golden voice of a prophet

singing redemption songs 

with the early morning sun

my day was abundant 

at this blessed early hour

thank you for your songs of

freedom. 

NaPoWriMo Day 7: Four Red Lilies

Four red lilies festoon my kitchen table

dangling their stems in a square glass vase

turning their heads from huddled yellow roses

in the back of my square table

Four red lilies bloom on my kitchen table

One opened so wide losing every petal in two days

another perfect and trying to stay that way

while the last two hold tight to save themselves for another day

Four red lilies die on my kitchen table

drowning in murky brown water

one petal remains from the first

the second still botox beautiful

and the most tragic, the two that shouldn’t have waited

Four red lilies still on my kitchen table

NoPoWriMo Day 4: Paper towels

Paper towels

Yeah, paper towels

such a common everyday item

pull and rip

taken for granted

unraveled to the hollow core

paper still grasping

holding the core

made of the same tree essence

all three

towel, roll, and tree

discarded disregarded

no problem as long as we still have oxygen

copious amounts of convenience are ours

NaPoWriMo Day 3- A birthday poem for my dear friend

My card with no envelope

open, unsealed

sparkling diamond refusing to be restricted in a box

if the world gets you a bit dirty

May you polish yourself

and keep shining

NaPoWriMo Day 2- Second Class Sleeper to Pune

blue plastic seats

thin sheets

best sleep

lulled away to pune

on a second class sleeper

garam garam chai withsugarwithoutsugar

ek chai withsugar

and what the hell is chickenlollipop?

must wake for 4am arrival in pune

there won’t be an announcement

will the train even fully stop?

never thought sleep could be this sweet

with arm cautiously linked through purse

feet hanging off the edge

alarm set for 4

when we will be born

kicking and pushing

each eager to be the firstborn

train doors miraculously spreading

to accommodate all this

and the afterbirth of luggage

This Is What It Sounds like When the Unicorns Cry

It is hard to pinpoint the exact trigger for laughter or tears. It seems to vary by individual and circumstance. My two month old sometimes gurgles with joy at the sound of my off-key singing, but it can also send him into a fit of wailing if done at the wrong moment.

This morning, my baby was in the mood for some music. My sister took a break from filing H1B visas and decided to visit. I played the Baby Einstein Pandora station while my sister and I sang along and did the Hokey Pokey around his cradle while he stared and smiled.  My sister and I are usually pretty deadpan. We both feel pretty awkward in spaces that call for audience participation, so watching us sing along to children’s songs while doing awkward dance movements would be a shock to many. Luckily babies have no judgments or expectations.

After my husband came home in the evening, I picked up my sister and headed over to our neighborhood yoga studio for a restorative yoga class. This was our first time taking the class, and little did we know that we were in for our own musical treat.  We almost stumbled over bolsters and blocks as we tried to find a place in the crowded room. The teacher was instructing everyone in the crowded room to get three blocks, three bolsters, and two blankets each.

Once the cloud of prop chaos settled, she began talking. She informed us it was a special day. “It’s my birthday, and my husband will be playing live music for us.” He was a sound healer, and they had lived in Bali where people traveled specifically to benefit for this time of healing. Each person was to receive healing during savasana. Her husband, dressed in an ethnic shirt and beads, waved to the class and smiled. I started to feel like I was in the middle of a Saturday Night Live or Portlandia skit. I stifled a laugh. We were about to begin.

“I like to chant,” the teacher stated. The class was chanting Om. There are a couple mantras I say at home, and I can get down with spirituality, even small doses of new agey white people appropriation type spirituality, but for some reason this was a circumstance that was triggering my sense of humor. I started saying Aaauuuu...but had to bite my cheeks and hold my breath to avoid guffawing. It was especially more difficult knowing that my sister, who was likely experiencing amusement as well, was just a few inches away from me. Instead of feeling more relaxed, I felt tension in my cheeks and stomach from holding in so much laughter.

The ninety minute class consisted of doing about five poses for a duration of eight to twenty minutes each. All of the poses just involved hulking on some prop. I would love to get paid for teaching such a class. We finally assumed savasana for the last twenty minutes. The teacher’s husband began his healing.

And it was unexpectedly truly magical. When he hovered above me with his tuning fork, something strange happened. I felt a vortex of energy extend out of my forehead. Unicorns were real. I was a spiritual unicorn with my energy horn. Unfortunately, my sister did not have the same magical experience. She had to use the bathroom, so her healing only consisted of the vibrations of her bladder resonating throughout her body.

Once class was over and we were safely out of hearing range, my sister and I burst into laughter that lasted all the way home. Once I got home, I shared the story with my husband. I was laughing so hard that tears started pouring out of my eyes.

I could look at the class as a waste of fifteen dollars. There was nothing restorative about the yoga. But then I thought about it. I had not laughed so hard in months. My sense of humor was restored, and I had tapped into my inner unicorn. Laughter and tears bowed to the divinity they found in each other. Namaste.

Inspiration Point

My friend E and I decided that we would go on a sunrise hike once each season. It would give us an opportunity to witness the early morning and get some exercise and inspiration. We aptly decided that the perfect hike for this trail was the one in Tilden Park leading up to Inspiration Point.

I was not planning on going to Tilden Park this afternoon. I was first planning on going to Bodega Head, but that was not in my destiny. I decided instead to go to the Hayward Shoreline. I drove through  heat and traffic to discover that there was construction going on in that particular area, so the hike would not be as quiet and serene as I had hoped. Since Hayward was being all wayward, I decided to just go on the tried and true Inspiration Park trail.

As I walked up the trail, I noticed the lack of people. There was a good number of cars in the parking lot, so there had to be people, right? I kept walking.

After a while, my imagination took over. What if there was a mountain lion? I reasoned with myself. The chances of encountering a mountain lion on such a heavily used trail were slim. But strange things do tend to happen to me.

The trail was taking longer than I remembered. Then I noticed that I wasn't enjoying myself as much as I expected. The view was stunning. The scent of the forest was pleasing. The sun was shining. The breeze felt good. Why wasn't the turn-off leading up to Inspiration Point yet there? And why weren't there any people on the trail? The mountain lion fantasy had not quite left my mind. Then I heard a strange creaking sound. It sounded like the door of a haunted house opening. There were no houses around. What was that?

I had been walking for about 35 minutes, and the turn-off had to be nearby; still, I turned around and decided to walk back. Less that a minute after I turned around, I saw an elderly man walking his dog.

My saunter down the hill was peaceful. I stopped and sat on benches. I walked off the trail to check out the view. I took pictures. I inhaled the forest air. I never reached Inspiration Point, but I was inspired to enjoy the rest of my hike.

Fear is a strange thing.

So is imagination. 

Finding a Present Value Is the Reverse of Finding a Future Value.

Self-love is healthy, but what happens when it turns into melodramatic sentimental attachment to oneself?

I love myself to a fault, but that doesn't mean I treat myself right. I use my present self; I am my own gold digger. I make plans without considering my need for sleep. I make myself eat what I want now, without thought to nutritional value. I please myself when I want, ignoring the pain in my wrist and the weakness in my forearm.

At this rate, my future self will be fat, broke, sleep deprived, and unable to use my right hand or arm to do anything.

I have found a solution to helping myself. I visualize myself as either my past-self or my future-self. I feel far removed from that person, so I can be a little more compassionate and considerate of his or her needs. When I think of my past self, and what that person would have wanted in the future, which is now, I feel like taking better care of myself for that earnest, eager, clueless, nerdy child who did not anticipate becoming me. I want to become somebody that innocent fuck would have wanted me to be. But then again, if my parents hadn't forced my past-self to do something other than play Pac Man and drink Kool Aid, I would not have even become what I am today.

Then I fast forward to my future, to myself as an elder if I am granted so many years. I imagine my wizened face and wish for peace, health, and comfort. I look to this figure and negotiate ways to maximize my future value while still staying rooted in my present. She tells me I don't need everything right now, whether it's experiences, food, money, or sex; I wonder if she is right. I wonder if she will be there waiting or whether she will be swept away by unforeseen disaster or by my own present recklessness.

random fiction incorporating a staircase

I had the perfect outfit picked out for the evening. I scanned my closet and pulled out the perfect purse. As I got ready, I imagined the night unfold, I saw myself charming strangers, secretly hoping that the one person invited who wasn’t a stranger would also be there. We would see each other and make our way over to each other much too slowly after too many unnecessary conversations because we wouldn’t want to appear too eager. We would walk up the staircase in the garden and then I would fall, tearing my dress, landing bruised and humiliated at the foot of the duck pond as disturbed waterfowl ruffled their feathers and walked away.

So I had the perfect outfit picked out for the evening until my imagination got involved. That staircase in the garden did exist, and of course I would want to go for an evening stroll, especially in the company of the object of my obsession. With only twenty minutes left to get ready, I needed to come up with another outfit. The dress would not work with any other shoes, so I needed an entirely different outfit altogether. Sometimes I just hated everything in my closet. I imagined burning it all and starting over. Reinventing an entirely new wardrobe held so many possibilities that adding to an existing set of clothes simply did not offer.

Thinking about the possibilities of a new wardrobe took up five minutes, leaving me with fifteen minutes and a newfound appreciation for the concept of uniforms. I looked in the mirror and wondered why we spent so much time trying to look better when we would just turn decrepit so quickly. I decided to just risk my original outfit. If I fell off the staircase, I would have deserved it and become a symbol of gendered consumerism.

Your words used to be geometric

carefully angled polygons of meaning measured to fit certain occasions

like a shape sorter toy

and i would hold each word examine it and wonder if it was meant for eye, tongue, heart, brain

or some other part

of which you would never speak

and the words always fit eye and brain

and too rarely tongue

spaces in my body became empty needing to be filled by more than plastic geometry

even though i was attracted to the colors

i didn't want to sort and make this be such a cerebral task

of putting pieces of you into me

so i just waited letting you put the pieces in

I kept myself open to more than just geometry and more than just us

until the threat of tsunamis of poetry gushing through my body

shifted your polygons into parabolas stretching through me

no longer structured

now I am only open to the angles of your geometry bending around my body

the circumference of your voice engulfing me with its depth

the area of your eyes sinking me in its volume

the perimeter of your shadow as it blends into mine

the surface area of your back for my nails to dig into

the square root of your sighs

the slope of your thrust

the infinity of your smile...

compartments

Work.

Family.

Friends.

Community Organizing.

Spiritual center.

Poetry.

Commentary.

Morbid animal stories.

Academic writing.

Funny.

Intelligent.

Goofy.

Easygoing.

Down for the cause.

Boundaries don't let me sprawl comfortably across my own geography. Standing rigidly crammed into each city-state, I feel constricted, uncomfortable when two or more worlds collide. It's a skill to navigate across boundaries. It's revolutionary to kick down the walls. It's beautiful to paint the walls and transform into plant matter with wildflowers growing rampantly making the walls soft and necessary boundaries instead of constrictive concrete corridors.

Why do I have several blogs? One for poetry. One for stories. One for things I'd rather keep to myself.

I'm spilling into myself starting right here.

Meditation, privilege, wisdom, supportive people, and a healthy dose of rebelliousness allowed me to create my own path in life. I was one of the blessed ones. Happy. Well-traveled. Single. Independent. Balanced. Funny. Confident. Successful enough to afford at least one international vacation, but poor enough to be truly grateful for everything I had.

Confidently coasting toward my thirty-fifth birthday, my paved trail suddenly seemed to deliquesce into wilderness. Life was speeding faster than I could pave, and I was about to get lost and stumble and find myself meandering through this unchartered, unpaved, jungle without any food, water, or gps system. Now of course this is metaphorical, so what happened to my perception of my blessed life? Don't worry, despite what it may sound like, this wasn't an eat-pray-love type of pandemonium.

Diwali. Mention this holiday, and I'm traveling back in time to a place I've never been in this context. I can see one of those psychedelic spiral time warps suck me down through the colorful years, slupring me so hard I fly back before my time across continents and experience the festivities in India.

I can't remember my first few Diwalis, but I have vivid memories of my parents describing fire crackers and sweets and colors and crowds. I looked forward to joining in on the festivities, and always thought I would experience it at some point in my childhood, but at age 33, I still have not celebrated Diwali in the Grandmotherland. My associations with the holiday are not my memories, but mostly my mother's. I imagined rangoli, shankar pali, chakli, and kandils long before I really saw them. I heard stories, and they became mine. I saw myself outdoors in a crowd full of decked out desis with lots of children. I saw myself in my new Diwali clothes smelling earthy after bathing in utna, milk, and oil, holding something that sparkles and sparks and then being called in to partake of the sweet and savory snacks.

Over the years, I experienced several Diwalis. My parents tried to make it as "authentic" as possible. We bathed in Trader Joe's olive oil. The chivda was sometimes made using Rice Crispies. Scented candles represented the kandils. I remained nostalgic for the Diwali I never experienced.

A few years back, the nostalgia transformed as I fully looked forward to celebrating Diwali in the California 'burbs. A new ritual had been established, a new culture carved. My parents took what they knew and created. I knew I could expect five types of pohe, chakli, sweets and the warmth and light of the kandils as old school Bollywood tunes played in the background.

Authenticity was redefined as Diwali took on another meaning. I still look back fondly at the memories I never had, but I'm grateful for my own experience. This year, as I eagerly await tomorrow's festivities, I take a look at myself and question my authenticity. This year, I as I renew myself and charge my inner spark, I vow to take what I know and create.

The words that follow are likely to offend many couples. No apologies, for my single friends and I never get any when we are subject to the offensive actions brought on by couples on a daily basis. Similar to being a person of color talking about racism, or a woman pointing out male privilege, or as an ally, bringing attention to heterosexim, being a single woman calling out couple privilege will surely bring about an onslaught of responses ranging from pity to denial to dismissal.

First of all, there is the economic privilege that couples enjoy due to sharing expenses on things such as rent, food, and lodging. This seems reasonable, and it is. However, couples seem to push this privilege when it comes to things like giving presents. If I am invited to a birthday party or wedding, I always bring a present. Why is it that a couple, which consists of TWO people, also tends to bring ONE present? Perhaps they should share a plate too...

This two-for-one special extends beyond presents. It is also prevalent at social gatherings, such at potlucks. Again, many couples think it is perfectly acceptable to bring one dish for two people. I have to go to the store, do all the prep, cook the meal, and clean up. The couple can share the work, or have one person do all the work while the other person has time to take a nap, catch up on work, or watch a movie. Why isn't my time valued as much as a couple's?

Now aside from what the couples literally bring to the table, there is also the constant fussing over each other. "Honey, did you get some of the beet salad?" "Babe, do you want some peach cobbler?" Since when did adults become incapable of making their own damn plate? And if one partner happens to swallow water down the wrong tube, it might as well be the end of the world. Oh, and I forgot to mention the not-so-furtive glances that couples give each other when they disapprove of something that the other says or does. They think they're being incognito, but all the single people that aren't too busy wiping crumbs off someone else's face do notice.

Ah yes, the codependency that exists in far too many relationships basically makes me just cut off friendships with many of my coupled friends. First, there is the assumption that the partner is invited (they're not unless there's an invitation extended, which often there will be, but can't we have a few one-on-ones with our friends?). Then, there is the permission factor. I didn't know so many of my friends were so kinky that they needed to role play and ask daddy if they could go get dinner with me. I have been dissed by my friends because of partners studying for tests, partners being out of town, or partners being sick, not majorly ill, but just like cold or flu sick. Well, screw you and don't come crying to me when your partner is sick of you.

Now the worst part of this is that the couple feels sorry for the single person and not because we have to endure all this bullshit. They think our lives are somewhat lacking. Here are some of the things that my coupled friends have said to me.
"I would hate to be single right now. "
"You must feel lonely."
" You should try match or eharmony or indian dating dot com"
Ummm...why do you assume that I should make coupling up be such a priority? Sure, it might be nice, but i could also end up like...you.

Now to all the single people, love is not something you can find if you don't have it within you. You need love for yourself, and love for those around you. As a romantic, I do hope to once again extend my love to a romantic capacity, but not by taking it away from other places in my life. My time alone is sacred. My time with friends is essential. Only with this sense of balance will I truly be able to value a romantic partnership in which I can grow and nurture growth in another human being.

Womb. Yoni. Pussy. Vagina. Cunt.

Passages
to Life

That don't leave much Choice
if being a Woman

is just about that space
between my legs
that tunnel
that has potential to birth
miracles

but when potential runs out

Am I still a Woman?

Womb. Yoni. Pussy. Vagina. Cunt.

A wise sister once told me that she wouldn't be
blackmailed by the Biological Clock

Time bombs explode inside of me


Womb. Yoni. Pussy. Vagina. Cunt.

Doesn't make me a woman.

I'm a woman
because
I was constructed

and the repercussions
of construction
are stronger than biology

Womb. Yoni. Pussy. Vagina. Cunt.

My womb chills.

My yoni glows.

My pussy wants some action.

My vagina bleeds.

My cunt is a rock star.