mayday_calls

i bet, your wife will be proud when i write a new poem, i bet, your anxiety will be proof  that i replaced her with  this souvenir, i bet, she will be amazed how  i lace my art and confusion  into wildflowers, i bet, you will find every rot and ruin you traded me for in synchronous metaphors, i bet, with every stanza she learns, the distance between her suspicion  and your conviction  grows one syllable thinner, i bet, you will stand up and kiss her head, only praying this  syntax will  never pick her, i bet, she will promise to sleep,  but terrified, she might smell my blue ink on your skin,  i bet, i still understand the traffic  in your throat when you listen  to how a hero turns villain  fixing me, then soothing her, and i bet, neither of you will ever know which one of you  i am still writing to kill, yes i bet, as she pulls you in  the bed,  hoping my poetry merely  is tragic and sad,  you wi...

someone's son,  someone's curse, i have kept both of them on my tongue; loving neither of  them was ever  enough- but i learned  to crave steel  blades upon my  tongue; then i showed  two colours of  my blood, because  i chose to spell his name off my tongue; neither knowing  which of him to engulf first; so i painted the  son in dirt, to sanctify my tongue; lord, who answered  the curse! i guess  it infected my tongue; yes, i was never  loved for my tongue. - chetna 🌻 

keep my absence between your bedsheets- when your wife turns her back to sleep, tell her about how it starts yellow at first, but leaves only ashes too hollow to weep; keep my absence in empty teacups- when she finds your life fucked up, tell her about the abuse i had done to convert your temples into lockups; keep my absence in the dowry chest- so when she asks what comes next, tell her about the drop in temperature  when the storm overtakes your reflex; keep my absence in the open window- and lord, she flutters the curtain, tell her about my eyes already watching  to absorb your lethal hammer blows; keep my absence in the mantelpiece clock- every second she waits up late, tell her about the wreckage you create, she is the one who stands by the gate; just never tell her that inside, you keep my absence for your own pulses. - chetna 🌻 

so this triumph in a vacant  room s urprises you, only you, barren trophies in my hands or the remnants dignified by you; two days of starving the tongue, i concede defeat by recalling you, the 2 AM ceiling syncs to my lips, no one answers my name, like you; carrying brittle moods on my face inflated under the gravity of you, digging the fingernails in my head, i lose my scalp, scratched by you; you keep breaking things you  believe should belong with you, you seek reflections in smoke, but the glass is living with you. - chetna 🌻 

दिल्ली, मेरा शहर नहीं, एक साज़िश है शायद, दिल्ली में बात नहीं होती, रफ़्तार होती है, दिल्ली में हवा साफ़ नहीं होती, अफ़वाह होती है, दिल्ली में बुनियाद नहीं होती, गवाही होती है, दिल्ली में चुनावों में रात नहीं होती, नुमाइश होती है, दिल्ली में वुसअत नहीं होती, सल्तनत से नेहरू तक की याद होती है, दिल्ली में फ़रियाद नहीं होती, बस पुलिस तैनात होती है, दिल्ली में लफ्फाजी नहीं होती, सड़कें होती है, दिल्ली में शैली नहीं होती, क्रांति होती है, दिल्ली, मेरा शहर नहीं, एक साज़िश है शायद। ~ चेतना 🌻

i have lost the  moisture of  the edges of  my eyes,  i lie and  weep beneath  such a brown cloud,  an act of love; that pink shirt i  wore at school, is untouched now, a symbol of despair in my house, a single thing- a matchstick and  sudden ignition,  what if it catches  and singes  my  body hair in doubt, i scream but drywalls absorb  my every sound,  it kills me but  my  depression   does  not count, i gaze at some  mystical power to  learn if i have been hollowed-out; " fuck my mouth!" - chetna 🌻 

if clock is a circle, we run in tandem; if it is a straight line, your july after my  MAYhem, locked in some orbit, we are a chance when  the dial takes the spin, but landing on a narrow seam, then your skin touches mine; suspended breaths in the gap like 11:59 leans that one gasp into 12:00-      being pushed onto      the road where      celestial empyrean      runs off the line and      we see a conflated      moon phase in sunshine;    the clock overtakes, monsoons breaking across dry summers, people move on, i still  permit you to my heaven, "two six two seven, a silent confession." - chetna 🌻 

frost before the snow, never felt this cold; preemptively closed- this gamble of twists  and targeted turmoil,    at the request of     decaying teenage,    or the victim of     shielding macrophage,    rumoured instincts-    drawing a younger girl     into his holding cage,           the first clean break           comes when we swear,           the second one when            lives are bottled up            at the front and rear; october boys did not talk about the fall, october boys knew well to withhold love in control, october boys. - chetna 🌻 

in the theory of a hungry child, i was the piece of bread, he could ever touch feeling short of fights, a story of portions, never the whole- in  the confinement cell, devouring and feeding myself malice in bites,  in the theory of a  hungry child, i was breeding the milk, he was chewing fire, scattered flour,  another scandal in the quickest cold hour, sensing his broken belly, i caused the famine, in the theory of a  hungry child, i wish  i had become a glass of airèn wine- oh, to be tasted; not just kept down, handpicked even if the sparkle fades out, to be sipped throughout, in the theory of a  hungry child, he saw the hunger, i stayed starving like a bereft child. - chetna 🌻   

every morning i feel  cursed for existing, i swallow my tornadoes, and call it risk aversing, putting my nervous system under fire, here i have nobody  who is scared of my asymmetric smile, i put garlands over  my bargaining power, smiling in cruelty and i'm breathing sour, cleaning everybody's  closets and shelves here i have nobody  who  handles my  tears  with care, i draft eulogies in my days and fraying nights, is it feminine or divine? why should i not bury deep that haunted child? trusting my intuition, i feel now i must die, here i have nobody  who prays to my God "this storm must expire!" - chetna 🌻