The Soul Guitar

My pregnant guitar sleeps

on the meretricious zone of my dispatched room.

The foetus of your heart’s song

tediously grows inside the womb of my guitar.

The strings of my guitar

are like your eyelashes

where I jingle the chords and rhythms of your tears

with the tip of my thundering fingers.

My one-armed guitar

have six fingers.

The extra finger

points at the automatic digital emotion

that lies between you and me.

I sing the song of your red ribbon.

I pluck in the tunes of your shampooed hair.

I taste the philharmonic melody of sweets that you send.

I write letters to the unborn foetus

on the wrapper of those sweets

and I pack a smiling moon

on the remaining wrapper for you.

Your soft feet

gently steps over my chest

and you walk all through my lungs.

Come,

let’s count full-moons

on the calendar of our phagocyte minds

and let’s just play a chord

which would make us a double full-moon.

Close my eyes

with your palms

and let me create

a virgin solar eclipse.

Sometimes, you and me

drinking cappuccino in a crowded restaurant.

Sometimes you and me

riding in a rickshaw

with a sweating map of codified city

under your armpits.

Sometimes you and me

eating the reflection of stars.

I see you

with the eyes of roses.

I talk to you

with the lips of roses.

Sometimes you and me

growing just like bush of roses.

I just go for a bike ride

with a hangover of whiskey

under my shoes.

The guitar guides my journey

speaking like a prophet.

It preaches me about

words and music.

It tells me a story

 - a story about a widow and her empty bed.

- a story about a college boy and ashes of cigarettes.

- a story about sex, fame and filthy money.

- a story about branded smiles and wound with price tags.

- a story about hate, anger and mute faces on television.

The front lash of this guitar

is like your face.

The back lash of this guitar

is like mine.

And we melt into one face

in one solitary frame of this guitar.

I turn over

the photograph,

a dusty lens of camera,

few posters on the wall

and bottles of dry fabric paint.

I was a painter and a printer,

who painted and printed

brainless heads of mountain,

who painted and printed

your age, your breath, your whispers.

Your anger calmly sleeps

inside the refrigerator

with some cold curd and pine-apple juice.

Your words

hits the glasses of my window

like the grains of monsoon rain.

We used  to stand together

under the huge church bell..

You often talked about your father’s modesty,

I often talked about my mother’s delusion.

Your bangles used to give music

to some of my lyrics

which I wrote

in the yellowish pages of Peepal leaf.

Those lyrics were bullets

that was never fired from a revolver.

Those lyrics were grains of wheat

that never grew in the soil of pleasures.

I have piles of audio cassettes and disks

where I dig the laser beams of fantasy.

A tea cup falls down

and my lyrics spills

all over the floor.

Do you still search for time under your pillow?

Do you still listen to air stuck in wind-chimes?

Do you still wish to go on a river-side adventure?

Does your daddy still look for a NRI husband for you?

I recall the days

when I listened to jazz in a radio.

My black radio used to yell and cry.

It was a radio

that I purchased from nobody

and I sold it to none.

Last autumn

we just sat near a lake

biting and chewing rows of roasted corn.

That was the day

when thousands of farmers died in the country.

Maybe the corn tasted like some dead bodies.

You are an orphan of two hundred weeks,

I am a father of nobody’s child.

Just remove the cobwebs

from the rotten windows and creaky doors.

Heat up the freezing silence from your mouth.

I have some pills full of songs.

Take it. Swallow it. Sing it.

My pregnant guitar sleeps

on the meretricious zone of my dispatched room. 

The foetus of your heart’s song

Tediously grows inside the womb of my guitar.