I
These days
I find everything staged:
the words of comfort you plant,
the concern that I fake,
the platitudes that we toss,
twirl, throw into each other’s face.
How brittle is our truth
that we wrap it with pretexts
believing love holds good
only in certain contexts.
II
The other day
at
when the Sun was
a speck of orange in your eye
and the world
a soot-covered portrait,
I felt I had a poem for you
but then, these days, I don’t write poems.
I look for words instead,
words that would miff the silence
you puncture our conversations with.
III
In the quietness of the night
when you twirl next to me
I hear shrill screams
of our unsaid thoughts.
I then strain, strain
to hear your silence...
Salim Joshua at a Soirée…
I
So we must end the conversation now.
It has hung long
From the Rembrandts and the Rousseaus
(cheap imitations
mounted on dreams
sundry & parvenu)
That your silent walls adorn.
But you wish to speak
About the trivialities that tweak
Your propriety, your idea
Of what the world is, of what it should be.
I feign interest
(how may I tell you
I am part of the world that you hate).
II
We sit at the bar.
Everyone has assumed a role,
Everyone is a character.
“So I was at this glistening
Office of glass walls
On the 67th floor of Chrysler
And then throw in the punch
Of how you spent the weekend
Scuba-diving in
Lounging, smoking pot
At Luna Lodge in
The boys are agog.
They’re too eager to fill you in
About their training stints in Düsseldorf.
(I sigh! The farthest is
III
We sneak into a quiet corner.
The evening trails as a wispy fragrance
On your wine laden lips.
I wish to drink the moistness,
Feel your heat against my breath.
My hands rustling against your breasts
But suddenly you break free —
Coquettishly —
“Wait! Let me see
Where my darling husband is?”
(Bitch!)
IV
We sit with our bellies full,
Courgette and prawn dolloped with soufflé,
And break into idle chatter, pitter-patter
Sprinkling names —
(The conversation strains — someone coughs!)
The stiff upper-lipped editors at Knopf,
The haute couture,
The avant-garde,
The ‘here’ and ‘now’,
The ‘whys’ and ‘how’,
The ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’,
The ‘must do’ and ‘have musts’
Discerning eyebrows,
Dancing flamenco
With waspish tongues:
Shreds of half-understood conversations
Heard at someplace else —
That may ease this evening of discontent.
(But in our hearts, as the evening stretches,
Dreams fizzle like smoke
From a gun's nozzle.)
And then…whimper!
(Note: Salim Joshua... was inspired from a passage from Suketu Mehta’s
No comments:
Post a Comment