Teri Justajoo

You were a thought.
Like, dust on dupatta.
Like, sun on the skin.
Feet in the water.
Face in a pillow.
Stripes on an ankle-sock.

You are a thought
I keep forgetting.

Somewhere

Somewhere someone woke up to a kiss.

Somewhere someone fell out of a dream.

Somewhere someone sat on top of a carousel, stuck.

Somewhere someone spiraled down 40,000 feet and into a deathless sea.

Somewhere someone watched the late night news and broke down.

Somewhere someone got their plaster signed in violet ink.

Somewhere someone began to walk away.

Somewhere someone wished to hold a hand.

Somewhere someone set off a firework.

Somewhere someone watched it burn the sky.

Somewhere someone thought of all these people.

Somewhere someone thought of all these people.

The Sidewalk

You are in your ever-old grey hood.

Walking down the leafy sidewalks in

mindless little steps. The cold consoles

your crippled thoughts as 

Red leaves chase yellow

ones and you 

chase their playmates from

a hundred autumns back. Where do

ghosts go for a walk, 

then?

In The Name of Poetry

The idea was to unlove you.

I'm not saying my ideas have ever been foolproof, but

this one had a quiet brilliance about it,

apparently.

The idea was to uncount the grassy sunsets and

unmemorize the lazy peace. The idea was to 

unlearn the memories till they became a shade

we never wore on our hoods and sneakers. 

I'm not saying my ideas have ever been

wasteful, but this one had to be shot down,

apparently.

The idea is to love you.

In the name of poetry.

Apparently.

Shadows not your Own

Silhouettes and

shadows and

light-strings

hanging, you

make a pretty picture and I, 

a scattered one.

Oblivion

Clockwork Postcards fly

through yellow

wisps of Yesterdays.

Wildflower bookmarks 

and fraying envelope browns, whatever

happened

to innocence - ? 

Oshtomi

Eight Yards of feeling beautiful.

Three breaths of leafy murmurs.

Petals and Pistols.

A Kajol and a camera.

The Bestfriend and the

sidewalks. The

school-gate and the sad eyes.

The Dhaak-wallahs and

the undecidedness

all  lit up in silver

oil-lamps:)

Ponchomi

The Mehendi-wallahs have already taken their

place in front of the bright-silk Pandals.

Balloon-kaku must be on his way.

Twenty odd ice-cream counters have mushroomed

across the street, each more drool-raising than the next -

One young lady trips on her yellow sari and

looks around in vague embarrassment, anxious

for this little slip in her graceful flow to have escaped

notice. I look away real fast.

Satisfied, she skips off to join her frantically-waving

group of friends. She is feeling pretty alright!

Rickshaw-Kaku brags to his friend about the incredible double-fare he has managed this

early into the Pujo. 

Somewhere someone blows a whistle that sounds

unbelievably like a mouse sighing in happiness. 

A toddler wearing a Batman tee and a

wide-eyed look of wonder 

tugs at my jeans for no reason at all. His Dadu laughs apologetically on behalf of the mini-man.

It's hard not to smile ~

I imagine you looking at some other little kid with shiny-coin eyes, 

at that end of our pretty city.

I imagine you finding it hard not to smile too, and

I smile:)

Sail

Tiny ship

tipsy ship

wobbly on the

wave

Tiny ship

weary ship, there's no

wind today.

Wrappers

Little by little

the stars fog out and

the words playing claim

to stir up a temperature I

wont reach.

Loving a friend from a

lightyear away, that is how

the stars fog out,

little by little -

Breath

Rail tracks and track pants

track pants and

fingers

fingers and silver

silver and bruises 

bruises and old love

old love and

new ~

Home

The year is now 

my favourite season, 

leather hits you hard on

a cold day. But

Someday, I won't have to take a ride back 

home.

Page Turner

He wrote down the things he never meant to forget.

He stayed up the night balancing himself on the toes of his favourite song.

He didn't mind that the song was by a girly boy band.

He laughed at the most inappropriate of moments.

Annoying goofy laughter.

He was one for happiness.

Then he was dead.

Quite suddenly, quite

dead.

She wrote down the things he never meant to forget.

What a page-turner, oh.

Pujo

Sunday air

lathered with that butter-corn scent.

The white-kurti Mannequins have traveled a long way since then.

Brown Golas drip into cups that are not ours to spill.

Pink-Ponytail kid discovers her gymnastic potential on the escalator.

Trinkets and bangles are passed around,

the emerald-stone ones make the loveliest little tinkle.

The windows are so full.

The people so happy.

At the crossing, by the Phuchka stands, around the Chilla-walah, across Eliot Park and on the other side of the bustling bus stand,

they are all so adorably happy!

And now

Happy-looking Asian Paints banners are being put up beside the apologetic Kolkata Traffic Directives. 

In a city that bleeds golden lights,

I seem to have lost mine.

Of Timelessness

Starry night.
Cloudswept corners.
Lamp Posts blink
softer than dreams.
He puts on your favourite
song
and shirt and
wastes
an extra blast of that
cologne, and asks
Her,
"Shall we love?"

Words

Words

Scissor-cut, handmade paper

words, purple-drugged, 

graying fraying

stray string

words, mellow mute

half-mine, half-squandered

words, trespassing

words, softly

kissing, softly lying 

words, obstinate

behind the bars of a

sinking

rhyme,

footloose, loose

words...

Music

Saltwater skies,

the shade of sleep, sleep

and an off-key

smile.

Semblance

Here,

the fruit basket that

held Seasons and Stars.

The spill marks

are only as pretty as you

let them be, let them 

Be, for

they have no place to crash,

Come sunrise they'll wander away in

sweet obedience. 

If love is lost pendants,

I'll remember not to 

find.

Spook

On Saturdays

when the Sun is tripping

You can see

them in your bottle

of wine

green as ever

dissolving figures

dancing on the dusts

of Time. 

Vacancy

They have cut down the Neem tree. 

It wasn't much of a tree anyway,

reed-like and just about hanging there at

the road-turn

looking vaguely spastic. 

It didn't burst into blooms like the Gulmohar

by it's side, it was never known to have

much of an aesthetic sense. But

it had a staggering quietness about it

that caught passer-bys off guard on lime-shaded

afternoons or windy eight-o-clocks. It was ugly,

but it was patient with it's own ugliness. Nobody

can hang a name on it, it was never aflutter in borrowed grace. It just stood

there in it's corner, awkwardly looking at it's feet as the sky changed 

colours and it's dark leaves gratefully blended into

a relatively non-judgmental canvas. It just stood there.

It stood there when the sun stole across Mrs Mukherjee's khadi curtains to

make love to her Bonshai Oranges, 

It stood there when Keya got home from her

Math tution, feeling a little worthless. It stood in

it's place as Jijo spread himself on the verandah counting

his precious Jenga Cards, and It

didn't move an inch when Pal Kaku journeyed out

of his beautiful home for one last time. It just stood there,

watching,

making sense, not making sense,

putting dust to love and love to wind and creating

infinite Quiet...

Going back to the unbecoming haphazardness of it's

existence, they were right,

it was ugly. Thankfully,

they have cut it quite down.

Voyage

Look at me

in soft wonder

shower bullets and

smiles, Look at

me, hazel

heat, peace or

passing pride-

take me

in, quiet, I'm

quite a moment,

sailing by - Don't look

around don't look

at me, I'm just

sailing by.

Friends

Funny-named sidewalks and

whiskered cotton-candy men,

Run down lamp posts and

water-side Deodars, the 4:30

air and the underloved strays, I have

too many friends -

To an Orphan

Whiskers that grew

old and a trembling belly

that we stopped stroking.

Space

Then

laughter returns ,

like a ghost to it's

haunt

and all the chocolate stained wrappers

are blown away into

a space that hangs

like a red thread from an old tree.

It just hangs there,

It only just  hangs,

harmless to most.

Deja Vu

Wet red Bus Stops scurry past

Do you like the coldness of your fingers?

Peep-toes on a day like this, you have the

hots for adventure, standing here like that

in your happy-yellow Coat. 

Wet red Bus Stops disappear, did they

tell you Bus Stops could be home?

Did they leave you behind, have you

been here before?

Sailor Song

Between the white rocks and the dead sea, lay 

the Mermaid. She lay there through Water and Time. She was there when

the Pirates danced, She was there when the Sailors drowned. Everyday,

She watched the sun-burnt Sun sink into a tossing heap of turquoise, quietly,

restfully. The wind was always salty, often

sighing. She  never really reached a sigh. Her thing was to.. watch.

And when the blackness of the night floated in to fix her 

purple fins, she sang of the Sailor who wouldn't be Saved.

Pirates plunder people, Sailors often do that to Mermaids.

They do that to Mermaids before they drown themselves with the

sinking Sun, quietly,

restfully.

So the Mermaid watched. Through Water and Time, She

only just watched. But

if the white rocks were a little more alive, they'd have heard

a sighless Song soar up from her seafoamed lips. The lips that

were never known to speak,

sang

strange

songs.

Still,

Sailors don't Listen.

Mermaids don't Speak.

One Drowns and the other Sings.

One Drowns as the other

Sings ...

Tank

Bournville wrappers frogskip through the air.

Dusty cement square dusty blue jeans.

Sooty dark golds, forever encased in Cobweb glass lamps

flood the heart as

twisting silver rings fill up the 

poker spaces.

Drenched to the bone in that quiet light,

two girls dont talk of a lot of pretty things.

Peace

Shoes

Moonlight falls on her ankle and

lingers. A thin silver ribbon,

fraying. She puts on her blue shoes and

stays. If sleeping in her shoes is

staying.

Wildflowers and Envelopes

Rolling 'round in our fields of Oleanders and Suns. Two pairs of eyes adjusting to the nutjob vortex of purple and gold.

-..anything Irish must have in it a blob of pretty and a fistful of crazy.. - you said.

- ..especially Irish summers..-

I had laughed, as tickled by your auburn braids as by our conversation. You were weird, and I, an archeologist.

So i stuck with you, all summer-long... dynamite-ing caverns, gauging fathoms, disgracing math... making a fool of myself, in general. It was only a matter of time before the hunter became the hunted, and the Jester, Her Highness...

see?

But tell me. Can your tresses still stir up a storm on placid magenta noons, Heather?

And O. Do they still have Summers there?

Our heads reeling under the Drama-class dregs of Juliet's ivy-balcony. Drowning, hitchhiking, paragliding, into wherever.  And there we were,thinking it was the tinted cellophane of those 3D glass props we would fool around with.

 The ones we were allotted during our rehearsals, yes. The ones you said you wished stores would sell?  You had asked me where I'd gotten 'em from. You had asked me if I had stolen from the greenroom. I didnt talk to you for an entire hour before handing you the glasses. And the Sorry-note torn off my song-book.

About as much as I could protest Heather, the longest I could stay away from you without breaking down.

But you said you loved the glasses. And you loved their  tinted purple.

I had smuggled them out of Ms Connolly's Locker during lunch break.  So She never knew.

YOU never knew, Heather.

You with your blunted chisel and  wood-carved animals. You with your Hannukah-songs and your alcoholic father.

 I had learnt more just browsing through your sonnet-spewing eyes than Ms Conolly could ever teach me.

Clearly, I was young.

But tell me. Do you still hang  feathery Dream-Catcher's by your broken-leg bed, trusting those helpless handiworks of art to take away your nightmares? And do you still lie to curious friends when they ask you about them, Heather? 

And O. Do you remember being young?

Remember that rhyme about the kitten who wanted to mix up all the colours? One Grammy would sing to us after that staple St Patrick's Day dinner at mine..? And  how she could never quite recall what the 'Colour-Kitten' came up with when he put purple in yellow and yellow in purple...? I'v long since found out.

But you weren't around for me to run to, Heather. You weren't there for me to run to, squealing, waking you up mid-slumber. Or stealing you out of your kitchen chores to fake a genius revelation,  just  so I could look at you in your sleepy pajamas. Does your button-nose still twich up in that funny way when you soap the saucers, Heather?

And O. Do you still hide your mails beneath that leaking sink?

It's been so long, Heather. There have been wars and there has been poetry. There has been love, and there have been funerals. But every summer, when this foreign sun shines on my neighbour's Oleander's, I ache to let you know what the kitten got when he mixed purple in yellow, and yellow in purple.

When there is purple in yellow, and yellow in purple, Heather,

there are letters that grow old in sink-bellies.

And O. Pretty, crazy, Irish summers that span a lifetime.

The Dying Muse

So there he lies,

..thinking..

a scooched-over haze

by the city-lake

Gazing painfully into

the smoke-screen tapestry

of some senior Banyans;

Disinherited,

disenchanted by

the Friday-flops

of Time and

Space.

And if you could catch the twilight at an angle

that cared

to find his face,

You might see the sun that has gone

without a bath

for seven-eighty months, 

(and counting...)

or if

 the 5:20 purple

were suicidal  enough to kiss

his burnt-out eyes,

you might see

a Blue-moth, caught

in a sand-storm, dwindling -

Or something (almost)

as pretty and

pointless and

Conveniently dying.

The Truant. And The Truant-Junkie

Paper-wheels in the storm.

turning over,

spinning crazy

like nobody's business.

Lopsided thoughts

tripping over each other,

tumbling forth from

a madman's neon-struck

mind ,

creating

avalanches of

garnet-dust,

gold-moon pollens,

and riverine letters

that wait to morph

into fly-away Canaries.

They circle his dreadlock head,once,

before gliding off

to wherever, and nowhere but.

Damn sweet of them, dont you

think?

Paper-wheels in the storm.

turning over,

spinning crazy

like nobody's business.

Fern-wood shadows linger faint against

the doldrum eyes of

 the Little-magazine poet,

jay-walking into

a sleep-smudged seduction of

her pay-eve night.

The waves crash on over

her french-plait head,

creating

lipstick torsos, guitared

complaints, the

 winking ghosts

of frills and guns and ink

and orchids in the sink.

They fall into her lap, once,

and sit there for a lifetime

before fading into

wherever, and nowhere but.

Damn sweet of them, dont you

think?

Paper-wheels in the storm.

turning over,

spinning crazy

like nobody's business.

Speak for the bench.

sweet peace of mind, or

Poetry?