Two Poems (both for me!)

Here are two poems that David wrote for me. Some lines are quite mean, but then friends are allowed to be mean once in a while...
PS: Brenna is my Scottish name! ;)

Dr Brenna

As Doctor Brenna's wont to say:
"the stammer of the Riverbat
extends beyond its fingers play
across the fruit trees, across the flat

expanses of the desert lands
it flies across to find the river
nestled in the reddish sands;
that little metal roaring sliver

that holds the Riverbat in its grasp
while it reaches down with wingèd fingers
to grab its hands like Eagle and Asp
above the cactus where a city lingers."

But Dr Brenna rambles slightly.
I take her academia very lightly.
________________________

Into Hell with Dr Brenna

Dr Brenna's off to Hell
with jaw dislodged by too much drinking.
No sin you say? Far from it, sir!
A one pint glass should not slide in
or be placed between the jaws that way;
Dear God would not allow such sin.

Dr Brenna's off down the Styx
armed with just a bottle and straw
unopened unlike the forty-eight before
unsucked unlike the four hundred hanging
bent and twisted at the back of the boat
vibrating away to the good doctor's singing

Veerappan's Daughter

I remember your
body. I saw it when
I was six years old.
A long brown wire
body and a finger
that tucked
a strand of hair
behind my ear.

I think of blood
blood like the new
stains on my thighs.
Like the smell
of a scream from
a sister's mouth,
a sister I never knew
because everybody

says you killed her.
A daughter
you didn't want. But
you named me
Prabha, didn't you, father?
You named me Prabha
like the light of
sandalwood mornings in
those forests you loved.

face of pins 

Goa Guide

He said fakkade with such pride
even Bom Jesus
would have giggled.

Beautiful fakkade with carvings
and pillars he said

wiry hairy arms gesturing
to the skies,
his moustache
quivering in supplication
amongst candles,
a dead saint and an
embarrassed lover.

:D 

I used to be bald then,

but you know that already.
You called to me once, but
I was bald and brittle and

didn't care who saw my
walled nails kneading your
scared scrawls.
I was a peach bell
hanging from your bruised
child-knee. Remember our

collection of cheap
shells by the fridge? We were
heaps of rags hurriedly
hidden beneath beds.
We were

swept away like hangovers spat
out with toothpaste
and morning phlegm.
Feel my scalp, lover.

Feel it.
Touch the smooth
prickly tracks, see those perfect
dying bones playing
tricks on your chest.

Houdini

Hands that creep jerkily
shifting slipping
out of rooms iron rings
and locks and waters that bite into breaths.

That well
that rank trunk
that gasp of titillating death.
A dancer’s smile
a swift toe-hold a handcuffed nail-scratch
hint at escape from here.

Onion Rings

Perfect stinging slashing circles
juiced with homegrown lime.

Circles within circles

within
circles pinch
my seasoned eyes
pretending tears like slow

sweat
drops
between breasts.

I need onion
rings for covers
for pretensions of
freshness for pretty

garnished hands
smelling like
layers of
purple
basil
skin.

Letter from Manorama to Ramabai

Mother, I was born out of your skin
your sin, your itch for that
low-caste man
you called a husband.

Did you ask me before you
changed
my religion and my name?

I was a child, desiring your hair
your time-
coloured clothes.

But you denied me everything.

I work with you
as I have always
worked with you

and see your
grey eyes still consume you
while I grow tired and old
and see my death like claws
in my thighs.

Mother, I cannot forgive you.

I work with you
in silence
hide my anger in my

nails and
write these letters
to you at night
and tear them like
scratches in the dark.

On Giggling Fits

Yesterday, when Susan came over to pick up some books, we got talking about uncontrollable giggling fits. She recounted a hilarious tale about how she went into one of those infinite, hiccupy ones when a friend told her a rather gruesome tale of a missing cousin.
I was reminded of a trip our gang had taken, one day after school, to a friend's (Madhulekha, her name was) place because her maternal uncle had passed away. We sat discreetly enough for some time in a room crowded with wailing women. I don't remember who snorted first, but after that we were a riot of grey-skirted, evil-spirited gigglers. We just couldn't stop. We clamped our hands over our mouths, refused to catch each other's eyes, all to no avail. In minutes we were a teary-eyed mess. The wailing women took a break from their wailing to glare at us, but we were soon making eyes at the bereaved son's school friends and didn't care.
Madhulekha didn't talk to us for a week.
On an aside, the best giggling fits in school happened in church, especially when the smell of incense mixed happily with that of ripe farts.

Gemini

Mimicries within me
suggest repetition.

There are pixelated
conjunctions
disguised in my eyes.

All selves doctored by
mirrors seem true and

these wicked fickle cruel
crazy women
oh these histrionic

women cackle
and seek
release

tie and tickle
me until I

laugh and set them free.

Marking Answer Scripts

May is usually the time when I have to mark examination answer scripts. Not the best thing to do when the temperature hovers around the 45 degree mark (in celsius). This time I found two amazing papers. One began by saying, "I have been asked to write critical and explanatory notes on Georgiana Darcy or the Jane-Bingley relationship, but how can I when I have no idea who these guys are." It went on much in this vein and told a rather articulate tale about sports students who are forced to study any subject just because colleges want their names to be in the news. This particular student, who had no interest in English Literature, had never attended classes and felt happy that he was finally writing an examination that would surely make him flunk and he would be rid of his "stupid" college for good.

The other student had only copied out the entire question paper around four times and interspersed it with bits from a Hindi movie love song that goes like this:

First Time Dekha Tumhe Hum Kho Gaya
Second Time Mein Love Ho Gaya
Yeh Akha India Jaanta Hai Ham Tumpe Marta Hai
Dil Kya Cheez Hai Jaanam Apni Jaan Tere Naam Karta Hai

I was definitely entertained, but I also felt that we were doing something very wrong somewhere.

Who is Sandra Spreadum?

A couple of weeks back, I found out that I have a porn star name. Guess what? I am Sandra Spreadum, or so I was told here.

"An Old Man from Vasad who had Five Penises Suffered from Runny Nose"*

It's not possible.
An old man from Vasad
cannot have blue eyes.

Screw the disbelievers.
He does have blue eyes
and five penises and six
fingers on one hand.

Chew on that now.
He sits spread on mellow
yellow, his bald head
demurely veiled.

The lines failed him.

But you can see skies,
wise skies.
No, I never
tell lies. See that view, where crows
once flew and a cow sits now.

I love that old man
with the blue nose
and the straight stare
and let's give him his due:

He didn't stick
those penises with glue.
They just grew
and grew and grew.


(*With apologies to Bhupen Khakhar, wherever he may be now...)

The Piano and Gangsta Rap

Today, I went to Sarai, all sweaty and late, expecting to see Bhaji on the Beach. For around two minutes, I wondered why the screen was crowded with scantily-clad Maoris, until it dawned on me that I was watching Jane Campion's, The Piano. I hadn't seen it before, but had read an interesting article about it by bell hooks last year when I was researching for a paper called "Singing the Ghetto: Gangsta Rap and African-American Identity". I had found her argument interesting, but could not form any real opinion since I hadn't watched the movie.
Today, her essay came back to me with a bang and I had one of those moments.
The Maoris are made to look like silly freaks who cannot seem to think beyond sex. For someone who's supposed to be very concerned about the marginalisation and silencing of women (I have grave doubts regarding that as well) Campion apparently has no idea about what she is doing at other levels. The weird and insensitive representation of the Maoris was too much to take. Such thick-headed racial stereotyping!

The Caricaturist

A long 6B swipe
distorts noses.

A flicking stretch of a
wrist and lines twist, yield
and quirk out of shape.
Gooey eyes,

shoe-clad hair,
laburnum teeth
leak out of smirking
pores in fecund fingers.

Crow Ghazal

Father, I said, tear off the clothes of that unrepentant crow.
Pipul trees are singing expletives, damn that recurrent crow.

Why did Maryam dance the Bihu in my grandmother’s village?
All laughed when they touched the loud eyes of the accented crow.

Once, when I was reading to leaves, weedy winds slapped, struck me down.
Where o where at that moment was the sacred tormented crow?

Alien armies walked by red sand banks and branched into ghosts.
Centuries ago, this was your home, disobedient crow.

When a River gnaws at the ropes of a daughter’s arrival
Don’t forget to fling her nightmares at my thighs, you ardent crow.

Plato Problems

Beaded cloth-birds
cannot sing even
with bells.

There are two
elephants.
One blue
holding fast to
the wall.
The other
splayed.
Too tiny to
stare at
the silver pots
with shells.

(Please ignore
the brass spoon
with teeth and
feet)

My plants on
tortoise-backs
move slow and
sometimes
droop for
lack of opium

Portrait:III (Kinnari)

Her hair grew knots
one day
and she turned
into an ill-
smelling saint in
parchment clothes.

She made prophecies
of drying
women, leaking crops,
sore buffaloes.

(We never looked at
the messy
sindoor on her
widow's peak,
never
met her foolish
round eyes,
never
watched her pot-
bellied walk)

Sometimes, she wore
faded marigolds
in her rope-hair
and sang silly
love songs.

Giving In...

I finally gave in to the temptation of blogging. It feels good. Like the smelly diary of my childhood. Will I have something to say everyday?

Doiboki

She went around
with scowling hair,

her long betel-spittled
lips exploding sex -words.

She sat in street-corners
and exposed glistening secrets
like roots with
shifty-eyed knowledge.

Men nudged and giggled.
Women looked away.

We
children
sometimes pretended
fear and ran away.

Sometimes ran after her
and called out her name.

" Doiboki

Doiboki
boki boki

doi

boki."

She'd turn around
and unbutton
her blouse for our
experienced eyes.

Lunar Eclipse

Here he comes
an immortal head
open malicious
mouth a loud moustache.

Will you gobble up
her white fatness?

Rahu rolls
through

the skies laughing sweet
expletives.

Will you sink your
shadowy teeth
into her round self?

A dancing

head full of himself
gorged with milk ready
for the angry grab.

Wait

wait. She is tied
to the sky
and cannot escape.

Lice

In school, lice crawled
on our scalps like ideas.
They played, bred, raised
families and ate our brains,
we were told.
Mothers ran after us
with scratchy combs and
itchy shampoos and annoyed
us every sunday until we heard
life-blood pop between flat thumb nails.
And we,
waited
for the creep
creep of monday.

Letter from Ramabai to her Husband

Beloved,
I'm tired
and this drying body
remembers the crane-
white of your nails tonight.

The widows come in
limp droves everyday
and my ears scorch
with their words.

Today, Shanta told me
"They gave me powders
to choke my daughter."
Her hands kept
fluttering to her head
as if to touch
dream hair.

Sometimes
at night
I see my brother’s
ghost and we
still roam and
wail with bloated
bellies and tongues painted purple with
sour berries
and my hungry child-belly
carries Manorama
kicking and clawing inside me.

Beloved,
it rains outside and termites have grown
wings to search for frail lovers.
Soon they will
lose them and

tomorrow
I will see whispered wings
squashed to
the ground