FATHER, FATHER..

 The summer teeth of sun,

golden and warm, touching

the vermillion lips of flowers.

I will hide in their mouths,

licking my bruises with my pink tongue,

 but how can  I behold my pain

for am my grief itself?

My grief is same as the

noteless song of a cicada-

loud enough in the dark,

cunning enough to hide in a tiny body.

It shines like the heresies of men who

read heaven with their choked prayers,

 listening to silence of a sacrifice

because gods love slaughter.

It is a beloved sky reminding

the fables in which run away daughters

always die at the end, and

unlucky heroines who fell in love with beasts.

Grief enwraps cold shoulders like molten iron,

reminding of sepia toned smiles,

oozing between daisy chains that hold me

between life and Lethe.

It is a country burning where

the sleep deprived bees strip

their golden dress in search of food.

It is the evil cloth, so blue,

clinging to my body like a second skin.

A razor. A ghost. A handful of gravel.

I am in search of metaphors,

to be glued together,

to make you understand that still

I am a fool

holding him so close in my dreams-

never to being touched by any language,

because only he rhymes with me.

You gave birth to someone else,

Not to a broken clay model

who still breaths through tiny nostrils

and regret it.

Once I was normal, good and

all the adjectives you loved.

But now am too big to be happy,

sleepwalking through unknown streets

in cloaks spun by newlywed spiders.

Still, you want to be a puppet master,

To mend me, and to make me dance

while moving your lazy fingers.

You try to make a flute out of me

 which will make nightingales shrink in shame,

but  am an opaque weed, a cuckoo nest.

Father, Father, dear carpenter,

You adorn my coffin with your shame,

hammering the nails careful,

so that I won’t return and

write a poem,

again.

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 I am yearning for death.  Forever longing for it...achingly..When people around me crave to live, do everything to have a life, I could never understand it. I could never understand the meaning of their desire. I always wanted to die… slowly, painlessly, and alone. Over time, my death instinct  became an inexorable habitual thought. The yearning to merge into an infinite darkness is there, always. The swelling torment I can't put into words. There was nothing, until him, that could dilute my urge to die. I used to think I can hold on a little, until he disappeared. I was obsessed to wither completely.  Look at me now. I think I have died, when he left. What a metaphor, the old cliché, you may think. I can declare this without embarrassment, but I can't express it. It is really so heavy to be afforded by my vocabulary, thoughts, and consciousness... Many moons ago, I listened passively to Nee Mattume by T.M. Krishna. And yesterday night, like a little miracle, it ca...
Read more

THE BOOK OF SETHI

PROLOGUE: THE FIRST TIME GRIEF SANG I don’t remember the first time I heard Ali Sethi. I remember what I lost when I did. Something inside me— the part that kept sorrow folded beneath my tongue— opened its eyes. It wasn’t music. It was recognition. A voice that didn’t arrive like thunder, but like memory—slow, precise, mercifully cruel. It sang in the key of ache I inherited but never named. This is not about songs. It’s about the ruins they left glowing. It begins, always, with silence. And then: Ali. 1 TO THE VOICE THAT ARRIVED BEFORE STORM Some nights, I don’t know if it’s rain, or your voice pressing its forehead against my window. Ali, you don’t sing— you stitch. Each word, a needle pulling centuries through my skin. I keep your ragas in my wrists— they flutter when grief walks in, asking for tea and permission to stay. Who gave you the right to know what longing sounds like before I could name it? Who taught your throat to echo the ache I buried beneath my mother tongue? Sometime...
Read more

The Unanswered Ring: Returning to Decision to Leave

Some films don’t scream.They breathe. Softly. Like someone lying next to you who doesn’t dare touch you. “Decision to Leave” wasn’t a thriller to me. It was a letter never sent.A wave that crashed but never reached the shore. I watched Seo-rae fold her silences like laundry. Every movement quiet, every word a disguise. And yet—every glance, a plea: “See me. Even if you don’t believe me.” And Hae-jun— he didn’t fall from a mountain.He dissolved, little by little, like a man walking into the sea,telling himself it’s just water. The film didn’t ask me to watch. It asked me to listen. To sighs. To footsteps. To hunger that never became desire.What kind of love is this? One that doesn’t kiss, but watches.Doesn’t hold, but follows from a distance. Doesn’t beg, but leaves quietly, hoping to be remembered...The kind that hides in plain sight. The kind that tells you,“You’re better off without me,” but still checks if you’ve eaten... A Scene I’ll Never Forget: (And perhaps, never forgive) Seo-r...
Read more