Two Poems

Against Translation
“My secrets cry aloud. / I have no need for tongue.”
               —Theodore Roethke

The body moves like dust & our. Rain. Rain from Shillong, Paro, Bangalore.
               I congeal the fat between my index ngers & thumbs approximating its atrocity. Like the measure of time while browning a roux. Or force. Water
               tanks re ll the hospital nearby & I sni the petrichor like an emergency. Three dogs fuck; I touch myself. The way language can also mean
               & be. At the end of my sadness—the threshold is ecstasy. Once I was a child at the trough of hills, a skinny boy: leek, of pines & peaches—dark
               as mulberry; now—I am the king of fetishes. Feet & pits. Once my legs celery: my mouth gooseberry. Now—it is just a mouth. I mull tea leaves
               beneath the remains of a cup. All my desires light & so melamine. See. “Mutual funds are subject to market risks.” Diversify. Diversify. Diversify.
               Smallcase portfolio or invoice discounting? Tell me your thighs. The body moves like dust. Pirouettes. Wrings like a wound ayed by a blade—
               The body moves. Squirms like a worm in the ass; twists in the gut.
The raccoon heart dies. This heart dies of a sweetness but late. Love / then
               die lest love dies. The body moves. The thigh breaks; I touch myself
&
shake. I was wrong about so much: At the end of my sadnesses, there is no
               threshold—only ecstasies: Fields. Some grass grows & bends like
lovers in a war singing a song. Someday I will be sinless as the sun & hum.
               Until then a body. The body moves like dust. Like ower. Rains. The body moves like a canticle in verse: My own personal nomenclature of
               lust. Cruelty kneading me. “Motion is equal to emotion,” wrote Roethke weighing two hundred & twenty- ve pounds of gut vitality. How
               do we enter the world from behind without rupturing a life? The body naked—a circus of bones: Nakedness its only show, its enamel shield.
               Early in this life the millenium turned into the walls of an asylum:
Teal & north-eastern; taught a boy a body. Fatherless & still a boy: Love, less
               of a moment, more, more a consequence, long, containing spillage:
I

live you. Diseased—I live you. Malignant. “As long as you’re feeling the
                chill of the knife, you’re ne.” I learn to dice as we yearn to die.              
                That boy
is me & still only a body. This body is me. All those boys are me. All those                
               bodies me. Me—my mother’s womb. My father’s tomb. Once
the glance was my favourite shot; now—I stroke myself. See, see, don’t                
               you see some muscle already? Once I lived in a ladderless orchard; now—I
pluck. Once I was a body; now—I am a body. My mother mushroom.
               My father fruit: Both their hands vermicelli—my ancestry & you.
Our sad family on the sad ground in a sad country at this sad time. The body
moves like dust & our. Rains & ower. Then the body moves
curling towards shame. Petals in that rain. A body is a body is a body is a                
               rose then a body. Then a shrimp. A colander. Then water. Then a river &
you. Twilight—your knee. I too have a frugal need for tongue. Until
               the body. Until the knee. Until your mole: A monastery where
I
moaned like a bell once. Till then both our bodies, birch, mere
               attempts in trying to concede like an eye.

Self-Portrait as Epiphany of a Fat Man’s Growing Gut Vitality

Mirror, use me.
Like joy—

Throttle me Bodiless,
Totally re ect: Mirage A clear
                          undisputed
Lie. Clarify
Furniture of
Fat like

Fish.
No plurality;
Braise me, mirror,
          Bottomless
In a pool of butter
Refracting
Slantly as light

Escapes into
 Years—
                  Store carbs
                  Inside Stolid
                                  eyes.

When you fasten
Wrists across
Loins

Of
your
Belly

                  Do you gather
                        Paradise
                        or
                  Comedy?—

Density
of All my
Desires:

Probability
A graph of
Cocks jelly,—

                  Then, mirror,
                        Coldcock
                  Me again

Until I
Pressurize
Mass by sting

Moaning like
Bells:

                   I ring to
                        Wring
                   Then
                      eat.

The           body
only            An
experiment Towards
death

Ask her father.

                   Is it the yolk
                        Or the
                   albumin That is
                      the egg?

The whole is
Not it.
Never protein

(Surely you can’t
have Everything
But you can want)

                   Who tastes her
                        Cotton in the
                   City yet to feed

You?—
I did try

Reaching you,
Says your lover

                   —Turquoise
                        Sugar wet
                   & Of once.

A surgeon’s hands:
Stoic
Never small

No, always small.

                   Night, try me.
                        Haven’t we
                   always Come
                   together?—

Joy, leave me
Hanging Limpid
& noose
All trees Yak.
Joy Joy Joy,
                        Pimp me Like
meat
Starch rims you &
you gape
Your holes

Into that
Merit of tongues.
Bonk me
                        Bugger Blaze
me
How one spendthrift
Of Dante once
Did
Say halo
& let the glass shatter.

                        Mirror, you worry me

Memory & yet that septum
Mouth cutting as
Cheese—