Being nobody Being everybody

The day we truly know

they taught us wrong 

that there's no "us" 

that there's no "them"

is the day we breeze

through barricades 

around us and inside us 

and the day we find ease 

with being nobody 

and being everybody.

How the world ended

After they banned love songs
and beards, they banned the word
love and made forehead markings
compulsory – wear a printed label
if need be – we need to know your
origin story, they said, terrorising
people who used the word peace
and putting behind bars anyone
who spoke out against wars
And so, when the sun and moon
shone in the same sky one day
they banned them both and this
finally, is how the world ended. 

And then there was peace

Shaking with tears
of rage and grief
she peeled away
all borders they’d
plastered on her skin
scrambled their so called
countries into a colourful
salad and fed them to her
forests – or whatever was left
of them, till slowly, slowly
the land turned from brown
to many shades of green
water flowed in the streams
birds came back to the trees
the sky was blue once more
and then – there was peace.

 

prayer

In the municipal garden

the aunties singing bhajans

keep time on rusty knees. 

Next door

the aunties playing housie

chant the winning numbers. 

25 37 48

Like an incantation.

Like a prayer.

Daily Riyaaz

The habit of thinking in meter and rhyme

is hard to give up once April is done

The most mediocre thoughts seem sublime

when nouns and verbs into sonnets are spun

at least to the writer. It's in thinking

playing with meaning and words on the page

appearing from nothing when pen and ink

make marks that start garbled, a message

that slowly deciphered, makes more than the sense

We conjure, from chaos, the order of tense

future, past, present time's pauses and swells

Somehow the spelling transforms into spells

charms, incantations, or curses with which

A poem turns words into ways to bewitch

Aegopodium podagraria

When I think of what frightens me the most

it's not vampires or witches or ghosts

It's goutweed. Some think, with leaves edged in white

and flowers in umbels, it's pretty and right

for dry shade where nothing else will grow

but it won't stop at the fence, it will go

deep into the forest, crowding native

species out. It's this appropriative

quality, shared by those who colonized 

this land and brought it here. Both I despise

Since 'culture' comes from agriculture, and

so does colony, this fear for the land

is a deeper fear of losing wildness

my own, and that with which this land is blessed

Friendly at first, but on further exposure

you'll learn too late, it's a hostile takeover

sheru

I did not write

about the small cat

who died this spring

because I did not know

how to speak 

of the improbable brightness

of his being. 

To be honest

I would rather have 

shown you a picture

of him asleep in the sun 

belly soft and open

with the unguardedness 

of a creature

who has never known pain. 

This is no parable

about keeping beautiful things safe.

To see the world only 

for its wonders 

a golden, blessed thing

living a golden, blessed life. 

It is as it should be.

 

Ghazal

How long the night when sleep won't come, alone, in silence

I count the sins for which I must atone, in silence

My heart is like that old pond of Basho's the frog jumps in

like ice, until the ripples of a stone, in silence

The hands of the clock move without making any sound

Time passes haunted by old loves, unknown, in silence

Outside the rain makes music on the roof and the wind

blows dreams through the minds of poets who groan, in silence

Breath in, breath out, the only sound that memory makes

this offering, a song of old old bones, in silence

Rosa 'Leonie Lamesch'

Orwell planted roses too when he came 

home from the war, to a cottage, garden 

overgrown, two ramblers, red and salmon

and three polyanthas bought for sixpence

each. My polyantha could be the same

as one he had, I'll pretend it is. When

its copper buds open, I'll summon

up his ghost, his literary presence

Read 'A Hanging' or 'A nice cup of tea'

and say to myself, 'He's just like me'.