Poem for the Punjab
As far as the fish peers,
I live on your land,
On your grain,
And under your protection.
I must work,
and dance for as long as the clothes need to dry off.
The lantern coolly blows by the side of her eye
to speak, blending patterned faces in wood.
I must not taste different or bitter,
I must concede to palettes and treatment.
I must eat,
What is doused in hot waves and splashes,
In which I found besmirched posters crying,
‘Loyalty’.
Damp tablecloths hung on tepid hearts,
Pomp and
roars the gut,
Tipping in liminal urgency.
Does Punjab need poets, or water, or workers?
The elephant smiles on the crossbow,
Keychains, Clicks of the register, quays by the pinks of her.
Agile, filliping tingles
Arid, burnt surfaces.
The clock watches the silos as the the last stack is heaped, the last house is scored, the book drawn, varnished, gutted, the first signal of the day.
Seconds watch the gardened movement of intent,
frosted, tractioned, glazed, kept
in the flux of the pondering field,
Silted mud in tiny,
soft, furtive seconds.
Surely water keeps the earth.
-(from drafts)

















