Body Orchard

I taste these pears and peaches with my whole body,
as graceful as the first floret of springtime in a garden,
We watched for the first time a tropic moon
descend pine- orange into our yard,
I kissed your raspberry cheek and tasted
inviting mango juice on unbound rosy lips

“Sangam” of red roses and white lilies flow in
East- Asian almond cool aquamarine eyes,
A sharp nose pyramid a moon ring shine,
Long Thailandish slender neck and
Brazilian bloom-down-cheek’d peaches,
in your diamond apple body orchard
shaded under Indian long silky spirited locks

The plum tree in your garden is now
bursting into flower with the promise that
snowy flower buds give birth to ripe lilac plums
this autumn when you turn sweet sixteen

Garden fig is a glittering moist four-petalled flower,
After I strip off the blossom with my lips,
heavy with dotted green and red fruit,
marking each interlude with musical drops

The blackberries would ripen-a purple-green,
Like a bottle of old wine, its pulp was sugary,
sun’s blood in it leaving good stains upon the
tongue and desire for more pickings

I have wild free-born cranberries, but
my garden doesn’t have the forbidden fruit
For the true are cherry red and golden mango,
I have memories of yellow daffodils and oranges
blended with the burn of colorless lemon tears,
basked in honey rays, dreamed in pomegranate
sunsets of lime hills and dulce roses
Years of sweet citrus lived in golden hours

My yellow heart pining for red fusion,
to shake the fruit that never falls,
I am alone without the temptation of apple,
Limbs entwined in a sweet embrace
I kissed season’s hot tangerine lips

The colors of my country are spread here
with clear blue sky, sun, breeze, dew and peace,
I can see big juicy melon being sliced up
and divided between a bunch of shiny kids,
Fruit is for sharing, with friends, family and 1
neighbors even if your neighbors are bears or cows

I would not live to see the leaves fall yet
moment of delight in the shared fruit would live on
I am not inclined to romanticize my toils in the orchard,
as the aches and pains of this grove are mine only

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Immigration

I hold the soil from my roots in my hand
that I have carried with me here in this country every day,
As I lay my impregnable longing against room’s wall,
I hear my helplessness like weeping at dawn,
As my soul wrinkles with the motherland,
I parted with my parents,wife,kids in the country of skin

No one leaves home unless your home
is a floating nest on the river Nile of industrial waste,
You find yourself among the mining crocs or drought alligators,
When you swim across the seven seas of population
put yourself in a boat of hope thinking the strange salty
water is safer than the familiar sweet land,
You have a shadow of blood in your veins but an empty
belly and the anthem under your breath,
the miles traveled means something more than a journey

During the day my heart is full of stories of my streets,
polished memories of my village life,
I carry black scars from wars of white greed,
dust of my family carbonized in dry mushroom clouds,
I carry parental house along the vertebra, pink dreams in my eyes

When the night liquidates the day as a sinful cloud
plasters its sun,everything seems shiny for me-
Migraine flash in my left brain-
Shiny open eyes when I fail to sleep-
The shine of stones in my kidneys-
Two shiny pearls on the cheeks-
The word “motherland” over the galaxy of stars
and the Moon behind the clouds called“migration”

I don’t know if I am an Australian or not?
For my country, I was a weed of seasonal crop
for this nation, just a rudiment who is deposited
in their area by a migratory trade river and thus
left open in the “unwaged sun” and the “taxed rain”

Australia’ mandatory detention and offshore
processing of asylum seekers welcome hundreds of hirsute
refugees who can’t think free of faith’s manacles,
but not those who believe without the obligation of
forming belief and possess souls of wisdom and skills
with closed eyes to what is happenning in Germany and UK

l am in Australia but I live in the Sahara or floating on the Dead sea
an expanse of concrete cities, a sea of neo- brotherhood
without any emotions, a forbidding area lost in a desert of doubt,
Farewell my motherland, Farewell my ancestors, farewell my dream of new life!
5
I was not allowed to attend the funeral of my mother last year
Neither this year when my father passed away
I haven’t seen them for four years, will never again in life
They call it humanitarian visa processing based on fixed values

Every night I wander around bed- town
to buy some tranquil delights homegrown,
Now only in the unfulfilled dream
my mother body was whole again,
Now I know absence past the softness of palms
and the presence of hard bony death,
How heavily barred body entrap the soul?
My father washes my mother’s body in
the final Hindu ritual observance
She said to my father that she wants to see me once
but a divine shine that comes across her face disappears in a flash

I’ve transcribed all my dreams into poems, not into realities
that reconcile my exile from home, stretched them into poetic lines,
The streets where I grew up is punctuated with electric poles,
I have recreated the dream home I had to forget,
Fancied Peepal tree and gang of boys up again,
Fields of wheat and millet, stars and Moon and Sun for me

I have imagined myself surviving by transforming
flowers into the bread I have never eaten,
I am a brown floret spring out of your mind
from the womb of a black history birthed from white memory
This is how it feels to live and move in two worlds.At once.

I came here to outlive the ghosts of martyrs
beyond the hatreds of nationalism,
How the basic joys of being give us the kinder face of humanity
But I am marginalized to the point of disappearance
Barred as a shade of skin, a tone of speech,

Kicked by the mighty, detested by the commoner
Now I know humanity is Janus faced-
Half devil-half human,White faced black truth
I will not recommend it even to political foes or religious friends.

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My Father

My father never did womanly things
like taking his kids in his lap and
loving or playing with them,
Yes, he did masculine things of
breaking some mirrors,hitting the doors
or his head against a wall, slapping
his children and abusing everyone when
helplessness trapped him in the web
of poverty,tension and unfulfilled desires

Orthodox and religionist in him
taught us most superstitions that
made him a sage devoid of social
life, and me almost an atheist,
He taught us good values
without letting us in his room

We had seen him write poems
but we were not part of his universe,
the world may be familiar with his works
but we haven’t read his books as
we have developed immunity to it,
As a good teacher, he changed
many schools and as an honest person,
he rarely attended any
social gatherings or function,

He didn’t tell us our history
or geography,oblivious of siblings,
locked in a closed family circle
ignorant of our community,we live
at the borders of our social circle now

When I see any kid,
I wish to be with my father,
talk,learn and serve him
but still I lack a bond
I haven’t seen him for long time
and never feel a need or pain of it

He is counting his time,his legacy
some published books and
unpublished manuscripts
lying in a store almirah,
the long gap between us stops
me to take those few steps,
it seems a long journey

Upbringing and luck shape our life,
my father was child of his misfortune
and I am child of my father

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