Driblet

Oh, with those lusty pink-orange grapefruit eyes he devoured the world. Slice by slice. Lick by lick. Sometimes, to a stranger he made love. And with a lover, he had sex. He clung on to hands like he did to life. And oaths and vows and promises and such were left in box of odd white. Decorated with ribbons and hopes of a lily. Sometimes, the box would change chameleon colour. From white to a brown. Back then from a rainbow to nothing. On nothing-days, he would stand in his room, peer at the silver moon mirror and undress himself. Naked, he would lie. Naked, he would die.

On Mondays of June, and sometimes of November, it peeked from behind a bead curtain. It looked at him. The voyeur. What it was, it didn't know. Who it was, it did. It bit into a grape, a purple one. Streams engulfed its being. Purple streams. Look, it did. Look, it would. Look, it believed, it should. When his eyes shut, and he saw his dreams within the narrow bedroom of his eyes, it came closer, grape juice in mouth, and knife in hand. Slit. Slit. Slit. Before he knew it, it killed him. He woke up. Alive and with dead dreams.

He looked at it with turtle eyes and kissed it with a smile.

She flipped her hair, kissed back, and laughed.

Slit. Slit. Slit.

Blah!

I've slipped into a puddle of humdrum nothingness. Yes. It's true. Vacations do that to me. Two weeks of feverishly flipping through pages, trying to remember statistics that aren't meant to be remembered, swimming through a pool of absolute (for the lack of a poetic word) nonsense. And then what? Three months. Three months of doing nothing. Sigh.

So, my Annual Summer Book List has been made. Twenty. I'm aiming for a bit much, I know. But, I have Karnad in there too. I think I'll do okay. Reading is all I see myself doing. Which, really, is not so bad. It's pretty good, in fact. All I remember of the summer break from when I was 7 was waking up early in the morning, fidgeting around downstairs on a bicycle, and coming back home and reading. Aaah, happiness. I know now that happiness is tangible. Well, almost. A book is happiness. Cliched, yes. True, oh yes.

Strangely, that's about it.

It's 8:17 AM, and I've been up for an hour now. I say this without an ounce of doubt in my mind, there's something wrong with me.

Yawn.

Viola

Rainbow-ribbon eyelashes,
Tangerine-flavoured breath,
Almond peel skin that makes Summer
melt;
Cinnamon mouths together in a sonnet,
Raspberry-laden clouds of spring.

Like pianist fingers on a box of ivory,
He plays with her hair,
Like pictures in scriptures, he Reads her;
A vowel, a comma,
A full stop and a Puma
Lined.
Striped.
Stripped.
Lined.

A few strands stray,
A few smiles melt,
A few hours swim…

With her syrup-tears she finally
comes clean;
She looks into wine eyes,
and asks him to stay
He splits his blink,
and says with a whiff of silence
that he has perfected,

He Will.

Patterns of Pitter

Precision, laced with blissful ignorance
thrown out of the marble windows of slow, slow time.
Gleeful hungry hands unbutton seams of soft sweat.
Beads of perspiration glide down the sliver of a silver back.
An ice hand feels,
and ignited is the mind.
Pieces of a purple soul mingle with carnal harmony,
making concentric circles
within the forceful realms of a warm void.
Strands of black press themselves against dunes of sweet, sweet kisses.
Cardamom, the man with the almond eyes thinks.
Cardamom.
They, the two, become one;
then two again.
Rocking in and out of bundles of sunlight.
An exclamation of white and translucence.
And then, it stayed.
Within the hollow space between her feet and the earth between his teeth.

Thursday

He smiled a tangerine smile and she smiled right back. With coal-lined eyelashes, he looked at her. She smiled. Yet again, she smiled. With feather fingers he touched her blue-black hair. She called his name. She ran away. She knew. She pretended. Intended. Comprehended. But pretended. Moist fears, dry hopes intertwined in the amorous melody of his touch. He fell. Oh, he fell. With a harmonious thud. He didn't want to untie the satin ribbons of orange. He had to. The man with almond eyes tried.

She ran away. She knew. She pretended. Intended. Comprehended. But pretended. Into a canister of black seeds of grime, she escaped. Leaving bloodshot eyes and trembling knees behind. Making the morning stars and the fast cars disappear. She escaped. From what would be. What could be. What was.

And he...cried.

A Thursday was all it took for the primrose to die.

Twelve and a few Twenty Five

Sweet wedges of sour, sour lime,
Rusty edges of pearl, pearl grime;
And that time of the year,
When a smile gives way to a tear...

This year, somehow, the smiles linger on. The blankets of dust melt. The eeriness of happiness disappears. The spirals of glee settle down. Crystalline drops of rainbows hibernate.

And this year, she didn't feel like weeping on Christmas. And this year, she'll laugh when the clock decides it's time.

Putrid

Fragmented lies. Forgotten.
False mellow eyes. Blinded.
Bits of ugly sunshine. Thrown away.
Miles of turquoise showers. Disappear.
Existence of temporary insanity. Locked.
Files of weathered red. Discarded.
Freckled. Speckled. Pickled.
Cried. Died. Confide.
Alive. Again. Now.
Never to come back.
Nestled in a container of the sourest lime.
Bathed in the milk of unkind lips.
Flung in a path of horned petals.
Allowed to be. To rot. To die.
That.
Go away, birdie.
Go away, before those eyes get you too.