Youth-Celina

Saturdays, girls pack in the showers
to scrape the hair from their pussies
amid the steam and evaporate into
the arms of eager boys. Those are
the high times.

Mondays, no mention. Yet:
sex on screen, sex anxiously hidden
in the inner coat pocket
of our language, sex prodded with
fingertip slips over a shoulder or
spine, as we flirt in the day. Sex-crumbs
stack day in and days out in public
lead to nights alone, feverishly
rubbing the day’s pressure away.

Us-Celina

His sadness collects in solitude,
A silent hurricane over
A chunk of the sea

None had crossed but winds.
Mine, a desperate claw and grate
At open-chested earth.

Plopped on sit-and-squeak spring beds
With a couple loose words and
The death of a day,
We exchange miseries
Like rain sprawling toward
The earth, then climbing
Hazily back upward. Yet:

There is no nature here.

Green Goddess

I feel nothing,

Numbness.

Taking over my body.

Oxy flowing through my blood,

Touch is absent

A non-existent memory.

Comfort from the rain,

Acid raindrops

Hit my pale face;

You run for cover.

I face the rain,

Melting my skin away.

The blood runs down my nose,

I hint a metal taste and

Cough a white cloud of chemicals,

A wasted breath.

The black ash

Collects on hands,

Beneath the foil.

A picture of me,

One year ago,

I look good.

Picture now,

Shoe next to face,

Profile picture,

Any angle captures the destruction.

Dark circles,

Targets for my depression.

People stare and wonder.

I know the answer,

They probably can guess.

Never will I be the same,

Scared for time,

from time,

Forever.

 

A Bus in Madurai

Dented metal, chipped paint,
Overflowing people
Crowd in
inflation.
Bodies of life and chrome tip and dip
forty five degrees
towards the stacking, forgotten
shops and shop keepers
slows and goes
off and off
on and on
always.