ask, & again for the first monsoons of my love (or, मेरे शब्द इतने भी सस्ते नहीं की शोर ना करें) [Mountains; 28th December 2023]
Lover boy, it saddens me.
You reckon the words I weave are an affectation,
that I take them too seriously,
that they are really only सस्ते(saste).
Darling, I wasn’t lying when I said,
I am shifting, structurally.
The left is acquiring the tricks of the trade. The erstwhile right no longer has tongues, it only listens. I know not what awaits me, or who shall receive me when the sentence has been served.
You see, my darling,
my back is deformed –
the stones were indeed hurled,
& the fires did burn.
But, my lover boy,
you must know (don’t you?),
my words, held by a straight spine,
are the only balms I have for a back which is broken.
A straight spine is not a biological imperative,
It is a poetic formation.
A straight spine is not an ordinary back of an ordinary man in the crowds. A straight spine is a hunchback’s treasure;
it is the straight spine which spins
his tales of sleeping for a fallen woman’s hand,
as it were the last of the flowers,
in the landscapes of eternities.
Lover boy, ask, & again, for the first monsoons of my love.
& again, I shall tell you, there are no fires or stones I shall not bear again,
only to touch your tongues once again.
Ask, & again,
I shall summon summers in which your spread-out,
oh-so black, almost purple, back devoured my whites,
as if it were the first time you were ever seeing light.
Ask, & again,
I shall tell you, lover boy,
I lust for the tastes of your still-summer-afternoon-sweats,
with the same-good-old, mad-bitch-on-heat, greedy growls.
Ask, & again, I shall tell you,
I am more than a man,
I am a world of a woman,
who tosses worlds with her words,
without lifting a hand,
(& often only for you).
Ask, again, I shall tell you,
unlike the mere mortal of man,
who couldn’t bear the revolutionary weights,
I am a woman with a broken back,
but its spine, intact.
Ask, & again I shall tell you,
I taste the sorrows of lost summers in you,
& also springs of red-hot revolutions,
with the same delight of the original savage,
who dared to be the original poet,
& whose appetite is wide.
But, my lover boy,
do not ask of me,
to not take my words seriously,
to think of them only as सस्ते(saste).
My words, my darling boy, are the worlds in which,
love is not an anathema,
but a requirement for revolution.
The mere moral of man was, after all, merely a man. He took writing to be an act, when really it is only an instrument.
He really reckoned he could lead the revolutions, by leaving the lovers behind?
Without love, tales of revolutions are horror stories,
& without poetry,
politics, merely propaganda.
Ask, & again, for the first monsoons of my love,
but, lover boy,
do not ask of me,
ever fucking again,
to not howl for my words.
#alltheredsofmybloodsलालसलाम #poetryisresistance
Notes:
- Faiz was a fine poet, but a lame lover. With no apologies to him, https://maraahmed.com/wp/2009/06/09/dont-ask-me-for-that-love-again-by-faiz-ahmed-faiz/, also academically dealt with here, https://www.academia.edu/117098503/An_Obscene_Calling_Emotionality_in_of_Marginalized_Spaces_A_Listening_of_into_Abusive_Women_in_Govindpuri_Slums_
- Houndtrack: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxAiJDhsoXckqYH3LOyneGMV8cCk84lp