Two feet

Two feet witness
those toiling to reach home,
witness the sum of all things unjust,
all seasons adverse, weathered,
shaped by the unprecedented.

Two feet find
the will to break barriers
that segregate, cage, dictate
leap over fears that open out
possibilities to be shared as humans.

Two feet unravel
knots around identity,
enriching such choices
of what is imbibed and what is kept out,
find their way through a tunnel that connects.

***

Knife and phone

I sit down to enjoy my art
with a knife and phone

a faint hunger works up
after listless hours of scrolling,
satiated by plating colours,
textures, guising gnawing boredom

an elaborate post production
followed by regular reporting
to imagined drools, likes,
hearts and compliments

a click later, the deafening roar of
aeon travelled stomachs
shatters my plate. I gulp splinters

stab what is left
of hunger inside

***

On having entered a room

On most days I witness
seesaws of alternating identities 
as we hiccough through planned exchanges 
and spontaneous spurts
engaging in our own little play, 
trying to sit still, weightless in the centre, 
as if we do not matter

Today’s different, somehow
cracks laden with seeped pretension threaten collapse, 
realignments of agreed-upon definitions for this space,
as the sanctity of boundaries between relations 
that changed behind closed doors
is dragged into the public eye 

With blaring earphones and eyes shut
I no longer exist in this room
now I am a cat that waits 
to jump out of balance, to find myself 
to make me whole 
to become manifold, timeless

***

To giraffes who keep their necks above the clouds

aspire to reach the sun
pine hard, long enough
that anatomy changes

crane up to bask
in the effervescent sunlit sky
at a hot air balloon’s height

then, also, stick your head
into the bedazzling brilliance
of a jumped-in monsoon puddle

follow the sun to the ground
the linear path imagined
shall curl into a spiral

bend down harder and
you may see light shining
under you, inside you

laden clouds around your neck
cast shadows, obscure vision
‘other’ the world
don’t you want to be
bigger than what shaped you?