I read this poem at TARQ, an art gallery at Colaba, Mumbai. This was inspired by a woodblock art by artist Soghra Khursani. I’m waiting for a picture of the painting from the people at TARQ. Just to brief you, I have spun this poem looking at these works of art like two people in love, but trapped in two dimensions. Their agony, exasperation, love and disturbia.
If I were Van Gogh,
I’d paint you a thousand starry nights,
so that the Milky Way would run out of stars
and you would run out of words.
If I were dynamite
and you a wall of stone,
I’d place explosives carefully in the nape of your neck
and whisper in your ears, “Let go.”
If someday you’d care to look back,
You’d realize how unordinary we were
to have not handed out the fucks we had
to the world, sparing them for each other instead.
Holding on to them like roses waiting to fill the air with themselves.
If someone would look close enough,
they’d see how paper thin our existence and ego is.
Lovers once, now mere subjects caught on canvas,
impressioned onto cloth by woodblocks.
If the universe could listen to us,
It’d know that we became galaxies.
Galaxies became us.
What we forgot was the death of every star,
a black hole could come up with astral explosions.
We became explosives.
Explosives became us.
Trapped in a dimension to which we didn’t belong.
Separated by a distance we couldn’t fathom.
If people would look at us here,
and not think of us as monuments on the wall,
do you think, they’d be able to hear
the gospels that leave our lips in prayers,
pleading for one last starry night,
and for the final traces of explosives
that would go off somewhere in the paintings we’ve become?
So that finally we’d know what freedom feels like.
Finally, we’d taste liberation.
The Broken Clock 
