Sleepshead Bed

They say that in a lover’s bed, 

lies a tiny, little death. 

You think

It is not an endless pit to dread, 

Your lover’s bed 

Is a soft and warm

breeding ground. 

Sleep’s hard to come by in a

lover’s bed:

but not this little everyday death:

You’ll just keep their bedbugs fed. 

Such are the quiet labors of love,

Sometimes we bleed to save them blood, 

sink our backs into broken coils,

wonder if we’ll leave a mark behind. 

They’re sharing their blankets, 

Squeezing me in; 

Surely their bed isn’t just a 

plush, lidless, coffin. 

Don’t invite fear to your lover’s bed,

She’ll whisper in their weary ear: and

Lovers never hesitate to forget. 

Like the tip-of-tongue joy of meals, 

Our fingers tell us how we really feel,

Until our wretched lovers’ broken beds, 

Prevent it from getting to our heads. 

They are morbid lands, the downy, almost pyres

where our lovers nightly retire.

Dangerous places where we willfully

lie whilst sharing our bread;

So what of our own, carefully made bed?

Our familiar sheets will not tickle, 

But we know that even self-lovers are fickle—

So we make a safer bet, that

four hands will more readily suggest

companionship than two

And so we dream, 

As lovers in beds often do

Happily loved until they fall asleep:

A stupor of forgetting 

That love is a gift of giving.

And just like that, in one fell sweep

We’re lying at our lover’s bed’s wobbly feet, 

Prepared to mend the breached orifice

Face the curse which persists: reality must suffice                                                                                               In our tiny, little afterlife. 

Translation: Kehne Ko Jashn-e-Bahaara Hai (Javed Akhtar)

Hearsay is that it’s time 

for a celebration of blossoms, 

(some call it spring);

But it seems that today, 

the sight of this 

causes love anguish 

to behold.

A so-called celebration, a

Purely nominal, titular spring, for

What court of spring-seasons 

can proceed lacking the participation 

of such an essential guest?

Yes, when love’s in distress: 

Even fragrance is sullen, 

she shies away from the flowers 

in the garden.

Some grief is hidden in the portiere, 

an unlikely

(but temporarily befitting)

alias for atmosphere; 

whose expansive vacuum has been 

(oddly) thinned by this 

lovelorn circumstance. 

Everything seems pastel, 

The views are subdued, 

The very threads of time are torpid, drowsy. 

Remaining suspended in our hearts 

is lost chatter,

as if to marinate us, tenderize us

in anticipation 

of love’s return to spring. 

How might I articulate my grouse?

I am presently consumed 

by thoughts of how to settle

whether or not I might claim him intimate.

For although we traverse together, 

the distances are between us...

Akin the opposite banks of a single river, 

we do not meet:

We are as aloof from one another as our destination. 

We are near each other, 

and yet, we are not close— 

I cannot consent to this pain! 

This interval amidst us

is a (perplexing) glass wall. 

Everything is tepid,

When love is tormented.  

This fake, namesake

of spring

aggrieves me. 

 
The tune I’d heard 

is the one my heart had chosen. 

But what strange destiny has time 

chosen to play me instead?

I cannot imagine that he is happy 

while I sit here, desolate. 

Indeed, in our rendezvous

it is as if we are commingled in loneliness.

Isolated together, 

Although we encounter the other, 

we never meet. 

Ah!

Nothing is impossible in 

this alien springtime where

the flowers blossom without ever blooming.

Our eyes see the spring, 

But our hearts know it is autumn. 

On Perspicuity

Almost true:

Blasphemy

—you

A flimsy promise 

I suspect it was known, that

your plan was homegrown

And

I, a nescient botanist

archetypal fool

You convinced me to campaign

For a weed,
as if, 
perchance, 
it were a flower.

Illusion of ardor 

Hooked to the bait

I did not know that 

Intrigue is everything,

only when it has nothing to hide.

Veneers are like shams that lie on sofa beds

to hide our seminal stains. 

They are not pleasurably mysterious 

like curtains that open to a frank world,

eager for breathtaking. 

Thank you for exfoliating

my naiveté:

I was mistaken, I

Confused inscrutability with challenge.

Even so, 

it is a new age now:

“l’amour nouveau”

We are patrons of candidness. It

flows uninhibitedly, just as natures do.

Yes,

Mountains are proudly scaled by those who

saw their preeminent peaks

Long before 

trading in for better shoes.

In Passing

If you will not tarry,

Let me tell you in passing:

A calloused hand is harder to hold

But far more worthy. 

Toska

Speaking your heart to a cool lover

Is, perhaps, like being skinned alive. 

You are vulnerable, and more than naked 

More so

Juxtaposed by their armored habits

Unto which acid could be spilled, 

Inconsequentially. 

But 

You are hardy too.

Or not anymore?

Well, usually, some spilled orange juice

Would not hurt you--

But today, on raw, gleaming skin

It sears.

Are you afraid to pine?

Do you understand the beauty of

Feelings, 

which have a way of making

All the world brighter 

Uncovering all its hidden philosophy:

Yes.

Even a juice bottle will tell you 

that

separation is normal. 

Juice. 

A bottle of dead fruit-- a bottle!

--Taught me

To think to myself,

When I am crying:

"This is

just to shake it well; 

we will drink

in a quick moment. 

Maybe, if I draw the salt in my body up to

My eyes

It will mix things up inside."

Remember:

The drink is much sweeter,

For just a moment 

Of shaking it up. 

An aside:

Is that why 

they say 

we must

"Drink 

the moment?"

Perhaps,

Living in the moment

Just means 

Remembering that tears 

Make you sweeter. 

Well, I just lived a moment 

cast aside. With you.

Pining makes me reflective

In all these pretty ways

And so 

You are perfect 

Not for loving me,

But,

For my love.

The wisest lovers do not say 

"The greatest love is one that 

lights the sky up," 

They say it makes 

A breakfast beverage richer than 

Red hook's treasure;

And we all know that it's

Hard to be unhappy

In a rich world.

Love in the Time of Climate-Changing Psychobiology

You're frigid. 

I am a desert rose.
Play, repeat:

I'll listen to the songs, but

Cognitively dissuade reason.

My ears won't hear 

Clashing sounds.

Reasons, bitter almonds 

Cyanide in the brain;

Atrophied sea-horses;

We are murdered incrementally

By stress.

Stress, the little pressures as

We take on more and more,

And share less,

Yes:

Only winter smiles upon those

Who are cold.

And now, it is spring.

I must not wait on a decision already made

Love is a drug; every time we touch 

Oxytocin, vasopressin; and more. 

There is violence in deliberate asynchrony.

We share evenings of hope

Until they are evenings of injury.

Aren't we healers? 

Let us not breed despair. 

I will say that there is something 
oddly self-aware

In studying operant conditioning,

Whilst being operantly conditioned

By your hot-then-cold stares,

Agile fingers; meticulously meted out words.

Indecisive affection. 

This is chemical, as chemical as 

Every grain of sand and flake of 

tightly squeezed ice.

Desert rose, frigid oak,

Neither is a stranger to emotions. 

I forget that even as

The desert sun scorches,

The desert night has frozen 

Many a thirsty soul.

And so a strange attraction lies 

Yes, it lays within me

The dishonest draw.

It's an easy delusion:

Our icy words aren't so cold when we

Share our blankets, sweaters, scarves.

I'll calm myself

For this is a forgiving world: 

with truthful lies, and good thieves;

And endless seas, 

Which give rise 
to not just 

the desert rose,

but also the frosty ice. 

Heart of a Woman

Have I yet,

The heart of a woman?
Quietly-tugging-question:
Lurches, like my stomach as the train
Pulls in, relentlessly
Station after station. 

The heart of a woman,
The calloused heels of a traveller,
The tousled hair of a lover,
The massaged skin of a nymph,

Have I yet
A mind of my own?

The penitent thief:
A good man,
Like most others
Unknown. Invisible helpers
The machine runs, its cogs
are remembered, but not until
They fall out. Have I yet, 

The heart of a woman?
With soulful eyes to see
All those repentant robbers? 

Have I yet
The gritty tenacity
To confess completely?
The hands of a pure lover,
Midas touch to
Blessedly transform all sinful lives
The heart of
A woman who is
compelling.

The heart of a woman,
Her bleeding conversion,
distorted self-images:
Have I yet,
The power to create life from nothing?
The capacity for such astounding love?

Have I yet,
The heart of a woman?
Grown from the glitter studded, acrylic sweat
of a big-sister, a gentle teacher, a smiling scolder:
And what if I do?

Shall I be a specimen 

Or set precedents?

And how can I count and thank:

All the almost lovers,

All the hands which shared their warmth

and helped me circulate the truth?

Those rueful souls,
Whose eyes saw me from their corners
and passing glances,
With sufficient distance to see the metabolized me; 

When I only saw up-close, 

as a parent who cannot see the new inches of child-bones

The little girl I was originally, 

with a little voice, 

wondering impatiently:

if she has yet a heart of a woman. 

I must also thank,
The lovers of whom I

have meticulous count
For leading my growth and sharing
their food. I don't think
Dinner is a coincidental tradition of courtship.
Some lovers have nurtured me, even if not to see,
but equally importantly, to be
a welcoming home to 

the heart of a woman.

Yes,
I think I do have one:
a heart of a woman.
A soul that is grown,
no, not fully,
but certainly enough to belong
to a woman.