Generous

Generic

Generia

And we could pause like sinners

Before we dream the

reverie of engulfing our teeth

Into the luxury of dolled up disenchantment,

Casserole our ineptness, bloated stews of

Street rats and pontification.

I hate us and the way we lick chocolate off our hands,

Smother conscience with our fingers,

We could roll under rugs, sweep

Carpet-stings into plastic bags and

Throw them into the ocean. I hate us,

And the way we riot our lives. Gamble

Our kids. Lets kill them, let’s graze on

What’s underneath.

achilles achilles achilles

come down

i flip my head inside out,

hairballs of my

ancestors’ blood,

clotted methamphetamine,

or articulated deference,

or love,

raging through the veins of our city

like the beads of a rosary

if your ribs are split at the ends its

because you inhale white noise like an addict,

menthol on the porch for your waterlogged lungs.

if you wrung it, the rivers would overflow,

sin for the ambrosia heads of our babies

ounces of my skin, pounds of my flesh,

for sale at the winter flea this morning,

thigh-deep in bonafide banality,

sell a tooth for a skull,

sell a nail for a skeleton.

settle.

my fingers ache to cradle your hair once more

and winter your body with my fears,

a cold claw at your throat, love, i long

to etch my disparaging words into your neck

like the time i smothered you with tattoos and flowers

and kisses on your head,

to hold you and sculpt your sorrows,

to fall asleep and in love

upon the hollow of your chest, and smile in my sleep

because you are mine. whole and true.

and it aches to have you sheared off my skin like this,

it aches to see you cry,

a bleating brevity that i know

time will heal and seal. soon, you will

rust away and my lungs will forgive

everything that has been inflicted upon it.

but for now you dawdle and digress,

and i keep writing these poems in the dark.

karunam (pathos)

I was 13 when I first met you, static as boys should be

while I coiled like a fetus in my bathtub,

watching everything I’d ever known  

rally into drains.

I’m stiff except for the cerulean streams of history that flow beneath my skin.

I’ve never been less lonely or more content,

Nestled between ceramic and public water, filling sentences

With words you never said.

Led Zeppelin-

Drown the air,

Drown the notes of my parents contending

Over bone-shaped childhoods,

Erode my breath between boulders of

Rock.

I bled dry into what I perceived you to be. I did not cry but I hoped you’d still hold me,

The way fiction sometimes creeps into your shirt.

In cold, distant wheezes.

_____________________________________________________________________

Footnotes: this is a part of an awfully long poem i’m working on, based on the Navarasangal (or the nine facial emotions) of Kathakali (a form of classical dance and storytelling native to Kerala, India). Esthappen from Arundhati Roy’s ‘God Of Small Things’, to whom the poem is addressed, is a very important character to me for various reasons. i’ll be uploading the other parts soon.

gums washed in the youth of chips,

hips sweltering in oversized pants, as ovaries blaze with the throes of womanhood,

i’d wait for thursday to fall like icarus from the clouds,

the november of weeks,

it’s only rhetorical that i’d let jupiter storm in my chest and we’d flood the floors

and summer the heat i’d be forced to lip for the rest of the school week, 

before collapsing onto your bed, lulled to sleep by the smell of your hair.