POEMS OF LUST
Poems have no sex organs - Hoshang Merchant
-1-
Hoshang Merchant said
Poems have no sex organs
And then went on to declare he is spiritual.
It was just yesterday that I was reading
Akkamahadevi describe her entire body a yoni
and her soul just a fortress stiff.
The Shakinis of the after-world
torment you before crossing over,
the dues must be paid in full.
When Isis the great bird, was in a dilemma
whether to make love or eat
the great manliness of the dead Osiris,
lust won, finally and Horus was born.
My dear Hoshang, poems are the sex organs.
-2-
Kama cannot be burnt
nor can he be curtailed,
shot down or buried.
I have no use of Hoshang,
he is taken by the boys with broad backs,
big feet and hands.
He has secret writings but an open closet.
Curious though I am about how
he interprets the cry of the mockingbird.
I loved a man frail as a sparrow
who caressed me with his beak.
He once revealed he was once
a Walnut tree who became a chair.
I sat on him and wrote exquisite poems of lust.
-3-
That woman at the café kept talking about my big bindi
Its colour, size, powder, and the scent
Ah yes, the scent she could smell it, she said
I was surprised that she could get the
fragrance of the raw turmeric pounded
with lime to get this exact red.
When I said my man loves it
she was disappointed and sighed.
I said I am straight, sorry there is no spark.
-4-
The night I was petrified to write the word lust
Dorothy Porter held my hand and showed how
Nefertity rode her, growling like the desert.
She didn’t mind using sticky words, she said and
she also cast a spell on me. I was zapped.
That night, when I wrote about my longing
they said, it was my best poem on social justice
about backward and forward and oppressed and suppressed.
When I tried to explain they said
it would be an altogether different matter
if it was a gay poem addressed to someone called Vivan.
I curse you, Hoshang Merchant.
-5 -
He cried in desperation
“Oh woman, throw me less fire!”
I laughed and said it has already been said.
He asked who? I fell silent, busy.
Mentioning Baudelaire would have caused
irreparable damages at that specific moment.
I am Le Vampire. Feed my lust
before the Bhakts decide to ban it.
They have mastered the art of cooking without fire.
-6-
The eternal question
Do I ask for it?
The moral brigade would crush me
with their arrows.
Yes, they even can come into my bedroom
and demand to cover me with thick chaddar,
something like Chughthai’s elephant.
I make futile attempts to quote Kalidas and Valmiki.
Even recite couplets on the fierce goddess
who stands on Shiva stamping his erect manliness.
Gods too must marry to do it
unless a Shiva lusts for a Vishnu turned Mohini,
for the welfare of the humankind.
Hoshang will love this story.
I do not. I despise the argument and
I am still stuck at that word.
*artwork via Pinterest
No comments:
Post a Comment