Hi friends. Inspired by the work of artist On Kawara (he painted a panel with the day’s date for years), I am putting together this poetry project on FB and WordPress where I add to an ongoing poem every day (possibly for a year, and some poems may take more than a day, while I may end up writing more than one on any given day). Not sure how it’s going to go, or how long I can keep it up etc, but I plan to bring it all together (the poems, the videos I sometimes embed in them, the comments following each etc) for a multimedia show at the end of the project. Participate (or not) in whatever way you see fit (the FB comments section is one way, for instance, and don’t feel the need to be kind or polite – one of the points of the project is to explore the process of writing poetry in a more interactive mileu, so don’t hold back! ) Also, feel free to share them with social media denizens, using the fb hashtag mouth365, which is also what you can click on to bring the poems together. Mouth happens to be the pseudonym I perform under. Thanks much, and here goes everything!!
day 154 (september 28, 2018)
..tears are tracer bullets
tearing through flesh and bone and skin
watercloaked for generations
until they reappear finally as
a line on a cv
this
is
exactly why
boys cry
and yet….
day 153 (september 2, 2018)
…when
brown anger is forgiven
by white benevolence
when
bootsonthroat
is normal resting pose
for justice negotiated
only at eye level
when
black is justan easel
to sell at artbasel
when
paint dripping in white
mansplains
violence
perhaps then
it is time
to
ask
when?
and yet…..
day 152 (august 30, 2018)
…gaslighting (v)
from the noun [gas light (n)]
as in
murky illumination
drawing attention
away
from monsters lurking
in london fog – a shroud
draped over empire’s periphery
gaslight (v)
bridges gaps between
fuel (gas) and flame (light)
to verb alize
dis simulation in order
to create ancient order
as in
elevating to war hero
an ordinary spitter
of gookcunt verb iage
as in
burying with state rights
a hindutva right to [state hate]r
now that jack the ripper
stepping out of darkness
into empire’s gaslit focus
has redirected
a generations
conster nation
and yet….
day 151 (july 23, 2018)
…those tears, an exsection years
in the making, a final liquid offering
evaporating, leaving salty residues
that will excavate deep
tunneling
into mine shafts until
one chloride ion
will embed into rock
and reduce
another cation
completing a salination
that started
when lashes stripped eyes
of memory
day 150 (july 19, 2018)
…this moment
the one when
free drops out of freedom
leaving doms pretending to be subs
and
subs pretending to be permanent
when
russian resurrections
define morality equations
when
presidents alienate aliens
in order to
wall in walmartian
value reductions
when
unions
become empty sets
and
universals
become epithets
when
citizens are defined by origins
as long as
original residents
are first thrown out of the region
this moment when
the shit finally hits the fan
and that whirring
is just a socialist redistribution
of exhumed excreta
this
is the moment when
empathy means something
because
this was forever
exactly
how it always was
and yet…
day 149 (june 18, 2018)
….colonialism
is a shimmering
swimming pool
in kolkata
shedding onlywestern exteriors
i dive into the deepend
a
dependent club member
breaststroking from
the margins to the center
finally
i stand up in the shallows
rubbing water
out of pores
that
are now properly chlorinated
and yet….
day 148 (june 2, 2018)
..sylhet silhouetted
on monsoon horizons
the rains will
disrespect
borders that waters
flow over
-Calcutta, 2018
and yet…
day no idea what it is right now
..Sitting here after a completely depleting day, sipping a beer and listening in on a mother sitting across the table from me, working with her 15 year-old as he struggles beautifully with gabriel garcia marquez magically realizing allegories. “technology has made the world completely underwhelming” he muses. And she nods tiredly and excitedly “and how does this apply to you – I mean you know this process so well… draw on it !” And he re-engages, exhausted but also so willing to weave magic. And my batteries recharge. And yet.
day 146 (march 23, 2018)
…wonder why
pornstar
becomes an adverb
for how he had sex
as if
pleasure and desire
and sex for hire
are even more egregious
because
they
can never ever
be put together
or as if
orgasms that are performative
need to come branded with relative
qualifiers
“here comes a woman
who must be pitied
not for
having sex with this
orange agent
but because her burns
demand compensation”
or as if
she isnt openly laying bare
how we are all exactly like him
carpetbombing with
missionary positions
and then
covering up
with shaming redirection
or as if
she isnt absolutely
singlehandedly
carrying the torch into
his white house
burning it down
with smouldering vaginas
that demand
reparation
and yet…..
day 145 (march 13, 2018)
….remember comparing
exam marks after
anxious midterms
96 in english
but
69 in hindi
doublefucked by
first language essays
learnt by heart
describing the same days in the same zoos
3 months apart
and yet
failing to
reproduce premchand
the way
i quoted shakespeare
little did i know
i was empires traitor
training to be its hero
yet
stumbling through
gendered tonguetwisters
(who knew that cage bars were female)
that stopped interactions
at bus stations
no fucking wonder
that i took
so many detours
on lines that never went anywhere
but hey – thank god for bollywood
leading me back into conversations
where i could finally
wax poetic
in still foreign but nationalistic
cadences
and yet…..
lyricalwars 