Three Poems

Visit

if you tell me
not to take the rickshaw
up this incline
I will huff and puff
and see the trains passing beneath

 

enough
of platitudes and monkey-nuts
that momentarily keep me warm
swarms of lives
lived in bus-queues
in the up-rise of breasts
that will be molested
again and again
in fields of grain with temples
where your banner flies high
give me food at yours

 

where the destitute eat
and breed faith
in your trident modified
to reach only to stars
and not beyond

 

Tea

fish fry
I die

 

before I dance

 

this train
will stop by the Beas1

 

after the beet root wilts
rabbit leaves
take flight from cornfields
to rabbit ears
dipped in tea
with bangles
red and white and gold

 

unfold
that book which props me up
lots of thoughts
in sunset
red
with you

 

and the will
to catch a cab
refurbished with letters
in alphabets

 

we now will learn
to dry
in winter fun

 

Anticipation

because they were four-laning
the highway
I could not go to meet you
Rhododendron

 

this ice trident on my head
is when I once walked
past tire-treads

 

the bud
and two leaves
of tea in improbable gardens

 

a cane chair
and a town
where buses procrastinate

 

before they leave
to where the mountains
end in plum

 

apple flowers
bitten by dew
few
are the tears

 

wept into the first snow
salt melts
and ladybirds
wriggle
from beneath rot

 

on the snow peak
we are weak
in the morning sun