FIVE WAYS

FIVE WAYS

1

New shoes, worn without socks
Scraped the backs of our heels,
Shelling flakes of garAAAlic skin
C
Our knees perennially
Scab-brown, Mercurochrome-red,
Iodine-violet or Friar’s Balsam-purple -
Taboos in stoppered glass phials,
The alternatives, stung, smarted,
Put to instantaneous death
The nerves of pain – from the
Uncertain balances
Of pre-pubic play.



2


There’s a bone beneath the skin
Of the heel, so it must be
A very slim shaft that can
Pierce it and drain away
A proud life. Yes, yes,
He deserved it dragging
The vanquished body
In ignominy
In the mud.
Asking for it.
No record of
The half-Immortal’s
Last words remain
But only the question
Of why he wore the armoured shoe
That day
On the wrong foot.


3

Shot in the stomach,
Its guts hanging out,
Then again behind an ear,
The unsteady hand
Of the Municipal Dog-shooter
With his licensed gun,
Khaki bullet-pouch
And alert boredom,
Doing the damage,
Sending the creature
Round and round,
A dance with his jaw
Stretched like a catapult
The screeches fading
From the open throat.
Condemned by excessive spit
To the sentence for rabies.


4

My grand aunt
Took to her bed,
Her ambit
Its soiled sheets
And the wooden commode
Evacuated each day
By the dalit server.
The skin
Under her chin
Hung like a dug
And she held it as she was dying.
“No flesh,” she said
In Gujarati. “All gone.
This is ‘bo-choon’
Only ‘bo-choon’
All that’s left.”


5


God’s sins:
He shot a monkey King
When his back was turned.
True warriors don't do that
Though Gods define
The truth.
The jealousy
Or the imagination
Supplying the unbearable
His woman under
The pumping demon.
“Walk through fire,
Prove yourself.”
When Gods can make fire
As cold as ice.