Is it you or you or you
who will bolt into my gaze,
my ear, my catastrophic
throat? Can you hear me
on the ninth floor peering at you
from my towerblock window here?
This gilded cube is where
my Marseillaise, my marching mind,
seeks minds of all calamities:
the wincing pulp, pupating
pipes in risers, aluminium denture
boxes; twitching life is here –
flows in my ear. I thought
of you; you rang. You heard
my song – my jana, gana, mana,
Ganga, knavish trickster pulse
I signalled out of concrete –
neurons sparking down
the network popping in my head
like mustard seeds in oil,
like faulty fuses, siren screams.
And you down there, bedevilled
and believed.
When I’m fossilised
in concrete, cradled through
the countless hours,
lusting after Georgian stucco,
quite barbaric tyranny,
you cut me off.
But still my chest frays open,
bivalved wires spitting, bloodish.
For your connects, I wait.
Anita Pati