‘I come to you, to go nowhere’: When the domestic space becomes a site of quiet resistance

The peacock who drives my bus

A glint escapes through khakhee
as his neck oscillates, marking
two ends of vision, he gauges
his battlefield, like a blindfolded dancer
borders the stage before a performance

blue shoes toggle clutch and brake,
he honks to jolt the world out and
accommodate all versions of
stolen half hours in his bus, a
mesh of criss crossed signals
hinted at a reluctant audience

parent pleasing veils dumped hastily
into bags, clutched hair released and
arranged on a shoulder,
the adjacent seat reserved to continue
tiffs and trace trails of apology

songs traverse decades as sunlight
forges city skylines under my right ear,
a sweeping train lulls me into oblivion;
he owns the bus with his hands cleans
the puddle on the bus floor whilst
bystanders, maintain distance.

Love, sent to a single loaded corridor

Hanging upside down, like a giant lizard
I cling to you with unblinking calm,
draw waves along your length.

I dream of ways to inhabit you again,
my Marsyas, as your voussoirs shelter me
under nine arches.

Out from under the First, I regain balance
on moss-retaining tiles, checkered red,
laid at 1:5, turn away from its faint stench.

Rants of a cutter-armed friend
ricochet off mount boards; she completes
my model, saving my ass under the Second.

A ninja jumps out from under the Third
negotiating a bush, watered from above.
A puddle forms in broken asphalt.

I witness...

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