on a day like this...

On a day like this
We can sit
Beneath the sun
We can run
Our fingers
On the naked bodies
Lying in the grass
We can pass
A trail of smoke
Between the lips
Fingertips
Burnt with the ashes
Move again
Towards each other
Write a letter
That maybe starts
Your name

On a day like this
We can swim
Miles and miles
All the while
Looking at
Each other’s face
And when the race
Is over
We can roll
On the beach
With our backs
Towards the skies
And our eyes
Still dreaming
Of dreams
Untold

On a day like this
We can slip
Into bed
And drown
Into sleep
Don’t keep
Track of time
Until time
Itself forgets
To knock our door
We sleep some more
In the embrace
Of our bodies
And the smell
Is all that dwells
Between the sheets
Long after
We are
Gone.

march 9, 2014

Unititled

Last week someone was murdered in Amsterdam
They found a body
in a burned car
but the head was missing
and some days ago
they found the head on a street
near an infamous cafe
as a warning or something.
My friend knew the victim
he said he was always 'dealing' under his balcony
"He probably offended someone big,
you don't get murdered and decapitated for doing nothing",
he says,
"There is some crazy law here,
you won't get arrested if you know people
you can sell drugs,
but you aren't allowed to produce it."
my friend says he is glad that the guy is dead
because he made a lot of 'noise'


...and he offended someone big



THERE IS SOME CRAZY LAW HERE.


29/3/16 2:10

Alejandro

I had known him for long
Four years is a long time
Four years
Since I had seen him coming down from
what seemed like a ‘stairway to heaven’.
“I’m curious how to warm up with u”
was the first thing he had said
and for the next four days,
his warmth never left my side.
Four days
is all the time I spent with him
Embraced him
‘Lived’ with him
He told me about himself
in his broken English
“my granny is french and she emigrate to Chile with her parents”
‘Chilean French’, that’s what he called himself.
I called him
‘Alejandro’
He taught me little words
of courtesy
and beauty
and love…
He helped me around,
Showed me places
Kissed my lips
And walked with me
Hand in hand.

“N u never have wrote for me”
He complained one day
Many months later
“I will visit India
I will visit old palaces”
He had announced
“I’ll be your guide then”
I offered.
He asked,
“Hand in hand ??”

And a joke that he had made
Seems like an irony now
‘Stairway to heaven’
Is where he dwells
I wish
I could stop him
Even for a moment
And say
“See, I’m writing for you now, Alejandro!”

On ‘his’ birthday,
15/9/14
Ankush

BLACK

Black:
I smoked with him
as the smell of clove engulfed our bodies-
our conversations.
A black little cigarette would
wrap around
its aromatic tobacco
sheets of history
and burn them
and we
intoxicated by our own past
and freed by it
at the same ‘fucking’ moment
would wrap our arms around each other
and kiss
and kiss and kiss,
until
our breath would become one
like the identities that we shared.
‘Black is beautiful’,
We wrote on each others’
once-colonized bodies
through our silent lips
because the language was taken
and the voices were oppressed.
He loved and hated his name
and yet kept it;
it reminded him of a past that
he didn’t ‘want’ to forget
and whenever we talked
I realized we did search for
many such pasts
that we didn’t ‘want’ to forget.
A love like ours, then
is not just between two people
It is between histories
‘Shared’ histories
and the loss, hence
of either
is irredeemable.

Ankush, 16/10/14

On Polyamory

There are insurmountable secrets
In her doe eyes
Who do they see?
You or me?
Those nights
When she lies next to me
And thinks of you
Whom does she dream?
You or me?
When she mistakenly
Utters my name
During a conversation
about you
Who does she mean?
You or me?
Who is it that walks with her
And who is it
That holds her hand?
Who is it
That kisses her
And who
Looks into her eyes?
You
Or me?
Or both?

Maybe her free will
Runs its fingers
Over us both (and others)
And churns out a melody
that we call ‘our song’.

For it takes-
Two to tango;
but many many notes
to make a tune…

Ankush, 29/6/14

Should there be love,
in times like these?
Should the flummoxed, waspish tongue
extricate itself
from asperity
and sing the vertiginous notes
of love-lorn duets?

Should there be sleep?
Should the abashed eyes blink
without searing;
amidst whimpers and trepidations
and let the ominous world
Fade to black?
(hear the screams).

Should there be dreams
of innocuous (?) glee,
amidst the millions
still not free
-To dream?
Should the pellucid world
engage the soul
in a blithely peregrination?
And resist all temptations,
-of living.

Should there be life
amidst malevolent incursions?
Where truths are
just versions;
Should there be truth, then…
Should there be breath,
where death
is a kindness?
(or so it is said
as all who disagree
are already dead)
Where every rope,
is a noose
tightening around the necks
of incredulous beings.

Should there be hope?

midnight, 5-6/6/2014

THE WEATHER SHOULD NOT BE WASTED

I woke up dry,
Between the damp sheets
Wiped the fog off my window panes
And looked at a face
That was stuck at a corner
It said-
‘this weather should not be wasted’
So we sat
Among the multicolored walls
In synthesis-
smoked
sequined
stitched
unlaced
mixed
like milk in caramel
till the sky was murky
‘this weather should not be wasted’
We chanted.
we smelt the scent off the bodies
and melted the unperturbed wax
and scraped the layers of consciousness
till the haze of smoke had risen
and started dripping from the ceiling
and slept till the moon swayed
and stayed awake till the sun was ablaze
and rusted off the gold dust
from our bodies
with tender kisses
we measured the length and breath
of nothingness
and tasted the oceans
that splashed through time
we stayed together
all day
two strangers
never to meet again

and the weather was saved.

Ankush Gupta 7/11/13