City Nights 2 (a poem)

The city comes pouring out

of her mouth like sleek brown rivers
of discontent, her hands flat
against the pink café walls,
the round-faced waiter in his purple apron,
stunned.

The city pours out of her mouth -

colour of churning monsoon street,

bags under neglected coffee eyes,

soles of slippers that have spent the evening

in an old-fashioned cemetery,
colour of guts.

On her fleshy back, a hand
rubs in the city’s truth –
This happens.

At least once in your life, the city

comes pouring out of your mouth
until you are drained and your gut is a shocking pink
like the walls of a café where shaky first lovers 

sulk.

One of these days, past midnight,
it will all come true -

Everything will come pouring out of you.

Your big bum,
the beer towers you drink to fit in,
the hands that rub your back as you gag
over an alien sink,
loose knots of mustard hair,
dead phone batteries,
under-cooked mutton.

The city will come pouring out of you
and when it happens, you will smile
with your eyes shut tight,
you will say to the nearest friend –
This happens.
This had to happen.
It happens to everyone.

[Edited slightly after it was published in Verve (India) magazine]

(C) Annie Zaidi