Guitar: Shreyas Srikanta
Flute: Arjun Bharadwaj

Dance of Wild Peacocks with Flute

A letter to Shreyas

Pausing For Breath

The rain is nothing but a weeping cloud

3 poems | Guitar by Shreyas

1. 

When i remember 
in every caress 
you are tiptoeing to the edge of the earth
and breath becomes rough syllable 
an impolite asking
in the shade of all these trees
to richly summon the past of us 
to wag the light away
where the devotion and the vice 
dissolve
like monsoon on a tributary 
your laugh. your teardrop. 
a stern jaw that chews
this secret 
a red mouth
stained and balanced 
by last kisses
one too many
when you speak
sparrows visit the balcony
and squabble themselves silly
when you leave
there is dusk on the pillow
a vanishing. 
a night in which
i am a scream
empty of words

2. 

I would say it’s love
the answers, the glances, the coins
that lie wasted 
on cheap flower
like
plastic. 
but i am a little worn, you know
my body wakes knowing
it will be harder to breathe tomorrow

there are wrinkles, darling. so I’ll take you
pepper-haired, pimpled, too irritated 
to shave.
a half-lover’s better 
than loneliness. it will stop the
lust or the questions.
we aren’t young anymore.
I would say it’s love
but I have known love
I have known feeling like-

I couldn’t exist without him.
but what is life but a pittance 
to the inventory of tremendous want? 
We are possessed by need
until we don’t have to live anymore.
Let me sing to the sky, 
A shorn piece of wool
a lingering lie.
When all that i do
is advertise heartache

3. 

When you came
home
like afternoon rain
dirtying the floor
I thought of winter
and the endless shore

of mist rising over the dahlias
on the hedge
an orchard of kashmir apples

our house watched
and what a simple thing it was
to have my fingers dart to you
and rest there

like you were all that could
possibly contain me.

lakshmi90