the hook beside the fan

the hook beside the fan runs incarnadine like your eyes turning red with the green smoke of memories masquerading as dance in our paranoid conversations in our soot black minds our black tongues magnified on walls with kites that hold uptown trips and back in time spread-eagled on mattresses spattered with bed bugs of the mind

scratchingscratchingscratching grrrrrr the itch of togetherness piled high
on tired eyes on phonecalls echoing through the night in satellite advise of broken concerns, a bridge of our convictioned cacaphonies of care holding
you no drugging you no spiking your drink of conscience with the poison of our ephemeral thoughts.

listen
to the sound of the red
listen
to the throbbing pulse of empathy
listen
to the hunger of searching minds
listen
to the silence of our freedom

Does a fish know the smell of water?
How old is this moment?
frozen in an icicle of
abandon encrusted in
walls with no ears
in lamps with no eyes
in corners and nooks.

They strain
and crane their necks
feeling us melt,
colours dripping like sweat –

our desires, our solaces,
our no mores and our
lingering…

as bob sings of love to nirvanaman in the fluorescent hideandseekaankhmicholi of light I hold your smile in my tired hands and document our moment of measured surmise and whispered bliss and smoked beef and dal tadka and the warm comforting blaze of a house on fire with welcoming hands and the slow drizzle of you and you and you

and where would we be?
without the hook beside the fan?