the kids want bollywood

The kids want Bollywood
something more North and more West

glittering cloth, bouncing bare hips
praise of lips
on national TV

not so much the kitha-dom of me

------

back home
they learn to point their toes,
the redde is lowered,
hatte bejewled,
mandiya straightened out.

they loosen their palms and step lightly.

we say, it's very indian, it's very western, it's pretty and also
it's very necessary.

the beravas have been dying a long time.

------

I work with a lady who says
give me just a flavour of "Senegalese"

I lean in with a stifled wince: I
crush me beneath a hundred cultures, I
grind me to spiced dust, scatter me.

------

no one knows that
I think of you

in my curled arms
draped across this curving waist,

seeking to see yourself
in half-dropped eyes,

find yourself on
half-laugh mouth.

I think of you in the
tharikita-kun-dath-

I even think of you in the
thah

your body rigid, you gasp me in.

------

#WhatItsLikeToBeADesiGirl
am I a desi girl?

#WhatItsLikeToBeADesiGirl
to be pressed into an even tone

------

the kids want Bollywood, I try to be what they want me to be

------

062813

my love is not a lemon
- can’t press it till it flows
my love is not a violet
my love is not a rose

my heart is not a chocolate drop
that melts on curling tongues
you may have a voice
- doesn't mean that i'm unsung.

Today's poem will be a journey to the heart of the hollow earth

travel the arid surface of a 
page until your pen finds just 
the place; then
drill!!
take no caution! take no care!
dust don't
dig or
not dig - it's breathless,
deathless - dig? so dig!
break those pores apart
exclaim, what a work of art!!
inject ink jets in lifeways
call it an effortless play in the sandbox
with baby pails and shovels
search and abandon the search
abandon the
humanity. Who needs it? What an artist!!!
oohaahoohaahooahhooahh
oooh wait! what?! oohaahoohaah
muscle?! blood! oohaahoohahh
heart??!
WE THOUGHT IT WAS HOLLOW DAMNIT THE EARTH'S CORE IS ON 
FIRE WHAT NOW

the game (II) -- God stuffs me in his pants before I can figure it out

A poem is a risk, and a temptation.
It begins with God
(a thought has tickled his palm) groping with eager hands
in his pocket for a coin. Then suddenly

Off I go! I find myself spinning rapidly, flicked
on like a light switch, revealing my faces: agony and elation -
oh the torture! oh the ecstasy! I'm a loonie

in this pocket of the universe
wondering where I will fall between
obscurity and triteness

hoping today for the latter like "my love is beyond words."
I would like to be as sincere as my
heart beating
silently,
certainly,

but I settle with a
vague little "flump!" in God's lined palm.
I lay myself out like an X
in some corner of your mind,
and hope you'll find me out 
from the text where I hide 
from the risk and the temptation of
whatever I write.

on saying something vital

this tongue of mine's

twisted through autumns and springs, 

laboured long to wring

out these words now rattling

between my teeth; i stall with

'is THIS the time to speak?' and

store my heart inside my cheeks, 

like a twitchy squirrel, to keep.