By Durbar Chakraborty
occasional overlords
catch a cold when the sun shifts.
i wave, i wave
through yesterday's tainted clothes;
you should have been there,
exchanging stupor
for a couple of ticket stubs.
if all is where you place your fingers,
nobody perhaps lives-
nobody perhaps leaves.
if you could read my mind,
why must i speak?
cup your face before the solstice
and carve out a silhouette for yourself;
when you are done stuffing human jars
with coins that bear your birthmark,
perhaps you would be lonesome too.
you are a million things.
you are the polaroid dread
that doesn't clear up
even when i shake my dreams off-
nobody really looks both ways
unless you want them to.
you are an obscene caricature
i stash away
in my deepest prayers-
or perhaps that's God.
have you spoken yet?
if you saw the world in ash slits,
i would have been baptized in you,
and you'd see i write of the same fog
that drenches your red halo-
or perhaps that's God, again.
you should have been here, Platero.
if i take your name in vain,
if i look at you for a while longer,
if i really spoke in your tongue,
you could not tell me apart,
could you?
otto cum plata,
dreams of everything
we have always denied,
hair strands and a red fever in August,
i would take your salt for my namesake.
and you'd slice me open
with a thousand dead caterpillars.