Floating Signifier

Events float without roots

Detached.

I apply logic of the past on

Today’s effect

Context too evaporates

Amnesiac calendars

Catalogue seasons together

All the years fit into

A single refrain

Stuck on a record player

Memory dwells

Like a parasite

Forgetfulness does not oblige

A name rules all

And lays claim to other nests

Confused grammar fails

The test of tense

Desperate scissors

Fumble with the cellophane

A needle pokes the inflamed gum

Searching for that numbing pain

Wistful parchments step into water

Hoping to dissipate

But everything continues to form

A palimpsestic mass

Where the December wind

Blows in a dawn of March

(Like sand it runs through fingers

Like sand it washes away

But always comes back

To claim the shore

As its own resting place)

It's there in the Doodles

http://cottagereader.com/2013/11/08/its-there-in-the-doodles/

I have read it in the doodles

The ones that were written in mist

On the windshields in the parking lot

But it is more clear on the keyed metal of shiny cars

The expression that comes out once a year

When you burn your tongue again

Drinking espresso from thermocol

Or perhaps more often, like in the showing of one finger

When that really says it all

It's nothing really, but can be seen in various places

For example, the chewing gum from nowhere

That gets stuck on your shoe's sole

And comes out only on its own

It is displayed in deserted monuments

In the form of museumized underwear

It is hidden in the not so ignorant flick

Of a cigarette’s ash on someone else's carpet

It is also seen to flash on walls

That are splashed upon by bursting bladders

It is hidden in the yes nod

Of a 'have to do' hand me down job

Don't ask me to explain

What is it, as it can be very deceiving

It can become a language of its own

Only by saying the same word differently

But, I will simply not talk about it in a poem

As it is only a matter of habit

And I can't take away its punch

When used as vocabulary.

Adjustment

Poem in Cottage Reader: Adjustment

Do a running stitch on the wound

Where the old photograph was oozing out

Make sure you adjust the volume

Coming from that pendant in the jewellery box

Hide familiar words on high tension wires

With spaghetti, tomato sauce and cheese

While you cut the tears out of your hair

Fix the fireflies on your black chemise

Eat the gaps between your fingers

Remember to water the flowers kept in books

Submerge your eyes in the stop bath daily

Fix the rewinding with a Plaster of Paris mouth

Dip the tip of your pen in freshly made brine

And strap your stomach to the brain

When you walk, throw bread crumbs for a trail

You never know when you want to be sought out

Make a papier-mâché mask

By beating pieces of poems to a pulp

Adjust its tones to suit your changing premise

From colour, to sepia, to black and white

Then take a compass and trace your phobias

When you reach a hand littered with little stick-on eyes

Enter the television and enact your favourite scene

But, always stay away from static, in the early hours of morning

Writings from that place

I do not know the difference between before and after

Inside the shopping mall, night could well have been the day

the only indication of a present

is that pain in the feet, possibly due to walking a long way.

but lets not talk about that

it is not what I wish to talk about

I want to mark this moment

and separate it from this long continuum

why is it important, you ask

to just type down my tryst with nausea

passing it for a poetic event

umm, perhaps its not! After all,

we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes again

stuck in our solitudes

Like a dog running after its tail

wait, I am not sure if that's the right metaphor at all.

it is a struggle

to remove the glasses, tinted by the pasts

transgression has become a victim of its own abundance

How does one write about uneventfulness?

Again, this is about marking!

distinguishing this moment from the next

like tagging a photograph as 

"the day when we went..."

but such moments happen lesser and lesser

the blues hold the falling pieces in place

On autopilot most things happen

but time runs out

like excess water seeping through mud in a flower pot

I shift from muse to muse

expecting a tour-de-force moment to happen

but I am sure that when that moment comes

I will reject it, and move on!

As so over I would be

that I would have played all the possible scenarios of that situation already...

Poems in the Cottage Reader

http://cottagereader.com/tag/ritika-kaushik-poems/