Suicide Note

Suicide Note

                     

When I die— in winter

of all seasons

 

Bury me in a mosque

near my home

in the vicinity of a tree-temple

 

So when they come

dragging it

they will also find a corpse— frozen

waiting to be bristled

 

Then a season later

compose a railway track over it,

carrying all the faces I’d have not known

all the faces I could’ve ignored,

 

And when they come

burning it

shower them with icicles

 

And when you have a feast

following their retreat

do not whisper my name

 

So the faces wouldn’t know

I could not build.

                                                          I have signed, O my enemy, your death–warrant

                                                                                                                              Agha Shahid Ali

(Nov 27, 2011)

Around Silvered Lapses

Around Silvered Lapses

              On sister’s birthday, to Sana

 

Little wheel-like things crisscross

on city midnights, and

where I coil this

nothing tracks down to you.

 

In fifteen years

I have not pinched orange skin,

snarled at by an amnesiac cat, or hid

between parents’ quilts.

 

It’s permanent to have you

 

traffic-spotting behind that green gate,

your small head next to mother’s waist

in holly patterns on the kitchen wall,

still clay-parrots on the windowsill

a blink away before you sleep,

on an unexpected rainy afternoon,

for healthiness, I confused

a bitter pill into your mouth:

at the mouth of thinkings gallery

not all hours are full of fears.

 

Where I coil this,

 

frayed white sleeve-edges scuff

distinct hair on my wrists,

like hasty men of conurbations

brush faces on local trains,

a camouflage of time in my bedroom,

every day of this year, sheds skin:

my other half is a condensery of lost language,

consisting of you.

 

(Nov 5 – Nov 8, 2009)

A Finding

 

For once,

before dropping unconscious

in the parking lot,

acquiring the right to ask

how much rage I have

she is unable to decide

what to wear on father’s funeral.

 

I too have redirections,

any dislocated bookmark

drives me crazy.

 

 

Silence of the Noises

Did I betray myself,

when I sat there, waiting

 

without listening to you, was

a terrible thing to do.

 

But there are questions

I need to know.

 

How could I tell,

I have the answers.

Monsoon in Hometown

                      A survivor of present

                      — memory is instant.

I could walk so I flew,

stumbled forecast,

saw everybody turning

a tattered face,

 

in an awkward pause

the tin-roof spasmed

on the wall, violence ensues

even an old building.

 

The epigraph severed

through the rainyard.

 

                            Monsoon is too pretty a name for a season as messy as this.

                                                                                         Nadeem Aslam, Season of the Rainbirds

 
(Jul 11, 2010)

panic

The last of gravedigger’s wives
wriggles while bathing,
neck cold as leaves shivering -
aftermath of rainy nights.

Several hours ago, rubbed
against jute, storm after storm
inexplicably sweet lashes burned

her faint-less skin brown.
Growing brown, her fingers
excavate down his shoulders
where fireflies would drown.

Yet. In cold night dreams
he clumps lightning in her ears,
her body melts in his palms

of mud and skin.

(jun6 – jun25, 2010)

A LOST FISH

 

In the course of all meditation I watch, that is never there.

I think of the north: I think of the south.

I find you without we, at the centre of unknown- a metaphor unbecoming.

Is it my secularism that breaks uneven, or is it the tradition of male born of female?

In tenderness I despise your nothing. Touch the blades of the river far away swimming, limb by limb, standing still on the bank, carrying the taste of you.

At once, in a leftward leap, I will swallow the strength, and become everything.

 

(December 03, 2010)