What Do You Talk About My Land — Poems by Mayank Rastogi

What Do You Talk About My Land?

disorderly, diseased, man-melting sapphire in my land

take from me what you want, all of us kayar in my land.

we breed obscenity, we free-fall from the heavens,

why then your idol, my idol, paroled in my land?

beck and call at seven, wake up my marshalled beloved

time to patrol, barefoot and drowsy and a little greasy in my land.

i hope to make a scene, salvage some thrown coins

where is he? where is abraham who promised me my land?

fake ancestral shops looted, the embers still glow gold

a thousand batons evaded, death’s grown obsolete in my land.

talon’s eight edges, tightened around my dream vision

dilapidated arabic houses, dome & arch broken in my land.

i shall leave without confessing my bitter monstrosities

what is truth? what truth? truth? -everyday asked mistaken in my land.

dreamchild, you cannot scamper to freedom, unaided & limping

you need my prosthetics, unnamed un-weaponized ancient in my land.

no-man’s land is defamed without reason, kaafir

men and women and children prohibited from staying in my land.

An Afterword on Life

afterword on who? the blindness after birth we call: life.

my collectibility wilting as i age rashly, diminished in life.

i spend moments hysterically, to build: lost time

baritones of a coin, one memory forgotten, the other side life.

eclipses measure twice; one in the season of whites falsified

next when you vacate me, naming me a retailer; of life.

histories converge; you’re the victor, i know yours.

you shall never know mine, cerebrus guards it with life.

budding right through me, i have twigs of melted saffron

your insatiable injustice suspended in the margin of life.

if you & i had more time, i would write free verses & decide

if formal verses aren’t it, they’re tearing apart my life.

she cries: the blessed one lives always, eternity in the streets

so spare her, oblige, and return my ages to her life.

celebratory dinner; we’re climbing up the social ladder

elegant dinners, you bore me, funds and shares invested for life.

it snowed, your frost-beaded hair breaks in visions

my forever-etched name cries on the shoulders of life.

Narcissus Near an Unknown Lake

I

mirror; you capture everything i’m not. failed at

last. who will look after me? i am not the limousine flower

that blooms by rivers. idiotic. i’m not capable of looking

after you. i’ll stir my cup in my suite, with fine muslin

sheets, and write about the damned. between the

table and the sheets, between you and me, wait,

let me repeat, how i turn into this corpse beneath the

earth. this arrangement of your children, looking at me

with hope. you tell them everything i’m not. a laid-back

deserter; compliant with your seas. mirror, mirror.

i’m your fairest. there, there. your eldest is in my heart,

with his tattered shirt, echoes on the lone hill on your farmland,

with the burden of the absence sinking him, an inch every year

into the ground.

II

soft paisleys now wreathe your head, as you are six feet under

i can only voice you as you were, voicing my goddess. lover, you

should have called my name out. the beloved. at midnight i breathe

slowly, to not wake you up. at midday, i put my arms into place.

as i said, you should have called my name out. i don’t remember it.

when the rain begins, my paisleys will bloom on your head and

the wreath no longer a wreath. ties will be severed, and the grass

will be mown. you’re no longer welcome here. my kaafir hands

can’t be kept on a table. they move from place to place, woman to

woman. man to man. when i write, my mother’s voice echoes at the

back of my tooth. nauseating, unclean.

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About the Poet:

Mayank Rastogi is an aspiring poet and writer and is currently working on his first collection of poetry. He is also an occasional musician and theatre enthusiast. He is pursuing his Master's in English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.