Saturday 28 December 2013

Old Man Parkstreet.

Music wafted out to the thoughts on the street,
wandered down the noisy alley

Full of old ballads etching each arch;
Staring whimsically at the crowded eateries
Through puffs of smoke and memories.
Firm and young were those days
Still the acrobat jigs within with each visit.

Books littering the street got some unfastened stories.
Of love and liquid women
Of coming and never leaving.
Perhaps so many of them got carried away to different shelves
Some limping and some martyred.

There were musicians and lovers, dancers and bards
'This street throbbed with live bands at night,
serving perennial morning coffee'
I saw nostalgia creeping up her warm eyes.
'We visited Mag’s when I had little money
She loved the tea in there as I loved the smile '
He sighed
I live in the nostalgia of wandering times
Years I sat enthralled, a bride,
little more than a child on a new street,
with thirsty eyes to live some golden mornings and pink nights.
sharing brewing cups of yesterday and today
with an old man and his beautiful memories
so full of 'The Street' beneath.

An ensemble of mansions stood hemming my fairy tales ,
corralling an expansive sky
Roofing within my right to fiction.
Of changing leaves and bleached views
Of changing vignettes and different tongues -
Of sweaty dance floors and of flesh(l)y cravings.

Spirits and the Spiritual in cassocks both walked these streets.

The white sahiba with their Derby hats left much in the brown in me.
Love came clutching
when my old man's bright shiny eyes
lived with his memories of his Armenian girlfriend
in a sixties town across the road.
And when the chanteuse locked herself out to work
the blues danced and glances devoured.

The Armenian and the French both lived in pieces
Smooth and on the rocks  
So did the emerald flowers and the red hammers on the wall.
Each saw its day,
arrive and loosen its way
in a spacious gigantic history
of apolitical warm croissants.

Shared with a long gone husband
left like those generous tips on the tables
and the conditioned air smells stale.
choosing between  now and then
full and devoid of remains.
A strange city aches within,

The sap-green moss clings to the neighbouring cemetery walls
as monsoon submerges all and death
and some unkempt story lies,
enclosing a tale untold.

Each has to travel to timely and untimely deaths
Many years had to begin here and had to end.

The cuisine sends its aroma afloat
of grilled ducks and buttery lamb chops
then came the American burgers and intervened
They came, they conquered and they remained.
Enjoyed with two little hands and delight
Each story has different times.

My old man planted the flowery trees
that grew outside our window.
Did he know I would arrive some day
and see the flowered boughs?

Behind the flowers the street still lives
with inconsistent humans and consistent memories.
And all the sins have found its way to churches.

So they renamed it after a saint.

But Old Man Parkstreet will remain in you and me
Tucked in my eyes and its nostalgic other side.

Parkstreet (Photo from the net)

There were holidays in the bend of your lips

There were holidays in the bend of your lips
Shivering in the shimmer of your lipstick mark
You left on the coffee mug

standing solemn on the kitchen sink
There were holidays in the kohl of your laughing eyes
Flowering the debris of love and despair
Spiralling into the deliberate erotic of bound and vacillating
There were holidays in your arms
Which drew me to journeys of gardens and terraces
The analogy of carnations and blue sky
There were holidays in the touch of your fingers along the artefact
I cherished
They strolled from your fingers,crossed the origin
and met the feasible arterial of aesthetics
My holidays travel with you like day
And devour you like night
I have been on this holiday ever since we met
Ever since you came close
Ever since you touched
Ever since you hung on the ambarella tree outside
With moonlight and dark hair


On this lazy Saturday afternoon
I am sitting with my coveted pickle jar from mum's pantry
she left for days,

when I don't feel like cooking and there is only bread.
These remind me of holidays of origin and ripeness
These remind me of moist you and slithering jellyfish
There were holidays in the sadness of your eyes
You turn away and all the holidays leave me, go out of my life.








Edited by Dr Ampat Koshy
 

BLUE=GREEN JAR WITH BACK-LIT FLOWERS -- Elizabeth Blaylock

Monday 23 December 2013

When last Autumn I visited your house

There were lilies in your garden,
when last Autumn I visited your house
They were so large, fragrant and proud
and we stood so full of everything and sunshine.
Outside, your white walls
amidst their pink warmth,
as if sharing secrets I longed to tell you.
Amidst their numerous
And my disbelief, we discussed love
and spring.
I suppose they never told you
We talked about flower men and crushes,
How I blushed
as they swayed in laughter with the breeze
I suppose they never told you
How they felt
when you left footmarks by their side
How they missed you
And ached for your tender, warm fingers
I suppose they never told you
I too left my footmarks that morning,
I wanted yours to cover mine.
I wanted them to kiss your feet
like a dying man kisses his would be widow
for that one last time.

Sitting years later in a december afternoon
I want to go back to your autumn Lilies
Just to ask, 'Did the footprints meet?'
and leave it unspoken "Do you still grow lilies?"

Picture from the net 

Lilium Candidum by Svetlan Stefanov







    Sunday 22 December 2013

    I will write you letters this winter


    I will write you letters this winter
    When the snow falls and the fire crackles
    I will race over those alphabets
    Lingering on ones I felt
    When I stood under the warm sluicing water
    and you were mist across the shower of rain
    I caught a glimpse of you in the golden sunlight
    outside the deep green curtains.
    I will hold you in coherent coincidences
    And I will refuse to turn the page
    I will sit with mulled words and live in exuberant summers
    When the ascending spirals of smoke groan wet
    Ebbing away the sensation that leaped up the chimney
    I will know you were hanging on to the soot.
    You were holding on and clinging to my roof.
    I will look at you as tenderly as the moon
    Looks at the frozen icicles that remain on the branches
    When every living room will be swarming with unions and laughter
    This Christmas
    I will write you letters under the mistletoe
    I will not proliferate or pluck my history from yours
    I will let my now and then merge in yours
    I will not let the distance long or throb
    I will let us squeeze and snuggle into a poem
    When passion will river on my soft swollen syllables
    I will unfasten the violet from my ink
    and spill all over you,on and again

    I will write you letters till the winter ends.


    Friday 20 December 2013

    Poor,yours and defined

    I want to meet you over heartbreaks
    When your eyes will caress the purple rings under mine,
    I want to meet you across closed doors
    When we just have memories spilled across the sides,  
    I want to meet you over your crumbling years
    We won't have our passionate denials,
    I want to meet you over some  infidelities
    I will dissolve myself in contained deities with my religion traversed.
    I want to meet you over fun, frolic and picnics 
    I can be wary of your eyes following  me in weightless love
    I want to meet you in insomnia 
    In silent darkness, on a pink bedspread, in timeless connival of moist cocoa butter
    seething restless on my misty skin
    I want to meet you when you walk away
    When I go prophetic to deny my blinding fears
    I want to meet you in a cemetery, exhausted over bodiless souls
    Who knows, you may descend to the memoirs on the pungent smell
    You may return to the madness of love and life 
    I want to meet you in hospital beds
    My last wounds will birth you in healing. 
    I want to meet at the church then 
    To belong and to be your bride. 
    Dressed in all that finery of convictions 
    Rich, poor, yours and defined.

    Sunday 1 December 2013

    Sometimes I Confuse You, Don't I?


    Sometimes I confuse you, don't I?
    Then again I love our confusion
    You are like that enormous scar on my mind
    Visible silence of timeless exile 
    Hanging between clean and soiled
    Forever hanging to unhurried seasons 
    Spread out on a construct of society 
    You are like that sunlight who caress the virgin snow
    I sought your splendour 
    To win my battles 
    Your silence bristling within
    Made me limp, even when I lost my strength to walk.
    I love our confusion
    Travelling over the crumbling, threatening clouds 
    Often when dusk descended to my street and your hair 
    I opened my eyes to your day sweating all over me.

    I Was Living In Fragments

    I was living in fragments
    As I meandered in the illumined
    I was living in seasons
    As I wafted up the steps of time
    Perhaps I found a country
    coiled in your eyes
    And I stood a nomad at your journeys end.