why 176 cms? 60 kgs? — fucks to give?
my anatomy//structure is a wilderness, drinking
through the air, one part mulch, the other
a hybrid of gas-dreams.
why rate my brown-bread-skin through
its number of moles and grafts of love?
why try to measure the length&girth of my life through
an arbitrary number of years?
my freedom isn’t your sugar & flour ration
that you can scale and take away per your
desired capacity for consumption?
how do you measure the taste of my ilk,
my sun-settled eyes, the fight of my cauterized
heart?
how do you see and experience my queer body, in-
tact, (w)hole, sweet&sour&salty like the rim
of your empty shot glass?
why do i succumb to the standards set in my core
by the (ir)regularity of your burnished soul?
i shred figures and hopes, letting the well-paced,
untold story of its desire to take its toll, leaving me
to rot, with a rumbling disdain for this mirror of
your eyes, that cannot tell or realize
the plurality of my roles.
.
© Anmol Arora
Day 29
(Inter)National Poetry Month
Edit: (Previous title, the value of existence) Linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at WRT (June 4, 2019), where I am hosting this week and I have shared a poem by Kamala Das for inspiration and acknowledgment.
HA's Place 
This is beautiful. Love it. Such thought provoking and moving questions. The video, song, and art complement it so nicely 😊
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Great thoughts. I love this.
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a rumbling disdain for this mirror of
your eyes, that cannot tell or realize
the plurality of my roles.
You tell it like it is, brother! I applaud this immediate and needful poetic voice.
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How does one take the measure a man? Weight, height, skin colour, eye colour… what is seen reflected by the “mirror of your eyes” or does one chance to take a deeper look at what is beneath. The character, what is cared about, the “standards set in my core” that is what one needs to see. Love the song pairing.
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Knowing nod and standing ovation for this declaration of refusal to be reduced to cliched parts
Things aren’t great here in the U.S. either, but a lot more people are giving the middle finger to narrow ideas of acceptability.
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lots of issues here in the states as well. Life is hard all over, we just keep on keeping on.
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So many questions and so many roles, Anmol. Weighing, measuring and counting are not for me, unless I’m cooking. These lines caught my imagination:
‘how do you measure the taste of my ilk,
my sun-settled eyes, the fight of my cauterized
heart?’
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I wonder how much we can solve by measuring and (worse) comparing… standards that never can be met will never solve anything.
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As someone who has never measured up to society’s standards, these are questions that need to be asked and examined. I’ve taken to being quite snarky with those who would measure others by arbitrary qualities such as so-called beauty.
Cie from Team Netherworld
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“why do i succumb to the standards set in my core
by the (ir)regularity of your burnished soul?”
We judge ourselves by others standards. How crazy is that. Hopefully with age, comes wisdom as I find less and less I care what others think. Sigh – a heavy poem, really.
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Followed by many, Anmol. Business based productivity, performance, promotions, and salary justification based on standards not necessarily understood.
Thanks for hosting, I intend to comment on the poem you found but I’m running late for here tonight.
..
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Desire across the cultural grain must be such an incessantly difficult rain to walk through. “how do you measure the taste of my ilk, / my sun-settled eyes, the fight of my cauterized / heart?” With what measurement, whose calibration?
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why rate my brown-bread-skin through
its number of moles and grafts of love?
so many good lines here…this one of my favorites…very nice writing …keep fighting for your cauterized heart…let it love for that is all there is even in its pain…bkm
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This is a poetic Declaration of Independence! Bravo!
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