Whispered intimacies
And I got your words
Today.
I will have them painted
Tonight.
Try to choose
Or take them all.
Glitter on innocent
Raspberry lips that plead
For touch, for closer
Communion.
Composition in coffee
Cream blending with bitter
Chocolate worn on business
Days.
Ravenous red, for fiery
Animals in us, tamed,
By love in dying
Languages.
Colourless words, invisible
But everywhere—Love
Reserved for needy
Nights.
Love, remember the rain
And our fading words
On lonely nights
Drenching—Drizzling—
Bring him up to worship you
Straying to a steady
Chatter or studied
Silence.
Remember our
Whispered intimacies
Which still linger on lips.
Remember that some words
Which once beheld promise
Now hold our bodies
In motion.
Composition
At that brief time
When you wait
For the audacious cane
To strike your skin,
And the rest of you is flinching
And cringing, with part shame,
And part pain,
Poetry dictates itself
In your mind. Short lines
Rip through, like bullets
From a machine gun.
The poem comes with the
Freshness of a life set free,
Whistling its way,
Painfully, like wind searing
Through the palm fronds.
Then,
The cane thrashes
Your skin, dancing cruelly
And bouncing in wooden joy.
Before you scream,
Or shake, the poetry stops.
And the Muse, is tentatively,
Laid to rest, much before the
Composition is
Complete
Untitled love
and perhaps,
because we only met in secret
and shielded by darkness,
he hesitates—whenever i ask him
to bring our love to light.
Meena Kandasamy (1984) is a Chennai-based poet, fiction writer and translator. She represented India as a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program 2009. Her first collection of poetry Touch was published in 2006, and her second collection, Ms.Militancy, will be published later this year. She blogs at http://meenu.wordpress.com
And I got your words
Today.
I will have them painted
Tonight.
Try to choose
Or take them all.
Glitter on innocent
Raspberry lips that plead
For touch, for closer
Communion.
Composition in coffee
Cream blending with bitter
Chocolate worn on business
Days.
Ravenous red, for fiery
Animals in us, tamed,
By love in dying
Languages.
Colourless words, invisible
But everywhere—Love
Reserved for needy
Nights.
Love, remember the rain
And our fading words
On lonely nights
Drenching—Drizzling—
Bring him up to worship you
Straying to a steady
Chatter or studied
Silence.
Remember our
Whispered intimacies
Which still linger on lips.
Remember that some words
Which once beheld promise
Now hold our bodies
In motion.
Composition
At that brief time
When you wait
For the audacious cane
To strike your skin,
And the rest of you is flinching
And cringing, with part shame,
And part pain,
Poetry dictates itself
In your mind. Short lines
Rip through, like bullets
From a machine gun.
The poem comes with the
Freshness of a life set free,
Whistling its way,
Painfully, like wind searing
Through the palm fronds.
Then,
The cane thrashes
Your skin, dancing cruelly
And bouncing in wooden joy.
Before you scream,
Or shake, the poetry stops.
And the Muse, is tentatively,
Laid to rest, much before the
Composition is
Complete
Untitled love
and perhaps,
because we only met in secret
and shielded by darkness,
he hesitates—whenever i ask him
to bring our love to light.
Meena Kandasamy (1984) is a Chennai-based poet, fiction writer and translator. She represented India as a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program 2009. Her first collection of poetry Touch was published in 2006, and her second collection, Ms.Militancy, will be published later this year. She blogs at http://meenu.wordpress.com
