These corridors are lined with paintings
of women, brown with  bronze amulets 
around their waist, inherited from mothers 
who visit them in their silent dreams 
with widened eyes of past,
they stare out from the frames unaware 
of their large naked breasts,
nipples unhardened, lax in a beauty of vacant desire.

Peeling purple patches of this pain 
I long to wash my body 
with the rasping tangible colours of these women, 
scrub the tattoos of shame singed on me
in birth. Today instead, I bring you here.


My blood is dirty red with
phantoms of my half birthed ancestors,
weavers with coarse fingers which
blunt my nerves to the beauty
of your silk and heavy gold.
I reside with revenants thirsty 
for revenge, howling out for answers denied in death.
Yet I won’t ask for your snake shrines,
your aristocratic surnames,
your pretentious confidence.
But show me your knots of vulnerability,
your underground godowns filled with cobwebs of 
hidden sins,
the temple ponds where half dead corpses of your insecurities
were thrown to crocodiles with open jaws
teethed with grinding stones of memory,
And in silence 
mark out for me those scars that refuse forgetting.

Then, let me dance my febrile dance that
you reserve only for sex with mistresses,
watch me 
inhabit these paintings, its women and their indifference,
and suffer from our denial. 

Next Poem: ......................................................................................................................................Back to Poetry Index