Drops!

They fall

they stay

they slip away

drip and disappear

they stain

leave mark on dust

and trace

again

again

again

ebb and flow

birth and go

of things delicate

and things hard

strong and weak

faithful and irreverent

colourful and dull

love and forsake

dismissal and embrace

and without word

or music

etches an old story:

where I came

and where I shall go

forget,

read me in this passing

that’s enough.

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The mother of all wars

 

Fighting is gender-neutral

even war, even men-men war

is femaled

for men take wife to frontline

take mother and daughter,

and war visits as anxiety and wail

but this war was differently femaled

for it came with fighting women

with some among them

made to explode;

but in the uneasy fleeing

from tyrant shooting to kill

into the arms of considered foe

timeless tenderness

was a flower that burst

through war-rubble,

a flower

easily crushed,

easily ‘warred’. 

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My father

(a note to Mitsi)

‘The old house is still standing’

I recite, and she asks

‘so why do you have to say it?’

I’ve never been questioned on this,

for the grasses of home were always green-green

even in the driest months

and unkempt seasons

and though the paint was cracked and dry

at times

there was nothing to explicate

home was home,

familiarities don’t come off the walls

like plaster does,

and that’s why my appachchi,

your ‘Polo Aththa’

is firmly defying

his infirmities;

he’s an old house

paint-cracked

but here the grass

is green-green

and will be

as and when

they all,

we all come

to see him.  

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