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. 

I, INTERNATIONAL.

“Mama, why do they call coriander cilantro?”

“We call it that too, sometimes.”

“No, it’s Chinese parsley.”

“That sounds like medicine!”

“Only if you get your medicines from the Hakim.”

“Those are witch-doctors, but Ayurveda is a real science.”

“India never even had witches. Hakims are just herbalists.”

“Something has to give: 
     tourists spend exorbitantly for those homeopathic sugar-pills.”

“Whatever you say, but none of that stuff lead to fMRIs.”

“Maybe it did. Even if they don’t publish about it, allopathists still eat it!”

“You know that coriander is actually medicinal right? 
     There’s empirical evidence.”

“Yes. Grandmother used to put kothimbeer on swellings,
     and they went down right away.”
    “Is that coriander? The guy at the bodega calls it dhaniya.”

“Google says they’re both Hindi; just like English has two words for it.”

“And it’s not a bodega. He’s a street vendor.”

“Sabzi-wallahs can be street vendors or not—”

“Mine comes over if I text him; beats the queues at Reliance FreshMart.”

“—Thela is what we call it. Yes, and it’s healthier, straight from the farm.”

“That’s a cart. A street-cart.”

“Well, it’s not exactly a cart…”

Evergreen Creepers

New creeps up,

Behind your ears,

Over you shoulder.

You will hear yourself-

In someone else's voice.

Smile, with a pained heart:

Pending disapproval,

And the elusive, 

skating-rink which is acceptance. 

When new creeps up:

Love yourself like you never could.

Who else is there to love? 

The time of hope and butterflies

Has flown too far away, 

Just like you have.

Horizons are just lines today, 

They are not borders that represent:

Fresh starts from withered heights, 

Where life continues, stubbornly on. 

Yet, when new creeps up, 

You too should be onwards. 

Pointed ahead, heedless of the fact that 

Change never tells you:

That it's the person standing right behind you, 

In every forsaken supermarket line.

Yes, 

Old friends are old questions.

Or, suddenly in your hand

Metal is a savior

From empty conversation; 

In rooms that are portraits of

Nostalgia, not truth. 

New creeps up

and asks difficult questions:

Maybe I'm really a cat person

Maybe I never was in love 

I don't know if I'll ever be?

There are no answers. For:

When it innocuously knocks, 

You will find out:

Lovers are worn concepts,

Carpets, who see too much footfall.

Cats are transient multitudes 

Of lives plagued with

Ifs and buts. 

New creeps up: 
It saunters over, to help you realize

That home lies 
in two or many places.

Your heart's somewhere in between the

Polar forces

of familiarity. 

The forces that take form in all those

Invisible waves and teleported voices,

They seem to repel

All the warm bodies with foreign accents, 

Who home vitality in their strange cadence.

Yes:

Gravity is meaningless, 

when new discreetly arrives.

New creeps up, and

There are no easy decisions.

Time won't stand still,

Not even for me

(Not even in a daylight-saving land).

But as a cold, shrewd, kindred soul once said:

Regardless of which (equally) fatigued path you tread, 

Tomorrow is always a new day. And

Every uncaged bird will tell you that there is

Agony in bearing an untold story. 

Let me say:

There is nothing more excruciating 

Than conceiving an unlived life. 

So be polite and greet her, 

when new creeps up. 

Speechless

Watchful, as a hawk above a golden field, 

I see myself in your arms. 

It is a dream I cannot shake, 

A thought that once could have passed; 

But now has settled, 

For the long stay. 

Frost-- the world has ended in ice today:

Yes, and your bitter cold is silent. 

Frozen words are sharp stalactites, 

Unseen, they still pierce the heart. 

Yet, I ask: who ever arrived 

that did not depart?

Let us be on our way, and

gone. 

Dinner with the only Greek Puritan

Dear, dear boy: 

Come on over. 

Sit down. 

Have a drink?

12 years aged, 

It’s not the only icy beast 

In this warm, warm room. 

Here, I like silk ties; 

You’re wearing a sweater, 

Your jacket is leather, 

The clothes aren’t striped, 

But your forehead is furrowed. 

It’s my mistake, 

Really—

I made you up more than I listened. 

A man’s locution in a boy’s voice, 

Bellbottoms hugged your fecund thighs. 

How was I to know that I 

would be nervous?

That it would not be me, sitting there? 

No, no, not I, but the meager

shadow 

(of lucky, lucky me)

across the table from you?
Tomorrow's headlines won't read:

"Anxious artist meets her creation.”

It’s a wonder, but

despite it all, 

I'm almost head-over-heels.

That--
Or I’m just dizzy from all the walking.

With you, I will: loiter and amble--

greengrass-over-hill. 

But only 

If you bring:

The polka-dotted scarf, 

The bauble-lipped snicker, 

Your eyes’ lascivious glimmer--  

Indeed, my faith did flicker:

Be true- was this our very own last supper?

Are you the apostle holding the knife?
And am I rich with unspent coin?
Or was it never supper at all:
Did we merely consume a most ordinary dinner,
Of strange sustenance that only made us thinner?
(Were you also cursed with fanciful expectations?)

Really— 

Who could ever know? 

I, for one, never knew-
To me, you
were (presently, or perhaps never?)
The ironic fertilizer of my fields:
A hardworking mule, my favorite muse--
Always busy, inciting all the words.
Good! In fair exchange,
I offer you-
Reap my succulence, this sweet fruit:
My (catalyzed) literacy. 

To be sure, it inevitably is
the way of men and Gods:
To come and go.
The fairer ones:
We linger and kiss,
Virtuous, just, until--
The only dilemma is posed.

Alas! 

You are not an easy problem to solve.
But really—
Who could ever have known?

My good sir, please tell me:

Where is Aphrodite when you need her?

Oh! 

We both know:
I am no king of Cyprus.

But be my Galatea and bear me Paphos?

(Secretly, I’ll admit I’m concerned more with the process

than creation.)
Jesus!

Let me not fawn over a deafeningly silent rock!

I console, love with my soul, I understand,

(Lesser, I am consoled, loved and understood.) 

But you’re the oddest oddity, and--

I have quite the collection.