Memorise My Number

Author’s note

2007-10-31T03:11:00.003-07:00

The cynic and the happy fool

Words inspire words, inspire words. And somewhere in this circuitous route that strives to take us back to where it all began, we tend to lose one of two things. The words may lie in corners preferring to fade into the two dimensional humility of pages. Or inspiration- that prodigal son- sucks the agony and the ecstasy out of us, to leave us with nothing, to return with nothing.

It is for the happy fool and not the cynic to take a trip to the museum. For the fool will wonder and marvel at every crack and chip in every artifice, worship every layer of dirt and come away speechless at perfection. But the cynic will shake his head over imagined flaws, grumble at destructive missiles darting about in their school uniforms, glare at glass panels, and come away nodding in agreement with his own dusty ideology.

Sometimes it takes but an afternoon of introspection and a flash of humour from the calm eye of a brown dog to discover the happy fool, masquerading in the suit and polished shoes of the cynic.

This is the story of a girl who, much like her words, preferred to hide in the stale shadows of corners. The curious concentrics of time shifted often, like quirky sands. From joy to sorrow, from success to failure, from love to its shattered remains. From trust to mistrust. From innocence to betrayal to cynicism to sense, and back again. Much like every other concentric of time in every other life.

In realisation of this simple fact, I present, Memorise my number. And I have only the flashes of humour from the brown dog to thank.

The cynic.

2007-10-31T03:11:00.001-07:00

The girl in the cubicle

2007-10-31T03:10:00.002-07:00

Today, you have been cancelled.
There are three blackheads on your nose
your nail polish can't tell
your fingers from your toes,
your hair is having a bad root day.
Your sweater is very old
your fingertips, too cold
the irony on your lips
incredibly stupidly bold.

But mostly there is nothing in your eyes.

Three hands

2007-10-31T03:10:00.001-07:00

I wish this was a painting-
I could have changed things around.
His head on your shoulders,
your method to his madness,
his angst on your unfurrowed brow,
your logic on his lack-thereof.

But real life is no Renoir-
and this, an impossible menage-a-trois.

So these colour images are faded.
Here lies the sepia and grey
of a lifetime of dreams:
my truth, your cloak, his dagger, my heart.
Our unfinished masterpiece.

How to write love poetry when not in love (OR) 9 o' clock blues

2007-10-31T03:09:00.002-07:00

9 o'clock in the morning-
The traffic lights and speed breakers
are making love to vehicular smoke,
one little schoolboy wails piteously like a siren
at his academic plight,
the cows practice their fly-swotting,
raging hormones make their way
through college gates.

9 o'clock in the morning-
Blue suits are already growling into their cell phones,
buses are already running late,
my day and I have already started out on the wrong foot
without you.

The residue

2007-10-31T03:09:00.001-07:00

Mortified.
Amused.
Supremely uninspired.

You make my poetry as cliched
as the impression you left on me.

I hang on to the memory of your shoulder

2007-10-31T03:08:00.004-07:00

6
I hang on to the memory of your shoulder.
Each morning, the shadow of your beard,
like breakfast in bed,
sits abandoned by my sanity,
and all the books on the shelves
grow cold.

5
I hold hands
in a single moment of sepia,
cheek to cheek
with your frank declaration
of things I should have heard.

4
I play footsie
with boots too big
for your logic and
my penchant for sucker heroes.

3
I kiss the face
of reflection too young
to be so old.

2
I fall asleep in the heady warmth
of a nightmare you left behind.

1
I hang on to the memory of your shoulder.

What I am

2007-10-31T03:08:00.003-07:00

I am the moment before the news breaks.
The moment immediately after
the last man gets the joke.

Too early for astonishment,
too late for confirmation of understanding.
Maybe it’s the atheists’ purgatory.
Any purgatory will do,
except
I don’t know what needs to be purged.

I’d like to think it’s my wet purple socks.
Too damp within, too cold without,
and no shoes is good shoes.
Tomorrow, I will be on sick leave.

I am the misfortune that favours a genius.
The affluence of those
who never learnt to discern it.

A rupee short of a cigarette,
a bank of unspoken baloney.
Maybe it’s middle class morality.
Any morality will do,
except
I don’t care for it.

I’d like to think it’s my quick wit.
Too backward for dignitaries, too evolved for dates,
and no booze is good booze.
Tomorrow, I will be quiet.

What poetry?

2007-10-31T03:08:00.001-07:00

The kind that stops short of a sonnet

just because I left no mark
on you or Petrarch?

The kind that breathes deep

then runs into pages
because I haven’t seen you for ages?

The kind that practices scales

and renders a chorus
because it’s lonely and amorous?

Or the kind that pulls out a Kleenex

and blows its nose
as another couplet comes to a close?

The transition, part one.

2007-10-31T03:07:00.005-07:00

She walks in

2007-10-31T03:07:00.003-07:00

She walks in.

The sun has curled up like a cat, by the sea.
The man on the moon is hanging by a crescent.

Leaving her working blues at the door,
she hangs up her let-downs

She walks in.

The cat has sunken roundly from the tin roof.
The man and the moon have climbed the stairs.

The blues leave her to find work,
the kettle whimpers, she hangs around.

Joan Never-Been-Kissed

2007-10-31T03:07:00.001-07:00

She is so delectable,
you could write a recipe book
on her lips alone.

I am so deplorable,
you should write a self-help book
for my kisses alone.

Bus No. 13D

2007-10-31T03:06:00.006-07:00

Tomorrow appears
dullish grey.
A bit like
week-old chicken soup,
yesterday's news,
corporate dinners.

Today appears
pop-eyed.
A bit like
the fish on the line,
your old English professor,
an expensive pug.

Will you wait awhile
or become
dullish grey and pop-eyed
at the busstop?

Pencil in the jugular? It can't be suicide.

2007-10-31T03:06:00.005-07:00

This poem
made it through
three revisions,
four stanzas,
and five minutes
of deep thought and toil.

Her friend was not so lucky-
it was a case of bad blood
and too much water under a ruined bridge.

Brochure

2007-10-31T03:06:00.003-07:00

About
When in a public place,
I often pretend
to be sketching someone.

Clientele
He will walk up to me,
ask me if I draw.
I'll tell him I don't, you see.

Objective
We would have had
our pointless conversation
in the beginning instead of the end.

Contact Us
He will walk away, baffled.
Four hours, five fake sketches later,
he will endeavour to memorize my number.

What big teeth you have!

2007-10-31T03:06:00.001-07:00

When you mock me,
your eyes dance like
leopards over sheepskin,
and I feel like last season's wool
trying to dredge up a new sweater,
and I feel almost convinced
that I can do better.

Only not.

Tonight, she sleeps

2007-10-31T03:05:00.005-07:00

Tomorrow
poetry will bleed from trees,
leak from ruins,
ooze from dead earth.

Tomorrow
poetry will reek of spontaneously combusted crows,
smell of yesterday's suicide note,
strike up a conversation with the dead cat.

Tomorrow
poetry will sigh pathetically,
and sweep silence gently away,
along with ellipses of no promise…

The transition, part two.

2007-10-31T03:05:00.003-07:00

The Word Slaying Lady

2007-10-31T03:05:00.001-07:00

Always
in the evening,
when I have beaten words to death
and there is incriminating ink
on my fingers,
I come out into the garden.

The birds cry all the way home
with news about the Word Slaying Lady.
The trees whisper to each other
about what the highest branch saw.
The grass sighs softly
wishing it was on the other side.

Someday,
I will be long dead,
my bones carefully toasted
over a hot fire,
my soul wandering aimlessly in search
of pen, ink and for God’s sake,
some fingers, please.

Outside,
the birds cry all the way home
telling fledgling-stories of the Word Slaying Lady.
The trees will admonish saplings
for standing on their toes to get a peek.
The grass will tell their seed
that this side is far better, because

inside,
a little girl furiously scratches
on yellow paper,
with inky black pen,
the mortal remains
of the Word Slaying Lady.

Poem over lunch

2007-10-31T03:04:00.003-07:00

I take myself seriously.
Every morning, I wake up and take a big fat shower,
and I do this every morning religiously.

I take myself seriously.
I can be a lot of funny, with a lot of everybody
But an insult brings out my worst best mysteriously.

I take myself seriously.
On Sundays, national holidays and bad hair days
and especially when the sun is behaving shiningly.

I take myself seriously
While I smirk over a pint and watch you
take to a taco and all the belles, so seriously.

The random validator

2007-10-31T03:04:00.001-07:00

I am the random validator.
When the teapot complains
about being short and stout,
I rub her rotund back
and tell her thin is out.

I am the random validator.
Each afternoon, when the crow weeps
for better hair and a baritone,
I remind him of the Bee Gees,
and a certain Rolling Stone.

I am the random validator.
The sidewalk made a snide remark
about wanting center stage.
I pointed out Colaba;
now its poise has come of age.

I am the random validator.
If I ever ask you
for a pat on the back,
remember my random ways:
cut me some slack.

Thoughts of whisky on a Tuesday

2007-10-31T03:03:00.000-07:00

On the first day of this mess,
I gave up, among other things,
chicken kebabs, whisky
and the Times of India.

I would tell you, among other things,
that you inspire me,
sepia is your colour,
and we should drink whisky together sometime.

But I gave that up.

Coo-coo-ca-choo

2007-10-31T03:01:00.001-07:00

I want to wake up one day and find
the whisky and the words.
Before it's too late.

Before punctuations are thrown in prison
for misdemeanor and rioting.

Before September steals August's thunder
lightning, rain and the smell of wet mud.

Before the oceans eat us all up
as we brisk-walk away another Sunday morning.

Before you become preoccupied with
male pattern balding,
and I acquire a taste for young boys
and red lipstick.

Anniversary aperitif

2007-10-31T03:00:00.002-07:00

My Monday morning muse
has not washed his face.
The milk has gone sour to his whining,
and I don’t believe there are any
eggs.

I have often gazed at his shoulder,
the furrow on his brow, his
sophisticated jaw line… but today,
I heard him fret over the shape of his
legs.

In the shower, he whistled soap bubbles
and in his head, he shampooed a symphony,.
But his baritone yoddled off into a
high soprano, as I screamed, “Oh no! Oh please!
I begs!”

And then my Monday morning muse
slipped into garters and high-heeled shoes.
His dramatic swaying exit was
preceded by the downing of four hurried
pegs.

_

A year gone by, now my Monday muse
is the alcoholic wench who I watch
slink into my neighbour’s ink
before I slip down to the pub myself and help empty the
kegs.

Last year

2007-10-31T03:00:00.001-07:00

Two thousand poems died of loneliness,
cold and wet at the bus stop,
unable to find a rhyme for themselves,
tripped on poetical outcrop.

Five hundred and seventy were hit and run over
by drunkenly-driving coffee cups,
three hundred-odd asphyxiated
on inexcusable grammatical hiccups.

Two hundred and ten little poems
were the runts of rhyming triplets.
They died and left their siblings-
two hundred and ten little couplets.

Seventy-five died of opium,
twenty-one of spurious ink,
eight died of handmade paper,
one of an overdose of pink.

The happy fool.

2007-10-31T02:59:00.002-07:00

About you

2007-10-31T02:59:00.001-07:00

When you are afraid,
everybody rushes to clench your fists,
and bate your nervous breath.

When you are staid,
they weep to decorate the furrow
on your delectable brow.

When you are political,
they draw chalk circles, and fight
amongst themselves to demarcate you isms.

When you are typical,
they laugh loud and long at
Version 25 of Joke 1.

When you try to dance,
they hold your feet, and put a tap
in the toes of everyone you meet.

When you romance,
they put the scarlet in the wine, and whisper
with you, ‘you are mine’.

When you breathe your last,
they will light a stick of lavender incense,
and vow to never discuss you in the past tense.

Haikus for a rainy summer

2007-10-31T02:58:00.000-07:00

Scent of April rain
The flowers are all confused
Come kiss me again

~

Longest eyelashes
On a summer morning bed
Fall asleep again

~

Heady scent of rain
Making love to first-blood mud
Your hair smells of me

Tick-tock, we'll win

2007-10-31T02:48:00.000-07:00

Our is a synchronized ritual
of my waking up in your night,
you lunching through
my after-dinner snack.
Four years older,
yet half a day behind,
need I remind
that the past will
catch up with us.

Some years will pass, and then
tick-tock, we'll win.

Our coffees will
grow cold together.

I want you now

2007-10-31T02:47:00.000-07:00

I want you now.
We can twiddle our thumbs together
and make hay in bedweather.
And when the clouds part,
we can discuss art
and make our coffee
on the fire of thy neighbour,
who will burn in Hell
for coveting his neighbour's life.

Shut up and kiss

2007-10-31T02:46:00.000-07:00

Dancing under the moon
with your eyes as full of conversation
as forty telephone operators,
we play power games.
I don't have the power to touch your arm;
you're having trouble with the power steering.

Mocking the moon
with my head in the clouds
and my castles building themselves in the air,
we discuss sex and politics.
Do we lean towards the left or right;
who gets to be on top.

Poem, i give you my hand

2007-10-31T02:40:00.000-07:00

This poem is nice-
it’s short and sugary.
It reminds me of
apple pie a la mode.

This poem is enticing-
it’s deep and dark
and mysterious.
It hides in dark corners and flings things
when it’s furious.
It is
erratic
and whimsical
and sits about with its head in its hands,
as if it’s going to write a novel,
but because it’s
so
unpredictable, it gets up, stubs out its half-smoked
cigarette and
leaves.
(In a huff.)

This is my favourite poem.
It’s funny and it sings pretty.
It’s a good lover, and flirts with frivolity.
It has a head full of ideas,
but when it looks into my eyes,
it stops worrying about the rhyme scheme.
“Rhyme schmyme”, it says,
then offers its hand,
gesticulates to the band,
and dances with me into the wee preface
of the next anthology.