India #1 of 5

the smell of India
is shit mixed with wafting jasmine flowers
lotus incense masked by sun-stenched, fly ridden fish
asphyxiating leather varnish
and Ayurvedic oils
rose petals delicate with curdled milk
exhaust fumes and cinnamon
sugary tea and rotting rubbish dumps
masala sweat
and
overpriced marijuana

eve

We're lying under
the vast stars of pre-historia,
our eyes see the colours of Christmas,
backs arched against impossibly-held rocks,
precariously heaved into each other
like consoling lovers.

We imagine aliens might have passed through these
enigmatic landscapes
-- or at the very least, dinosaurs...

a Very Yellow Lights darts right --
"Look, Tom, a shoot-- ... a satellite...," I say.
(My Christmas eyes must have deceived me.)

But it hovers a while, then
comes to a stand still.

My Christmas eyes deceived me. Now it's
stopped, completely.
"Oh, it's static," I suggest.
"Just a Very Yellow Star."

A very yellow star.

We imagine xeno-scandinavians
landing from expansive avian pursuits,
we uncover possibilities for beaming telepathic calls
into space; we let our consciousnesses leap
from mountain peak to mountain peak,
following the soft pad-prints of Hanuman.

The Very Yellow Star
starts across the sky
impossibly swiftly
it flares into a
Large Yellow Sun, a
nod to the yellows and twinkling golds
of the wrists below it.
It disappears instantaneously
into a hidden black hole --
it's
Gone.

My Christmas eyes blink, my heart
swells with the same fiery yellow light
and won't shrink, won't
follow the disappearance
but stays loud and thinking in my chest

"That was a U.F.O.!" says I, stupidly
stating the uneasy, alluring, impossible obvious.

We sit a while in silence
taking in the expanse around us
then make our way back to the house.

Murali

she's sitting on the floor,
cross-legged, bare-footed,
bright yellow gold and jingles,
peeling the vegetables with some heavy iron instrument
her eyes salt up slightly
as she sheds the skin off the onions,
wiping her sweaty cheek with the
chaste edge of a pungent hand --

she's so happy,
all smiles
and cackling
laughter

(her age inflates and deflates -- I'm not sure
if she's forty-something
or sixty-five... no
grey hair, body soft --
and that brattish beautiful grand-daughter,
that cackling glee...)

but when she squats below the steps
to feed the hysterical chooks
her face falls tired, empty
her head drops to her open fist one side of her neck
and I see she's worn,
desperate, pitiful

exactly as I feel, and I've only been here
five weeks

Gokarna

The distant, floating echo
of some disillusioned psychedelia
hovering behind
the shattering click-clack-crash
of metal wheels
jarring against metal tracks
[if-out-of place Palm trees
made a sound
it'd be semi-tropical green]

on an overnight train to Mysore

we're like boomerangs
going in reverse
returning back to where we
came from

part "Fantasy Hotel"
past the coconut palms
back into the cold
to come out the other side:
into the scorching heat, again -
we search out the extremes, we
won't settle for mediocre

except there's
no such thing, in this country, anyway
so we couldn't find it, anyway, even
if we
tried

I've never seen so many mangled bodies
I've denies them my four cents
because that's the rule here
and then I mourn
my own apathy
and console myself
by holding your head
with the
two good hands
I have

I walk past a
foetus of a man
nestled between the motorcycles
almost certainly an empty body
and I wonder why nobody
does anything
while I also do nothing

we descend back into the mountains
there's barely any streetlights
but I recognise their shadows
from the last time we were here

in a budget hotel in Madurai

from two a.m.
until six in the morning
you chuck your guts up, seven
or eight times
until you're
empty

you sit naked on the tiled floor
amongst your insides,
I drag myself out
of REM sleep
to pour you salty-sweet mixes
you can't even
stomach --
I pour four, three
end up outside of you

I wear my jandals in the bathroom
I wash my hands compulsively
I label our drink bottles
I kiss you only on the cheek --

and somehow you still look beautiful,
somehow I love you more.