Captain Morgan

Poetry
Sabin Iqbal 

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​We open the chubby bottle in the attic of the office.
 
The night is not young:
It’s crumpled, creased and cracked.
It’s edgy, sweaty and sunk.
 
We breathe in distilled grapes and distant hurricanes,
Caribbean lightning flashes in our lungs,
Calypso blues rumble within us.
 
We huddle around the table and begin to drink.
 
After the initial silence and poise,
we begin to talk, tell tales
about our love, lost or rejected.
 
And, sometime, don’t know when,
I see in your ocean eyes high waves,
a peacock-blue of dreams and dragons.
 
You don’t look into my eyes, as a decision.
Then, he sings a lovelorn song,
we all listen with our eyes shut
and hearts open, and words fall into crevices.
 
Like Medieval apothecaries we sit
around the carcasses of our love,
and examine the details of anatomy.
 
We go away when the night is creaky and the moon is feeble.
 
Then you call me to talk about your love,
to praise him and his virtues, and you cry;
I respond with my tears, for you.
 
The next day, we blame everything on Captain Morgan.

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Sabin Iqbal is an Indian journalist and writer. He has worked in newspapers and magazines in India and the UAE. He was Editorial Director of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Senior Editor, Tehelka; Sr Assistant Editor, Business India and Editor, Sports Today.
 
When he was a postgraduate student in University of Kerala in early 90s, his poems were published in a collection published by the British Council and Poetry Society India, and in Anand Bazar Patrika. He stopped writing poems for nearly two decades but has now begun working on a collection.
 
He is an aspiring novelist.

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