I jot down, scribble,

More like,

I press upon

Bruises on my arm,

Recall how

My mum

Caressed maps with

Her long nails,

My heart beats,

More like,

Steady screeches.

I write,

More like,

Leaving contracts

Unsigned,

I’m a delocalized

Chattel in an

Ocean of humans,

I’m a shop

With labels removed.

And again

We watch the curtains close

The pleas and confessions

To padded walls

A stage, blemished

With white foot steps

A spider

Starts to crawl,

We tread on

A barren floor

Your figure is

A half-lit moon

I fancy dragonflies

Left their wings

On my iris

Did you hear

Me call, dear?

I’m overflowing

Prickly with hope,

We sway, like ruins

After-math of a war,

We sweep around,

A millennium of ghosts

No melodies

But silent tapping,

We blend in the scenes

Behind, 

We’re blooming

On a snowy night

The invisible audience

Clap their hands

And we watch 

The curtains close.

When I was younger,

Rolling rectangles of

White paper

Was something I did.

I’d stick the edges

Colour the end- yellow;

Pretend that I was smoking,

And feelin’ mellow.

But I obey Biology

Text books, and not

Exactly fond

Of unhinged lungs

Over my

Over-saturated heart.

Speaking of hearts,

Mine’s a see-through

Your beautiful eyes

Are in there, too

Your personality

Is its pacemaker

Your laughter

Is its murmur.

(Now, where’s 

My Biology text book?)

Now, you’re younger

Than you will be

Next December

And the one

When you’d be

Forty, too

So you can go on

And pretend

That you can perpetually

Love me.

(You stuff the chambers

Of your heart

With sheets

From Biology text books.)

I don’t want what I write
To be an ash-tray
Of a yesterday
I want my pencils to
Become trees, woody,
Of many lives
Once again.
I want my pens to
Thermally decompose
And kneel down
As a body
To sibilate
“Blessed is God”.
I want my words
To circulate
Like deoxygenated blood
The way folks and avenues
Would hold me
Or claw at me
Would replenish my hands
I want to
Write
And
Write.

Yes, you should probably

Start shielding your 

Walls, with silver plates

Carved in the name

Of your worth,

Start feeding your skin

With packets of yogurt, 

So fresh, and white,

Should be both,

And men with stethoscopes

Rolling off their tongue

Should start: knocking

On your daddy’s door.

You should never really

Read books that are

Directions to what you’re not.

You should count the stars

Up to eleven

Not more than that,

They’re wrong.

Stop being camouflaged

By pretty girls,

Start eating your way

To hip bones.

Zip up your mind

Unzip your white dress

And announce how

Modest you are,

As the sun

Struggles to sleep.

If time is a man-
made concept, then I
want to climb pipes to
men’s apartments, and
steal time from
their pockets,
we are timeless.

If time was only
a plane in the solar
system, then I’d drink
up the Milky Way, see;
my finger-tips are
studded with asteroids,
breathe out your hydrogen
please.

If time was an equation
in terms of denials, desires,
fruits ripening in
our minds
then my bedroom floor
is stained with my soul
that spilled out, out of
our inequality.

Upon hearing the word
‘Poetry’, I see
A mirror covered with sand;
Poets strangled, with their hands
Like flowers or flightless birds
Exhale, slowly, inhale,
Specks of sand in their eyes
Mirrors, infinite reflections.

But I’m not a poet,
I estrange myself with
Ropes like neck-laces
Pills that drown you,
Perpetually in Hell,
Crash, the mirror goes,
Bloody pieces, wish I
Could do it to my

Existence, I listlessly
Kick, whimper, broken
Mirrors to self-portraits
Then choke myself with
Sand, but poems aren’t the
Shallow kind of
Uneasy self-portraits.

So. I don’t really know
If there’s more skin to
Exfoliate, but I meant
To show you everything:
The misspelled words,
The torn pages,
The grunts, the inner
Bruises, the clenched fists
That knock out my thoughts
And shatter, sedimenting to
My feet. I meant to show you
The pieces of mine that
Can’t be handled, though
Biggest, the sadness that
Bit off my throat.

I guess I should have
Been less of myself
More of the fake
Breaths dusted on
My shoulders, more of
The artificial sweetners
On your finger-tips, the
Snowflake patterns on
The fur of the deer
Next to me.

I wish I was a man, sometimes.

I would be the branches,
And not the leaves that
Get replaced every season,

I would be the anchor that
Vibrates the voice strings
To define who you are,

I would hold you or
Slam you against your
Reality, but you
Are nothing but smoke

That was meant to
Be extinguished,
Nothing, but a set
Of futile distractions,
And I, shall wait,

(Until you get stripped
Off from your fake
Flowers), to drool
On the transparency
Of bones, perpetally.

It sucks to be a woman, sometimes.

There’s this day I haven’t met yet, among the other days, which might be affable, might be smeared with bits of glass, might be as wide as the sun, might be as far away as gone.
But it’s there, I know.
This day, I should tear, so that my socks look like ladders instead of snakes.
This day, I should widen my pupils, with all its colours, instead of black.
This day, I shall pull the thread, unafraid of the puffiness inside.
Unafraid of the shadows that are because of light.
I shall trust and believe in the invincible force.
I shall remember that it is entirely aesthetic, a dimension I cannot even decipher.
I shall see the stars and mountains that hold hands and bow down,
enveloped by the flawless sky.

I hop on each word
As rocks on a pond,
Yet sink down
In the spaces between,
I gaze up to the chest
Of the sky, and wish that
Strings of sunshine
Would tie me up,
Suspending me in love,
But I sink down
I sink down in smells
Of forbidden glances,
And measurements we define
And call ‘reality’,
I swallow up the way
The sky’s chest heaves
Up and down,
And tear out wings
From butterflies.

I carry the night’s secrets in my head
The darkness in most of its degrees.
Flipping of pages, nocturnal hoots,
Drowning of keys down the river that
Creak out the thoughts you’ll forget.

You display moist sunshine in your eyes.
Trickling honey down my throat
A vintage shot, which shoots down
Resurrection, though, resurrecting
Nostalgia, the morning dew that settles
On the pieces of my thorax.

I think of braids of white and black,
Of a heavy cloak upon
The crispy satin that is your skin
Embroided with suns, stuck with moons
A farewell to your
Arms dipped in fantastic
Orange, purple and quiet
Screeching with actual groans.

The boy didn’t smell
like fruity smoke, but
pure, innocent sweat,
his hands tracing the
hips of time, that
moaned like sound
of rifles, he tried
to scrub off the stains
of blood-thirst, one
at a time, we live

in, he bought French tulips,
stained them red
in his dreams,
he sighed while listening
to the sugar plum fairy
then sighed as he
hammered his chest,
trying to shoot down
halos off faces
that were
set in the wrong dimension.

It’s too late for me
to fill up my ventricles
with dirt from a country
that seemed too close
irrespective of distance
but, in fact, was really far;
I thought I battled for
the odour of burning corn
and finally understood
the depth of
the endless pit I was
falling in, painted with
racial slurs, and plenty
of grandmotherly homes.
It’s just too late;
I grew up on the fringes
of belonging, I got myself
a blunt larynx to fit in,
I took off the flag
underneath my skin
and stood colourless
in front of the wind.
It’s just too late
for me to flutter back
to a childhood I never lived,
plastered with what I was
supposed to love, instead of
“they’re just vindictive”.
It’s really late now
to be a square in the mosaic
with a remarkable shade
and not yet another one
with a chipped off corner;
the airy promises I smiled with
leaked out of the balloon
of my tired lips.
It’s just too late
to learn how to dance
with ‘pride’ all over
my forehead, instead
of folds that spread
out, to spell out
“I’m a pest,
unwanted”.