.
after my autumn and spring
pass by, leaving only melancholy,
leaving for my body – ideas
of how it should have looked
but how much shame, it is
different, my letter wakes
god up and she sings back-
prayers do not recover the
bodies that have been abandoned
by their souls, god wept as
she traced my body vein by
vein, “your spirit is a temple
of sentiments and stories,
your body is religion – hollow.”
i crumbled my letter and dug
it deep in my fist, as i touched
my blemished, fat, unloved,
untouched, abjured body,
it bloomed and goosebumps
like flowers rose with a desire:
“make love more often, aren’t
you home finally?”

~ P

Her Skin is Not Who She Is

Before you judge a woman for her colour or her scars, maybe you must remember the skin of your own mother, her love, her smile, her wounds, her cries, her sacrifices, her surrendering moments were all so vast that probably for most of us, she’s the first woman who was perfect in her flaws.
The girl you judge might be for you a moment, a passage of time, a life that doesn’t matter but the same girl, the same girl cried several nights trying to find her own soul and check whether it has a light or it too is a lie.
The same girl let the tap in the basin make louder noise than the cries of her heart just because she was scared of being judged a little more.
The same girl might have fought unknown battles against something she deserved to fall in love with.
Before you judge a girl for her skin or her face, would you not like to fall in love with the thought that her face had galaxies resting upon it, maybe she knows it and maybe she doesn’t.
Would you not like to fall in love with the thought that she too might break every nerve visible through her skin into laughter one day when serenity touches her and sets her a little more free.
Would you not like to fall in love with the thought that despite her flaws, she too is a journey through her own valleys and rivers, she too is a map to somewhere inside her soul.
Would you not like to fall in love with a thought that when each one of us stop looking at just a face, we would start reading the wholeness of a soul beneath it.

~ There’s a lot more than you can see on the surface

Longings

Longings.
Of being able to say what I can’t hold anymore.
Of time.
Not running out of my hands like sand.
Creeping slowly when I want to halt and feel nothing.
Of being able to cry,
Oh cry!
Cry my bones out
and feel weightless.
To feel it sliding down my stomach
that wet, teary smelled, broken breath
that makes noise like death.

Longings.
Of a month after months,
a day when all the waiting
would be justified.
Of transformation.
When walls, smells, soaps, noises, faces, foods, colours, water, spaces, vacuums, fillers, rooms, ceilings, birds, roads, dust, seasons would change.
Of answers beyond the stories of transformations.
Would it be enough?
Or would I still wait for another story with a longer waiting?
And would this be my life?
Just this?

Longings.
Of being loved the way I want.
Of being able to drown into those moments that look like pauses,
like photographs still and deep.
And no matter how long you gaze at them,
nothing about them changes.
Of someone someday loving me
without telling the need to leave
for work, meetings and appointments.
Someone free
of the damages of this world.

Longings.
Of being able to cut off from these ideas
that I never chose but
they still surround me like daily soaps
running in some distant room.
Whom would you want to kill more?
The makers or the viewers?
The idea of settling down,
earning money,
getting up at 8 and sleeping at 10,
schedules,
using calendars and watches and setting alarms,
of being a people pleaser,
going to parties and wearing make up,
of not being moody, looking presentable,
following dress codes, hiding womanhood,
avoiding rebels, hating rovers, condemning hippies,
men and women and some other avoidable species,
hate the government, argue to look safe,
women’s respect is in her vagina, men have balls of steel,
live in hypocrisy and die full of regrets.
Of imagination.
Imagine a world without these ideas.
Of realisations such as these:
even imaginations
are nothing less than wars.

Longings.
Of rushing into now and now
and now in this next moment.
When anything can happen
Or maybe nothing would happen.
But at least it will be a newer now.
And in every now
I look a little more like nothingness.
Every now full of silence.
More peace and the world
more disappeared.

Longings.
Of someday being able to
write this again
another space, pen and paper
and putting an end to it.
No, not the poem,
the longings.
~P

Curves of my body

When did any of our body part become a commodity to be compared to or felt conscious about? All those scoundrel eyes that judge,  rape, harass or humiliate, I’ve seen women coiling all of it around their bodies and as if years after years they have detached completely from it. As if their soul and their flesh are two different people. As if it’s their mistake.
Why? Why do we forget to make love to our own hands and feet. Why can’t we sit in front of the mirrors making faces and loving every inch of our skin with devotion so overwhelming.  Why can’t we decorate our bodies with our touch and fragrance like our home. Imagine what heaven would it be to feel this body as the only cover that uplifts its bird, the soul inside. Why can’t we touch ourselves up to toe and feel like we’re butterflies out of our cocoons. Why can’t we dance with our flesh in the air drooling and swaying like lunatics and never feel the need to hold someone else’s hand or waist to feel complete. Why can’t we make love to ourselves drunk over our own bodies so much that it’s unnecessary to think of other’s flesh.
~P

Photo by Kansuke Yamamoto

It’s a mad mad world

People are people
they can’t be anyone
anyone can be people
and then i see no meaning
for what each of us is,
it’s their in the heads
and what if, it isn’t the truth?

They taught us things
now things aren’t even those things,
they move, they change,
they die,
their masks fall off
and how rapidly,
not even one could I catch.

I would have tried
to be what they say
you can’t ever be,
but life ate me
and I gulped it too fast.

It’s a mad mad world
their voices
they think are sacred chants,
never realized
their temple bells are noises,
they stink of bloodied hands.

Blood of a murderer is fine
but a womb’s blood, a shame.
Blood that cycles
with pain and cramps
gives life to monsters
and men alike,
all they die
the same death,
it’s the blood
that bears the name
of spots, strains and wreath.

It’s a mad mad world
they said God made it
and hence, it better be holy.
Wrote books on God’s behalf,
called them ‘the books of truth’,
named him ‘He’
for ‘She’ was the truth
they die to hide.

If I am to tell you
a secret
I call her She
and sometimes
I forget the word God
I am to say God
and almost it sounds Gdo
or Dgo
like I fell from sacredness
to callousness,
because I love her idea
I love her without the skin
people made her wear.

Every night
in every ‘ness’
I visit the same God
without name
sans thought.

It’s a mad mad world
pinches to live in
they have made homes
say they’re shelters
all false
all false
they’re never ending walls
but all false
If I am to say
for once be at a madhouse
raw and real
in the end,
they build their own dooms
and I wander and run.

and it’s never
going to make sense
born in a fence
they kill you
in the fence,
they always love to
kill you in the fence.

Come to the mirror

 

In the midst of a swarming bus
You will meet across hundreds of men.
They might stink,
Oh no! Not from outside
They will stink in their eyes,
In their minds
In their ways
And in themselves.
But, oh miracle!
You still won’t know the secret of their reeking.
They are too pompous of this stinking animal in them.
And please,
Please dare not think that this stinking miracle
If proves to be your bane,
Anyone is going to break for you
The window pane.
Oh no no!
Girl, dare not think of any perfume
That will take away this stinking miracle.
Because those who have it want it,
Those who don’t
Have never told.
Do you see their hands on your chest?
Oh don’t tremble.
Please don’t.
Nothing but affection they say,
Affection to let you know
How beautiful you are!
The stinking miracle is so affectionate my dear,
So, now you need no perfume for it
Do you?
What did you just see?
Another hand on someone else’s butts?
Do you have to speak?
I have taught you, don’t quarrel on road.
Oh my dear, stay obedient
I know you will not speak.
Quiet for yourself
And vocal for others,
You talk funny, my love!
Such a saint was never born
You keep smiling and never frown.
Go to sleep and think of nothing,
Life is so striking and you will just pass.
Like your people did
Who belonged to you.
You can’t ponder how many untold stories have they died with.
Because, you are taught
To not brood over.
Oh now in the dreams, you slap the stinking animal.
First who touched you
And then the others.
But why slap affection, you fool!
You know this world needs too much of this.
Oh Jesus! Look how your mind shouts back at that animal
At all the stinking animals.
But thank god you only howl in dreams!
God made you lucky woman, my child!
My brave child again goes in the same bus.
Now she does not yowl even in dreams.
So well, she has settled with the stink
Exactly like a bird with broken wings.
Oh no! Please don’t applaud for me
I know how well I have brought her up.
Look at her strength you folks!
She knows to settle down in a gutter
Full of various stinks.
Come here! Come here!
I will give you some gossip,
I just heard the girl next door
Oh my lord!
Mercy my lord mercy!
Mercy on fools.
The girl next door was raped by the watchman.
Oh no no, the watchman was a stinking animal
Allowed to be pervert.
The girl had no strength
To settle like my lovely daughter.

And here I declare the wisest of all mothers,
Tell your daughters to compromise
Or else the watchmen are free to move
They are bound to groove.
After all, with whom otherwise,
Will they share their stinking miracle with?
Why shout like the girl in the English songs?
Teach the girls,
To change this bad omen into melodious form.
To paradise or to hell
The way is in our hands.
These rebels are born
Exactly like sands,
Keep them always
Beneath the shoe soles
Sew with needle all the holes.
This is how I teach you
To remain in this gutter.
Let’s not forget today
The years we have spent to discern the stinking miracle.
Teach all the same
Inspire with your own lives
The minds of the young ones.
They should not find anyway
Out of the junk.

And you my lovely daughter,
Come let me take you somewhere!
Sit, look at this in front of you,
The beautiful mirror.
See, how it enhances the glow of your fair hands,
Oh your charming smile
Your curly hair.
With millions of gems and dollars and pounds,
A tall gentleman, I will send.
Mesmerized by your beauty,
He will take all rounds
He will faint and get up,
To hold your hand and say,
Oh lovely woman!
How many hearts did you break
Waiting for me all these days.
What say my dear daughter?
Have I not written the best fairy tale?

Oh yes! Mom.
You taught the best and you wrote even beyond.
But there is an unknown folly in the tale
Listen to this, what I am to say.
I am not virgin, my dear mother.
Chastity which you told to make my pride,
Oh! I feel apologetic my big lady
I think I have lost it in all those rides.
Those rides you said to go on each day.
You had said settle down with the stinking animals.
Oh mom! How could I have told you.
They settled at the cost of my chastity.
I was raped, mother.
No mom, they were miraculous, right?
So, their eyes could rape.
Hundreds of eyes have my chastity,
Not even together
In one thread, lady.
All eaten apart,
Like flesh from my body.
Mother, you taught so well
And you wrote beyond.
Come, sit and look at this mirror.
In your face I see so much,
I fail to say in words.
Look mother,
Talk to the mirror.
The mirror now orates your legend.