Saturday, February 25, 2017

You need to get out of here

You need to get out of here
before you get too comfortable,
already you have reverted to your
old tongue and it has embraced
you with open arms,
the prodigal daughter that you are.
Already you are drowning in
the sweet dullness of this
place which keeps no time,
It will engulf you whole
if you stay too long, you will forget
the days, the months and years,
Do not give your heart to this
place because it doesn't keep
its promises, it will offer you
so much and take it all away.
Already you have begun to love
the rhythm, already lulled into
a love as ancient as the hills.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Not even a little

Yabane Adum you say,
That's how you learn languages,
I think, from lovers.
Though you aren't mine
but another's.
Hayengdi emannabagi luhogba ama lei
Anything mundane inflected with your voice
registers as though a poem
over which I could weep.
You are not mine to claim,
I tell myself
You do not see me
 the way I see you,
Manakta leiragasu henna thapchaba
But we are singing songs over coffee and tea
Koina paiba chekla ni
This is madness, I know,
this soaring and sinking of the heart,
this licking of wounds, this thwarted affection,
this lingering sensation that I cannot get rid of
and the unfairness of it
that you don't think of me at all,
not even a little.

Monday, February 20, 2017

Atleast let me forget you

Don't show up like this
with the smile in your eyes,
and your big heart that envelops all.
Don't ask me for anything,
because I would inevitably say yes
to the words rolling off your tongue
and I suddenly see how it works,
how our language is supposed to be used.
I know I am not the one for you,
your eyes look for someone else,
your poems dripping with love for her,
But suddenly after all these years,
I have found you, a reason for staying.
Wouldn't you one day wake up
from a dream and see me in a new light?
Wouldn't you one day long for me
and write me a love poem?
I write this partly as a spell,
partly to exorcise you,
Because if you are never mine,
atleast let me forget you.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

How you brush past these lives,
none of which you fully owned,
just watched longingly from afar,
and at times like today you feel it so close
you could reach out and touch it,
and love like a cancer running its course,
Maybe not even love, just a boy
and his smile, and because you don't 
know him at all, he is everything
you never had, and how would
 you hold this life if you got it?