Writing sometimes...

Writing, sometimes,
Is like stitching up old wounds
And opening new ones,
Cleaning up some
And prodding others.

It’s also like opening
Old bandages to see if
The wounds have healed
And sometimes finding them fresh underneath.

Sometimes,
It is the wound itself.
And pain is not the connection,
Time is.


© Jatin Gandhi, October 31, 2006

To paint a song

I don’t have to be drunk
To sing a picture
Or paint a red song yellow
When I strum the paintbrush
I can smell the music flow
I don’t do grass
Before I wet the sky with words
Or breathe a joyful dance

(C) Jatin Gandhi, 2005

Lecher!

Lecher!

Do you letch at a woman
Or letch for her?
Or is it, to letch for other women
Is because you letch for the one woman in your life.
Can there be one woman in one man’s life?
Or are all women one
To a letch?

Can you letch for a woman
Who is no letch,
Shows no signs of being one
-- a woman who does not bring the lecher out in a man,
would a letch still letch for her?
Is sexual activity one-sided?
If it is all in the mind,
Can a table be an/the object of sexual desire?
Or a glass or bottle –
Empty or full – will it change everything?

Eating chocolate induces the effect in your mind
How many chocolates can a man eat before he feels a limp?
And women? Do they love chocolates more?
Or do they pretend?
Are there categories of flesh?
Is forbidden flesh one?
Can you stop a woman from eating flesh
Or a man from showing it?

(C) Jatin Gandhi
October 25, 2006

Showbiz

…and the mannequin looks on
hand on hip
another on waist
whether or not
if looks could kill.
But the mannequin looks on.
Lamps and lights
The din

T h e f a n s, t h e c r o w d s
And m u s i c too

Cigarette smoke rings
Clouds and wrings.
Dead flesh too sweats,
Trust the witness
---- the dead never lie.

Suffocatin’ smoke
To combat pungent,
Foul breath.

Ignore the stench.
Opaque glass panes and thick sideboards
Do not matter
If looks could kill.

© Jatin Gandhi

Metastasis

It began as heartburn
but travelled
at the speed of thought
and spread.

The brain was soon
infected.
The hate then entered
my lungs
I was breathing it

Next, it ran in my blood
every vessel, tissue, nerve,
cell got involved.


And before I could die
My soul was infected.

Nov 9, 04

The fractured arm

One arm, three bones
And many pieces.
Fractured, broken, split,
splattered, oozing, dripping,
wreaking, smelling, writhing,
twisting, twisted, deformed,
together, apart, all, one, many.
How it happened, they can tell.
But why, can they?
Would reptiles know more than humans.
Snakes, wild lizards or crocs?
Or the lizard on the wall.
Remember Anna,
The early January afternoon?
When, the lizard took over.
When he spoke of Wordsworth
But I thought of Isaac Newton.
He looked helpless.
He wanted to fly but gravity pulled him down
He fought gravity and inertia weighed him down
It is inertia perhaps that breaks spines
But broken bones are no big deal
When the spine is intact.


Jan 27 ‘04

Red

They came drenched
In red paint
Wearing red
Badges and carrying
Red roses

But there was no
Blood

(C) Jatin Gandhi, 2006

Unititled

If cities were beasts,
the one I live in
would be a mongrel.
A hungry one.
Ugly and rabid,
scarred and smelly.
Water flows from the tap
like saliva from
the sun-struck mongrel’s
tongue.

It heaves and pants.
It is noise.
But for those who have lived
here a long, long time,
just voices in the city.
The hungry mongrel
devours almost anything –
food and garbage
with machine-like
Hunger.

The cur took away my voice,
As if it were
A discarded piece of bread.


© Jatin Gandhi, April 25, 2006.