Shaleen Rakesh

I'm just a matter of, maybe, two lines crossing each other I have nothing you say: 'step out of yourself' I don't understand what you mean But, I reply: who will rub me out?

Where even the smell of the skin is familiar in those arms I sleep tonight I remember your look your rehearsed innocence and I love the way you hesitate you know the rules you play the game I play it too do you know it's true? can you for tonight try to shed that glow come walk with me through the door once more lets take from each other what we want, what we need some flesh, a little love with honesty and greed.

Was it the setting sun or the lingering shadows did we see each other? we met at the park and began with tea do you remember the grass? and the gentle breeze that had started to blow do you remember wondering why a moment so simple should be so rare? we went to the outhouse with sleeping dogs and strewn mattresses when I held you close to me I saw my years of poverty vanishing in the fading light I thank you for offering tea and I know you thank me for accepting the offer.

Is it the blazing sun or your fire that devours me my dense spring evenings brightening suddenly when you charge yourself into my veins.

I know for sure you don't see me here where the lights are like twinkling stars the music is shifting the crowd is drifting I'm lost in the smoke that fills this club I'm wasted in the world you call your own does it matter to you that I love your smile would you care to know what I wouldn't give to walk with you these empty streets to hold your hand this lonely night

At times I find you brutal and yourself you are an orange flame you rise up slowly and touch my face you are born there in yourself at each of your instants and sometimes I find you like a moment of me vague, hazy, distracted I expose us to the danger of merging us both in the space in-between

The sky and the sun seem a little higher today and the river stretches before me with a greater haze of promise.

In the late evening beyond every shadow of the day I came upon a tree leafless, voiceless and it suddenly took on meaning through my existence.

My vast open sky now that you're here I need nothing else and no thoughts in particular you have become my vision, my shelter, my nights I need nothing else not even a shade of my own.

This love, waiting for whatever the day brings it is piling up joy in its very depths that no strong winds can toss into the abyss

There's no circle of heat where this groundless horizon glitters a meaningless joy rises and vanishes like smoke but like an insistent shadow like running water there's life, there's love and somewhere you are still.

As love runs along this street it passes dusty towns, dry river beds, which appear and reappear with you and with the distant sun dazzling the blazing road feels like silk.

Moonlight through the window meets me in your eyes staining us both in white ink remember this moment like a flash of dreams which exposes Sunday mornings that lead me back to you

When dreams vanish with sleep and the season turns to fall this is the little stuff she smiled she's sorting dry leaves in paradise

You stare again the early morning sun as colors return to the womb of darkness you are my body we gaze at the river just me and you

All I need is your body that's all I bargained for and if you smile through those beautiful eyes perhaps I'll consider you kind but if I ask you your name you'll tell me that and more about your friends, your lovers your days spent, forgotten you'll let me put an arm around that gentle heart of yours you'll make me so aware of the shallowness of my desires.

Before this night of simple things before me before us you were there in a world that loved you that hated you before you left before you changed.

My heart races to fly again at least as this night does at least as the ferment of spring

As you will presently close the door and leave I realise that every locked door has a past and every locked door opens to the blowing ocean wind which door will you open when you find yourself today which key will you turn I know loving yourself is not enough just like nothing ever is.

Woke-up this morning on a hill next to you sat down still on lost ground cleared my eyes on the same street where you and me are still having so much fun together.

Spring's tentative blossom beats with a Lazarus heart and in darkness, with the earth turns the street of a mad lover watching her now is its own freedom I'll sleep by her side tonight and wait where she blooms tomorrow

What matters she's art or life's lame duck if she can pirouette like a ravine never the flood-chaser of famine not the cell-mate of narrow she is, not tomorrow.

Love is the only eye which doesn't turn to stone even when ears become secret corners of unfortunate truths.

Come unnoticed on faintly muted wings last of the breeze and remind my body's fading distress my adversary and comforter both show me what is possible not at the day's dim frontier but now when my face is still sprinkled with the glitter of your lament.

Today she is blue the color of her own intent no more sedition's red her hands of henna a growing trace of bloom bright tonight the silver beach building for the sea with cans of paint countless rafts between love dreamt and love lived.

She stares the song his music's veil weaving notes to salve her wound an unfinished remedy for his drunken feet unaware his broken tune her ear-less-ness is frankly spoken her rhymes shiver like winters moon she knows this season, her smeared verses will seek the light her month of June.

She wonders what price the body she lives in the days spent deaf to hear his heart beat what cost her laughter the teeth of his street and her stumble at his fate-line weighing on her back a mountain of years to find and lose to lose and find her voice.

She separates from her body when time returns a flight of soul-birds knocking quietly her skin every passing day the wind enters fusing heart with bone eyes with silent mouth time passes she sleeps never lets go his hand.

She came around like the earth to water every stalk to rake the garden clean ground and below she also called the breeze in his heart's waste places with love gathering strength at dawn, called to grow.

Open your eyes It's spring close your eyes it's gone Open your eyes you think you see his kingdom close your eyes it's gone Now you stand at the edge of the mountain and deep inside you can see him clearly The kingdom lies in your heart The kingdom is built and destroyed by the blinking of an eye and it dies when the eyes are opened.

So white was the statue so
Obviously of goodMarble so pale
And erotic that I asked Them what
Have they kept insideHer?

It goes on. It always has, and it always will.

She flies at the doorway of his house like a ragged kite of the wind January is here the silent winter upon them but like screams of broken clay she is scattered at his gate.

Every time I look back chase the memory, clear the throat wash my legs I see more, but hold something less in my hands hey love lets go back home before dusk but keep the water in your eyes before the lights go out and you feel thirsty again.

In this long and uncertain moment of life that mimics love he is searching and longing for something that once died she brings back memory which he's unable to feel he sees her as someone he will remember or maybe forget in this airless forest where he finds nothing to hold on to she stirs up desire maybe he's just hoping to find a small fragment of her which he wants to take home a fragment he accidentally lost a while ago.

Life soars on her wings like a runaway angel she cut lose her strings where will she rest before she leaps to skydive again with me.

Fireflies, when you see them they spin and flash and crash right in front of your eyes streaking and dancing like veins across the skin you must let them fly and wait until the sun before the spotlight is on you purple across your flesh until you burn brightly for the world to see.

Hearts almost maps almost cities Hearts more than passages almost the entrance to the person I will touch travelling with you I learn what roads are what makes our bodies

This is the India you've never been to. Where Ive never been often enough either. Its not just a land of sunburnt pilgrims. Its a place of generous beauty, untamed fury, simplicity and violence. A land of deserts and lakes and cows and mountains and rivers and crows surrounding cities of contemporary blinding 
lights of Freon. 
 It's everything you think it is and everything you think it should be.

You look so peaceful when you're sleeping your breathing sounds like gentle rain your hands wrap like blankets over me
 and I wish that nothing will ever change.

A brick is made of earth and therefore it has no independent existence. It's existence is derived from the earth itself. The brick is therefore only conventionally a brick while in reality it remains earth. It was earth before it came into existence and it will be earth again when it is broken up. Therefore it is earth really all the time. But the reality of the earth is also limited and relative since it is divisible (into a brick) and changeable and in time and space, it has no continuous existence.

Yes I have seen every inch of your skin at times when you weren't looking perhaps you were counting your own scars then your scars for other people for someone else but I still watched you I never turned away

Did you learn to be art? to display your hurt and your dreams? or is it that nothing could hurt you maybe the world was like your faraway gaze unhurt, in a fog?

Between drags she asked nervously "lie to me again?" without turning his head from the book he whispered "I love you"

And I tried to tattoo my skin to cover my scars but they were carved into my bones too.

The traditional Indian festival of color. Here you see a snapshot of the celebrations at my workplace.

A village in the interiors of Tamil Nadu

In a brief silent moment after last nights dinner you grabbed a pencil and drew a boy with a curly head a ball of scribbles you left me to flip through the sketches I thought- if my poems are self portraits with a head of scribbles too?

Give me a butterfly a pretty yellow butterfly so much power in something so placid.

Every morning I wear her face across my heart during puja I pass incense back to her and make wishes There are days my head on her belly is home enough and there are days I have to train my head to close around her time-clock and withstand the fallout from her autumn I hope some day I will be able to pickup her pieces and put myself together like her like the woman who can make the flawed look so beautiful.

These are two 150 year old havelis in Old Delhi...gorgeous, priceless.

Lutyens Delhi late evening

Dear R, I felt so wonderful just lying next to you today. It reached a point I didn’t know what I should do
 to stop myself feeling as though I was rising up to the sky. I found myself with the breeze and the rain and angels who were old friends. When bells tolled in my mind or my ears, I admit that I couldn’t tell if it
 was real, but, we all know a temple song when we hear one. I feel extremely light these days,
 like paper, gossamer silk or feather maybe. I dreamt you handed me a purple rag, looked me square in the eye
 and said “Tie it so you’re blind”
 and I did.
 I know we drove in a rickshaw because there was wind in my hair
 and gold in my covered eyes, which I can only assume was the sunlight.
You played Art Blakey on your cellphone and we hummed along
 as best we could to his skipping songs
 of pink moons and river men and their beautiful women. When we reached where I didn’t know, you untied the blindfold. The scent of mossy dampness drifted through gilded air.
 Bef...

I took these photographs at a primary school in an obscure rural village in North India . The nearest small town was a 2 hour drive by bus.