Londinium Grimenides
London, you are a peckish
rain bird & we
your tiny crumbs
London your psalms
are written in grey
newspaper weeping
beneath our feet
centipede millipede
centipede millipede
i alone am singing
in the gap
Stupendum Bombasticae
Bombay forever arriving
you are a fastly
blotting damp, feathering
high tides tickle, trickle
down your throttle, gurgling
in bulbous claws of stick
shifts you bare
incessant velocities
coal crows & ash
pigeons flecked
with improbable
brilliantine, the unsullied
albino pianos
of egrets plying
teeth music like
mimes on a raucous
promenade while
rebel cadres of crows make
mayhem, eke
out a living like most
of your precarious
flock, Bombay you are flapping
unwrapping your giant
drum rolls of wings, vast
as infinite vowels dropped
from Ahura Mazda’s sky, Bombay
we are all becoming
your carrion you take &
take us leaving only
the bare bones of our
solos, our scattered
keys, white as
the egrets’ music.
Canarium Konkani
Moon-Spider stayed up all night & spun you
a coverlet of stars, Goa
you arise & toss them
away, a net into your glassy
seas but always they are
returning to you like
cadences to my tongue, we are
all errant tide-children
wiggling in our silver
scales only you
are weightless, Goa
your twin wings of
water & sand
ether & reality weaving
a dance twisted as
a mangrove arm
a mongrel dream.
Crow-Calyx Kolachi
once you were Kolachi, muslin wing
mother bird, diaphanous laugh; that soft
woman went the way of wetlands
wish bone stuck in the throat
of murdered mesmerizing sea
now, Karachi, your consonants are hard
claws come to clutch
as i do. tightly
knuckled up, all your birds
are men, Karachi, only
instead of eyes, beaks are pecking
pressing against the last
egress of my iris
Karachi, I see
your wounded evenings flee
their captors yet even as
they board the last light countless
eyes crow in the sky
mark, proliferate a smug smog
glyph of sanctioned graffiti, thumbnail
my lyric, gargled garbled in static,
those thousands of paper cuts making
my skin your sea, Karachi, an elegy
floating at the mouth
London, you are a peckish
rain bird & we
your tiny crumbs
London your psalms
are written in grey
newspaper weeping
beneath our feet
centipede millipede
centipede millipede
i alone am singing
in the gap
Stupendum Bombasticae
Bombay forever arriving
you are a fastly
blotting damp, feathering
high tides tickle, trickle
down your throttle, gurgling
in bulbous claws of stick
shifts you bare
incessant velocities
coal crows & ash
pigeons flecked
with improbable
brilliantine, the unsullied
albino pianos
of egrets plying
teeth music like
mimes on a raucous
promenade while
rebel cadres of crows make
mayhem, eke
out a living like most
of your precarious
flock, Bombay you are flapping
unwrapping your giant
drum rolls of wings, vast
as infinite vowels dropped
from Ahura Mazda’s sky, Bombay
we are all becoming
your carrion you take &
take us leaving only
the bare bones of our
solos, our scattered
keys, white as
the egrets’ music.
Canarium Konkani
Moon-Spider stayed up all night & spun you
a coverlet of stars, Goa
you arise & toss them
away, a net into your glassy
seas but always they are
returning to you like
cadences to my tongue, we are
all errant tide-children
wiggling in our silver
scales only you
are weightless, Goa
your twin wings of
water & sand
ether & reality weaving
a dance twisted as
a mangrove arm
a mongrel dream.
Crow-Calyx Kolachi
once you were Kolachi, muslin wing
mother bird, diaphanous laugh; that soft
woman went the way of wetlands
wish bone stuck in the throat
of murdered mesmerizing sea
now, Karachi, your consonants are hard
claws come to clutch
as i do. tightly
knuckled up, all your birds
are men, Karachi, only
instead of eyes, beaks are pecking
pressing against the last
egress of my iris
Karachi, I see
your wounded evenings flee
their captors yet even as
they board the last light countless
eyes crow in the sky
mark, proliferate a smug smog
glyph of sanctioned graffiti, thumbnail
my lyric, gargled garbled in static,
those thousands of paper cuts making
my skin your sea, Karachi, an elegy
floating at the mouth
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