Brinda Bose
I
what conversations do you hold with the room you grew up in?
are they the colour texture stink of seaweed, soaked in the spirit of briny seas
olive black with the dark weariness of faraway lands
alive with the hope of survival in return
exquisitely hardy in refuge,remnants
most intimate, most distant
more difficult than fleeting friends and lovers lost and found
that old room swam you through every fall nick ephemeral passing elation
swept out blood crusted bandages when wounds healed
and smirked at your flickering jubilations
having no memory and all memory, no eyes and ears and nose and mouth and fingers but all eyes ears mouth nose fingers
your room baillemaps you each time you return
tracking bruises that broke and made you
fingering, lightly, all the laughter that birthed the crows feet at the corners of your eyes
II
finally, only one street defines this city
the coffin of skeletal tramlines
where collegiac ghosts
rest
on violent flashbacks
on laughter coiled in cobwebs
on raging literature crouched in crumbled pages: precarious, predatory
on shelves holding crusted pavements and gross management tomes to ransom
there was a time when all of poetry was an epiphany, wild and endless
before recollections rolled
anger roiled and ardour spent
retreading bookstreet now where time is liquid, burning
drowning infusions sugarblack
melting argument
smoking affection, o what affection was that…
whoever knew
that such an ageless street as this
the ageing might reclaim
hunting still
for themselves, for others, for manuscripts torn, caffeine, grass, frenzy, ennui, rapture
restless verses that spiral up and down those grimy stairs
vomiting fear and tenderness
insomniac
III
crawling this city’s face, grey termite tearing through a dusty shelf two millimeters in a year, or less.remembrances of what we said and did not say, what we did, slept, loved, lied, cried.but so much that we said we would do but have not, burning and yearning through alleys of conversations real and imagined. calcutta, crow. about all you know and think you know, about us together and apart walking along unbidden local traintracks and riverine, those glances which have met and held. of a time before we came to be, that a city existed in which we were born and played and hungered and wept, and knew, and did not know
calcutta’s crow
resolute
resilient
fretfully watching that odd tender touch that drops from your careless hand
on my shoulder
it has been so long and not so long at all that the city has held us, screaming and silent. all our lives when our lives have just begun. is it the old man bergson who meanders along with us unbearably light, henri henri hold on tight we said. oh is he the third who walks always beside us shadowdances through our piledhighyesterdays and wipes the snot of obnoxious recollection on our sleeves as they brush
against each other and smirk. calcutta, crow
agnosco veteris vestigial flammae, i feel once more the scars of the old flame
but what is that flame how high does it sear to leer up the skirt of ageing thighs
where did it come from when did the match strike and blaze and touch a fingertip of jasmine attar to the languorous dip behind my ear which your hand reached out and licked
calcutta’s crow
somnolent
satyr-ical
hanging from the edge of the parapet looking into our eyes as we wander together and apart there and here, rapt lost hidden in the stench of stories we have shared in separate lives just like
those old framed black and white replicas of our future selves having neither history nor logic that hang askew in that studio on the second floor where clocks stand frozen that no one visits
except us. calcutta, crow
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