Purple Stargaze

Grey night today
Overwhelmed by sadness
not quite its own,
a sadness larger than solitude,
a lingering spell of songs
from an era whose fragrance was long betrayed by
Salt and Blood.
An era that comes alive through faded texts
as moisture gathers on the window ledge
misting time, and slowing space.
An era living through ochre dreams
Now vanquished, slowly erased-
Parched-throat dreams, clawing in vain
for but a slice of yellow through all that rain.

i wish i could promise you
Picture-perfectness. Because,
mi amore, i want to.

You remember, that hot afternoon?
when i playfully draped maa's saree,
so you could touch
my waist.
And i started to ask, whether you would buy for me
a similar one - white bordered with gold
of the softest cotton from Madurai.

The pallu slipped off then
and the story of chais on the balcony
during June storms fell away too
while you kissed the edge
of a sun-drenched shoulder...

And that was it. Right then.
But it never,
came by again.

Poetry does not come to me today
No images, no scents-
Not of charred wood nor of jasmined hair
Nothing. Not even the stranger- broody, brusque
Bothers today, to ask too much out of me.

Today has random conversations
conversations about bad movies,
Half-baked American accents,
and us.

Today is free of form- meaningless, exalted,
then subdued.

No, poetry does not come today.
But you do.

When witches were made
in the moist womb of a still
sleeping planet-
The Blues were given to the seas
and to the lone kite
against the azure of a broken sky
While these minxes-swift, fluid,
so quick to anger
They took the Green.

For years they flew,
only taking the female form.
Sensual belles of an era forgotten,
mermaids of the mossy underground-
rejoicing in their bodies.

Till the sleeping planet
Woke to chaos,
and the jade that was their blood-
Thickened, and slowly
slowly

The Witches-
the ones of the olive complexion
of charmed ways and Southern grace
Coarsened and withered away
to what we now know
as Trees.

The girl, she wishes
She wasn’t just another concubine
In an archaic harem
That has severed all ties
With the market life
A life combustible, dirty
Holy life
A life of work, of payment
For a service rendered.

So she masturbates away
Pieces of her soul
Flint by angry flint
While the fuck of her life (and why shouldn’t she be crass?)
Waits.
In agony, in oblivion sometimes.
Because penguins-they mate for life.
Two shades they may be, but not two faced.

This wait, it leaves
Intangible..almost invisible lines of grey
On the glory that is dawn, that is new day
But who
Who is the owner of this today?

The girl, child, sensual woman
She is now.....offline.