You are possessed.

with hollowed cheeks that offset bulging eyes,with welts on my wrists, with creasing skin,with seizures of speech and song, with a single storybetween my sobbing, pendulous breasts.once i was a wife: beautiful,married to a merchant: shifty-eyed.living the life, until he was lost in listless doubt—of how, what i gave him was more deliciousthan whatever, whatever…

He, disease wrecked, downtrodden,long-ago skinner of animals, sets out.Ten days of Typhoid, and a partial recovery.Enough reason to thank some God.He drags himself clumsily to a nearby temple.Sadly, of an Upper-caste God.Away from the temple, he bends in supplication.Says his last prayer—Unwelcome Gratefulness.To a God who (anyway) didn’t help him recover.Innocent Acts of Undulating Faith…

And yet, you want to be heard.I want to tell him that I haveClosed and sealed my skin.Baby, I told you, love can hurt.I have exiled my heart.This is a lonely, lonely world,Even with a lover.Since I know the differenceBetween believing and being in loveOh! you know nothing.I have stoppedMy frantic searchFor the BuddhasOnly they…

With your left hand.Besides, fascist Dronacharyas warrantLeft-handed treatment.Also,You don’t need your right thumb,To pull a trigger or hurl a bomb.

and other ‘secular’ institutions—pictures of Hindu Gods are painted. . .so that casual people walking in (or up or down)fear to spit on the adorned walls.But still looking around or climbing:you can always find the work donea irregular red border underlining the wallsowing so much to betel juice and spit.And on cheap roadside compound wallsthat…

the water sees a parched throat slaking thirstbut the teacher sees a girl breaking the rulethe doctor sees a case of medical emergencythe school sees a potential embarrassmentthe press sees a headline and a photofeaturedhanam sees a world torn in half.her left eye, lid open but light slapped away,the price for a taste of that…

—Archibald Macleish, Ars Poetica.birds don’t sing in their flightfor them flying is a musethey compose mid-airweave agnostic versesneering haughtily at our absurdityas they float over our meaningless mosques and churchesand those patrolled international bordersand other disputed siteswhere the guns go bang bang bang all the timethey swing over there losing their birdegos(ego is difficult to…

Brahman GodAre EqualAnd Same.So IUntouchable OutcastAm God.Will YouEver Agree?No MatterWhat YouPreach AnswerMe. ThroughYour Saints.One MoreFinal QuestionCan MyUntouchable AtmanAnd YourBrahmin AtmanEver BeOne?

And then, unable to bear itany further, it breaks into wails.But not all suppressed reactionsend in our bemoaning the tragedy.Sometimes,the outward signalsof inward struggles takes colossal formsAnd the revolution happens because our dreams explode.Most of the time:Aggression is the best kind of trouble-shooting.

And you are crying again.Misery is (you always believe) the only genuineEmotion and sadness, the way of the real world.She wouldn’t have any of it.Sage in the cubicle, healer of sorts.Three years your junior. She makes soul-talkSound as prosaic as aeronautical engineering.At the end,Her warning:‘Stop this right now.’What will you say of your feelingLiving with…

Of my people—father’s father’s mother’sMother, dark lush hair caressing her anklesSometimes, sweeping earth, deep-honey skin,Amber eyes—not beauty alone they say—sheMarried a man who murdered thirteen men and oneLonely summer afternoon her rice-white teeth toreThrough layers of khaki, and golden white skin to spillThe bloodied guts of a British soldier who tried to colonize her. ….

On a road less traveled the patrol tracked down much:Him (him is now an it, a crumpled cruel corpse for womenTo beat their breasts about): the wreckage (four black wheelsThat speak of despair and a mangled red car-body awash yetSoiled and the cold apparitions of smoked glass and steel):The crime record—He stole at home he…