My Soul Belongs To Some Demon

I watched her holding a drink
and an unlit cigarette
when she reached into a man's pocket
and withdrew a match
to strike it off the rough bark
of some unnameable house plant,
lifting the fire to her eyes
it took me two steps, maybe three,
to clutch her with a sensational violence, twisting
her arm behind her back as the still burning match
flicked across the room, landing on the host's persian rug.

I dragged her out through the kitchen
and into the yard, no one moved from their positions,
Francis Lai's Concerto for a Love's Ending
didn't skip a beat, it slowed everything down
except for the heat
and with a blow of passion
I pressed four knuckles
into her belly, and
dragged her into the Buick
leaving behind a black shoe
to be found the next morning
stuck by its heel in the snow.

Some More Thoughts on Death

For the Sake of Navigation

I will die in between two days, on a transatlantic flight,

after the stewardess has given me my drink.

I will be at peace with liminal space, false legroom.

I will be nation-less, ground-less, 63,000 feet up in the air.

My soul will thank me for doing

almost three-fourths of the job, the airline & co. will not.

Perhaps the plane will land in Paris,

but the chances are slim, instead I’ll be carrying bad news to a lover.

I will be one of the true, few mile-high club members,

receive a two-fer, a free plane ride back!

But if anything I just wanted to play with time,

make it wait for me zone by zone.

I will die in between two days, on a transatlantic flight,

inside the belly of an aeronautical Leviathan. 

The Measurement of Space

Solange’s Trance, What is Nearest to Us and What is Remote From Us

As I floated

I felt no longer steered

but taken as some target

hung naked from an outer sphere—

I cared nothing for

my rotting hair or swollen flesh

as sea-mist splashed my sponge-like skin

pushing me further where I pleased

into perpetual spins and tide-heaves

I absorbed the nearness of turbid waters

and the remoteness of forgotten lands.

Yet the storm woke me with ecstatic contact

and like a floating particle in the moon’s spotlight

eternalizing the cosmic ebb and flow

as nights passed while stars shone;

I bathed in the Play of the

Deranged, tempest-infused churned into black

devouring red glows, entranced in static wreckage

of body forms bent bow backs

a dreaming where drowned men

sometimes goes down,

I found myself

standing on the stage of

The Two Masks

and as I watched my skin glisten white

refracted through rows of

bobbing balls of eyes

I lifted the string of pearls

above my black curled hair

and felt the pull of

unfathomably mysteries haunting

my soul, fragile organisms reflecting

my inherited defects, the many

monsters of my future’s expectation,

there is always silence before the claps,

like crashing waves, sinking in
the sand of humanly relief.

Ive Seem To Have Gone Blind

What is that? 

Well it is one of the covers of my first poetry collection. 

This is my thanks, to those strangers who purchased it.

Lingering in my thoughts is gratitude, 

 The fact is that there are a majority of my peers who are always

frustrated with my work, and nit-pick at my word choice.

Yet perfect strangers exist out there

 who acknowledge

what I have created.

So this is my thanks!

My second collection will soon be back on those shelves. 

This will be updated.

Oh and a really big thank you to Katherine Martinez, the shopkeeper of http://sbbookshop.wordpress.com/ located in Palm Springs.

For the first bookstore to lend me a shelf.

What The Gravedigger Really Needs, Digging For The Villanelle

Infodio Infodi Infossum

Overall, the work pays well,

caked with mud, he shuffles in his rubber boots,

you get use to the crowds that cry like hell.

The gravedigger loosens his leather gloves to tell

me what he needs at the end of the day; the relief of booze,

regardless of the backaches, the job pays well.

I watched him once pat the dirt firm around the headstone of Estelle,

his overalls stiffened as his whole frame suffused

with a cold dew, he stood alone and wiped a tear before it fell.

Inside Kavanaghs, his rosy cheeks are an illusion of morale,

for I’ve heard him say, ‘what kind of man lives with a spear and a spade, to never recuse

himself the worth of such work? What kind of man listens for the pay of the wailing knell?’

In town I see him riding his bicycle with a large empty basket, a smell

lingers; a whiff of dirt and sweat is slow to diffuse.

Crowds not use to seeing him around, whisper ‘another death, another space for someone to dwell

six feet underground. Another lost chance to say farewells.’

But when death does knock, he can’t refuse

the work that pays well,

digging quickly before the crowd arrives and cries like hell.  

The Dinner Table of Yaad Na Jaye

At the Lahore Karhai, by Imtiaz Dharker

It’s a great day, Sunday,

when we pile into the car

and set off with a purpose—

a pilgrimage across the city,

to Wembley, the Lahore Karhai.

Lunch service has begun—

‘No beer, we’re Muslim’—

but the morning sun

squeezed into juice,

and ‘Yaad na jaye’ 

on the two-in-one.

On the Grand Trunk Road

thundering across Punjab to Amritsar,

this would be a dhaba

where the truck drivers pull in,

swearing and sweating

full of lust for real food,

just like home.

Hauling our overloaded lives

the extra mile,

we’re truckers of another kind,

looking hopefully (years away

from Sialkot and Chandigarh)

for the taste of our mothers’ hand cooking.

So we’ve arrived at this table:

the Lahore runaway;

the Sindhi refugee

with his beautiful wife

who prays each day to Krishna,

keeper of her kitchen and her life;

the Englishman too young

to be flavoured by the Raj;

the girls with silky hair,

wearing the confident air

of Bombay.

This winter we have learnt

to wear out past

like summer clothes.

Yes, a great day.

A feast! We swoop

on a whole family of dishes.

The tarka dal is Auntie Hameeda

the karhai ghosts is Khala Ameena

the gajjar halva is Appa Rasheeda.

The warm naan is you.

My hand stops half-way to my mouth.

The Sunday has locked on all of us:

The owner’s smiling son,

the cook at the hot kebabs,

Kartar, Rohini, Robert,

Ayesha, Sangam, I,

bound together by the bread we break,

sharing out our continent.

These

are the ways of remembering.

Other days, we may prefer

Chinese. 

Association with Taste

The Stinking Rose, by Sujata Bhatt

Everything I want to say is
in that name
for these cloves of garlic- they shine
like pearls still warm from a woman's neck.

My fingernails nudges and nicks
the smell open, a round smell
   that spirals up. Are you hungry?
Does it burn through your ears?

Did you know some cloves were planted
near the coral-coloured roses
to provoke the petals
into giving stronger perfume...

Everything is in that name
   for garlic:
Roses and smells
   and the art of naming...

What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
by any other name would smell as sweet...

But that which we call garlic
smells sweeter, more
vulnerable, even delicate
if we call it The Stinking Rose.


The roses on the table, the garlic in the salad
and the salt teases our ritual
tasting to last longer.
You who dined with us tonight,
this garlic will sing to your heart
to your slipper muscles- will keep
your nipples and your legs from sleeping.

Fragrant blood full of garlic-
yes, they noted it reeked under the microscope.

His fingers tired after peeling and crushing
the stinking rose, the sticky cloves-
Still, in the middle of the night his fingernail
nudges and nicks her very own smell
   her prism open.




Know any great poems about food? Send them my way!