appraising identity

Andy Warhol, Torso (double)

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.

 

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winter comforts

the first drops felt like invisible threads
dangling down the sky in swift, translucent
colours, wetting the epidermis of the earth,
in the pattern of an old comforting habit,
worn-out and bare, as a cold wind against
the torn paths of my seldom-used lips.

you felt like a stolen figure of hope —
a sudden departure from white noise
in a vast welcoming gesture of your open
arms, your face flushed in a lightning
roar — your voice grew distant, and yet
your luminous eyes stayed in the dark.

i shared the softness of my limbs, loose
muscles, hollow bones, all the broken scars.

.

© Anmol Arora

Also read, devirginating desire and a twilight story

Linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at With Real Toads, where I am hosting and paying homage to Mary Oliver and David Bowie
Image source (B. Prettau – WINTER RAIN)