there are no metaphors left now
for love. everyone has had a share
from the local policeman in his uniform
to your parents and the little girl
with plastic shoes who disturbs you
in your contemplation of this

when i approach you my mouth
is filled with this emptied word
when i open to say it the darkness grows
inside me are spaces vast and forlorn

from nothing i articulate something
this is the last metaphor.
from being to non being
i give birth to love
every morning as you rise
as soft and as quiet as a star

you are scared that i will lose myself

in a monotony of hours and tea cups

like a shell of a leech i will tumble

in the wind and never find repose

you ask me where my day goes

my day

i wash my underwear

i watch blood pool between my thighs

i eat a plate of chicken

my mother betrayed me

my mother saved me

my lover called me a liar

my day was full. 

i have not lost myself.

i know i have of you left three hundred and sixty five
odd days and nights in this city to retrace my steps
here where my body has been watered and the hot sun
long has folded up inside of me

and other things too such as the traffic which always
frustrated you and the death toll which is rising and the
number of deaths i could have had hit by a blue hyundai or
a shabby toyota pick up truck

i am as at heart with this city as the orange men collecting
its grime and language that pounds its way into consciousness
i inhabit this city as loved furniture in an old home, a chair
moved from one room to another restless and returned
with every new season.

i inhabit this city as those things broken. toilet bowls and
transformers toys. inconsequential and severe.

eating jaggery after many years

i would like to embrace you with my mouth again
when everything is burning, this moment is a window
to a time when my mother would say there is no peace on this earth
and i would respond you would search heaven no longer
if you could have one taste

he sold it in mounds the color of my skin
he heard the sound of my heart and the beaded gathering
of perspiration beneath my arms
for one taste my body would bloom.

on a road my fingers would taste as warm as the sweetness of tears
the reluctance of money with the sun at its brightest
you dissolve on my fingers.

my mother would say it will not always be summer
again, again. for now my mouth is full and my senses rapt
i will close my eyes. rekindle my blood.

i am certain my heart was misplaced
that the clouds spanning the skies are my membranes
that airplanes in their certainty carve lines of despair
over the landscapes of my tissue

i am sure that one day a tornado will arise
from the grim city and its populace below
and funnel my flabby heart into cotton candy
which children will eat, smacking their lips
and swallow with decision

i am certain there will be nothing else of me
but a sticky sweet fragerance which they will
carry steadily into their future.

i have your books and their pages
which means i have your fingers
and their hands

i have one nose happening in your ear
which means i have every word
you can ever taste

i have in me a wild throbbing
which devours me at night

i have not you. man who has
never seen me

you: a ship setting sail
portentous with soul
scattering recklessly
over a calm sea

this ship with white sails
relieving the dark water
from sullen night
pricks of starlight

in a lighthouse somebody stirs
eyes heavy with ocean
and familiar hands