of waiting

naked. i sit in the bathroom, waiting for my needs to dry and shrivel so that I can take control of my breath again and proceed with my shower. listening to Cyndi Lauper, i wait. i am merging with my immediate emptiness. yet, I keep on waiting…

waiting for things to normalise back to their abnormality. waiting for that dairy milk cake to rise and collapse and harden and soften with time. waiting for ice cubes to melt and burn my tongue further and blister. waiting for the pain to recede and waiting for it to come back. waiting for the silence before the scream to extinguish itself and waiting for the impending scream to crack open the earth. waiting for the food to pass the intestinal tract and waiting for the next unsatisfactory meal.

waiting for the room to start becoming my skin and enclosing my wronged limbs and waiting for it to break me to nothing. waiting for the world to open a star-shaped space for me and fill me with moonlight. waiting for my heart to collapse beneath the weight of my consuming world. waiting for the hunchback sky to turn into that particular hibiscus-red and fall down on me. waiting for the heat to penetrate my shadow skull and open flowerless graves within. waiting for a song that would escape my lips and take my voice and bury it into the ploughed riverbed. waiting to be kissed by a nightmare and fucked by an inconsequential god.

waiting for the wait to end.

.
© Anmol Arora

Image source (Tyeb Mehta (b. 1925) Diagonal Series signed and dated ‘Tyeb 76’ (on reverse) oil on canvas 44 x 35 in. (111.8 x 90.2 cm.))

 

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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)

 

don’t stay

the lights go off in the section where
dusk meets the dark tidings of time
– limitless, engorged, stagnant –
whites to become whole at
this juncture of hope,
where no one stays
when shutters
have closed
down.

don’t
stay now
either, since
my unslept dreams
resound in emptied-
out hollows of the mind —
all that was sought, to be lost,
has been found at a decried end,
where staying is no longer in need.

.

© Anmol Arora 2018

For With Real Toads’ Fussy Little Forms, where Nonets are the order of the day
Image source (Before the Dusk by Dana Dion)

***

I have been working on a new Insta handle for over a month now, for literary and creative posts: @anmol.ha.
For contact, you can reach out to me through my multiple profiles, enlisted here.

an evening reverie

 

what I shall make out in green and concrete –
the milk of this evening has gone rancid
in its own boiling heat – white blossoms curled
into their wombs – colored winds in this play.
what I shall discern of you, in your want –
an iris dusk shedding silken-haired light,
hung at the mere hint of one last goodbye.

.

For dVerse MTB

Image source (Arizona Dusk by Erin Hanson)

an ocean story

by Samantha Keely Smith

down the lanes of persistence and sweat,
there are waves lapping at the mind’s cliff,
seeking restoration of things wild and vain,

I see with my squid eyes the promulgation
of morrows bound to my brows, lives are tarnished
by the salt of this ocean of continuity, despite
a range of cul de sacs of mediocrity,

I ache to parch my thirst through drowning,
I seek virtues in the bleeding sun touched by
paints of this allegory. I have seen tempests
and treacheries, I have witnessed moats
of luxury, and the contrasts that lie within
these stories.

the vastness doesn’t exemplify loss but transcends it
into a lonesome lore,
I can feel the brush of drops and sand coming
awash, on my face, as my limbs stretch out
to become the shore, where

sirens sing and muses muse a melancholic hymn,

a reverie is lost and found, thus becoming –

it was meant to lose itself in turquoise ripples,
for the fates of my nature and your culture
are misaligned.

.

Linking it up with Midweek Motif at Poets United

*16 June: Linking it up with dVerse OLN

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