and i am tracing the spaces
your lips covered/caricatured
on my sunshine skin —
my lips blooming&bursting
this spring of lust, bereft of stars,
while i look for my own loss
in the dark.
the roads are endless in this city
of loss,
but my beginning is its own end.
where do i go to seek the poetry
of things? how can i ever
make this night last?
.
© Anmol Arora
Day 4
(Inter)National Poetry Month
your eyes are water-channels never be-
-fore-seen by the travails of my body,
your hands are grains on a dried river-bed
that haven’t felt what it is to be dreaded
with a precipitating desire for
such soft/silken/smooth meridians — i laugh
away your hesitant touch, as if di-
-vided by a barrier of evergreen trees.
the epicenter of this tremor lies
in your heaving chest, and your soft cries
are the lingua-franca of this land,
dense with ligatures of our limbs: misaligned —
we meet at the estuary of our dreams,
our faultlines eroded by limited means.
.
© Anmol Arora
A broken/battered sonnet for my prompt this week for dVerse Poetics (On Geography), where I have shared verses by Whitman, Bishop, and Ammons, to inspire the poets and prompted everyone to inculcate geographical themes in their writing. Do not forget to visit and participate. Also, I am linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at With Real Toads.
hidden − alone − like a heart
come asunder − palash
drinks the heat of this sultry
day, painting the white into
reds, and a soft orange flame,
like a petal drying, on
a non-existent shore,
i pluck a new memory to be unveiled −
kaagaz ke phool −
lying awake, and hiding my trace
beneath the bed, of the previous dusk’s
reckoning − i smell of you,
and i smell of the night −
chameli drying on my chest
leaving aside all pretense,
hidden − i inhale, as
you come awake − your fingers riddled
in my hyacinth hair, my lips
blooming like a torn tulip bulb,
at least for this day.
.
…
Flowers and their symbolism:
Palash (Butea monosperma): Arrival of spring, blooming of love
Kaagaz ke Phool (colloquial tr. paper flowers) (Bougainvillea): Beauty, welcoming
Chameli (Jasmine): Love, romance
Hyacinth: Sincerity, constancy
Tulip: Love, cheerfulness, royalty
…
Bringing together lovemaking with the hint of its end, for dVerse Poetics, where the flowers are speaking in their beautiful tongue.
Edit: Linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at With Real Toads.
love’s bulge seems to be pretty abundant-
lewd words weave a fulcrum of all dreams, wet to touch,
sweet-bitter tones serenade the ears, a silent breath
grazing the neck with a scimitar of nefarious thoughts,
don’t speak, just do the unspeakable, the unmentionable
with a velocity of a soaring plane, upending us into submission,
this is the art work people gawk at and fail to encompass
into any coherent knowledge, its deprivation, its salvation,
spilled paint is the canvas for this action filled space, love is
swallowing its saliva and thick puddles of misery foam at those
silent, nurturing lips. your mouth is my mouth is your mouth.
let’s do it. let’s unmake love.
.
Image source
Linking it up with Poets United Midweek Motif
Also read this: this vulgar handiwork of time and let’s draw blood
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