I am not the hours of smoke creating clouds around my head

I am not the shards of Time I fractured with primeval knives

I am not the flecks of red swimming in my eyes

I am not the silhouette that left this room in 1987

I am not the apparition that floated back in 1998

I am not the Passage of minutes soaked in chemicals and sanguinity

I am not the whiff of emptiness that abounds in these vaults

I am not this urbane void

I am not the subliminal lyric I plagiarize

I am not the perspicacity of this transient thought

Source: In Yogic tradition, Mahat is considered to be the Great Self or the emergence of intelligence in the human form.

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.