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.))

 

Advertisement

of heat and pain

the pain comes in waves, rising with every twist and movement, closing like a sunflower in that one particular posture and head tilt that makes it recede to an invisible centre (all else silent). in that particular pose, a burst of senseless laughter escapes me, of relief, of sweet, sweet relief. it has only been a couple of days and i am sick of its tentacles piercing and needling my muscles into tight knots. the right quadrant of my upper back is a plain, a parallel dimension for unintended consequences of seemingly inconsequential actions.

a hot water bottle rests against the hurt. the nightlight makes the red rubber look like blood. its scaled surface feels like old skin. letting the heat transfer and latch onto my pain, i feel light. the waves pass me by, hungry for new flesh and brittle warmth. lying in this manner, i drift off to visions. it may be the result of a muscle relaxant i took in one go that i feel the vibrations of a half-dream on my left shoulder and forearm, and numbness spreads throughout like apricot jam on a burnt toast.

with this unkindly sleep, i stay in a drug-addled awareness. all is as should be. all is on its way to becoming a memory.

embracing the pain, i read of an empress and bulimia, bridges made of watermelon sugar, and the kill list of a forgotten virus. the night becomes predawn becomes the first glimmer of light becomes a hot day. the water turned cold hours ago, the anti-inflammatory chemicals have absolved themselves. i move around and struggle with the weight of my small being in the vastness of this bed, all in the hope to find a way through the pain.

not to avoid it. to be it.

the pain as a reminder as a prophecy as a hypnotic dream as a sunburnt image as a rain besieged sea as a burnt-up pyre as an acceptance.

.
© Anmol Arora

Image source (Frida Kahlo, Arbol de la Esperanza (Tree of Hope), 1946 (Photo: Nathan Keay, ©2014 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, D.F. Artists Rights Society (ARS), Private Collection Chicago))

your love took all with it but this sweet pain

Kitchen Windows in Summer Heat Painting by Lynne Cartlidge

your love took all with it but this sweet pain,
you rendered your sleek spell in this neat pain.

the skies are split open by the heat’s rage,
i smouldered to the whims of this elite pain.

you dropped all pretense, spilled my discreet truths,
i am left bloodied by our defeat’s pain.

you are not my soul, not a complete stop,
i won’t be richer by your deceit’s pain.

all this loss made us change our concrete ways,
still i lost you to this obsolete pain.

do not go to find your past life’s street-mark —
Priceless, you’ll no more love your heartbeat’s pain.

.
© Anmol Arora

A half-hearted ghazal — linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at WRT

a paean to pain

Pleasure from pain by Chipriade Andreea-Luciana

have you seen the festering wound
with maggots and flea eggs, defining
the scope of pain and hurt as just
a preoccupation? did you pour liqueur
and salt on the scraped skin that has
covered the scissors with a ritualistic
charity, to part with your sadness?

unless there is a scar, no one would
know how carefully you have figured
a way to wound without wanton dis-
charge of pus and blood-filled nerves
that define your convoluted desire
for all this pain and hurt. catharsis is
the name of a tiny hair sprig sprouting
from an open contusion, like growth
in decay. they have restored cellular
activity (godly) in the porcine brains of
the dead. so what are you going to do,
if not pulling it all out with a tweezer
for a microscopic study of metabolic
activity that denotes that life reverses
and re(as)sembles itself, and applying
a gauze to move out, and hide and smile
till it looks becoming on your face?

grief is the name of your eyes that
refuse to cry. loss is the truth of your
lips that cannot remember the sparse
touch of all that you did not say, and
all that was injured by your mistakes.

.
© Anmol Arora

Inspired by the Day 18 prompt at NaPoWriMo

Day 18
(Inter)National Poetry Month

the loss of agency

keeping up with timelines of loss —

the cold-handed warmth
of a touch, where the waist meets
the censure of modesty —

small-sectioned, covered
half-inched skins, neat-folded
and soft-edged,
curved, light-bearing,
pinched between the nails,

silver-glinted.

the early nights (touch) take something
from all of us.

.
© Anmol Arora 2018

Image source (A Munch-Gogh Parody)
For dVerse Quadrille # 67