Your hair strands buried deep
as veins inside my chest,
my gasps circumambulating
the oasis of your ear,
your intricate coiffure
the topology of the universe,
with you illuming the front seat
I am cycling near the speed of light
and the gasps, the oasis, the universe
grate into fine strands of hair,
lines - illuminating hair lines.
Time behaves erratically
like your aesthetic tantrums.
In the moment riding now
I see everything in a now
Past, present and future now
THEATRE LOVE circa 1970s-1980s
You, Me and an awaiting
outside the Regal.
Among pattering voices -
chai, cigarettes and black tickets -
I, in my usual bell-bottom pants,
you, in your unusual burqa.
We're planning a coup
(against our families)
in that dark hall with screen
illuminating the face of Omar Mukhtar
Like a torch:
All revolutions go out of fashion
like the bell-bottoms.
BUS-STOP LOVE circa 1990s
Dressed in a decent school uniform,
too erotic for me.
I lose two bus stops and an hour
to reach yours in time.
The bus is crowded in cursive lines
like our hearts effusing bodies
scattered in a grenade blast.
The grammar of crackdown
marks the bodies in line,
each alphabet separated from the other -
You remain inside the bus,
I wander in barbed wires:
Every love story does not end
by the gates of the school.
SATELLITE LOVE circa 2000s
The bus addas have been extracted
from the jaws of Lal chowk
like a rotten tooth
leaving a historical cavity
grafted with telephone towers.
It rings in your landline
I hear it in a PCO cubicle.
We're arranging a meet -
timing fixed,
spot decided.
Around the margins of the University
some restaurants serve love.
Shutters fall, hartal -
Two boys murdered.
No buses to carry us:
Not all stories travel uplink and downlink.
Some hop by autos
shrouded in black.
BLANK LOVE, 2019
We encounter a blackhole,
every story into the event horizon
SOCIAL LOVE circa 2020s
A desert of digitality
under the sun of connections.
No me, no you
nor our shadows,
some algorithms controlling the narratives.
We don't meet,
we don't talk,
a rhythm of blocking and unblocking
Keeps things afloat:
Messages don't always travel,
sometimes we have to.
FUTURE LOVE circa Unknown
Under the last Chinar tree
a machine that serves
Masal Tchout,
two hologram lovers eat
and pretend they're real lovers:
The future echoes no lines.
