A cantaloupe gorges into the running river
and sinks before it floats.
A fish’s eye rolls down the pile of rice
with the stream of curry, on the plate.
A hart chasing the wren sitting on the hands of the tree,
spreads across the musk.
Spanning from the tall blade grass to the roots of my trees.
An elderly man promises me that my swimming and sinking and floating poems will take a flight, upon my healing.
I titter at those words looking at the sight of my sea.
But my tittering does not make it funny. No.
I dare not to mock a person assigned on a project to mend me.
I only wrote it down as it comes flushing to my memory.
Nothing in particular.
Only a silent gaze filling the rows among the gourmet.
A glare sometimes or the gallant eyes
preparing for the fight and fury.
Speculating the meaning of a prose
steals its brightest light.
So just don’t do it
and slide gently.
Pass it by
and place marigolds and daisies and all flowers
around the foot of my aching tree
and read it
as you please.

An itch dwindles and spreads along the way
The shining shin of mother and the reason of all my poems
is lying there, in a shimmering dream
of death and devastation.
What left me gasping, by the river-
The cat’s clutch holding on to the cliff.
A lavender face in the biscuit palm of my hands,
a prose I did not throw in the dustbin.
It’s all making me breathe.
I lose my breath when I lose you.
Gripping on you is like gripping on life
with both hands and their fingernails,
just so you know
that I could never lose you.
You’re that dream, the incipient one
like that of a child.
The dream that would make them want to live
a little more when they’re all grown.
It’s everything and never nothing.
Seasons of writing crap and and never selling it,
but perching it on the marble windowsill
and bowing before it
is love.
Beginning on the word diminishing
and reaching a whole tree
of tenderness.

Blood rushing underneath the flesh of my lips, to cheek– a sudden slithering tickle in my muscles. The tongue is rolling to say something but is forgetting before it utters and unfolds. My head has lost words to tell, so I make up more. I desperately need to read poems, stories of all kinds. I need to dive in- somewhere deeper and newer. I need new seas to swim through. But I guess I float in my own.

I feel this urge to emit poem on the buds of tongue. I taste a poem inside me, coming somewhere from the depth of incoherent belly. I’ll write shameless ideas on a rough WordPress note, to weave something later. When was the last time I truly believed in myself? I guess I never did.

The blood rushing in my lips becomes frozen and clots when bit by you. I love you. I think so. I feel that I love you and I miss your warmth. I don’t think I can successfully write what I mean to.
Last night, I discovered my body lit up. In fire, I breathed. A state of trance. Of losing something.
I think there’s always a poem screaming inside me, twitching my body parts and telling me that I must write. I’m blinded. Blinded by my own light. I feel this sour poem between my teeth. My cat kisses the water dripping from the AC.

I was burning last night and nothing could save me. A longing that sits on the edge, a foot hanging, a foot folded. I feel myself on this empty run- chasing after you. The thought of us, lost in a forest, walking through it. Different dilemmas of different homes go on and on and they come back to a place. What I must write about now? Little dimsum swell in the soup. I feel the comfort of talking to my mother, when she talks about the mountains. The hairs on our shins are so likewise. I think I’ll become her in a few years. And I smile. There’s nothing more that could make me smile on this day. For one moment today, I feel the vastness of this world and the people in it, and tiny different ways in which we differ. And this thought looks so beautiful that I forget the ugliness. There’s none. There is none.

What am I talking about, do you know? This isn’t a poem. Just a flow. And I keep flowing like a river. Perhaps a poem after the stagnance, of everything inside me. What is this place in my mind? Where do I come from?

—Priyanshi, As I write to never pause.

Learning to carve a poem on the islet, where only seas embrace the sullen mouth of land, could be dangerous. It could be a poem that has no idea behind it. Nothing behind it. It comes only from places you’ve been to, it comes from the place in you where you soak everything, but without a thought. Only arriving. A denouement. Everything didn’t have to be a gigantic writing. And although there is immense sadness, I can’t think and write of the last Bougainvillea I touched, or the touch of its scales. Quilted paper-roses spoke in the language of daffodils that night- when the island was dipped in the night with moon kissing it gently. An ungrateful cat scrubs the tip of my nose, with its tongue, sneezes on my face and bites my fingers. I hum with depth and scare her. To let the silence spill, words had to be lost. Language had to never be found again. And then I would think about why I am roaming on this island. I remember the song called Circles round the sun, I listened to, back in time. As the car passed close to the woods. I was in eighth grade then. Nothing mattered. Nothing really mattered. As I’m writing this, I think of a lover that isn’t there- I think of someone I’d love someday, who would read all these poems and tell me how to write better- How, I’m yet not a writer, and will never be. I also think of the day I’d leave him, with all my heart and still go on writing, without caring. When I will lose him, I will write a poem, everyday. An island poem each day and they will all be called islets.

the forget me nots are hanging from the walls. Moon is crying in lullabies to let me sleep, alone in an Island that eats everything on it. I’ll be finished like this. But my language will be with every tree, close to roots. The island will become me.

sleep is caving in,
head of an embodiment
falls down.

On the threshold,
I wait for the town to disappear,
for the night to engulf and look me in the eye.

Dim light of the moon
sees shimmering water
and the roof of distant houses.

Magnolias hushed a river of tunes
and then became quiet-
Still and cold
like your kitchen floor.

I breathe onto
the neck of flowers
and sink in their smells.
I, now smell of them.

The personhood of a flower ends.

To be a bee and be caught
in the clutch of times,
sounds like stinging oneself.

jingling bells around the dewlap
of a cow’s neck
remind me of the farms
I’ve sweated in, in my poems.

I hold between my teeth, an evening primrose.

The exhaustion of birds is dropping
from their shoulders
It rains in a place
they have long flown away from.

When I break my proses into poems,
I feel cold. The closeness of words
in prose looks like winter warmth- a blanket.

Days of strawberry songs
become dust after the wrath of fire.

How much
wrath has ended
is a discussion of great sorrow-

Something that sits on the windowpane and dives
in my lemon tea.
A larger sadness is burning holes on my face.

Thoughts flood like ocean, in a day.
In the little gasps of time,
I am pulled in the vacuum of trembling reverie.

I am tired of casting a shadow.
I chew a leaf and lie down on the lawn, I close my eyes.
And the world is lost.

Sleep
has caved in,
and I lie on the ground.
Magnolias, Molten Dream and cucumber hands
stop searching.

Earwigs crawl to the centre
of this room
from behind
the bathroom doors.

For many things
unfinished,
I lie on the floor- prostrate,
each afternoon.

Connections that speak
of contorted flowers
and insouciant death
of depth,
take roots
inside my lungs.

One day
I am playing with words,
the other day
I am traversing with paints
on Amruta’s body.

I wait to reach her nose,
to place a blue nath.
With my thin brush,
I dig in in the mound
of cobalt blue cake
in a corner of my palette
and pick some color.

From the oyester of mouth,
pearl-like words
touch the sea outside,
for the first time.
They touch the sea and influence it.

A scintilla spreads
like an omelette
on the body of a mountain,
engulfing it,
minute by minute.

Many such manifestations
are lost in the sea
and many pearls stolen
from the maw of hundred oysters.

A babbler pricks at the crab apples
and flies to the oak tree behind a temple.
A Shiva-linga perched on taakha
behind Amruta, smells of flower-ful delicacy-
bail-patra on the linga,
flowers fallen on the yoni.

The subtle smell of mortality dissolves in the air and runs away with the sunlight.
For this cool afternoon
feels
like a life
as long as an ever,
with the baggage lost.

Earwigs crawled
to the centre of this room
in the beginning of this poem.
The light of the sun is soaked in my head
and I emit a poem so full of life,
at the end
of a
Poem of Despair.

A little prose- all florid,
is broken into a sincere
poem
on afternoons like these.

७.०६.२१
🌺

The rain pelting against the roof is the sound of truth.
A leaf engraved on my soap is washed away.
My head is dissolved in thoughts I cannot uncover.
A lemon falling on the melon rolls
and pauses around tiny feet.

I run for clarity in my maze of thoughts.
It is a clear maze and perhaps
I do not remember you anymore.
What is you and What is I?
And by the time it ends,
how much of this poem will be true?

Threads of ember lie
in a forgotten sunlight.
A song is shaping my mood,
but for how long?
I can’t live in a song. Let us sing another.
Angela by flower face is caressing my winter soul.

I sit with Angela rolled in my tongue,
waiting for ages without knowing
until it plays.
I sing from my belly or I don’t know where.
I become a feather,
I hold hands of the wind and my throat does not hurt
of holding voices.

Swan Dance of a stream tiptoes to the pines of my forest,
shaking a bunch of leaves hiding in my folded arms.
A ray of your shining sun falls unlike the other days-
on oak roots, sieved from the pine tree.
Meshes of an empty room fill it
with rays of sunshine
and let the light talk through the day in silence.

The walls of this violet room soak in
the wetness of a dreamy day.
They soak the moistness wrapped
around the forgetful words of the light.
The Blackness of the night is terrifying.
The walls of this room feel
a little lonely in a long while.

One wall misses the face of light
against its chest.
The light wanted to bury herself in the room, but left-
Her hands slipping from the shoulder of one wall.
The smell of the crisp leaves stays
but it doesn’t fill the room.
The smell, rather, is a reminder
of the influence of light and her absence.

The song of the moon is the song of love today
speaking to all walls of the room,
feeding it the sweetness of pain.
Through the meshes, softness of the moon spills
on the floor. Not as vibrant as the light but
uttering something to fill the emptiness.

Meanwhile, in the forest,
old cedars are moving heads with the wind.
The morning arrives and I am afraid
of all sad songs coming to life, again.
Afraid of you, leaving.

Grief and I will walk together in my forest.
Grief is a very old song and now
I must hold its hands.
I held grief’s hand even when you were here.

We slip from each other’s hands
for we tried to hold.
It was one stroke of light that might
never return to fill the room.
For many nights, even the moon
will grow quieter-
spilling on floors like the very nature of night.

On some nights, even the floors
will be untouched by anything.
On some nights
even the moonlight will hide.

Swan Dance of a stream tiptoes in my dreams.
It was a dream about remembering; interrupted
and later forgotten.
I thought you have been forgotten
but you came back clearer to my memory.
And by the end of this poem
it all sounds like pelting of raindrops against the roof-
like a song about truth.
And by the end
you are floating in my sea.

In a room full of sunlight,
I lie on the floor, quietly, curling and coiling.
I sometimes wish if we could curl in each other
in a room full of sunlight sieved from some meshes
and by the time we’d wake up
the light would be leaving the room.

The light looks more beautiful
by the time it is leaving.

I become a poem about mammoths

and butterflies with you.

My eyes shut in absolute peace

and I cannot help but pour

the beauty of my soul

in your chalice.

Colors of the rainbow

sing and shine.

And there is no error in my melody.

I want to be a thing of beauty

without you, too.

If you leave my mind,

I do not wish to go mad.

I have been writing poems

about devastations and of

my bubbling wrath,

lately.

One day, I was reading all my poems

and I got

damn tired.

One year and nothing but pain,

and hurting, crying in my shallow corners.

In the rivers of guilt, floating

and crushing you,

my flower of Sun.

This is a poem

that looks different

to me

and I am writing it after

all the times

I have burned you with my touch.

I am afraid to hold your hands.

Just as afraid as you are

to hold me, again.

I might burn you again

and bruise your soft soul.

Can I try and write some more?

I often forget I am a flower,

blooming in the willows and woods

and make you the Sun

I stand for all the warmth I lack

and I want to keep basking

under you.

I don’t look for answers in this poem.

I will only write.

I wanted to be a Poet.

Am I?

I stopped believing in myself

the more I was brought closer to the depth

of everything.

My sadness, and my inability,

and my ruthlessness became more real.

I was becoming this different Priyanshi,

you know.

I miss my sweetness.

Since sadness and anger and misery

were more organic

and came to me,

more organically

I stopped trying to become

anything more than I was.

I stopped smiling and being kind

waiting

for it come from within.

Well, I must say

It hasn’t come and it never will

If I stand waiting for it in a garden withering and blooming from time to time.

And maybe, even searching

until I find it

will never assure me

that I have found it.

I will cultivate it

like a paddy field.

Sadness is more real

and It will always look real to you.

Everybody’s so sad.

Sadness is convincing.

Let it be

but stop watering it, so often.

You don’t have to look above

but stop looking down

if you think

that it is enough

and now your neck hurts

Move it, from side to side

to ths sound of ‘clik’ –

your nape telling you how tired it is.

Once above.

Once on each sides.

Sit down and rotate it some more

and just look

at the horizon

feeling forgetful of the roots

or your feet.

Run to the ends meeting.

Scream and catch the sun

or just keep looking at the horizon

and keep sitting.

The world will not be new tomorrow morning,

but you can change your eyes

and look more often

at things that bring more light to them.

I began this poem, with my soul speaking your name

but by the end

I did some talking to it.

I can change my eyes

and look more often at you.

I am not the sun

but I wish to be so full of warmth

to stop looking for it.

There will still be some sadness

like the dead of the night

that lets you feel

the liveliness of the morning.

I want to be the day of the night.

threads of sunlight,
splitting one by one
waver and run around the sun.
Clenching the whole of it.

Threads of sunlight,
the hidden violet, grey and red
run around the sun
and make of it

a giant red ball
that one cannot dare to erase.
Threads of sunlight
splinter from above,
above my head

like a sharp sunlight broken
on hitting the face of a rock.
It burns my skin without a spot.
Threads of sunlight

utterly speaking a tale
I no longer remember
or name.

My loneliness brews
something on my mind,
purple and soft
but weighing on your shoulders.

I should not write about you,
like I have written everytime
about all the blunders I made.
I want to look at myself
through nothing.

To not weave a story, this time.
My mind searches truth in my sleep.
It searches the truth
without a dream.

When I wake up, I realise I did not sleep.
And I was only haunted
the entire night, by the thought of
you already leaving.

I have lost the habit of believing
in my aloneness,
for a long while.
I still want you, but I don’t want
to keep looking,
for you.

I want to stop looking for you,
not in the hope of finding you again
but with none of you, in sight.
I hope not to become something in your eyes.

I don’t want to pick dried flowers,
from the heap
and press them between my notebooks
thinking of you watching me
from somewhere

I hope not to walk in the rain,
walking like you are with me.
I want to remember how
I walked without you
in the back of my mind.

I want to write words
that slip
from me, without making anything of them-
like I began this poem yesterday.

Threads of sunlight splintering
and weaving me into a ball of cocoon,
and inside me, a child who
does not remember anything from yesterday

or the days before.
Threads of sunlight
clench the sun
and fly to me, whenever I sleep.
They weave me a sleep so calm,
that I cannot remember
a thing.