Did the force of Kal enter that aching space
between your eyes ?
Did her khatvanga leap out from
your calloused palms?
Did you bathe your ruptured fingers
in the gurgling alizarin-eqsue puddle,
the color of a fresh morning a shoeflower
from my Manna’s flower garden?
meant only for the most rabid
of goddesses. Very unlike the thulian pink
of my daily obeisance
to the other pleasant deities
I bowed to. Then. But I don’t
anymore. Forget me. You, we can’t.
Did they inject rabies shots into your skin
to negotiate with those intimate imprints,
of a lust-drunk cur, who didn’t know where
he chased .when. he. Bit.
the Sasabonsam
All teeth, and nails
Erupted with the blood of
Ancients, who waited for her turn
In the matted locks of a Kalpavrisksha
Not the silhouette of a prophesy
Not the jingle jangles of
Beauteous payals .
That orbit her jagged shins, nor was it the din
which births an eclipse. It often welcomes
new-fangled demons for their midnight
prowl.
This was not an ordinary kill
The Orion played witness
to its own kind and shape.
Born in the fire of Earth.
They say or have said
for long. But, the dark lines of fate
in your palms, no sibyl could dispute
them.
Did they quiver with unknown
fear and known
odium when You cut off
the Pishacha?
His head tumbling in on dirt
Like an ugly growth
a bulbous, poisonous shroom
exploded in the forest grass
Like a disgorged insect that children
in the hutment near my home pass
time with. Cut up and cut into two.
They do. They do. You did.
Did he wince, when Time came back
to swim in his watery corneas to structure
diabolical serenades.
Of a sure end and large hellish vats
Of burning in hot oil till even eternity wrinkled
like a raisin on Delhi’s summer roof
Is that a scary prospect?
Like a month in Gitmo.
Or hanging by hooks that
Pass through tortured nipples
Tell me, Kalki – I can call you that, can I not?
Did he feel Death?
And the punishment that
beckons him beyond it.
Did he know Death?
As closely as a lover knows
The lush of another’s orgasms.
Unclasped and deranged.
No. I mean not that.
The lack of life. In his skin.
And veins and arteries.
Like You do. Or did.
When he hounded your being for 90 days
or more, who knows?
What slithery, slippery
Creature wakes up in bodies
Like ours, Lines their bends,
a physical chorography, an atlas of ache;
something rises I know it does,
to conjure twin headed serpents,
grief and compassion.
Do we know. Will we ever?
That it’s Time. For hunger and insanity.
It’s time for avenging Us.
It’s the appropriate moment for making cartels
and opening fires, of worshipping the hoary blaze
of scalpels that will slice
to harm and hurt. To cause pain.
In the other.
To hack and dissolve. And
also make mince-meat of
guts, eyes and hearts that
bequeath hunger. It’s time drown.
Not sink. To find ugly voices, banshees
screeching louder than
preaching.
To undo Pure. Or Holy. Just become Us.
Ugly. The hide and darkness.
Hideous, indeed.
To roll heads not just give them.
Because. You begat. When.
In the smoke that cloaked your hills
That raspy morning you found out
You were not a mere sorceress.
No. That was mundane.
You are witchery. Herself.
