36 Degrees.

They spoke quickly.
In crisp hoarse voices, like butter on fresh brown bread, liberated of bicarbonates, they seemed to be more like organic carbon components, that combine, like heroin.
They walked in short confined mechanical army steps.
Then the fusion of finding their being in its essence.
Pride and Power.
Army cuts were suddenly wildly grown in the Power of not being questioned.
Top buttons were undone, sometimes intertwined in its fabric were stains reeking of cheap whiskey, lolling down their rugged chins.
Or maybe the world was never ready to acknowledge the hidden punk lurking in the very intrinsic value of the living plasm successfully increasing their audacity bestowing them with longevity.

She was waiting, trying to paint a dainty look over her face.
The effort was some what like an erased portrait with intricate expressions drawn and re - drawn, and erased vigorously and incomplete.
Her eyes were not like the smudged line of perfectly applied kohl, that spoke of a lover's lust, but that of the very victim imposed to forced lust.
The had further left dry smudges lower, on her upper cheek, dabbed by the salty tears that evaporated, exothermic, fired by bad memories.

Blood shooting through throbbing veins fueled by consumption of alcohol right through the cornea of the eye

It was like waiting for a cold morning to pass by as you feel your body tighten up in a warm spasm as noon creeped by.
Pausing and replaying a song.
And while the click of the button sounded pause, you quickly heard a dog howl in the distance, being kicked away by a pedestrian for coming in his way.
And after that you don't bother pausing again.

The song was now blinding every other sound.
Like being lead into a plethora of white sound till your ears tear into your inner drums and resonate in your head, like a twitching dying insect, grappling with air to build an epitaph of dust that would dissolve in the air and then fall to death.


Her eyes were as blank as could be.The white throbbing pulp was yellow due to exposure.
The was a slight dust in the air.
Quite claustrophobic.

The whiff of massacre in the air.

The prowling fear around the corner.
Yes, her, doing a swirl around the pillars, in those loosely flowing ruby red silks.
Once a flag of shimmering white.
Now soaked in red blood.
Shriveled in neglect.

As she looked on by, still not a step farther.
She saw the last of the burnt flag, brought down.

The flavor of the atmosphere was ubiquitous.
It reeked of the pungency of a ripped apart conscience seering in the bitterness and forced pleasure of the dirt of drunken breath.
The irony of a bone marrow fucked filthily and left to smear itself in the nothingness of want.
Wrung and clawed like a piece of clothing used to clean the floors.
Soaked in a faint smell of putrid flesh and phenol.
becca' screamed and jumped off the terrace.
The pudgy baby in her arms, flew into the air, right in tow.

Those bullets in the air.
Right through the tonsils, the mercenary rip of, off, the glottis.
The dark veiled pink womb, sometimes, covered by the white of milky skin.
The dead body's of haplessly slaughtered women, made to be carved intricately, repeatedly pleasured forcefully while they swallowed bullet after bullet begging for their respect.
A shallow gruff laugh of clawlike teeth, waiting to shear sheep, in the hard cold fungus smelling air, made so by the rugged pack of religious army.

Uncle Homer
His dog was shot through the upper jaw and left in its own fly swarmed pool of blood on the freshly moved lawn, heavily freckled by plaster and cement powder.
Foam from the sofas, and his jade weaved english coats lay in shreds.
They had gunned the place down during evening tea.

Aunt Helen and her flower beds.

But she hid.
Ara.
Like a glowering worm.
Twitching in its grave.
Flickering.
Not wanting to explore the outside in fear of being crushed before the moon disappeared.
The butterflies were more like moths, now.
Hovering over the stench.

They had come home too, she hid.
She was best.

She overheard them talk in a language that sounded mixed with spit and grime of a heavily accented tone.


She shuffled past scruffily.
Like a quiet spider, rubbing its miniscule hair against a surface lucky enough to feel.
She'd have said daffodils, but running in directions that sounds propel from to get to safety was one of the most difficult tasks given.
She had to pass her predators to get away from them.

She hadn't known or cared much.
But they talked about survival.
About men in divine cloaks who swept away misery and so as to who's misery was most swept away.
They were butchers.
Brutal.
Bloodshot eyes.
Dry lips.
No compassion , just a cold demeanor to conquer over anything that was ever inanimate.
Some said it is wrong to please the desire, sin.
Some said don't get attached to what was made to combat desire.
So what, now?
They killed each other.
Like that.

She couldn't care less.
She just had to run scottfree.
Pay a price for wrath and then the agony of the environment all victims of wrath.

She walked through the debri of house after house, through chimneys, seeing naked women.
Blood soaked white wash smelling of turmeric and cinnamon.
Sometimes, a half dead baby with a ripped state of physical extreme unbearable to the naked mind.
Susceptible to the feasting maggots of discord upon being subjected to such gore.

She walked by.
She couldn't cry, it was a long way, she had to keep a steady breath.
A quick rest in peace for a good soul.
A mother here, butchered with her blossoming womb.
By those, butchers.
They could kill.

Her knuckles were quick enough to curdle though, at sights.

She called them that.

They had almost retreated.

War

Those crackling flames of the bonfire seemed to create an invisible effervescence as it burnt with the air that was wafting the smell of evening ivory flowers.
The trees of which had branches on which sat the finest winter songbirds in the color of the darkest of pure blood, the one waiting to burst out of the finest most polished tip of feminine demure.

She was waiting for the first batch of birds to create a shadow over the porch.
She looked, intently.

She would pierce the tip if she could smell choler in the air.
The whiff of sweat trickling down the labor beaten chiseled features, down like a wave rolling out in the shore, before beating into the boulders courageously yet with the poise of a practiced high class masseuse, the luck of the sweat drop she thought, rolling down very much like the gleaming ball of oyster extracted pearl when she unclasped her pearl necklace and it slid in the time wasted after the unclasping along the mighty curve of her coveted bosom, the sweat drop rolled, in thrifty articulate gallops along the cuts of his bodice, and they'd smoothen out into a run disappearing into his loins.This made her swell in delight.
And the songbirds coo'd as the giant tree shed a blossomed ivory flower a little away from her lap as her long legs curled in a chasm of prayer for him.

Yes, she prayed.

His eyes were sore from the mud in the air.
He was ready to rip, to be ripped.
A familiar roar that had till now threatened the nights of his love, as she lay limp in his arms.
Breathing in quick huffy moans into the circle of his mouth.In the cold mornings of early winter as she tossed in bed.
Clutching him like a stolen prize ready to be sacrificed to the throes of the games of the world, almost anticipating in her frail mind of a tragic end that fate offered her before she could yawn in her sleepy fit.
He crackled his whip, lashing it fiercely in the air.
Creating vacuum.
Atoms whipped in a whirlpool of nothingness.
In place, rose and fell ounces of sand.
Cruising his body like a fleet of royal security.His eyes were shut.
He could hear better then.
And he did, the heavy drone of hot salivated breath that wafted carnivore massacre, he could hear the panting of the pride of the mightiest of animals, the lion , his predator, so he could fetch her the herbs, she would anoint on all the armors and shields in their abode.
It lay across the crowded growth of wild foliage.
Right after the endless stretch of a moat that the animal had found its way around.
In a quick circular movement he would be elliptically parallel to his victim.

He laughed a cough.
His eyes were still shut.


To rip, he thought.

The lion braced its stride in heavier paw shuffles as it eyed its grand offerings of the day, and chased so as to enjoy the smell of crafted flesh before it let the human gamble its sharper animal instincts.

Her fingers tapped in a uniform dance, one in succession of the other.
She suddenly sat still.
She breathed from the ivory flower, the one he'd have put in her hair as he planted wet kisses over her sun dried gleaming skin, draped over the softest of the broadest womanly shoulders.
She broke into an involuntary pink flush.
She knew how accurately he had studied distance and acumen, the bull's eye.
What was more, he though not a disciplinarian was crisp enough to follow these principles in the sparkling moonlight that painted the crystal green ocean as her shoulders were grazed by sand on the deserted oasis , undiscovered , as she made love in nature's crest.
He'd come back to her.
It was just the ticking of seconds of his absence that made her so impatient.
She felt like a scavenger searching in an untread wilderness with thorns hedging the path that secured her from it.
He had measured its distance, as she kissed his bruises.

Her mind was in a kaleidoscope that filtered reality and surrealism that dissolved in her own construed apprehensions.
She believed.
The branches were aflame.
The songbirds were taking off into the evening horizon.
But believing in disbelief as she saw again the intact branches justified her senses.

And in a shrill short cry of frustration she tore open her evening silk coat, inside of which was the finest laced corset in the color deeper than the evening red of the sullen sky.
Animal instincts.
As she stepped into the pond across their backyard.
Cradled among oak trees, like her between his arms, straddled.
She couldn't wait.
The animal in her had run away into the wilderness, far away.
She immersed into the scented pond nurturing flower beds that infested their magic in its womb.
She bathed in it.

The evening air was cool and a fresh shower of sand enveloped the air.
Just following the scents that his olfactory acknowledged.
He was tired of lashing the feather weighted crocodile skinned whip polished and wound in sheaths of finer skinned leather.
The clouds eclipsed by the fleet of returning birds, told him, she was in the pond, by now.
He was man.
She made him the animal.

The lion roared.
He had had enough.
He ran straight into the direction opposite of the wind cutting in zig zags as he jumped onto the back of the lion.
He would ride.
He would ride hell.
Through the animal's hell.
The King of all animals.

He wound the whip into swift coils with quick withdrawal movements and ducked to fall onto the ground and roll over to his feet.
As the animal lay leg tied.

He could wait for a tease.
He would like one.
And he quickly thought about the lion.
In front of him.
Struggling, almost free.
He ran up, straight over its back and landed like a dart on the pivot of the lion, his feet, and he lunged forward in the air and struck the throat of the lion as he jumped backward onto solid ground.

He walked into normalcy.

She stepped out of the pond.
Soaked in sweet scented sticky juices.
She would dress up in the finest of creamish silks woven in spring.
And wait like the most beautiful ice queen waiting to melt in the sweat of labor.

And she dismissed the arrival of a potential future storm cloud.
She bent a full arch and touched her toes, straightening her toe ring, woven and flattened iron carved to look like flowers, she moved her hips outward and pouted while smacking her lips wet.

She knew he was coming.
The air had a distant smell of sand.
The galloping of a horse.
A click.
Thuds.

And in a quick turn she was lifted off her feet as she locked lips.
The ones that met the deepest of secrets and stirred them for some more.

She stepped back.
Made a face.

Raised a brow.
Beckoning a war cry.

She invited him with the most tunefully heavy voice clouded by a crisp mysticism waiting to be shed.
She said to him "Make war"

He blinked.
The roars of pleasure were long decorating the air.
War.

Of polythene and burns.

There lay an ashtray, full.
The most peculiar, being, this recently smoked cigarette that had been stubbed in an angle and was still standing tall in the ashtray.
The others on close scrutiny, looked brutally stubbed and the ash was brimming.
There was a damp strong smell of nicotine and burnt rizzlas.

There was an echo.
A human stir seemed to disturb the only motion in the room, the motion of air and aroma.
The stir, was more of a click.
A sharp, pitched click.
Precise.
It was him.
His leather boots, their buckles clicked as he lifted both his feet and placed them on the table.
Somehow there was adequate space to accommodate his legs on the table, amongst the piles of paper and plastic cups and the drawers of the old table, had empty cig packets, filled with ash and burnt out cigarettes.

This was a ploy of his subconscious mind.
The empty packs that is.
They were for the days, when the income was barren and it was best smoking the smoked damp old cigs.

The old telephone rang.
And as it did, the chipping off paint on the wall, threatened to fall over the floor, spread with sheets of polythene.
The smell of polythene almost hit any person who walked into the room.
The only problem being not many walked in.
Those who did, most certainly didn't walk out.

One reason not to smoke cigars, was his obsession with its larger flaming butts that might fall over the polythene and burn it.
He wasn't a cleanliness freak or worried about holes.
But he couldn't add a more pungent smell, of burning plastic into the room.
There were too many smells and enough to counter its putridity with the pungency of other choking aromas.
So he smoked cigs.
The other and more important reason being, him not being able to afford cigars.
He didn't care enough to, he thought to himself.

I mean he had a small wood cabin up in the woods.
Just around the bend, the steeper edge that people never explored because it was off the edge of the cliff.
It was hidden and he still had a view of the occasional normal life that he was supposed to keep a timely check, of.
He didn't murder or anything.
Not the whole I kill holidaying strangers because he was deprived and lonely.
Though he'd never been able to figure their loud chirps about the amazing weather.
It was always like this here.
Cold and windy.

The cool wind circled his ears.
A warm breath later, he inhaled.
Some clean air.
Bereft of the contempt and prejudices of people.
That mattered more to him.
Than the "ooo its such a chill I'm getting goosebumps" shrieks from brazen, drunken groups of happy tourists.
They didn't care he thought.
He drank too.
Every friday after he sold a few boats and bears carved using his knife collection, he did that through the week, on friday's he sold them to the small population of people who came walking from their houses in the higher altitudes to sell berries and spices and scents of wild flowers boiled and filtered manually.

They paid him enough for liquor and ciggs and he had a lot of money saved from his earnings.
He didn't remember much about how it sustained though.
But he was always good at calculation, he'd like to think.
He came back afterward walking in a dizzy as he opened the last bottle after huffing and puffing his way back that had now reduced to occasional quick coughs, because of experience.
No development, only change.
Whatever he thought as he glugged the last ounces of beer, he liked finishing all the rum outside of home and throwing the bottles.
He left beer for home.
Smart men drink beer.
He itched for just some more rum.
There was a bottle buried in the earth, it was way cooler underground.
The mud.
But it was below the polythene and the fat arabian rug, these were rare bottles, he had designed the house with an inbuilt fridge, these bottles had labels and tags and sometimes the bags had confetti and tiny paper hearts that had made him laugh like a maniac at the sad situation.
He stole all of most of these wares and antiques in his humble abode from occasional tourists whom he watched while he basked in the sun, against the strong tree bark or cutting some branches of em mighty giants.
The women groups usually fancied him, they occasionally waited and ogled at his mud stained body glistening in the chill of the summer sun piercing through it.
The families inquired and stopped to drink water and attend to nature's call.
They were around, about, the cabin was well concealed.
And when he said so, it was.
But he was here and there, everywhere.
Almost like a ravaged animal, but with instincts of a prey more than a predator.
It never hurt to be safe, he'd think, while he rolled some of the best marijuana which those make shift business people from the higher mountains got.
Sometimes they'd give him mushrooms in the monsoon.
He got out less then and it rained a lot.
So he was busy for the next few days.
Being sane was never so easy.
And in summers he was on detox.No alcohol and no grass or any herbal shit.

He made a trip to the higher mountains and lived with him or them.Those friendly fanatics who'd give anything to be there.
He showed off his stationery and boots and colorful laces tied to his bag.
Red, Green , Yellow, it was those childish whims.In town, back then, he tied his loose hair in these bands and laces.
He told them about stories that he'd heard from families that stopped by near the bend.
He never even thought of his wood din in fear of someone envying his comforts and inviting themselves.
He had the ability to be accepted, mould, escape and be excused all the whiles, he did grace them.

It was easier to tell those country cops that you're a cool business tycoon on an occasional trip to collect resources to procure betterment of mankind.
Latest mags and chick things from suitcases and two three books on autos were enough to ensure them I was indeed a special highly confidential person.
That too even they'd never found his spot.
He'd gone occasionally to find them following the women into their holiday.

He just looked and smoked and then once in a while went up and acknowledged himself.
They usually had original cigs and rizzlas and they were ready to trade for glossy magazines.

The women were most fascinated by him.

It was something about her.
She waited back one year on her yearly once trip, with her girlfriends.
This time she just got herself lost and she followed me.

It was a bad day she had chosen.
She waited till he had gone in, sauntered through the windows opening the drapes to let the last of evening light come in as she watched him take off this pair to get into a lighter pair of clothes.
And she said she came in because of the light, the burning lanterns, she was cold outside.
He looked at her intently, he was amused and merely shocked to say anything more than welcome her, acting appeased by the only other hint of human existence on this patch of land ever since him.
He'd not known anger in a long time.

He'd been pleased but he soon wanted her out.
But he had a hunch it wasn't going to be that easy.

She talked excitedly like a small bird.

He remembered Sylvester swatting tweety with a big thin netted raquet.

Suddenly he took a another puff of the customary does of herbal leaves.
Nicotine was passe.

As he woke up he saw a knife and a few shroom tops sliced on the table.
And a beer bottle was empty on the floor.

Now he remembered.

It was crazy.
His throat was dry and nose was cold he habitually reached for his lighter as he shook his head as if shaking off all that ever existed.

She insisted, he refused.
Then there was a tiny physical tiff.
Stupid wild cat.
He had smacked her across the face after he'd deluded her to stop beating her fists against him to respond positively to her overtures of love as he kissed her passionately, holding his fingers firmly in a band across her neck.
And then a twist.

He glugged the last of beer.
She had acetone in her bag as he rummaged to make sure she wasn't a minister's fanatic punk daughter.
He had mixed it with beer froth.
And he convinced himself she was maniacal.
Who the hell followed a man who wasn't even leading you by sweet talk?
Women now a days, he thought.
As he had wrapped her body in polythene as he strangled her while he pressed her thigh.
She fainted.
Stupid Women.
He touched her curly soft locks and was lost in the aroma of a woman.
he ashed the polythene and he tried lighting it out before he decided he needed another swig.
And as soon as he recovered from acetone and beer he looked hazily at her and saw her hair burn with the polythene, he had watched the fire burn.
He was always in awe of fires.
He always appreciated the destruction in it.
Now he did the same.
But it was too late and he had witnessed what he could have avoided.

He took a few more swigs.
He just wanted a peaceful life.

He walked quickly to her.
Stabbed her in the stomach twice and spat at her legs.
Then he inhaled another breath of smoke.

She had ruined his peace.

He slept on his bed annoyed.
The last few swigs before he rolled some marijuana on honey blunts.
He was accustomed to initiate the defiance of gravity as he rolled while lying down and puffed away the stale one.

And this time he woke up, he did know.
He could make out.
He saw her body lying burnt in polythene and neatly beside the body was a stack of belongings, valuable even.

He wondered about not recollecting any instances nor did he identify with the brutal instincts that could have been associated with this act.

And now he was sitting cross legged on his arm chair.

He made a quick introspection.
He was not schizo he was sure.
But there couldn't have been a zombie walking into his cabin.
He recollected the woman entering and then a the smell of flesh.

The same flesh, the flesh of a woman.
That he had left behind with his earlier identity in the city for life.
He saw her.
Her jaw line was burnt and looked smeared.
It didn't make him queasy or sick.
It just flooded him with love.

He dry laughed at the irony.

But he went on and touched her skin.
He let himself drown in its tingling.
He was washed over by her compassion toward him.
He was a curious bitch, he couldn't deny.
But she was the only one, who ever made it.
To this.
Even the cops had never been here.

He sniffed her hair and then quickly poured a glass of wine from the bottle that was in her bag.
He discovered the sudden tide of love.
That had drained into the whirlpool of his stoicism.
It suddenly rose like a black sea serpent and washed him away.

He stared at her and his gaze could not but admire her sharp but round features.

He paced the floor as he drained more wine.

And then he knew what was to be done.

Those many years ago, when he left the city to find life, he'd not known he'd do this.
He was excited at his wicked idea.
He almost felt like the american psycho who was passionate but ruthless in love.

He went to his arm chair and folded his legs over his desk.
He burnt the weed in his pipe.
Today called for pungency, not indulgence.
He'd choke himself to trip.

What a trip, he though, of life.

He smoked some more from his pipe.
The burning embers looked like shooting stars.
His life was the sky he told himself.
He was the Sky.

As his gaze was blurry and he could make out her silhouette on the floor.
He laughed at life.
He looked up at the roof, hoping to as if mock the sky.

And suddenly he flicked the pipe.
With the ease of practice.
Onto the floor.
And there, it was quicker than the fire.
The polythene whizzed into tiny spurts of fire and as if immediately to intensify the happenings it oozed and smelled.

He took quick satiated whiffs.
The room caught fire.
He almost wanted to cringe at the thought of burning alive.
But he could walk out, if he wanted to.
He had nothing to live on and beside this woman symbolized love.
Of all that was left.

And he sat himself dizzy as he watched everything burn.

Slowly as the log cabin threatened to give way.
He got up and walked straight out.

So much for love of a woman.
And he walked out the cabin, leaving his only most recollected impressions of life behind.

He walked straight into the bend.
The fog was too thick to tell.

And he walked like he had to reach a destination.
He walked.

The only difference being he'd walked off the cliff and now he had this smile of notorious victory as he let himself be compelled by gravity and all that there was that frustrated the living day lights out of him.

He fell, his last and final fall.
He chose to.

Tat

Those lemon drops
you swallow down your throat
once of all
where my tongue pierced
your soul.
The midst of your neck.

Then looking down to the ground
sniffing the distant autumn air
I see ants stack their grains
for winter.
The winter in your heart.
Let me take winter away.
Slowly
As I frequent your dreams
and show you
mine, from last summer.

The summer.
A bloom of a flower.
The blossom of my petals
shrouded
in peels of laughter and
those dainty quick coughs
to follow by a whiff of promises
you gave me, then.

Promises.
They bloomed like those periwinkle flowers
those that perched on the most curved branch.
Like the arch of your brow
as you twitch in facial pleasure
as I run a wet toe across your thigh.

Wet.
Like those, then, sleepless monsoon nights
spent in vapors of eucalyptus
trying to wash away in its aroma
and of rain soaked mud, the wet moistness
of my cheek.Writhing.
Which you in winter took away.
As of a fur cocoon
Of the imagination of a slightly opened mouth
That's how you make me wet.

And how could the nectar of honey in summer be sweeter
when all the honey I tasted was in winter.

And to all those porcelain sheets to be washed at home.
That were taken out to fulfill the Portia in me.
I crinkle my nose as I dust the wine glasses.
Each sparlking to be lipped.
Cupped.
wine, in the goblet.
now I rack them back onto the shelf.
Below which the fishes in the fish tank
spectated
some mischief in the air.
As you stepped in and out.
Of the kitchen.

The kitchen of our home.

To those verses that never reached paper.
They were fulfilled, before a plea, was written.

And star fish squiggle
and the want to butter their pores.
drown into the sea shore
as I wait to kill the sun.

Those days

Floating in a shirt bigger than my requirements.
I walked into the cafe, half a bar, almost.
I picked the corner next to the ladies washroom, my only consciously chosen comfort in the room.
The beer glugged to wash my teeth from the way home to the beginning of my day.
The beginning of my day as a publicly announced loner.
I tried.
I lit up and watched the orange turn to blue and then I blew white fumes.
My vision blurred and sooner than I knew it was greyer.
I really don't recollect seeing it turn grey.
I amused myself in the frustration of not getting a lighter beer.I liked starting off with a bud, they're cheaper in wine shops and more flat.
They can make you smell nasty by the end of the day if you didn't wash your breath off with rum and vanilla cigars.
Now some more draught, before I saw the latest english flick to satiate my guilty pangs of the chilly air around the seats of sterling and regal, I almost burnt my lip with the cigarette accustomed to inhaling itself in a exact copy of the previous roll of the lip while I cursed metro for becoming a multiplex, I'd have really paid extra for the buttered pop corn and its nerve numbing aroma.
Coming back to me not wanting to go see the movie, but the want to sit peacefully in an empty ac'd hall with crooning couples that rapidly flashed interest in the steamy bits of the movie and then indulged in some show and foreplay, sometimes it was so disgusting that they found baby talk a turn on.
I just want some peace, really.
But it was okay, it made me feel sick in the stomach about wasting saliva, Id chewed my mints, always precautionary to my surroundings, I liked being that.
Maybe.
Or maybe I was an angry young woman gone punk in the midst of menarche.
I liked my beers, man.
I can just drain more than you, really.
And I don't want to rangeen aaj ka mood.
Thankyou.
That's the thought as it approached time for the wandering deliriums that excruciatingly were in the air because of the peeks of angry grunts of pleasure from my fellow peers.Who would soon be graceful with their presence upto a point of intolerable nausea.
I was busy wondering why Independence and Republic are dry days, Yes, Gandhiji.
But would it have been different if the extremists were given they're rightful credit for involvement in the freedom struggle to an undecipherable beginning of the win over a known rigorous force?
The ironical part being the inspiration from this came from an unknown source that was capable of excavating emotions ingrained and fertilized to a point of eutrophication.
My religion.
My religion says oil the chicken to an extent that its dead body is oozing spiced and tangy masalas and they plainly let the flame work its magic to lighten the skin to a golden beauty of a crust.
CRUSH THEM.
So now we are independent and I can walk into a bar to drink my beer but I'd still be a woman who gets beaten by a brother or is in an abusive relationship.
No, I'm not a feminist when it comes to taking stances.
But if you must be a hypocrite justify its existence to the point of the roots of its being parasital to your own.
Not everyone woman at the bar table is a score.
Not a perfect score.
Not if she's your sister.
Maybe for a sister's friend, for some fleeting respectable thoughts.
The dart free with the crates of haywards, its board hung neatly over the wall, free of marks.
Its spotless existence saddened me to an end that I felt it'd not known how it was to be itself.
I'm emotional, of course.
IT refelcts in every sip of beer to drain my dry throat.

I've been sitting on the table at Leo's and my pencil nib broke because of the story I started off with.
Its shaped perfectly in my head that my pen broke in the vigor to complete.
The incapability eased out as I drained some beer and sharpened my pencil as I smiled at the cute white skinned aliens in my bubble that they were stretching to accommodate themselves, and it made me happy enough as they smiled on and borrowed my lighter while I drained my beer and scraped on to my lined page."

Denial.
Summer of 69.

.Running in Circles

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Breecher Stove


A part of me died with the book.
I was twelve then.
I used to coach in the summer for handball.
I played under 16 girls, as the goalie.
I think I was fit to go to the Nationals.
I was even a year back.
To enter nationals under 15 to sprint.
I trained from seven to twelve, in the summers and on alternate days, I was at Priyadarshini Park training from five to eight.
Muscles that throbbed when they flexed.
Perfect hamstrings curved under the knee.

I wasn't allowed to dance, no marching in the school squad.
Because I was to be stiff to run.
Run from the start into the evening chill.
Bombay was much cooler then.
The sea at Napean Sea Road.
People came there holding hands, some with their children.
A few of my friends with parents.

I watched the yellow wagtail migrate in their group, flying in the light blue evening sky.
They looked like a constellation does, pitted against a pitch black sky.
And then I bent to touch my toes, stretching before I took a start and flexing each leg on the line, I arched my back in continuous flow and then concentrated my weight on my toes, lifting my hips a little off the air above my raised knees, like a prowling leopard sprinting to catch a fiercely horned gazelle.

I usually got the inner bend.I loved the curves.
They were the best to win the race with no competitor lurking behind the shadow of me, a few meters away from my back.
The outest circle was where the synthetic smoothed into a thin flat patch of cement railed by metal and it then merged in to the grass, almost always freshly watered.
And in a few seconds changed into a sandy blur of sand in the sand box where we usually took our marks on a thinner synthetic track for long jump.

Yes, I ran in circles.
It was a five hundred meter circle.
Warm ups, bounding, from long synthetic tracks to short cotton shorts that covered my throbbing thighs.
Grass spikes, track spikes.
Grass spikes were for friday's, the most tiring and most fun day of tearing muscle over muscle for eons.
It was when we bargained 2 kilometers of running into oblivion for an hour of intense power training and then a long game of handball.
I played goalie even then.The days Ghosh didn't come.
With Ghosh, he was nineteen, training to get into an engineering college, I think he said calcutta or so I assume cause he's Ghosh.
The other times I scored giving a slip to the opposing defense.
I was good at shooting cause I was good at blocking.
The boys usually had their tees off by half time , and we all played as it rained.
With Savio Sir, our coach, helping the girl's win.
He said we were better, much more skilled.
He had two children, Gasper and a little Girl.They came over on fridays to go out with him as we all left slowly after eight thirty.
I was traveling with two of my other friends at the age of twelve alone all the way by bus.It was a big thing for us all.
Mostly accompanied by a friend's servant, or mother.But we were to confident to acknowledge that.
We got off and then I'd walk them home taking a longer cut so I could watch the light's at Marine Drive or maybe watch all those college kid's smoke in the lanes inside that were the quickest short cuts home.
I usually took the longer.
Walking on the yellow dividers on the road that I imagined to be an island which looked prettiest in the latest of evening as the traffic lights went quickly by, blurring my vision because of its speed and then the heady feeling of seeing darkness and light.
This was a normal day.
On school days practise was on alternate days.
In winters in was more rigorous and less playing. No more, handball sessions.
Just warm ups and aerobics.
Then sprints.
We ran in circles even then, in rain, in winter, under the setting summer sun.
Being asthmatic and wheezing cause of strenuous work outs were suddenly jumbled.
But the faith that came with Running in Circles, was a pleasure.

As a flight of yellow wagtails colored the blue sky, this winter was different.
High fevers and continual breathing problems kept me from participating in the Nationals.
I barely scraped through district that year.
Just two silvers.

But there were others who won the gold.
Other friends.

After that I just attended summer training at MMRDA and a free diluted Rasna before we left.
We paid fifty bucks for all of summer which was almost the amount we paid to get there on more relaxed days.
I played goalie on the first day try outs and picked handball and my friends played basket ball.
The rest is history that could have been.
Or I would like to think.

My habit of picking words.
Or phrases to describe phases still stays with me.
The first poem I wrote was in fourth grade.

PS: This series is dedicated to myself.
In celebration of coming of age, soon.
In a few days, a few days after the ides of march.

Let us cheat.

There was a stride in his walk.
Like distantly measured piano scales, that get connected to a set strings, same as the acoustics, the longer one, a pitch one octave lower than the shorter.
Like many guitars at one time.The same string played profusely over in a span of time the fingers cannot match.
The inclusion of some what organized distortion, in one instrument.
Usually he almost cruised the land like a road roller, flattening all the muck.
But today he'd hear the clink of her earring, a happy shriek of laughter in wild candor.
Mister Wrungwall was ready to feel a bachelor.

He thought, quite thoughtfully, about Missus Wrungwall, usually he'd be home on all weekdays, peeping in, through the kitchen door.
Then cruise to the sofa, and seat himself while he forced himself to watch news before dinner was served.
On Sundays, he did that four times a day.
Being a dad and working in a job really left no time for anything but a warm cuddle before bed time.
Sometimes they'd talk about the news and religion.
She was intelligent, strikingly so.

But that lucid smoky fragrance of burnt cloves and the black grease smudged across her tiny cat eyes.
No paint or anything.Sometimes her sweet minty saliva glistening on her lips with a tinge of grape lip balm turning the peach a tasty pink.
A pout in the stairway while you hug her close and then hold hands, while you slip your hands into hers and grip it tight.

Missus Wrungwall usually had her head turned to him, smiling while she called out to him over the phone, he supposed, while they decided who'd be home to feed weetalkid, the dog.
And then they'd grab a shower and sit together each poring over their books and research to grow.
To buy finer drapes at the market.
They walked apart and smiled and he chose blue curtains and she'd chosen red.
They came back and the dog had run off behind a bitch and killed itself.
Everything seemed downhill for a while, she said, she was in mourning.Wow, dogs, got funerals?
No evidence, either.No dead body!
Later at night she'd demand foot massages and wild kisses.
Why was there no mourning anymore, its the aversion to sports in women that creates this, their sudden hatred for physical activity.
Then its about chess playing and thoughts.Hmmpf.

He walked out of his cabin for the day, in a stride, not a cruise, mind you.
It was early.
She would always tease him while she made him wait outside her door.He thought.
While he picked her up as she walked straight into his arms.
Then they'd get drunk and leave the apartment as her undone hair fell over her forehead through the tight bun.
Today he was to meet her at the old fashioned bar, they were going to laugh like young lover's gone wild, as she occasionally brushed her hand against his and she pulled a strand or two when he didn't return her mischievous smile.
He never complained, as long as he saw her earring dangle across the silhouette of her neck.
And her lips lap up some liquor, she talked like an excited bird that flew a pitch higher.
And then she'd drain his glass while he was looking away, wondering.

Wondering, Missus Wrungwall and he were sociable, responsible people.
They always left a party or room unlike the hazy image in people's drunk heads, of them, those that maimed public image.
"Tch, tch", he would imagine her say, as they looked upon social mishaps.
And as his thoughts flew to the monotony of daily life and everything that caught up after courtship was over.

The men, usually discussed this hours on end at the golf club.
The long interim between courtship and death.
Marriage.
Commitment, he could hear them echo as they all laughed it off, like a woman would about her fears of looking like a hag.

Though all of it suddenly vaporized as he took a dip into the aura of womanly splendor that surrounded him.
It was her, she was back from the cloak room.
She said, so.
He would agree.
They then talked about the juicy pork that lay on their plates.And innuendos made their head's dizzy, much over rated by the one's unfeeling.
She tossed her hair back as she caught an oaf looking in her way.She just smiled as her lips parted and a glint of sparkling white shone, she clutched his thigh and he placed his hand on hers.

Missus Wrungwall and he usually held hands, maybe.
Thighs and hands on thighs in public were off limits.

As she struggled to fork a green pea off her plate.
He saw her gobble it like a melon and still it missed the curve of depth of her mouth and slid down her v - necked silk blouse.
Plop, he thought he could hear.

The Missus usually ate with acumen of a business personality.
No it really wasn't the snob component.
It was manners.

And as they left the tiny old fashioned bar.
After they had lapped up juices enough to make a dizzy.
He slowly held her waist and she complied as she effortlessly adjusted her gait to his arm around her hips.
And they strolled burying their feet into the silver sand as the moon peeped out to them.
The stealthy moon, he thought.
Wonder if it implied to mock him at this stealthy outing.
And as he was thinking.
She pulled his wrist and then ran over the sand, till she could drop down and be a silver sand queen.

Missus Wrungwall would normally be itchy by sand in her office socks neatly covered by women boots.
Or sandals or those hundred names for shoes that they used.

And as she tumbled over her flowing skirt, that had slits up to the knee.
He helped her up as she pulled him over.
They both lay covered in sand, with the mocking moon.

And slowly she spoke.
"Darling", she squealed.

Suddenly it reminded him of Missus Wrungwall and he couldn't help but smile, a toothy smile.

And as she pulled over to his side and kissed him under moonlight.
He gasped for breath.
And sucked hers to live on.

And they got up, wrapped up in each other's arms they walked toward Mister Wrungwall's now empty apartment.
He entered first, quickly.
She next.
He'd already walked to the kitchen and turned the lights on.
And pulled the curtains, it was late and people peep, he thought.
She drew the upper curtains open, and put out the lights.
And slowly he knew what came next.

The moon seemed distant and the smell of wild weed growing across the shore suddenly was distant too.
He smelt sweat and the faintness of feminine perfume.
And felt moist saliva tingle his skin.


The drapes of the late evening were suddenly put out by the thoughtful government that switched off street lights at nights and left it on all of early morning.
Suddenly it was calm and silent.
Like the peace after acceptance of death of a loved one.
There was fervor of love and candles.

The bathroom latch clicked and he turned toward it, and Missus Wrungwall walked over to his bed.
The sheets were uneven and more creased than they usually are.
And as she pulled him close and he buried his face into her brevity.
He thought of his mother and her comforting odor that made life seem right.
She kissed his forehead, as she always did, on monday mornings.
It was almost time to leave bed and then home for work.

And as he swallowed his spit, he thought of life without Missus Wrungwall.
He swallowed some more spit.
And then was none to swallow.
So he yelped a little woof and she suddenly emerged from behind the rosewood wardrobe.
She came over and held him close.
And he held her.

It was funny how Missus Wrungwall could become her.
The her.
The her, in every man's life.
She was his her.

The Letter.

From the diary of a woman, in love, reassuring her man to fight alone and still be together.
Of support and future valentines.
A poem of fiction not far from reality.

-
and like daggers pierce hearts
maybe needles ought to stop sewing
is it the unraveling of a gauge bandage
like you unwrapped me to comfort
where I can bury my face
chest and aroma of a man so fulfilling
and fueling my feminine clandestine virtues
As you fall like a splash of
silver paint
and from it sprints a leopard
in its lazy stretch
like the woman clad in her bare essentials
I raise my heavy hips
to caress a lion
who ought to devour
and if I said I'd spend planting
poppy seeds in your memory
on a lonely highway
across a distant blue shore
with white seagulls
like the sheets of my bed
as you touched my
ripping it out of the vagina of my
dirty bruised mind.

Then again I would be the woman who sang
happy songs in her head all the time
and the rest of the time
which was it all
was spent keeping ashes together
so that we could reminisce
like a heartbeat
straight out of hell
the need to get out of there
like I smell the zing of
the offering of you
stepping down
a seven fold pedestal
what matters who
just not enough
that eve would become pandora

play with a xylophone
whistle into a pen cap
as I sharpen your pencil
so you can sketch me
in natures crest
beneath a waterfall
of rain drops on cheeks
with eyes oh so tight
washing me into your arms
as you gather me
and hold me straight
into a plethora of amber flames
like a bon fire
of passion
in all its glory
doused by the cold night wind
swooshing through your ears
tingling your nostril
as you batt eyelashes across
my chest,
stepped out of the shower,drenched.
Those drops of amber, colored in her skin, dripped down her back and through her legs.
Touching the most softest of flesh.


-
Of all the past that knocked upon the moonlit door in a house of lonely fears and
some bitterness.
And she stood, walked some more, running,breathless,gathering mist against her cold nose.
A mongrel to a gamut, a set up.
Laid her cards down, milked a few pups, the breed of a lion.
Roared to hear distant echoes from the past. Stopped, looked behind, lost way.
Now she rummages for left overs, they might be wasted morsels, but why complain, we all live a wasted life.
The bits that are loose, not tied.
On bits of torn paper.
Why cant we hold together, the leftover.
-


But she had worn her silk, to hide, what man and monster would fight.

a fruit was peeled
in grandeur of it being the only meal
savored in greed
like eating the best cooked veal.

-

And in the silent crack of a distant
lightning struck upon thy fate
lift me to the heavens

-

I shall give you mighty wings
Aphrodite was jealous alright
How could Medusa win Zeus?

So she cupped a sip
of nectar and swallowed
as she then walked out from
beneath your legs
and all was fine as you
lit the fireplace
and love was made
as a distant evening
spent in Paris
on a gondola with a tuneful
but mournful mandolin
that was intensely followed
by gasps of rhythmic
breaths, exhaled
as lips met
and beneath the pale cheese of moon
slightly burnt on the crust of
a hot pancake
I would cook on a lazy sunday
afternoon
as you tug like a tiny child
at my apron
pleading to rumple the sheets
I just made
what is that compared
or should
it
to the days when my angry
arms grapple
against you as I bite some flesh
and tell you that its my way we'll have
and then shy away like a pussy
who mews so innocently
as I pin you down for some more.
-

Pick up the newspaper
to read
and I shall sniff you up
like a pup
waiting to be fed
pieces of meat
and yelping in delight

-

As a drop of dew
runs moist
by hot breaths
across the satin of covet of skin
across the subtlety of my raised cheek bone
that beckons a kiss
you'll see why that
waterfall washed away
silent moans of pleasure
as you give her a wedding ring.

-

A purr, a lick
and then a lil chase
tail against tail
the cat slyly walks away
as I boil milk to make
us some tea.

-

The tea over which you gave me the woman in me.

-

As the raven coo's
you unleash
my tresses and tame
them as you bury a warm smile
into the fragrance
of jasmine oil and shampoo
doused in menthol cigarettes

-

And as the evening says good bye
and jack and jill
climb up the hill,
I shall climb my bunk bed
and run straight into your dreams
as you sleep in a distant city
yawning
like you used to in my face
and flip me over like a pillow
and bury me like entering my womb
so I can keep us safe there
as I wait for you to come back
so we can frolic
with the garden hose
and run around pretending to talk to birds
about our lil night out like teenagers
the night before
and now back in bed
our separate one's
I shall think of you
as the one who let me sleep
a lil longer
so that the sunlight off, the drapes of my room
that you draped to the end of the wall
that now are aflutter
would wake me up
and then again I shall still think of you
and let me sleep a lil longer.

Till you come back.