Poetry | Manic is My Favourite Colour | Indira Prasad

Manic is my favourite colour

Ten beats a second, super fuelled

With the fire from a hundred cigars

Transcendent, invincible

There’s a sludge-quake in my small intestine,                             
Can you feel it?

Pin prick

Insulin spikes

Sugar

Pleasure
Not so hungry anymore

The demons have eaten my liver

Manic is my favourite colour

Crawling about like a sick dog

Under the Fluoxetine rainbow,

I am a god.


                                                                                 

The Devil's House

He’s awake

Standing by the window

Smoking cigarettes, turning dials, making strange sounds

He is a black hole

With ropes for hair

And a hook crook nose

He gives me something evil to smoke

And I want to go home

But I have no home

There are demons outside, making a racket 
Synthetic machines and brass instruments

My head is reeling

The devil lies beside me

Listening to Jazz, discordant, awful, piercing

He smells like rot, like dirt

His acrid breath brushes my cheek

Warm death on a sunny day

A million miles from home

There is no comfort in his body

His mouth makes a strange O

My mouth gasps for air and water

My body is desperate for England.

Change in the weather

I can see my breath

Small frozen drops hanging in the air

The weather is in my bones

I can’t feel my feet

My hands ache

My mouth won’t open

Slow death in January

There are never enough quilts

Who has opened the window?

Do you want me to die? 

I thought I would love the heat

But my insides have turned to resin 

All the water’s escaped my swollen body

Ran off down my back, across my neck

Hangovers are hell, here in the inferno

Sleepless nights cook my brain inside my skull

And the people; I am bewildered

Truth is; I don’t want to go home

There is no such thing as home.

                                                                              

Maybe I am loved 

Malign in the moonlight,

I think I can see the moon

In the coal pit of his eye

Eye-line a downward dagger

A glance shared with half the world.

But I’m riding in his car,

So maybe I am loved.

Static barbs fly

And I taste the vitriol rolling off his tongue.

Razor blade violin shriek.

Words which turn asbestos to ash

He doesn’t like folks like me                                                                     

But he buys me all of my drinks

So maybe I am loved.

It’s not his fault, it’s mine.

For not understanding I am blessed.

And he will screw his way through 200 years of colonialism

I couldn’t understand

Why he would never take me home

But he took me to a backstreet hotel

So maybe I am loved.

*artwork by the poet