time yet for a hundred indecisions...

christmas is the smell of auto rickshaws
and the new year comes and goes and comes again
but nothing feels new

my dogs still wag their tails when they see me
as if discovering for the first time how much they love me
and the seasons turn in much the same way

has anything changed?
every day we do the same things with our bodies
our tongues move in the fixed ways
constant numb heart beats

the kettle boils
trees stand where they stand
saturn still has rings

yet something changes

we feel it in our blind human way
in expanding waistlines
fading colors
putrid smells

biology moves clockwise
yet we don't really feel time

like we do not feel a rock
in a river
somewhere in the world
that never moves
only silently fades away
never noticed until
it is gone

gift - leonard cohen

You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
"This is not silence
this is another poem"
and you would hand it back to me.

"the best of us is drowning in the worst" -- salman rushdie

i wish people would be pro-india and not anti-pakistan.
it's not the same thing.

colaba

it’s where

the sky turns to that exact shade of indigo he wore when i decided to love him forever
i wrote about when i decided to forget him
our djembe instructor from goa walks past and doesn’t recognize me without him
now alone, i smile at the theatre of first dates playing out on the corner table
every foreigner has landed in india two hours ago
their accents merge into an orchestra of language
the breeze is a potpourri of hashish and arab perfumes
poetry was written by candlelight and sigur ros during a rare electricity cut
the bead sellers recognize me
and the waiters serve me coffee with ‘smile’ etched in chocolate sauce

where
i decided to never be let down again
where
i was let down one last time before i stopped crying

(where i refuse to read shantaram)

fuck - kim addonizio

There are people who will tell you
that using the word fuck in a poem
indicates a serious lapse
of taste, or imagination,

or both. It's vulgar,
indecorous, an obscenity
that crashes down like an anvil
falling through a skylight

to land on a restaurant table,
on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
But if you were sitting
over coffee when the metal

hit your saucer like a missile,
wouldn't that be the first thing
you'd say? Wouldn't you leap back
shouting, or at least thinking it,

over and over, bell-note riotously clanging
in the church of your brain
while the solicitous waiter
led you away, wouldn't you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar
and order your first drink in months,
telling yourself you were lucky
to be alive? And if you wouldn't

say anything but Mercy or Oh my
or Land sakes, well then
I don't want to know you anyway
and I don't give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided
into those whose opinions matter
and those who will never have
a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk
to you, and tell you that sometimes
there's only one word that means
what you need it to mean, the way
there's only one person
when you first fall in love,
or one infant's cry that calls forth
the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer
is what's left to you. I'm saying
in the beginning was the word
and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it's still
what I love, the word made
flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it's holy,
a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
ringing down on an anvil,
forging a whole new world.

love wasn't worth giving up...

...losing pen caps and letting pens dry out
...smoking before brushing my teeth in the morning
...eating messily
...wearing frumpy clothes to bed
...not using mouth wash after every meal
...forgetting to brush my teeth at night
...forgetting to have a bath before bed
...not shaving my legs when i wear pants
...wearing bras twice before laundering

yes i wanted to be someone else. but for now it's good to be myself again.

the sad part

if someone told me, all you can do right now is light a candle, i'd light a candle.
if someone told me, you can start a movement that will change the world, i'd think about it.