Complexity

Complexity


Lilith and Eve had a daughter
They called her gendre
She proclaimed ownership-
Of life, of love, of being,
Of intellect and strength.

She lives in me, confusing you
With her feminine wisdom,
She survives taunts and brickbats
Unapologetically sexual,
Proud to be the other.

She lives within my queerness,
Gently trying to decide for me
The identity that should prevail-
Female, male, somewhere in between?
What desires define me and set me free?

I hate/love her, she disturbs me,
By the enormity of her truth
She encompasses my existence
With her exhausting need to
Metamorphose my essence.

Us

In a quest to understand
The things that make me
Different from myself,
To separate the two of us;
To acknowledge selfishness
I spoke to me, one to one
And I told me, happiness
Is just around the corner
If you let me be me
And learn to love
Somebody else who
Will let you be you.

Vanilla

Her wrinkled scowl welcomes-
Time uncerimoniuosly.
She squats in front of the fire
As though she owns the element.
Her eyes-defiant, her hair- scanty,
She smells of cinnamon, age and garlic.
The kitchen she tames for a paltry wage.
She washes, she cooks, she assures:
But not her clothes, her food or her babies.
As I watch in horrified fascination,
She stirs into the sweet of my childhood-
Her imagination and angels' dandruff.

Strength

The cunt yawns
Proclaiming ownership.
The weaker sex, the cleft
That swallows the strong
And gives up blood
And gives forth life.
Call it meek names,
Speak of its honey;
And hide your fear
Of its encompassment.

Insanity

Forty pills a week
Robbed me of my essence
I walked the line between
Truth and knowledge
But who then decides-
That the images I celebrate,
Or the songs that weep to me,
Or the wind that lingers-
A minute more to caress me,
Than it does, a jealous you
Or the passion than burns me,
Down to amber cinders
Or fears that snake into my soul-
Of confusion, of breathlessness
Make me insane and you sane?

In My Heart, a Child I've Borne

A child promised to death,
A chimera, a silent victim
Of an illness he knows not of.
His people, the virus took to-
Humble graves baked in the-
Unforgiving, unholy sun.
But in my heart this child
I've borne, to love and to hold--
Till he transforms my sins-
To gentle virtues worthy of-
A mother who bled for him.

Love as I know it

Share my bed and not my dreams?
Share my laughter and not my tears?
Take in your selfish obsession,
Every bit of me that was mine
Call me your friend/ your whore,
Feed my soul to your new cats,
Throw away my desperate poems,
Just leave me, and walk away,
If you turn to me one last time,
Cursed is my happiness forever.

Lady Shaver

The razor drags menacingly
Up my compliant thigh,
Drawing bloody drops
Some gentle patriarch
Is whispering to me:
Soft and hairless-
Is a woman's body
Meek and submissive-
Her nurturing spirit.
Lie down and surrender
The curvitude, the dreams.

Perfection

There is perfection-
In the coffee stains
You leave on my table
In the marks of longing
You leave on my neck
In your denial of hugs
When I ache for them
In the promising sunset
When you drive away.

Felon

A yankee candle burns conspicuously
And I can barely breathe
I sleep trying to escape
The reality of my pain
I wake up to watch movies
And pretend to myself
That they make me laugh
But like the yankee candle
I burn slowly dying inside
A glass jar that is my being
And yet like the yankee candle
I have to smell and look good
Till the last bit of me is burnt