Shiva
And Shiva’s cum
white and sticky
poured onto the nearest
mountain and the white
reeds that shot
up to make
their own shade and soon
by extension was all the
world cum and the clouds
pure unalduterated
cum foam the snowy
little cum caps on the cum
peaks and the rivers pure hard
coursing cum
and the grass made
green by the sprouting of
cum on soil and sheets
of cum fanning in the wind
and the people’s bodies
slowly congealed
over the ages
and cows sculpted from
cum and tigers come
to life from cum and
tanks of cum
rolling down
the cum-washed streets
sky-kissing apartments of cum
cum palaces suburbs
of cum undulating into
the thirsty fields and far
shrines of cum
and the bodies
burning from the fire
of cum minds still muddled
under our blinding white
sun of cum
After Valmiki’s Ramayana: Bālakanda, sarga 35
Ahalya
Gautama (not Buddha) was fond
of intense solitary meditations Once when
he was out on a trip his
wife Ahalya was seduced by
Indra ‘king of the gods’ whom she found
not half bad When Gautama
caught and cursed them Indra ended up
dropping his testicles and
needing a ram transplant This isn’t
a poem about Indra’s balls
though it’s about Ahalya ‘invisible
living on air sleeping in the ashes’
After Valmiki’s Ramayana: Bālakanda, Sargas 47-8; the phrase in quotes is a condensation from Arshia Sattar’s abridged translation of Valmiki (Penguin, 2006 / HarperCollins 2019)
Ahalya
A stone ringed by fine white sand
but otherwise anonymous
more than half-sunk
into ground for all those years
of negative subsistence
Not so much the sole of his reigning foot
as the wider change of season
it brought leaf-rustle and
snap of twig the low breeze
in the sun-shafted air
and then you were there
reformed but the same person
who’d kept a secret
with the god in his lover’s body
Ahalya was the wine of him
new as the first of nights
were those long fingers
familiar or strange?
Have thought and touch
found each other yet?
Feature artwork detail of Folio from the Ramayana of Valmiki (The Freer Ramayana), Vol. 1, folio 50; recto: Ahalya falls at Rama’s feet in gratitude for her liberation from Guatama’s curse
