Mustang

The loneliness of being young is often forgotten,

left behind by adults who change in ways usually
not noticed until the change is concrete.
We become better at deluding ourselves
into believing we aren't as lonely
and we buy into the romantic notions
of youth,promised to us by pop culture,
the market capitalizing on the glory days
of coming of age.
Mustang means stray animals
in Spanish,I suppose
and that's what being in college is like.
I realise that home is a construct,
well,everything is,
but it's the only construct where
clothes smell of comfort (the fabric conditioner,you know?)
and potatoes and drumsticks are cooked in ground mustard,
rooms smell like dogs have been around the place,
it's never too late to catch a sunset in solitude
and it's never problematic to take a nap without worrying
about the wasted hours,
Home,with always enough,endless supply
of green tea and coffee stocked up in the larder.
I once read somewhere that home is a person
but that was young adult fiction,idealistic,
read owl-eyed at 4 in the morning,
(In my defence,I still really like YA)
I'd stayed up all night to chase away the mystery of teenage romance,
struggled to stay awake for school the next morning.
I'm twenty now and home is not a person to,me,
it is people,yes,but not always the same people
that I go back to.
When I first moved out of a place I'd lived in
almost
literally my entire life,my friend said
Home is creature comforts,
he was right,but I felt it was more,
it was nostalgia,it's a permanent abode
in imagination,
Memory
and more.
Maybe I'm just as destitute as the hostel cats
and campus dogs,
living on the leftover mercies of human beings,
getting by on the affection they anticipate.
 I watched people blur into each other's
movements,from the distance,on a grassy slope,
next to an oversized Labrador,Ash,
he recognised me even on days
I hid a sob fest behind a bathroom stall,
he soothed me with his presence,
 making the telltale red nose from crying ,vanish.
Does that mean I'm trying to be stronger?
I'm better at hiding my weaknesses now?
I don't know.
I wanted to be alone,get some fresh air,
clear my head,breathe,
go on a walk.
That's the recipe to feel better,
everyone says,
but it's in these moments
when you realise
how illusive totality is,
how impermanent home
or anything wholesome is.
Maybe being older is lonely too,
just being lonely around more people,
a far cry from going home to somewhere
you belong.
For now,I'll just roll down this grassy slope
and watch the sky become the grass become the
sky again,
till I'm dizzy and the blood rushes to my head
and I'm laughing so hard,I can't breathe.
I will try not to think about how itchy the grass is
and the bath that will entail as a result of this
spontaneous exercise in the spectacular now,
There are only moments in a day,
nothing more,nothing less.

Walled City

Within the walls of a walled city,

my thoughts grow invisible wings ,
born inside a closet sized,shoebox like room.
They struggle to take flight,
stumble and fall,some taste the dirt forever.
A cat we called Tilly Kettle,
as the namesake of a modern artist,
often purrs in front of my door,
I don't know what it is that she's been asking for,
it seems a lot like all the things I struggle to
say.
Labyrinthine is the structure
of most things I've understood
 cannot be fought.
I'm not yet sure it's impossible
to transcend these concentric circles
of creation,perpetuated
through walls we've build
because humans love
to categorize,classify,stick people and objects
into glass jars as specimens,alike.
Ideas might be just as futile in their ambitions
as Icarus,
or the renaissance man,
their waxen wings might not endure
the sun's strength,
or the ocean's might,
within walls born,within walls
predestined to crash and burn
like stars,
just as distant
and alluring.
We spend our entire lives
moving from one room to another,
walls within walls,
familiar we make them,
the ones we sit on,some we even cross
over,
only to realise we'd have to leave
 them behind anyway
to meet new walls.
Within the walls of the walled city,
I've come to learn to let go,too
not only to look beyond walls
but to make peace with living
within some of them,
as long as I can paint them in shades
of grey,
grey is not just monotony,it's comfort,
it's not just uncertainty,it's exploration.
Some of us might never break down
walls in this lifetime,
but it's enough,sometimes,
to see them as more
than mere walls,
paint them in shades other than the
standard off white
and black.

Faiz,Fish and Feminism.

In no particular order,
like stream of consciousness writing,

like the endless afternoons and 2 AM silences,

Shared,as we sprawled ourselves,

under the ceiling fan

laid bare our most intimate ambiguities

 in the summer.

Played a poem on loop,

it rendered out a refrain that stuck with us,

it claimed to promise us a time in the future,

when we'll get to witness the

mountains of injustice that loom over us

blowing away with the wind like cotton wool.

I don't know how revolutions work,

but I've walked with fleecy cotton wool,

floating by my feet on a late summer evening,

lingering on the street,final attempts at shadowing

the seed from losing it's sheath.

I've seen dandelions losing their feathery tufts,

in the pattern that was printed on 

my sociology professor's cotton shirt,

like the plausible cover of a novel.

I realise that all those that are vulnerable 

are endangered because they're frail,but this very

vulnerability will become strength,

letting go of inhibitions,

even if it means letting go of the fleecy 

blanket they wear.

Her lapel has a tiny brooch,she wears a different one

everyday,today,it's a fish,mustard and red,

it's eye staring down at me,

like those fish filled with swirls of Madhubani strokes,

ubiquitous in folk art.

Is it a hilsa,a flying fish?
Is it koi,the fish that symbolize luck,
the ones my roomate yelped with excitement
at,the first fish she ever saw,
 realised the childhood dream she dreamt,
having grown up up in a desert.
Is it one of those tiny river fish,
I swam with in my father's hometown,
wild and free and slimy,they tickled my little feet.
Is it the kind of fish my sister grills

with basil,

its tender flesh dissolving on one's tongue

like a strip

of acid,

at least that's how they show it in the movies.

Look for love,

and you look for love,

but it's not where you're looking for it.

It's not about others

loving you,

or how much you deserve,

for that is just an age old way

of preserving

"who should be loved,how and how much",

pickled with salt,heirarchies and whatnot.
Often,in your confessional mode
you mete out poems
about love that is not a commodity,
about people that aren't commodified.

Saltwater fish swim in doodled seas,

sketched beside annotated texts,

clouds of cotton tumble past time,

what is sublime?