The caterpillar marches
Munching from leaf to leaf to leaf
He doesn’t know where he’s going
He doesn’t know where he’s been
He only knows the munching
The hunger in his gut
The fire in his belly
Antennae pointing up
Vigilant for predators
Water and leaves
He doesn’t know where he’s going
It matters not where he’s been

The caterpillar weaves
Instinctively without knowing
Why he must, but weaves he does
A cocoon for the growing
The caterpillar digests himself
Dissolving into soup
Becoming a pod of pain and tears
And caterpillar goop
Alone for weeks he suffers
Reconfiguring
His whole body becoming
A new kind of being

No idea what he’s becoming
No idea what’s in store
Suddenly caterpillar emerges
More beautiful than before
Stronger and more delicate
Lighter than the air
Ready for love and lofty height
A sight beautiful and rare
The butterfly does not look back
To the caterpillar he was
The butterfly flies forward
Embracing whatever comes

And you could have given us this and that
but you were in the throes of some spaz attack
Spiral down
your spires of blame
and you end up forgetting all the innocent
in their small existence
Influenced by their helixes
and culture, the temperature
and more than we can comprehend
Forgive yourself first and
you'll stop being such a ******* to all the rest
The malaise of the mayonnaise
Lives of all these unwitting folks

To see you,
as you see me,
is a difficult art.
To repress it all,
to paint over
all the vivid colours
you inspire in me
is a labour of love.

All I'd like
is to see you
as you see me.
But to hear your voice
is to fall for all the same spells;
of all things concerning you,
I am defenceless.

Will the passing years
dull the yearning
of a heavy heart?
Perhaps,
but how helpless
I feel,
how lonely.

I'm over you now!
though the thought of you still lingers
was it the lips or the smile or the touch of your fingers?
Am I too slow or is the world so cold
First, they sympathize, now they scold
Was it the lips or the smile or the alluring lies?
That doomed me staring into the ivory skies.

The pens still sway to you, and the inks' still flows
it rips me apart and my heart it mows.
yet they swing back to your alluring glow.
Was it the laugh or the gaze of those honeydew eyes
That doomed me staring into the ivory skies.

Thought I moved on
Felt guilty but relieved
And then I looked
Into your amber eyes
And fell for you again

on purpose, on purpose.
I will not love you on accident.
I did not wake up suddenly overwhelmed.
I am quite whelmed, honestly.
but with my head up, my eyes open, my arms held wide aloft,
I am walking face-first into loving you.
the stains on my teeth from where I bit back
should scare you off, would scare me away.
but your hands are raw with fighting back.
I want to love you on accident. I want the surprise, the shock, the explosive horror of being so uncontestably tied to someone else that I cease even to be my own body.
but this is better. maybe less movie worthy, less poem worthy, but better.
I look at you and see your flaws, and think how they mirror my own.
and I want to be here, fully here.
on purpose, I think of you.
on purpose, I am loving you.

A 22 ct poem on gold



Dear gold



In the body of a woman

you attain elegance

lying chained to the hip

fatigue like



Endless are the times

when earlobes and foot

seduced me without you



Mere threads of yellow

will do better than you



There's a cuteness

seeing you

swing from a single ear



Nose studs, with a stare

have stung me sleepless.

The ones made of rolled

gold too



But, dear gold

You become gold

when you are pawned



Like the revolutionary

who becomes more revolutionary

when hanged



Like the soldier

who gets shot and becomes

a soldier even more



Dear gold in the pawn shop

My gold, dear gold





Translated by Binu Karunakaran

The solitary stars shine again
reminiscing the elysian amity
The petty cravings begin
with wishful uncertainty

Time does mend the wounds of past
uncertainty scrapes the scabs
Till dawn will it last
trips to the herbs begin

Sanity seeps out of the crooked corners
Leaving behind a hollow me
Melancholic madness seems warmer
Alluring gelid me!