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When we are old
and gray
Will there be a ‘we’?
Someone to share

these days, never ending
nights
dawns and many
twilights

babies grown up and
gone
houses once loved, now
mourned

will we still be talking

midnight whispers, ideas to change the
world,
will we still be
laughing? together? still curled?

gray in our teens, we are
young yet.
When we are old, we’ll remind
each other, if we forget.

*******************

Today’s prompt from Lisa Romeo: When we are old and gray.
Ignore the rubbish rhyming – this is what you get for impromptu verse. Yes.

Tomorrow

I will be a better parent. 
I will teach you to sleep. I will feed you
your meals on time and remember to give
you water when you are cranky.

Tomorrow,
I will cut your nails really fine and stop
pretending that these scratches don’t hurt.
I will, at the same time, clean your toe nails and
kiss your beautiful feet.

Tomorrow, I will be yours
for every minute that you are awake and wanting me.
I will ignore the flashing of this screen, the blue lights
reminding me of unread missives, your picture laughing
back at me, you under my feet.

Tonight, while you sleep, I make these promises.
You know I mean them. You know I do.
How can I reassure you, you with the arms stretched across
my bed, carved into my space, fingers curled, now open,
nails sharp and waiting
biding your time.

********************

In response to today’s prompt from Lisa Romeo: Biding your time.

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Hope
comes in all sizes.
Small. Medium. Large.

Dreams do too.
There are the big, fancy ones
Those that will take a lifetime to come true, perhaps
never.
There are the little, everyday ones
Those get us through the night, every night.

Gratitude is always large, so is
Fear.

Love, though, knows no boundaries
It is never enough.
And sometimes, it is all you need.

For the lucky ones, one size fits all.

————————–

Today’s prompt from Lisa: Small, Medium, Large

I’m a mother. Get me out of here.

Piles of teetering clothes on
my antique dressing table hide
my hairbrush. My nails
have seen better days, my clothes long for
the touch of a warm iron, and a shoulder,
long frozen, needs to be thawed.

The laundry basket overflows
with toys. Books gather dust, as do my tablets on my beside table,
forgotten.

No dust settles on you, though.
You, itching to get moving.
Three a.m or Seven, you’d rather be crawling,
trying to stand or kissing your (fast asleep) father.
Sleep? What’s that, you ask.

I look at the stack of unsorted
papers, bills, cheques waiting to be cashed.
6000 emails cry for attention, un-uploaded photos lose their
lustre, an unfurnished apartment gathers spiders.

I look at you.
You smile at me in your sleep
and when you are awake.
No one has ever smiled at me this way
or been so happy to see me.

The papers, the dust,
the missing dressing table…
they can all wait.
Right now, I’m busy. I’ve got
smiles to return, a hundred sloppy kisses await.

* A new series of poems written in January 2010 inspired by daily writing prompts received from the talented Lisa Romeo. Today’s prompt: Cramped.

Wings

On the morning of my 36th birthday, the
Mandovi glistened like blue satin.
In the evening, the winged insects came
falling onto our bed, baby and me
into the birthday cake and
              just heated coffee.
They were everywhere
and like uninvited guests, they wouldn’t leave.

Ultimately,
a darkened house drove them out
into the light.

All that was left, hours later, were white wings
on tables, under lamps, on the floor,
caught in baby’s mosquito net
a (farewell) gift,
a promise to return.

Morning walk

Newspapers dropped in the dark by a
skulking green van
Vendors huddle on their bikes
in jackets pretending
that it is cold.

I sweat.

Rivulets run down my cheek,
down my spine.
Knees wobble, not knowing that the rest of
me is somewhat awake
walking the long walk.

My baby look up at me.
Big eyes stare, wide awake
as if to say, “Chill out”.
The sparrows agree. Wake the neighbourhood chirping
in their hundreds. It is four in the morning.

The Post Office glimmers faintly in the
light of a flickering tubelight
In the crisp March morning
the frangipani awakens.

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I rush through dinner
Eager to put behind the
ordinariness
of the dal, rice, cabbage
capsicum
and rush back into verse.
I was once again
given a tantalising glimpse
into a different world
one where words tumble into
each other
effortlessly
and jealousies, pettiness
patronising patrons of the arts
feed the loveliness.
Fodder for each line.

I rush through dinner
then the washing up.
The sound of Urdu flowing
with the water.
I am exhausted from a day
of sitting, listening.
My back is giving way
But the baby leapt, for joy
I like to think
when old Swedish words
blended with Malayalam.

So I rush through dinner
postpone a hot bath
the thought of your book
lying on the bed, inviting
me away from the Internet.
I allow the sound of television
(creeping from behind the door)
to fade away in my head,
drunken shouts on the road outside
no match for this eager
pounding in my heart.

I rush through dinner
come back to your slim book
and stretch my aching
back,
my swollen feet
my rapidly wearing eyes.
I read
thinking back to my own days
of verse
hundreds abandoned
missing
a piece of my life hidden
among old albums, dusty
bank statements,
cockroach wings.

2 Feb 2009 / 9:50 pm

Swarm

The yachts are back
on an already crowded
river.

Casinos, fishing boats
barges laden with
precious ore, stolen
from our land under our disapproving
noses.

Nine little yachts compete for
water
floating restaurants
debris
a non-existent pontoon, once
orange and firm.

In the distance
fishing trawlers wait for
daybreak.
Here, mosquitoes continue
their endless search for
my blood.

The lights go out one by one
The traffic eases
The tv quietens down

Tonight, while the river swarms, even
the flying ants
take a break.

2 Feb 2009 / 11.05 pm

Poetry reading repercussions

After an evening of
indulgent verse
Swedish rhythms
and Malayalam words tripping
over each other
I come back to the
mundane.

Boats singing Konkani
folk songs out of tune
tv spewing AB songs
the call for dinner
concerns about termites

In the middle of this
my head still spins
with the sheer elegance
of poetic Hindi -
gentle, subtle
reminiscent of another country

Tales of charpois and sleep in
inky darkness spin webs of
fancy verse.

In the distance, Sweden
seems closer still.

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Written after a poetry reading organised by an Indo-Swedish translation group. Lovely renditions in Swedish, Hindi, Malayalam – most translated in English as well.

Sunday morning in Green Park

Daffodils
are shooting up among
the pigeons in Green Park;
it is a cold Sunday morning.

I have for company
Tom Peters,
the bells of a church somewhere,
and a few thousand
tourists
eerily silent
while we wait for Oxford Street to open
its doors for us.