‘Leaving’ in Dragonfly Arts Magazine, 2020

Leaving

I have been telling myself
I must leave soon
And I have been packing
The first, the second, the third
the last – I am not sure which of the
last moments I should pick –
but I have been packing

I have been hiding things
Today my face, yesterday the feet
The things you’d loved in
the first photograph you saw
see the arc of your foot and mine
the curve tells us how close we are to the earth

Then faceless, feetless, I move silently
picking bits and pieces of the nights
we spent tracing maps on bodies
a future on the skies
The shards of the mornings
spent sucking oranges from the bowl
until refreshed

The jagged pieces of the cold anger and hot fury
the first, the second and the other fights
I want to keep that as well to remind
Of the morning after,
as if a dip in a lake
on a burning summer day, brutally beautiful

All this I try to pack in a bag; it is filling fast
tomorrow it will be the fingers turn to leave
slowly, the neck, the tongue, one day
it will be the turn of the navel

I have been telling myself to leave
in bits, in parts, in shadowy whispers
all along these years
and you haven’t noticed
maybe when my smell is lost forever
from those sheets you will see
maybe when my breath becomes air
you will know I was once there.

Read Dragonfly Arts Magazine here.

Four poems in Sarasvati 057, a quarterly print magazine from Indigo Dreams Publishing UK

The Exorcist – Part 1 of Three poems for my reluctant love.

The Exorcist

Slowly, slowly, feel my fingers
stroking your forehead
wiping away the five folds moulded firm.
Exorcising you
of her with the long hair
sleeping clouds shaking serpents
of her with the anklets
drawing blood pricking memories
of her with the rings, on toes you sucked
dry lips burning mouth
of her with the tattoos
seared into your skin flaming
of her with the dulcet voice
the tongue poisoning you
colouring your throat blue

Your mind closes, as I try
Love, they are burning you dry!
Healing you, I try
I am the exorcist, I try.

Two poems in The Bombay Review, April 2020

​Death, unknown

yes, yes, I know we come alone go alone but when we come may it be to the sounds of love
and arms roped in an embrace and when we go, and when we go may there be at least one
person next to us, the one who has loved us for an instant even, or someone who has maybe
one lonely night prodded the moon and broken a bit off for you

no one should have to die alone

but you did, and at that instant, what was happening outside? Were there birds in flight, those
tropical ones that disappear, a stroke of colour in a flash or did a half moon rise or did bats
speak to each other in sonic whispers or did a woman murmur in her lover’s ears not now not
today?

you didn’t have to die alone

and what about the others who knew you, the husband, the friend, the lover, lover turned
friend or friend turned lover, where was he? where was anyone? the mother the father the
sisters who are meant to love, the brothers who are meant to protect, the aunts, the uncles
where were they in their worlds not knowing, not knowing, you were slipping away

you cold and alone

and so we think, we wonder asunder, how did it come to this
did you call the moment or did the moment call you
illicit whispers from worlds away cracking the earth into two?

*****

Read The Healing in The Bombay Review