Bear With The Fish Out
At the centre of the earth
The two hands cup together
to hold a beating heart
The bear of the night
with its fur standing out
for the fish that dare pass
the stream at night
But do the fish have a given time to swim?
Do they always go with the flow?
Or do they go home at some point
And curl up into smaller figures
Because the stream takes a toll on them
Does the bear sharpen its claws in the wait?
And holds himself thinking of a bait?
How does a bear sharpen its claw?
How do the claws grow out from a little cub’s toes?
Does the innocence of these animals too get stripped at some point
in their life?
They surely aren't born with a predator prey life but do they
learn?
Are they taught?
The way our dearly beloved
teach us to be afraid of the men
that lurk the streets after dark.
They become the bears and we are the fish
-------------------------------------
Rain
Rain has always been my favourite weather.
The thunder,
Like my father;
Loud and ground shaking.
The lightning,
Like my mother;
Quick and bright.
Always together,
a step ahead of another.
And I,
rising from the raindrops
collecting in puddles,
their love child,
follows them around.
To some he sounds like war and weary things.
To some she looks scary and scared things.
Together they seem so destructive and I,
was what lay in their path.
Never has anyone seen something,
so destructively preserved,
in a cocoon of hailstones,
away from the world.
Rain also reminds me of my first love,
how we shared a small intimacy in the slight drizzle of rain.
The memory where I knew tranquillity
and alas it was in the middle of a thunderstorm.
Rain is what I was born in,
to bring a clear sky.
Rain is what I sleep in,
under my starless night.
It soothed me,
when everything was a storm inside.
It cradled me in its muddy arms.
Brushed my hair with gentle winds,
leaving wet kisses on my cheeks.
It taught me how to dance,
without anyone watching.
It taught me that it's okay to get wet once in a while,
to slip, to mess up, to nurture, to love, to give, to show your try nature
without hesitation.
It gave to me.
Women
& Women
Sisters and daughters, even mothers
Are hurled into daily abuses and
jokes
Trapped in muscular gaze
Frozen as soft targets in epics
dolls in cinema
Excuses for duals
Cause for battle in the past
And the present too
Possessed
as furniture
Items of jewellery
Kept in vaults
In the royal cellars of history
While Sita greets Savitri
Singing songs of captivity
Shedding tears of loss and regret
The two women on the motorbike
Lal Ded and Akka Mahadevi
Whizz pass through centuries
Multiplying in numbers
As also in Shakti
Each one searching
for her own path
Her own tune
When the Snakes Came for Shelter
(Dedicated to Freedom Nyamubaya)
Fighting the war of independence
My
soldier friend, Sunungukai,
Lay
sleeping alongside
Snakes
who
Came
for shelter, into her tent
In
the black rainy nights
Unable
to find their holes
In
the marshes of the forests
0f
Zimbabwe
Her
long dark limbs
Glistened
And
entwined in the coiling
snakes
As
darkness slithered
Towards
the break of dawn
Haunting
Salvador Dali
During
such nights
As
if in peacetimes
Sunungukai
found herself secure
In
deep tunnels
Rolled
back
Into
the womb of her mother
Or
in the arms
Of
the lover she never found
Standing
stiff on their ends
Her
hair did not split when
still
silent snakes
hissed
in sleep,
Theirs
and her own instinct
She
knew, told the truth
She
smelt no danger
Nor
did they,
there’d
be no holding the venom
if
they did
(2)
In the same war
As
male soldiers entered her tent,
She
trusted her instinct
When
she felt the chill
Slide
down her spine,
on
the same marshes
of
the dark forests,
“But
I am on your side”, her lips uttered
“The
war is over, don’t you know”
-announced
their male glee.
Enemies
again,
They
came upon her
One
by one, and then all together,
In
celebration.
The
war continued for
Sunungukai
NEW GRAMMAR
He
told me a different tale
The
tale of…
as if,
of
although,
“As
if you are the only one”
“Although
you are the only one”
Language
of conditions,
of
conjunctions
