The N word
A dustbin snorts
its sorrows onto
the bosoms of sleeping dogs
A lover,
gone haywire,
from the loaded lawns
of his unmowed heart
leans on the trembling lips
of the garbage truck,
while a monk, old and sad,
gargles with the guilt in his eyes
“Follow the lines
on the palms of this debris”
burning masks of people
buried inside sewage pits
tragedy tethered
to the humid nerves of children
wrapped in the shawls of hunger
a giant puppet,
skin made from mirrors
of abandoned homes,
clothed in un-torn patches,
stitched together with silence,
from the wardrobes of raped women
tears of the dead gallows
their eyes forced open
by the thumbs of a resting republic
time, shaped like a half moon,
hidden by mothers
in the solitary confines of mortal hope
waiting for sons, inside unmarked graves,
“what did you bring for me?”
“vacant hours,
unoccupied”
moist kisses of mourning darlings
each born, from a different part of Brahma,
like streets in distant cities
joined only for a funeral parade
shrieks of a student
who never learnt
how to tie a rope
to a fan frozen with grief
“if not life,
teach us, at least, death”
these stories kept piling
one after the other
on top of the lover
like autumn leaves
dropping onto the pyre
of poisoned feet
the garbage truck
still looks full
A graveyard of stars
the sky doesn’t need
to shine or to sing
a sky whose moon is exiled
to a land full of chinar leaves
smelling of letters announcing death
that never reached the loved one’s breast
a sky whose clouds disappear into caves
for fear of a rainbow that never comes
and of lonesome poems
that never stop
“What do we call this sky?”
“A nation”