From Dreamless Green to a Tapestry of Bone-White Dreams

My body complies too much with sabotage. As blame is thrown, I watch it return with a force I capture in chemical absorption. He said that the body is all we have, he said that ignoring the body is why some philosophers can never write poetry like mine. He has said too much. 


11 july 2024



In recent dreams I see 

participants of the past

constructed in yarn be 

unlaced and sewn back—

all my friends from times 

that don't belong to me

drifting in absurdity. 

And when I come to, mornings 

acquaint me with a child:

splitting image of my mother. 

Day becomes the hem of a dream

collecting finer particle memories;

exhaling not love or adoration—what I thought I’d miss, 

but clarity of conversation; an evasive, perturbable

ache in my chest. 

While I narrate these visions 

of sleep to him, record betrays

that I long and yearn; 

an off-putting nostalgia

threatens me through dreams. 


Metaphors of the body do 

not seem so marvellous to me; 

history obviates idealism, to 

begin with, and so appeal is 

now primary to all. 

Systems of attraction 

are broken for some—they resent. 

Though, 

I medicate a fortunate body, so, it is needless, 

and this assertion is proof of possession.


the paradox of beauty.


Yet I cannot help but wonder

how I’ve been contrived as such:

unfree, submerged, superfluous. 

He may not comply but I believe

I can find a place in the upper rung

of tragedies; and when defied, he 

joins the spectral absence 

brimming with friends 

that accuse me of the same. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eyes of Hyderabad

Image
  A year has passed since the events of the movie Premalu .  (soumya's night vision) Reenu and Sachin are trying to work it long-distance; Amal Davis has left Hyderabad, and Niharika moved out to pursue travel blogging, but everyone’s been in touch. That’s neither been conscious nor demanding; skin and screen share the same space in Reenu’s heart, and days are spent tapping in and out of happenings, sliding careless brush strokes across keyboards, smiling at static eyes.  But today, things were off; her thoughts held a momentum that was hard to control. Like slipping into a white room, Reenu kept disappearing into her mind trying to lock onto something unthinkable. There was no memory of reading a children’s book.  There was no memory of even holding one. This is perhaps why her grip on the copy of Black Beauty felt uneasy like she had little faith in her own hands. The cityscape outside was an unfocused blur; she confronted a phantom childhood of her imagination, ...
Read more

Excavation of Memory

Image
Eight days passed and no ideas or imaginations struck me. Purely by coincidence, I found Walter Benjamin’s unpublished single-page thesis on memory. He proposed that one must begin digging, and come to find that Earth was never the one to give life, but is only a tapestry, rich with vegetations of memory.  His words halt abruptly- it was clear he intended to write more- and in the inertia, I begin this piece.  The idea of excavating a memory, of unearthing something significant or lost, struck me, or I struck it, with a spade I can hold.  Benjamin’s experiment had echoed in my mind from time to time before I found his text. I envied those who were able to expand and watch themselves in the past, observing keen details, collecting what would become the gurgling soil in their veins. I envied Anzi the most; he would elaborately report his childhood, his college days, his love affairs and his crimes to me, insisting that I write it all. I of course, never did. However, I woul...
Read more