#poetrypuddle

Iridescence: gold and bottle–blue and beetle–green. Wings snapped off mayflies in summer snowfall. The colour of frost in the early dawn. This is deception: dizzying and fractal and remorseless. These are the marks of false gods, their poisonous playthings, their breath to still the morn.

This is the stuff of dreams.

Greyscale: the gush of smoke slipping through trembling fingers. The heat of dark, long after the fires are extinguished. The sound of silence, beating hearts and bated breath. This is mourning: hollowed and ragged and bitter–rich. These are the marks of the people, their fragile existences on a hostile earth. 

PART ONE: ORIGINS

Chai in the morning. Assam and cardamom, mother’s tea. 

Sunrise heat. The smell of terracotta soil in our nostrils. 

The khat–khat–khat of cotton on a chakra, snick–snack of threads on a loom.

Calico, a thousand shades of cream.

Whittle on a banyan branch. Curls of woodskin on leather fingers. 

puff–puff – father’s breath clouds the dust, settles it bright on tamarind skin.

Lotuses on a wooden block, nailed sharp with iron.

Red pressed like Kali’s tongue. 

Teak hands stained blue. Henna tips turned black; paradoxical frostbite.

Indian ink, saffron, pink. Indigo sheets drawn skyward, billowing in the breeze. 

Murals from Kerala to Kanyakumari. Parted seas in peacock green. 

A thousand colours ripening in the sun. 

Ships squatting on the horizon. 

PART TWO: MARAUDERS 

British calico. Finespun, colony grown calico. stolen Earned calico. 

Ladies’ dresses, starched and press-ed. Wash of white lace on calico. 

Tiny roses on calico. Machine print, Parisienne calico.

Villager sari to a rich man’s robes – calico.

Crushed and crumpled calico.

Murals swept clean with white sophistication. Paper skin on rough hands. 

Indigo waters bleached demure. Lavender.

If the oceans could have washed you from my hair would they not have done so by now?

you knock the breath out of me

and why should it not be

beautiful and heroic and hopeful and terrible. 

          what is so terrible in choosing the manner of your death?

i am expendable. not because i lack in anything,

                   i am a little bit of everything

but because i have faced my mortality enough to know

that i am prepared to die. 

         and that alone makes me one step closer

         to death than any one of you

                   those who kick and scratch and scream and cry 

                   and beg, without restraint, without pride, for one day more

perhaps it is all down to pride. 

that i will not bow my head in the face of death

but take his hand and go willingly.

         because when you strip away the fear of the unknown

         there is only peace left.

         (i hope)