Mild Floods in the Neighbourhood

Before the bus stop ends your
wait for a free scooter ride,
after meeting your gaze in
wide mirrors of other gazes,
in between, holding an umbrella 
as big as you, you can have only
two options for the evening
- chewing finger nails or clouds
where eggs are burnt
in the memory of burnt days
of two hundred year old churches
dog saints
wild monkeys
trees and centipedes
and non bailable arrests

Now say hello 
to our armpit sweat
spilling from the sky

Drenching dry impatience
that throbs to burst
in our foot steps

Foot steps whose 
only friend
is a toad

Toad who bounces
and sweeps
terrace farms

Farms passing
rice on strings 
to homes

Homes standing
on a pile 
of cigarettes

It is possible
while slipping from the slope,
says the dog saint
to a tourist,
to smell this town
from the edge of your window pane 

Tall Blues

A sad blue brain 
takes a trip 
around the world 
in the country 
and returns home to
sad brown curtains

The rust of the skin scrapes,
it passes through
a long tunnel of wind
as far as Russia
and returns home 
with secret songs
frozen in matryoshka dolls

Secret songs that
are no longer secret;
their dull white ghosts
pierce and splice listeners
who sit together crouched
inside rented flats
40,000 feet tall

Listeners who, with their eyes
half shut, go on a guilt trip
for not touching their neighbours before
or for not storing enough alcohol