diwali outside, & names smoke on my tongue

with the taste of burning diyas / in the TV's

glitching glow the blue chips packet is passed

around, the remote has a coat of masala magic

from our fingers / with a touch, I harvest red

notification blossoms on green whatsapp boughs

watch the single tick split into two, then turn

blue under the dotted shade of typing, online

typing, last seen, typing... click on clickbaits

to be proven right / like a worm in the damp

soil of the internet, hooked onto a promise of

water, however salty, only to come undone in

an algorithm of annuli / scroll thumbnails on

pornsites, looking for something the shape of

us / but not clicking on it, guilted by what I'm

looking for / when a rare torrent finds a firm

seed, I feel the world might just get along sharing

touchscreen dreams from broken echochambers.

*

in the 3am heat, a hum through a flame of clapping

hands becomes a hymn / apocalyptically lit blue

packets of petrol pumps dot my dream like masala

magic fireflies alighting on the branches of a dark

country creeping north / I wake up shooting pebbles

across eddying shallows of my mind to roiling blues

of my body & trace its descent into the phosphorous

dark while being kneedeep in it myself / I wake up

under a blue blanket patterned with leaves fleshing

peach at the tips, burned by fireworks of yesterday.

~ Ajay
19/11/2020