SO MUCH OIL 

1. 

Come now, all we suffered 
Was the capacity of the hour  
We were neither green nor grey 
Nor had so much as to be decadent 
Nor so little as to revolt. A cold hand would report 
That our sickness was merely the heat of the spotlight 
On our dozing faces, the clatter of good teeth  
As we stood naked on a stage, and the paralysis 
In healthy limbs over a vague yet mounting 
Desperation to wake up—wake up 
But we let the night suckle us 
Our eyes stayed restless under closed lids  
And our blood rushed to and from the gut  
Under skin as placid as a winter lake 
What salts poisoned our chrysalis?  
Looking back, so little lends itself to narrative 
We wonder at our desire to impose structure 
To insist on signs, and to read meaning  
When there is only so much to be had 
Then again, what makes us human? 

2. 

The sun had barely risen when the new regime  
Announced the themes of a new century 
Banks were given licences; temples, keys 
And all along the promenade, marching bands crackled like gunfire 
We blinked at the light too strong for our eyes 
We picked and dropped our sheets like wings 
By-lines whispered of a second year of drought 
Blood was clotting in the fields, crops lay parted and flat  
But our ears were fixed only on the drumming  
We knew that at any moment it will rain 
And the rain will wash away what remains of the dust 
As a generation’s sap pushes into new leaves… 
Did we smile as the weathervanes began to spin? 
Past tangled chimes, we watched the city kneel  
Before the timpani of thunder, and the rain come  
With the abrupt insistence of a thousand violins 
We drove into the whipping, our windscreen all pixels 
Umber, we thought, gold, green, shale 
To leave the womb felt like progress— 
But as the air cleared, this was harder to claim 
Floods had finished what the droughts began 
All that rose above the waters was the highway 
Now we drove fixed on the light tinting the edges  
Of heavier clouds. And in a triangular patch 
We saw blue sky and the corner of some higher 
Lighter cloud, still white and backlit by the sun 

3. 

Late afternoon, we returned from our journeys  
To find we were not alone in making them 
On the old divans in fresh poses were our friends 
Brothers and lovers. And each was the very nucleus 
Of his new avatar, each boiling with intent and yet 
As pressed to the extent of his membrane crying: 
This is what I am, show me what you are 
Let me be validated or conquered, but in either case—loved 
And we projected ourselves not only with our words 
But our medals and flags, our whistles and drones  
And the black fire at the centre of our technicoloured irises  
After all, it was not only the self we were chasing  
We were also desperate to arrive at some truth about the world  
The wisdom and the innocence of the quarterlife  
That such a search still felt imperative 
Then the light began to slant, and achingly discrete  
In our towers of rhetoric, indignation and always, always desire 
We held up our mirrors to flash the light  
From us in the basalt fort on the hill  
To them on the shingled hold off the coast 
Did our message go across? Was our flare seen?  
It was hard to know. And meaning continued to flicker and shift 
At times wildly, at other times, along the wick of reason— 
But there was only so much oil in our lamps

4. 

Night dawned, a night more radiant than day 
We left our homes with our idols on our heads 
And our harvest of chaff even as the city fissioned 
To the smash of cymbals, the bellow of conches 
And odhum tum tum of drums in a trance  
She looked out and said: This is madness 
And he pulled the curtain across her face  
And their mouths met but to no tongues 
You see, our tongues were already plugged  
Into the great mouth and writhing in such a knot 
None could untangle it for fear of pulling up a fanged head 
Humbled by our closest, we surrendered to the city 
All tongues, we declared, are valid  
Now it was the body’s turn to speak  
And the body speaks through dance  
So we danced on olive and burgundy sheets 
And we danced over highways spoiled by rain  
And we danced on the sand by the watery roar  
But such a night has no chronology, such a city no plan 
The hour was a pupil bright with its own intelligence 
And as the lamps dimmed, the pupil widened 
We felt its gravitational pull. We danced as it pulled us 
And there was an instant, I recall, when we stood swaying  
On the lip of its amber iris, our hearts giddy 
Our foreheads daubed, our faces euphoric  
Like we never thought the final push would come 

5. 

The light was such, you could not tell the hour  
But for that it was day. On asphalt littered with shards 
Smashed windscreens gaped. A stray with rutted ears  
Sniffed at an idle plumbing rod tied to a cleaver 
In the distance, tired ambulances wailed 
Prisons filled with masked children, and crematoriums 
Ashed nurses to whom no memorial would rise 
Locked in our homes, we held our heads in our palms 
We slept at odd hours and awoke in cold sweat 
All we knew was that we had morphed from stray glimmers 
To our most pronounced, expanded past ourselves 
And spilled over…but never quite caught fire 

6. 

An invisible sun scattered the last monsoon clouds 
Red-tipped and sickle-scaled like a fish 
Looking at the great Matsya, we wondered 
Was it only a matter of time and psychoanalysis 
Before we stepped over the bodies toward some newer horizon? 
They’d got the gag off us now, but the clocks 
The rent, and convention had done their job 
Hazy anchors tacked the boats to the bay 
And our mirrors were warped like in those  
Old amusement parks where you move from frame to frame  
To see your height halved in one, body bloated in another  
Or smile wavering like heat on a desert highway 
A wise woman once said: When all are guilty, no-one is 
The time had come for each I to take leave of us  
So I left my tongue and my mirror in the dust 
And I walked for miles with no holy city in sight 
And one day I came upon myself in the steel  
Of a new footbridge. It’s always you, the face said 
And I replied, You don’t know that yet