On Fire

I call Eli Eli repeatedly from morning till night, my phone’s auto-correct changes her name to Elijah and so, like Christ on crucifix, I call out her name, my last hope, calling my sister for having food, I hear my father’s feet missing the floor like magnetic repulsion, a rebellious act from the floor, a shout-out, no more tolerant, these flames burning our little glass house; the fire has been eating our bricks, one by one since long and we learnt to live around it tending to the burns, making us more of christians forgiving for a living, a vengeance in disguise, the fire initiated by alcohol and a spark from kitchen, sometimes it’s someone switching on the light to cover up the darkness forgetting that there has been a gas leak, ever since alive, I wonder who named it love, their marriage; Ah! No. No, I don’t expect a miracle, to magically change the wine to water and save our lives, maybe it will rain with thunder and hurricanes, sirens to rehabilitation centers; how we have locked ourselves in this four walls calling it a home, despite being nailed to this crucifix, it’s April the summer colors have tanned the bougainvilleas pinned to hanging pots decorating this broken home like roses on the Easter crucifix where Jesus forget to resurrect and slept on for years, maybe it will rain and the flames will stop eating us, before it consumes us whole, while alive like a pyre.

https://llumierereview.wordpress.com/issue01/

Crocheting

On crocheting a happy content life, I could teach you Dear Chere,

you start first with the slip knot, yarns and hooks no procrastination!

Ah!  the patience and time would roll in,

chain many, the happy memories row after row

for that strong base, we need.

Skip the major vapid ones, for that unique design,

double and treble crochet the moments of unplanned memory bringing joy

stitch through the vapid skip, mending the pain, stitch through

swapping colours and adding more yarn of love.

Keep going the callow in a canto,

to crochet a happy content life, bejewel all journeys of fright and might,

and finish by tucking in the left over pieces,

cutting off that extra strings of trouble, 

finish off by tying securely the strings of bond.

keep crocheting for that happy content life,  mon chere..

https://issuu.com/storiedstitches/docs/storied_stitches_vol_9_issuu

Letters

I remember we once agreed to meet every three days

like an international postcard mailed with a stamp pasted on its corner.

Just so, we could avoid the suspicion of evil eyes,

drilling their bore wells on our parched lands.

But you know well what happened as the fireflies flew between us,

Floating, Cupid’s portion glistening on their tiny backs, glowing for our nightly rendezvous,

making it flower, like miniature lanterns flocking;

reminding me of the neelakurinjis of the Shola forest –

purple and blue flowers blossoming once every seven years, phenomenally.

Isn’t that why we went back there each night – to find the swarming dots of light

and dip in the fragrance of wildness – the flowers and the rest?

By the way, those flowers over the climber, covering the tree

with that bench beneath, neatly tucked inside the shade was my favorite. Yours too.

That tree often reminded me of the black hair of an Indian bride bejeweled with white jasmines,

like snowflakes on summer mornings, the blend of warmth and whiteness of those nights;

We always hurried to hide behind her cascade of leaves,

like hungry locusts coming east during the summertime,

before the monsoons could range a battlefield of marshness,

before the land found us sauntering hand in hand,

and before reality dawned on us like the rain showers, unprecedented.

http://www.literaryshanghai.com/jgeorge-two-poems/

Ambrosia

I walk a mile around the road, just to avoid the rickshaw and cut down expenses.

Ten rupees saved by walk –an offering I always keep for the roadside temple.

I do this almost every day without fail.

My daily pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine on tired legs;

I think of it as a penance for the guilt, for confessing sorrows,

and for sharing toasts.

One can see ideas and debates on living life rising as fumes above that roof –

The roof of the temple, by the corner of 7th Street in Choolaimedu.

Near a Neem tree, so pure, our holy temple stood – a modest tea shop for every commoner.

Nothing less than Ambrosia itself is a Chai flavored with friendship, I say,

lifting the weight of this daily routine at the altar like priest and his chalice.

Isn’t a glass of tea similar to the soothing touch of the oldest therapist working her long fingers on every mind?

Sipping this nectar – Heaven’s drink – down here on Earth.

I dare say, a day gone without Chai is blasphemy.

And I walk a mile around, to cut down expenses,

Now that my offering to the temple is done.

http://www.literaryshanghai.com/jgeorge-two-poems/

The Voicecall

Oh! I could barely contain this joy, this excitement spilling poetry from the edges like molten lava of a volcano; on hearing your voice through this corded universe coded. My heart here knows today, such tremendous explosion, like the sudden boom of an underwater sea bed. Sending those ripples of zeros and ones across the sky surface, I decipher them in the space between us, to a bottled note of love, music in the ring of that call; and there is a voluptuous eruption of joy in my bosom as I taste your hiccupped laughter over the line, like bubbles in my cappuccino, my latte. Ha! The words flow nearly noiseless like honey from a dipper, smoothly dripping from your lips, shhh! reaching my ears too far away from your tongue tracing its curvatures, yet piercing my innards you go on talking. Oh! Your voice, so rich so intense cutting across this silver network of signal, fails to make believe me; how far a kiss is homed, and there I curl my fingers over some lately cut bangs, cuddling to a leech in the gaps between your fingers, I try to knot you in my tangles, 

First published in https://troumagazine.com/

St.Teresa’s and Ispahani

By evening seven, we are sitting opposite each other, at Café Coffee Day,

in the less crowded Ispahani Centre by St.Teresa’s Church,

on the Thousand Lights Road of Nungambakkam bearing witness to our meeting.

St.Teresa’s Church, where you said the choir was always lively - not a word on the sermon.

And Ispahani, a fading landmark, in the maps of closely-packed constellations of other malls.

Like us, opposite each other, they have always stood, cut open by a busy highway;

St.Teresa’s for the lop-sided altar boy and Ispahani for the socially-awkward-writer-girl;

One by faith went and the other for the memory, the view of the barbaric yawp came.

It’s quiet there -

like in the library, like in the chapel of St.Teresa’s and in the elevated grounds of Isphahani,

a divine quietness shrouding, as we take those sips of cappuccino.



While I try remembering the color of your eyes today,

all I could recall is the roasted beans in the showcase;

with a tint darker than that – incandescent - hanging above us.

The warm cup of cappuccino between us and the busy road.

Your voice three months later on phone, telling me, how desperately you need the road,

a two way road, barricaded in between, so that St.Teresa’s and Ispahani

could stand opposite to each other, never meeting, in no universe,

confiding an entire cosmos between.



Coffee tastes great there in Ispahani, red velvets too

It’s an old mall in the great city of Chennai and she carries memories of love all kind.

She stands there, withstanding the great floods, hurricanes and earthquakes

like the best antique property of the city, priced, incomparable.

And I write this poem,

not because you asked me to.

I can’t contain the ‘you’ in me, anymore -

https://www.peachstreetmagazine.com/home/two-poems

Almond trees on 4th street

The red ripe leaves of the stone fruit tree garnishing these streets

falls raining on the empty road, tarred black.

It’s Autumn again;

the leaves are falling down in hope of rising.

To a dormant sleep of vim, they tumble

like bright orange embers, waiting for the winds of harvest.

An endless forest fire, he would initiate in them, on his visit,

They know, so do I.
https://www.peachstreetmagazine.com/home/two-poems