Between the two

Yudhistira has logic
So does Manu
Sadly I don’t understand them
and that comes in my way of

blissful marriage and easy copulation
1+1=2 cannot be more complicated.

In the marriage firmament
I often wish to be a star
like Arundati
Whom or which I pretended to spot
standing on a piece of rock
“May your chastity be like rock”
The priest murmured.
And of course I rock.

15 years post standing on brimstone
Yudhistira and Manu - persistent men
keep coming (in) my way.
One trades wife and other sells locks
to women.
But I am not women.
I am single and singular
That also comes in my way of

Blissful marriage and easy copulation
1-1=0. That is also complicated.

As I float aimlessly in the corridors
of well swept institutions
I spy the two men
Yudhistira and Manu
photocopying themselves assiduously
and releasing flyers into air for quick pollination.

They pause. They even smile nicely at me.
Yudhistira binds my wild locks.
He hates them. It reminds him of many things.
“Choose between us.
Him or Me”, says Manu gently
and
calls in my son to take me home.
“It is either him or me. There is no third kind,”
adds Yudhistira.

Between the two
I hug Yudhistira.
The chief architect of trade-offs.
He will understand my request-surely?
“If the seeds are all the same,
then may I have four more men
and rotate them like crops?”
I ask.

****

Published in Unisun's "Mosaic" anthology of poems

Kali

Tell me a secret, any secret.
Maybe on how
you live in dark marshy woods
and yet keep your feet spotless white
or
how you squeeze the serpents like washed clothes
till they spew the truth.

Can you reveal
how you wear a dress
tied only at the neck, hemmed with lemon beads
that I suspect to be living worlds
or how you keep the tongue
red hot all year round.


Kali
tell me how you carry
men’s torn heads like vanity
and use their prying arms
as leaves for your skirt

or
pray divulge why you should be
all black and blue
when you have no pending dowry to be paid
nor a man to maintain
and especially when you have a tiger of a pet?

Let drip just one coveted secret
from those luscious breasts of yours
that I can lap up to instantly become your sakhi,
something to stand me apart from your mother,
sisters, denouncers, devotees...


Kali, tell me a secret, any secret,
for how else can you love me differently?

******

Published in Unisun's poetry anthology "I, me, myself."

From an office window

Have you watched a crow
polish off a rat?
I did.
Yesterday.

Well.
The juicy entrails long
winding and twisted
into gossip go first.

The rat’s innards flow.
First fluently.
Then
h a l t i n g l y
in small talks.

Coming to the heart of the matter.
The nervy crow
picks up an arterial thread
from a criss-cross
of thoughts and treads across
meatydetailssilentspacesfatsunshedandsuddenly
jerks up
………………..
to nibble on a memory.

Elsewhere
two clock hands
come together
in a beak closing
to devour time
memories
conversations.

Then comes the kidney.
But much water has already flown.
What use is a dead rat?
Or so I thought.

The glutton picks the bones clean.
Slowly, surely, leisurely.
Every peck, a jab at time.

The crow relishes the memory
of the rat that once was
and I remember our
old conversations.

****

Published in Unisun's poetry anthology Peacock's cry