How to grow fond of lonesome nights
Invocation for a small amount of sentience
Transpiration
How to grow fond of lonesome nights
Trust me when I say this: you’re a raptor in combustible
sky, a gilled thing on wet floor. Dreams will never marry you
to sleep, but desire might. You allow your good bones
the treasure of a mid sentence twist, asterisk your name
in expensive ink, bow to duty. Appreciate how the sun
doffs its cap to light up the tundra. Here in tropical republic,
watch rains of a country wash up like bodies at the shore
of your stained sofa. Your feet curl in reverence to the teeth
of wetness. After all you descend from a pack that learned
to count, strike a fire, stoke flame for penetration. To feel
alive you invite susurrations to brush ears. At 3 am,
you make a coffee out of vengeance but use a little too much
milk. Yes, it’s a night to pour. The cup runneth over
with lather you don’t recognize. You decide it’s impassioned
flush between masturbation and self-pity. Recall faces
from places and places from faces. You pity the pimpled
moon, its 360 degree access to earth’s mangled theatre.
Oh, the kind of things it must have seen. The world’s ignited
by rum stricken sunrise: the eyes blink dilemma, city―
a fuzzy ornament, faraway aunts snoring jasmine and elegy.
Gravity sprinting from womb to womb emancipating
pleasure of waking dawn. Bird on the wire hesitatingly poops.
Misses passerby beneath by a whisker. By the virtue
of vantage, a creature in the shiver of guilt learns of gratitude.
Try sleeping in emergency, dreams polluted by need.
Forgive your stewy breath, blinded blue like a hissing river
rushing between dark shores. Forgive the last sliver of water
attempting to surge. In the singe of heat, it becomes blood.
Now you know it’s nothing that delights. A lull’s dignity.
Note it isn’t nothing in isolation. It’s nothing following a lot.
Invocation for a small amount of sentience
lizard on my forehead |
gecko in my dreams |
Lord is it my misfortune |
the world comes alive |
only when I sleep |
|
I worry the most |
when I close my eyes |
but deep inside I know |
time spent worrying |
amounts to |
a body’s mystique |
something peripheral |
like a pale moon panting |
arriving early at dusk |
tell me why waiting |
is dangerously joyful |
|
maybe anticipation is |
your brimful of heavens |
the chips |
in a choco chip cookie |
crunching your mouth |
churning hunger into want |
everybody lives like this |
mouth nursing tongue |
tongue riding teeth |
can I mourn a loss |
in my beauty |
or will that qualify me |
to the higher echelons |
of vanity (don't say yes) |
I would say I don’t care |
but by now |
I know your ways Lord |
& so my aggression comes |
with the delectability |
of sweet caution |
so on mercurial days |
I stare at mirrors |
until I grin away |
the flux of my desires |
I ask forgiveness Lord |
the strength to bleach ire |
no merit being a name here |
I’m just trying to be |
a mellow enough body |
an animal wants to rise in |
“I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.”
―Bob Dylan
the nature of things beneath my waist
arrhythmic but transpiring like everyone else’s
universe mimicking all that happens clever photosynthesis
our heady propeller didn’t you notice the blades of grass
lisping the meadow in your train window
their slow rustling slash pining your black beard
their strange murmurations in light anything born
will be reborn then vanish for the want to return
ecology’s cocktail I drink with glee I like how gnarled
the world’s things are I bargain over a few rupees
with a rickshaw driver but guzzle down a few hundred
on Jägerbombs at a bar it’s clear to me my moneyed
brow ebbs like thoughtless currency the joy of scrambling
less from lesser significantly creamier than more from a lot
don’t we dwell in fractions all the time starts in a zygote’s pinch
ends with mouth spangled with lifetime’s spit in these depths
of night my apartment is montage of ventilators glimpsing
into workings of hands and feet mice kissing gnawing
under lumpy carpet oblivious to miracles for a moment
they are the miracle in some windows, shadows making love
in some, bodies thinking about it in some, chests bemoaning it
for either its red fullness or dry heave what I really mean
to say is it all comes down to burning spice on simmer flame
flavour rising from incandescence in every steeling act
of fire essence duly purged ash for snorting ash
skin settling under kind blisters in natural chemistry stemming
from the marrow’s gutters bones here nudged an element
to realize the next second they had moved the world
Satya Dash's poems have been published or are forthcoming in Waxwing, Wildness, Redivider, Passages North, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Florida Review, Prelude, The Cortland Review, Poetry@Sangam amongst others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator too. He is a two-time Orison Anthology and Best New Poets nominee. He spent his early years in Odisha and now lives in Bangalore, India. He tweets at: @satya043
