Jon bhai ki chai

The man makes tea as the table blares under his heavy arms as if being dragged down a staircase.His face and his sooty beard is clearly visible despite the torrents of steam now rising from the pan which has been clearly heated beyond its last good year."A man's simple ways can even kill you",he says."Complication is all about having to rub a little dust off of someone's person.Discovery is part of our being,besides where is the fun in scalping a bald man.You need that mysterious pire to call you forth.Deaths are hard done by simplicity.I mean fuck malaria man,who wants to die of malaria.I want to burst open into a flood of flaming lava when i go.So they can look at me and wonder if there was more they could have known.I may not be the open book but i want them to want that opportunity.I  mean i may not drink from your glass because i fear infections or because my religion asks me to but i can't let you know that.You'll consider me a dead man.You will identify my fear of unidentified saliva as the corner stone to a grave i dig myself to comfort my provocations in.How can i possibly live in a place where every other man who walks in smokes 6 cigarettes in 40 minutes and still thinks i'm the one who is going to die because i got it all written over my face.That is self abuse.Your face is where you parked your car.That is all they care about.They do not praise the ones who self doubt,the ones who are too busy biting their own nails that when comes the time to grab someone's throat they are lying in the corner of their sofa,in the corner of a room shaped like a corner itself pondering over the intricacies of overlapping decisions.You need not always grab that throat but you need to look out because there are a whole lot of people trying to raise their heads over your shoulders to see what you got.Now i'm not saying you have to work hard at it or something,because they aren't the critics or alike who you have to silence since you heard them.These are just the eyes that watch you do everything and the moment you think twice or as much as let out a rant at about how pathetic your life turned about to be,they cross your heels and stab you in your back in a way that anyone but you can tell you are a dead man walking.We have nothing,and that we know.But that is a simplistic idea that must not kindle.You need to rub your coins before you put them in the jar to make them feel that you are a schemer and you have things up your sleeve."I grabbed the cup by the broken handle and as i was noticeably looking at it he smiled at me and said "You ain't got to lick it from the outside,have you kid..Just drink it and we'll forget about the money for this one". 

A new day

I have sleeves rolled up to my shoulders
and i think people want to look inside them
I walk a quarter mile putting one foot behind the other
and i think time will no longer move forward
I stand at the beach and i picture myself
drowning in a brown grey green welted ocean
I walk up the stairway only to look down
and wonder what mischief free falls are
I look at the children who look at me
and contemplate biting my fingers
I wait for the lights to fade and the people too
before i can talk to them and relate
I feel the plush skin of the draught
and appreciate it dressing down for the moments i love
I notice cities change identities,huge cities
but fail to find myself wearing the same collar
I sit by the streets and see the sky
parachuting to the earth in bits and pieces
I draw leaves but not the trees
as i sing tunes and not the songs
and i say to myself "What a day ! ",Everyday

Guarding the river

The whistles slur over the aspects

Words lost in the river ask me to bend

and give her a kiss,but her heart i can see

A misconfiguration of colours

not separating the vessel

from the shoulders of spring

Between exile to my peripherals

and interpretations on the inside

many a strange creatures have toddled by

fearing to raise me from my rehearsals,

Little men in green suits,Three legged mules

the sea-goat of Capricornus or her alibi

i believe there are monasteries up in the hills

in my name,mortal after all

A wet rock just as capable

i snuck under my toes the moment i realized

the illness of time would have me

Years of watching over the banks,

Idolizing the idleness of life

i inevitably sin today

in peeking across her arms,

Her fire glazed chest and

beyond that the first remarkable utterance

of immortality that was promised

A man suspiciously like me,

from the face to the bearings down

drives his fists into the ground

kicking up the earth,

a pile of rocks slowly emerging to the eye

I hear a melody chancing its nudity

with this unholy dance,

i find myself unwittingly removed from conscience

There are strange things i can think about

right now and maybe tell you

But for now i'll help the man play another song

The wind today is a joyously leaping parakeet i feel outspoken by

This way home

The staircase sang the song.The click clack of the old man's neck straightening to swallow supper and the mind falling down the boneless stairs in a rush.The foyer,the mother's womb where the arts practice what the arts preach.In its all too uncanny embrace of warmth the night sky glows like an ellipsoidal blanket torn in places where the skin of my hands touches its anguish of being homeless.The taxis race around,as if the windows punch inwards their irregularities in motion other than the half naked women pretending to sleep in the laps of men who can't get the ash off of their cigarettes.A draught bends along the curb sighted only by them whose reluctance in crossing to the other side is a window they wish to push themselves through to be untouchable.The gatekeepers wipe their frothy lips as i bite into mine.As calm as the idea of silence becoming an epidemic may sound i can hear the city give in.Podiums of greatness have been reserved for poets and painters who laugh symbolically as they think hard about the latest misnomers or find themselves shelved in every house,a place they will refuse to abandon for the rest of their lives. Listening with my soul in one place through the cracks of noise now ringing across my ears(of hearing myself breathe),streaks of light fall through denuding the many structures that shadow my first impressions,second of the tenacious women who scrub the sidestreet walls with their metallic heels having almost come to terms with their pace and need.Perhaps,that is just my perversity slipping through an open jar i conjured out of thin imagination.But wouldn't one be allowed the indulgence.Is this the way to treat a man who has just arrived himself.

Starry night,Van Gogh

                        "Cafe terrace at night" by Van Gogh

The sound of a steel chair unfolding
raises the stars
from underneath the moonlit arches
of a bend in the ruins beneath,
i sit in the verandah,
a piece of paper and a pencil in hand
wondering if they do the same

Mr Kumar

The sun beat down like an angry movie star.To say it was going to rain
is a lousy metaphor for a sad day.But it really did seem like a sad
day.I had Chinese quarters in my pocket.But no Chinese phone booths
around.That is strange isn't it.So i walked around a while until i saw
this man reading the paper at the steps leading up to the corner
house.Dressed too well to engage in an activity like that ,i thought
to myself.So i asked him if i could use his phone for a very important
call i needed to make.He was kind enough to oblige so i took his phone
and fed in the number.Just as i pushed the dial button his phone
popped up with this name a "Mrs Kumar" to whom the number belonged
to.I'll be honest with you the first thought that came to my wind was
Whore.What else would anybody think.So i walked up to this guy who by
now had swallowed half the paper and probably was just only getting to
the news.

"Excuse me,but i noticed you seem to have the number I was going to
dial already on your
phone by the name Mrs Kumar,May i know how.."
He sprang up,and before i know the sports page was in my face with
some football player's trailing leg blocking my view.He ran like a
monkey through a flooding tunnel,disappeared before i could add to a
possible list of answers to my question that ranged from "My cousin
sister" to "My weekend fuck".

There was no way i could've made sense of it alone so i dialled the
number again.
"Honey" i said "i've been waiting for you for two hours now.Where are you".
I did not want to catch her offguard or something if she were found
guilty of anything eventually.She said she was just letting her office
mail check out
and then she would be leaving.The sun by now had betaken and
surrendered to a conglomerate of sullen clouds probably as a
reflection of the events that had transpired so far.My eyes threw up
at the very possibility of having to endear with the theatrics.I
decided to put the pigeon in the cage because i did not want to
confront her face to face.I am like that.I hate to confront people
when i know i have them in the corner they don't know the sides to.It
makes me weak instead.

"Hey i was waiting here and i asked a guy lend me his phone to make
this call and he already had your number in his phonebook,under a "Mrs
Kumar",Do you know ..."
She hung up.I could hear the bleep bleep and i realized something was
*bleepingly* wrong.I had her in the corner but now i could feel myself
growing.I checked the phone for the other names,messages and his call
logs.There was nothing about him and her sharing a phone call or
exchanging any text messages.As convenient as that was to feed on my
curiosity i shared little of the enthusiasm to build it as a
coincidence.So i dialled again but her phone wouldn't ring.I was
panicking now.


What could it possibly mean.I thought about going back home but i did
not want to go gung ho about this in front of the kids.So i thought
i'd go to her office and meet her there.I called for a cab and quoted
her address.It really did begin to rain.For a moment i thought the
windshield would crack open and driver would be sucked right through
it.I don't know how to drive so i'm anaemic to the thought of losing
people who can get me from one place to the other.We stopped just
behind the gateway so she wouldn't see me coming.I paid the cab driver
with the Chinese quarters and keeping my head down entered the atrium.

He was there,already.Sitting on the couch,reading the same paper..how
absurd is that??.That probably made me lose it even more and like a
poacher i jumped all over him ferociously.He hollered in pain as i
jammed my knees right into his ribcage.

"Who are you ..How do you know...Why??" It was all rushing out like
poisoned food i couldn't help but spill

Just then i was hit by something on the head so hard that today when i
woke up here in the hospital the doctors said i nearly died.

What a strange story that is..Isn't it?? I'm not sure if he was even listening..

"Yes it very much is Mr Kumar.Please put out your arm now and this may
hurt a little" is what he said.

So i did as he asked and the bastard put a needle into my arm.

"Someone is here to meet you.You do know your way to the visitors
holding Mr Kumar?"

"So she is here..Well i do have a few questions". I said the second
part way too quietly.Probably that is why he did not say anything in
return..

I got up and starting walking towards the door when i heard something
jingling in my back pocket but was too drowsy from the needle already
when it hit me like that hammer blow.

It had not rained at all yesterday or my shoes would still be wet.

"So tell me first Did it rain yesterday?"

Wednesday haiku madness

From seed to syllable
this poem
growing into meaning

Orange shift
over the horizon,
and the cannabis

Tuesday
Still no fish
along the coast

Bordering the house
a grey crayon,
in his stomach

First breath
Too early to be,
Long and purposeful

Stereo shapes,
The walls sing
if they could any

Not this day,
the roses bloom
and we notice

Midnight
The stars getting nearer,
the way i see it

Wisps of rain
my wounds
reminded to me

Streaks of light
clash in the sky
to the pin dropping

Tall gates at the mansion
My attitude
lets them be

The undertaker,
Not knowing how
to dress to a funeral

The blind spot
having just,
passed me by

Grey Winter day,
A shroud for the snow
Not long ago

An old mirror
in the corner
reflecting on life

Her Hazel eyes
I have prisms
that seek them

A slanting tombstone
Another opinion
caved in

Sunrise
The lopsided shadows
take birth

Approaching dusk
An old man
waits for the lights

A cloudy summers night
the moon
falls down the steps

Autumn leaves
their shades
fall first

6 pm at the station
i watch Darkness beginning
to resemble her

God's own country,
fought over
by the mortals

A hole in the sky
he can finally
look through 

Through the vent,another empty bubble

Walking down the back alley,
where the walls continue to lean apart
but not in definitions of them
as the people push through,
with the wind breaking lines,
they barely made it to

Their black and brown suitcases
i find,grinning at me

Lost for words

In my own unique overview
  that spans out from the kitchen
and splays out on the grass to die like a poisoned rat,
i'd say
i love the freedom of others
 more than i love mine
So at the other end of my imagination
when i'm trapped
 Banking on film strips from years before
   Real air tight memories,half brothers
 Neat dresses and perfectly horizontal smiles
pull me out and we'll end this right here....

Numbers

The world not forsaken,for you trying 
The beginning 
   and the end are always meant to fall apart

Look at life,Not in the mirror
Not
  on the street you walk on everyday

Light can be shredded,It is when you sleep
    that changes the meaning of things

So be far as you can go
     There could be science in the numbers
   that surround the dot

11.1111 or 1111.111
  
I look at you as that dot
   and how big a number you want yo be today

This saga is no machine 
  to be flipped upside down to see 

what it looks like

    It is the sphere your brain skids over
        aspiring to find new ends
     to make this thread work

and seem alive 

3 36 am

A time bound spectacle
The long past notes are italicized to seem fatal
The roof slopes as if it exchanges with me its position
Absence of all alive says nothing to me
Whimpers of the moon,despite

A few things needed saying

Are the fish electric??
The painted wall has me roused
People come in and out of stores
not listening until someone with huge lips says it
i for one am not that one
A room full of rainbows,What?
Every sin overtaken,disappears

Yes i can't

some the things i hadn't said nearly enough,lately

A poster poem

#  #  #Finally here#  #  #

#

             Depression!!

         Venue  A place you feel out of,not of choosing
         Time    Not of choosing,Running out of
#

#       Price Appendant (Not per person)

#
     Biggest attractions "Revaluation","Distancing oneself from being summed","the count from two to one"...
#            

#   Free entry tickets(for conventional abidance workers)-a 'deemed fit' organization initiative*
           
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                                                                                        *Terms and Conditions apply(not exclusively)

                                                                                          A Deep Sensible Pit production

                Sponsored By : "Life", "Love","Despair,"Death"

Grandma

I see the dark places between your hands when they come together
and can't,and i seem to remember my whole life

Is it not the right time to wax the sky and make your gaze seem bigger?

Nudge the clouds and let us give her the stage
For she wrote stories off them,about them
as they seem to blink back

I do not trust the flowers by your bed,if they may know you
I do trust your nails,and i trust the white hair
on your neck

I have taken to opinions

Would you refuse unrequited love or has this sailor pretty much sunk to know..
There is no child in your untidiness,may be not even in the unwavering
belief that good will come to things,unreasonable

like my distance

O Grandma what are those lines on your face, i haven't seen before

The new Age of lost Poetry

Before the sounds gnash together
of the creative drum..
the humdum, the hums and then the dums..
believe in that rhythm,
Do not say or tell about the new undefined prolixity
because time has been witness to greatness,
and we might be the only victims..

The Drowning Dog-Francisco Goya

                                                   "The Drowning Dog" by Francisco Goya

Painted directly onto one of the walls of his house "The Dog" is one of many dark paintings by Spanish Artist Francisco Goya.The art now sits in the Museo del Prado,Madrid.A link to the online gallery is here

Off chains
turning inside the sadness
of walls staring at each
other,across an alley
where the language mute ,
and the listeners too far
from a drowning dog,
and the sea that pets him to sleep

The mute history of catharsis

A catacomb like bar
Outside

     a man derived
   from many burdens,
applied to counting deficits
     in unfamiliar lives,
  marks men on their necks
   as They drop out
 bowing to the displeasure
    of light,
 the glowing bosoms
  of women of their histories
 the streak of dawn
    their inevitable rescues
 penultimate to their fall,their leaps
 honest confessions
        the nods of heaven
  the untitled, the unnamed
      all stones they bled upon
    

     a fissure between
 their memories,promising
       and waiting for them to fall back in,
      again

Cuckoo

The woods bundle under
my pillow as an orange sun
shafts from between
colossal branches that are now,undeniable
i sing my appraisal to the twig
upon who's arm the cuckoo rests,
not now,as i wait for him
and hear the forest repeat after me..

Bukowski's New Animals

i have grown tired of the stupid cat,
because i forget all about her
of the sheets of paper that keep flying off the desk
i don't even sit at any more,
The dog's chin touches mine
in a manner and at a time i can never remember
O how i wish there were bottles dry enough to drop your head in,
Without the throat and with my genitals hanging outside my underwear
all cold and too proud of their audacity
I howl to the sky every night,standing on a hill of dirt
it took me years to accumulate
The dog waits for fingers to be pointed up
His lazy ass not worth kicking at unlike mine,i think
i wonder if they agree with me on anything
except barking at the people in the streets below
and being subtle when you can't be smart..Aaahh screw that...and screw you!!

Wheatfield imaginations

The little capsules shine
as deafness or the like looms.
Through the ochroid heads
that sway gently from one silent moment
to the whisper of another approaching
i can see the night sky drool over me
as fetuses crawl across the sky,
I see naked bodies of lovers entangled
and their violent convulsions leaving a stir,
My shoulders fall in embarrassment
and between my legs even the shadows stain
as an ocean floored by glowing pebbles
bears down on me,like an abortion of the day gone by
i fling them pebbles across the fields
and watch them drop over the bend,
where my last breath takes its fall
and where the disheartened gather tonight..

To the point of absence

The evening recites to me
its essentiality,everday
it breaks my mood to remember things
that made impunity our only culture
I fear waking to the same purpose,
the unkown to emerge and seem familiar
In a misty corner of the street
my heart is slurred by the expression i carry
I see people with torches flashing through their pants
and their sleeves buttoned to their necks
i see people with the moon around their neck
and a whole lot of the sky to run around with it
Their is little honour,there is little honour i say
The lights outside a brothel
count down their own days to doom
as they fail to look away yet not wanting to
In a way every man circles himself to a point
of absence,death

Saadhu

The devotees sat glim eyed and awashed in the flow of his intellect.His smile bore the grace of a bright winter sky yet the power of a mountain falling over to the wind.There were thousands who ascended the mountains with their wives and children to catch a glimpse of the sadhu every day .It was believed that the Sadhu was one of nature.His body merely canvassed what was believed was a unison of the elements of nature and the energy stored within him.On a clear sky he seemed to have a plastered smile garnishing his face and on a cloudy day his eyes would leak water.During the winter as leaves would fall so would all the hair on his body.In summers when the valleys would run dry his ribs would jut out like a cage being pushed through a wall of clay and his eyes would remain red for months.




He considered it not as an affliction but a gift.He felt pain but he felt pure too.That,he claimed was a small price to pay to be one of nature's own children and to be under the hands of god himself.He seldom talked to anyone but still thousands would come from far and away to witness this conspicuous man and the many variations of his inborn diction that they would lay bare at the best of their personal judgments.It was the greatest thrill of all.The nakedness of someone else's body was as artistic as people were willing to get with their imaginations.Many thought of him as a God and many cried fould to his antics and declared it theatrical for the simple minded.Medical journalists crowned him as alien and a possible medical phenomenon wheareas the law makers of the valley declared him a fraud and a baffoon for trying such tricks and the impotence of them to affect anyone else but him.


On a grey winter day an army of tall,heavily built men in brown overcoats and huge assemblies of machinery moved into the valley.It was declared that the hills bordering the underbelly of the territory on the other side had to be paved clear for a trade route to be layed which would serve as a transport route between the territories.People were dazed at how such a feat would be accomplished in what the men claimed would take just a couple of days.Rumours spread all over that there were to be orchestrated an explosion,a celestially inhuman feat,a blast of proportions that would swallow the hills and reduce them to dust in a matter of moments.Awe struck by the idea the people demanded to be audience for a show that promised such grandness.



So it came to be.The people of the valley lined up like goats against the blades of the Ganga near the foot of the hills about to be brought down to their own.On the other side of the valley the mountain now deserted and abreast its flat summit inside his hut the sadhu sat staring at the thatched roof muttering to himself "May man's will be blessed by another's".



The Liutenant of the army raised his hand signalling the advent of something majestic.The levers were pushed,the wires ignited and with a thunderous explosion all that remained of the hills and the sadhu were mere dust.He vanished as if eaten by the earth or scalloped by the sky into figments of air.The people of the valley stood stunned,gaping at the blue sky that slowly began to emerge from behind the clouds of dust.Back at the Sadhu's hut a couple of devotees found the place devoid of any human presence which sent them running down to the valley screaming "He ran away,He ran away".The valley exuded with rapturous applause as the men of the army took their bows.

The Good Samaritan's eye

They hid behind the trees
we thought we would leave standing
in our streets,
Watched us spend our days
digging into the ground to get into space
and the nights,wandering lost in it
We walked around barely ever smiling,
Our tragedies so slow we grew old knowing them
We made love and washed off
our tortured sensibilities in it
We lost love and rubbed shoulders
with the executioners..
On the road going up the hill
we were the white horse questioning his faith
On the road going down
we never thought twice,and ran
like they ran away from us

Sleeping in the sock

Uneven steps have left me holes to fill
with light that will only peek into from above,
it is warm all around but the darkness breaks it asunder
into a biting envelope that has cold muscle on all sides
It is like sharing a dog's hunger for a piece of meat,
the assurance is calming and the fight coming
Every now and then i find myself sinking through the hole,in still water
and there in that separation of the clod and my last beating sinew
i wish for the heaven's to be aflame
and down,by the places they were raised
as i surrender my eyes and breathe into this final temptation

In vacuum,and still

The world,now has silicon galaxies
hidden under their desks,
The drugs have become too slow
and the guns too quick to run away from
No longer can you walk into a room
and look into someone's heart,
They list you bit by bit
like dissecting you alive ,
Everyone gets numbers,you get a number
a code you wish to write down but never have,
Their screens blink and billboards are the only memory
they take home,to feed their children
Children who are stuck at one end of a clipboard
with nothing being written upon,
their brains tossed into a meaty bowl
of confetti some might find themselves fall under,
They would ask their mother,eventually
if sex was generally dangerous,
there was talk at school,at tutoring class
and even in cartoons that suddenly had breasts and penises
pixelated to neat indexes that confused their heads
but aroused their otherwise weak senses,
The mother would blush,look at her husband
who by now would have heard none of it,never will
his obesity sunk into a chair
and his shoes still hanging by the toes,
"I wonder why...I wonder why"
she would whisper to herself..

9 pm

I see teenage girls run to the curb
in transparent shirts,
A man slowly crosses the road
fending off the burning lights
struggling to breathe in their heat,
Our tongues dry,maybe the throat too
There are unformed breasts waiting to jump out
and there are confrontations we avoid
As slippery as the tongue might be
No word is smooth enough to be true
when whispered to a man who knows his way,
It is 9 o clock in the evening and
most people know where they are going..

Lonesome traveler..for jack kerouac

I have no consolations to offer,
To far away places i do not come
to lubricate your life,
missing from the last winter i was here
and the day you no longer will be

You sit there with a questioning face
staring at my shoes,
with years of clay and colors of earth
pouring out,
And their age showing on your face

Man in the brown jacket

There are razor blades in his pockets,i'm sure
For he needs to shave the brightness off
of the circular glow
above the lamposts at night,
It has been years and that jacket has not had
enough pockets to shed
as the man has had years climbing his spine
There are ways in which i miscalculate
his presence in my life,and then there are the ways
he lives by

It is discomforting to walk around in the evening
without him flanking the alleys
with that brown ghost like visage

just as it would be, to have
gravestones with no bodies to put under them,
but that is just another miscalculation

Another day,Maybe

The sierras cough up the uncherished feeling

of my presence just below their throat..

Wthdrawn from the decor of life

I climb miles,up and down

these hills wondering why i do it,

I was destitute only in faith

faith in your plans,

the irrelevance of most of them

Perhaps i am

the only coin at the bottom of a wishing well,

With a heaviness not entirely my heart's

I look around and i feel we live in it

You have a lot to wish for,

But another day if you take that leap

The oceans shall lie still

and resonance will be universal

Meet me in my journeys,i will talk to you like

a friend,like a lover 

and then there will be two

Mahabaleshwar,India

Outside Mrs Kimble's tea store

As is not my nature,
i was waiting for Mrs kimble
outside her store,
I think i was in love..
She sold tea bags
the kind you hadn't heard of
and you wouldn't really want to drink
As i rolled around in my thoughts
dolled up as fine as i could
a hawk helplessly hovered in the sky above,
i did not notice that
but the little girl,probably lost
pressing my hand firmly
Her hands too cold to be as sweaty as they were,
I realized i had been standing there for too long now,
Mrs kimble wasn't going to come out
so i walked down the road with the girl
and we had a cup of tea,somewhere
She said we would meet again,which we never did
since we were in love with the same woman,
She looked just like her mother
who had now been missing for two years..

A poem

Always undone

Cold beer

Do i smell a little like i have been
sleeping under a damp moon,
A little caucasian stroller
peering over a black suit,
His eyes scared to meet mine
as i try a little harder every night,but
I'm asleep when i'm drunk
and i was drunk when i wanted to sleep..

9 murders

New Delhi,the capital city of India was host to 9 different murders in a single night yesterday

It's better spoken of,
how they left us alone
the atomic bombs that never fell,
in this agony with which we bear thoughts
of watching someone else's house burn,
and wanting to watch more..
O how all hell never broke loose
until we learned to tie her in our knots...

Ragini(A melody)..of the forest

Ragini was miserable
The windows in her room faced the waking sun,
She had a growing belief
that love was a mysterious trail of blood
in a dark forest she wanted to find the end of..

She wanted to burn the forest down,
An apologetic letter claiming
her blood was unnecessarily spilt over the idea
would have saved her life,after she left
but she couldn't write

Years passed and her life had become the little stretch
between a man's legs across the riches he had
and the time for which he did not care
about  her dying heart

She was sold for a lot less than she had earned,
Every man who's constitution lay in her body,
was in love with her
Every other man wanted to be..

She never rose to the waking sun,again
She never saw another window
Her last letter saying I am home
would have burned the forest down,
But she couldn't write..

So she burned with it....

2:34 am

I'm stuck with good chances,
and that is all there will be of life to tell,
The lights in my house are the only ones
that sadden me...

Now Published-The land above water

A collection of 36 poems..An introduction by Aditya Bahl

It has taken 24 years to come(that is how old i am),published under the Writersworkshop one of  the oldest and perhaps the only publishers who consider poetry a constituent of the Indian Literature standard.Covered in the finest handloom sari cloth and hand woven textures from the streets of Kolkata,the book and the ethics of the publishing process followed by the publishing  house itself is what you simply appreciate about Poetry...Its that it is simple..I have taken a long sigh of sweet disbelief at this point in my life..But ofcourse i will believe...there is a lot still to search for on "the land above water"...

A little while after it starts to snow

The sky is laid out
over a sheet of thick black clouds,
its far end
entwined into a little
golden womb,
Its sad,just sad to be a flake of snow..

For george carlin:"Our Grandest lives"

I don't think we have any opinions at all,
The comfort of being called sane
is only an axial reference
to the feet,unmoved even
when a plash of cold water
tickles the toes,

The point just before the truth is bared
Is the grandest we all will live,
together

Tender be her name and the skin under her feet

The universe misplaced,

its lights
knotted with her hair

She walks like the
petrel,over water

Not far away,
beat upon by her lightness

my feathers drown
and a black sea chimes,
with her webbed feet

It does..It always does!!

Does it not happen enough times,
You stand out in the rain
and realize you rely on it too much
You could be far off munching in,mountains
and their gleaming backs of green,
feeling the earth splay as its urban jungles flood,
but You will go inside and come out
when it is loud enough to not hear yourself speak,
A couple of raindrops,during this time
will have slid across a telephone wire,
and crashed to the ground,together
at the point of the slightest break,
but ofcourse no point has been made here..

"Satyamev jayate":Truth alone triumphs

He says,i ought to be told

why the country is floating down

the gutter while we stand over and piss in it

"Satyamev jayate" is a new hit Indian tv show anchored and produced by bollywod star Aamir Khan.The show as the host claims is an eye opener to the ugly side of the nation.From rape to child molestation,from bribery to dowry everything will be presented with victims,their real life stories with real tears quite possibly leading to the public sincerely empathizing with them for atleast that one hour of broadcasting.The show has made waves  albeit,the sound and electronic ones on projectors and between the transmitters.

The name of the show heralds from mantra 3.1.6 from the Mundaka Upanishad

satyameva jayate nānṛtaṁ

satyena panthā vitato devayānaḥ

yenākramantyṛṣayo hyāptakāmā

yatra tat satyasya paramaṁ nidhānam

translated as

Truth alone triumphs; not falsehood.

Through truth the divine path is spread out by which

the sages whose desires have been completely fulfilled,

reach where that supreme treasure of Truth resides.

The common man watches the show,dumbfounded by its stark and stubborn honesty in eliciting from victims themselves their own stories as a studio full of people wipe their tears and the host cuts a figure of misery and pain.What is surprising ,to put it delicately is the fact that such information or shall we say facts are printed,published and presented in the crudest and simple manner across the country's news channels and print media,to which the public turns a blind eye.The conscience depraved society of the country has become so hung over the reality tv show mentality and the glitterati of the well known or the well kept,that it has become essential for everyone to identify every aspect of life through them.It is a pity that the people want to watch the pretty faces show the ugly sides as they grow prettier by the day and the ugly keep becoming us.

You know who is an honest man,

he who doesn't mind his galoshes getting wet

'Earth'worms and the 3 minute poems

From the grounds they be risen,

earthworms and the 3 minute poems

Out of nowhere,pulling along
the skin of weak ideas

With a little over two feet to live,
under and across the earth

I scratch my arms and look at my watch,
It is still 3 am,it was 3 am the night before..
Oh! Was i talking about earthworms ?..

A night in the woods

We stood by the fire,
as it crackled and the sky wept
with gleaming wasps
falling by my outstretched arms,
The trees swayed slowly
as if sliding along a woman's belly,
Quiet and listening to the baby inside.
There was smell of something
having died days ago behind the trees,
And there was the smell of fresh blood
now visible on faces as they searched
for one another with one good eye,
We peered into the dark
searching for a common indifference to this place
This beautiful awfulness we had not known,
A raw thump of the heart
that oozes out the purest of blood
The mountains brilliantly visible
with the moonlight settling over them,
Quietly they divided us
in our thoughts as they divided
the sky into chalices
poured into with a dark blue liquid
conjured from little sparkling lights,
I lied down and heard the turf
breathe,I breathed with it
and for a moment i was under a wreath,
A small cloud,a damp grey sketch
of distant origins
approached the tip of the mountain,
The valley it seemed,stopped
and the pines,the pastures,the half dry streams,the risen wolves,the untouched cocktails,the out of place rocks and the out of place men and women
all stood and watched..
The cloud passed by as no eyebrows were raised
but many a heart gave in,
In the morning we dug a hole for the dead dog
behind the trees and i wept till the sod turned wry..

(It so happens to be that this has come out on June 5"World environment day",That knowledge adds more color than substance,Doesn't it ? )

The disease of spirit

I watch her from my window,
running from corner
to corner of the street,everyday
with this effusing hue
of untutored innocence,
I have seen people get killed
on this street
more often than i have
wanted to see people get killed,
She leaves me marginalized
in my walled pathosis of vitality
where all falls are vertical,
I'm a drowning bag of dirt
and she the southern wind
that makes my chest ache,
There are days when i wish
for her to be kind and stop,
My chest is blue inside out
before the smoke even hits the ceiling,
I fear she will look up someday
and her eyes will defeat me
in the fight for purpose,
Honestly,she is the most dangerous thing
i have come across

Potatoes

An empty booth
on the street,
cannot face the sun

A potato
hangs by a thread,
a potato !!

Grass mowed over
only just,
slants inwards

A lullaby to
the pine,
the wind distrusts me

A lone climber,
for the sierras
to disown

The last boat
to leave shore
cuts across a diving sun

Morning

The mistress in my room,
why does a necklet hang by her neck
and everything else is a pale reflection
of her body,
The branches of a tree outside
are flailing off my forehead
but i can only stare at her
with my imagination filling the room,
She moves away slowly
as if apathy is whispered to her
It starts to drizzle
and the morning is a climax of sorts..

Words not spoken

I could care less
for the flight of the jungle fowl,
tethered by my hopelessness
having slunk down a pond in the forest,
Where i sit
uninevented into what i had dreamed,
a man not myself,
The wind drives the trees
and not my sorrow instead,
There is a rhyme in the words not spoken
there is always a rhyme in the words not spoken,
and they are digging a hole for me

Bringing disorder to our perfected doom

It is midnight in gandhi's mind,
Its not time yet,to pick garbage off the street
so we sleep on it,and die too
There will be opportunities
to cut yourself from the knees
and demand sympathy from those who will walk,
walk into the barrel of a misfired gun
walk through a kingdom spitting fire
and collapsing on its mothers and fathers,
But there will not be the calling for a resurrection
if death won't be felt,now

And they say home is where the heart used to be....

And i mumbled words to the door
I will always be close,
to unbolt what life is left of you,
The lock clicked and i walked away
feeling caged with a key from the outside,
It is a battle for the intentionally lost
and the man on the inside always wins....

All the cows returning home

There is this air
halfway
to the sky,
the landing of feet
over snow
is the sound rapping
between thick ice
and the warmth of the sun
lost in it,
Moonlight is a lost childhood
waiting to cry out
of someone's blood and bone
A buck sneaking through the forest
is the rustle of a leaflet,
not yet having announced him
His heart thawed,his chances
gone by then

a slow passage through the forest

The hands of a breeze
blindfold me,
it is the wet eyebrow
of a tree slowly
climbing down my spine
as with it the life in me,
returning to the earth

Begging for sand

I was a beggar
on the banks of a river
where the waters wouldn't climb high,

For a brief moment
her unworn eyes
dropped a nickel in the sand

Far from the aggregation of life

Its dusk

The weight of light settling down
on my shoulders as with
sights they are running away,
My fists still devoid
of the touch of calm as
as it is life they hold on to
The sky an unmovable object
bearing down ominously
as with its knowledge i wake
A rotten apple in everyone's cradle
Too many were too sweet to give away
as most things in life,

hang by that thread

Fact

the fact is,
all mysteries are unchained
and the improbable
is always
sneaking around

Speak

Somewhere between the words spoken
and the ones not heard
is the point of disregard,
We have returned to stare at it
at times with the feeling of having known little
And we have let heart's bleed
into silence on the other side

Let it rain

Let the rain divide you
into cold feet and spring
into the man at his edge and the one in the middle
into buddha's flute and its rage
the sea and your warm underbelly
into faces found in puddles and the ones still smiling
the drops sliding down and the windows looking up
into men who soar and graves that dig themselves
into your birth sung to you
and death in the deafness taken away

The temporary birth of character

The talk is of the weather,
the dilating libido of suppression
Of The persuance of harmony
through all the gutters
that lead us,where we have always wanted to go
There is nothing uncommon about conversations
picked up from between the whiffs of whisky
or set up in air conditioned theatres
to an audience drunk on the ordinary,
The air outside this crumbling state
of a man may smell less of the objects
one loves to loathe,
But his is the lone walk,
under the sky of a frightful night
we as cowardly want to avoid
as to expect

An old book

On the table she lay
Her legs apart like
the chalice of antiquity
forever left inviting,
The sperm of my attention
as it wanders
away from the egg,inside the egg
The pages in her,
the never had orgasms
in a heap,below some blind
perversions of life,
between this day and the last

This city

This city is too many lights,
to look down upon with a clear heart
The walls too thick,
to run through and find yourself again
The whores too tired,
to not be whores again
The air too thin,
to have the stomach for rain
The dead too many,
too late
The windows too many to look into,
too few to look out from,
An honest man's ego too small,
to die for some good
The sidewalks too wide,
too small to sleep on
The faces with too many teeth,
too few to show and fewer that bite
The heights of rage too small,
too big for your convenience
It is never quiet in the city,
And it is never strange

Unholy prophecies

It is the bomb of parity
between the old and the untold
that a child grows around,
He bites into it
like a rodent,for man is born
with an appetite bigger than himself,
The lessons of life
are found in such mediums
that it is pointless to convey
anything,by pushing in two mice from
opposite sides of a dark tunnel
to fight for an object not there..
And then since it is too late to say
'fuck you' to the first man
who told you how to live your life,
You end up being the catalyst
to an experiment going nowhere

Spring:My heart is a shadow running across the sky

Everytime i think i will wake up to black clouds
dissected across the middle with blue tails of the sky
breaking over leaves,like little blue soldiers of spring
landing on my eyebrows and elevating the soul of winter

i wake up to black clouds that never came by,
Never stopped to even giggle at this lost
interpretaion of mine,of the sill being closest
to the darkest place in my heart

Three Spring Haiku:Issa

Spring breeze—
the pine on the ridge
whispers it

 
Steam on the bay
past midday...
spring rain


Licking a bamboo leaf’s
spring rain...
mouse


-Issa Kobayashi(1904 ,trans. David G. Lanoue)

Fragments

An old man walks in the backyard
as my eyes sit in the front porch
gazing into a dark beyond,
It is hard to tell what he searches for,
I cannot see the tides in a sea of smoke
burning down this house
This is probably his story
pocketed and sewen with my words,
His heart shivers under the needle
of a slowly dissolving night
I want to wake up and lead him
through the advent of misery
delayed upon him,by decades
But it is better to just look away

Losing a thought in spring

In spring they say,the rain will fall over the precipice.An ocean that has wandered along every dry shore in search for its gold crown is flowing through my eardrums causing my thoughts to swim.The bubbles of air escaping my lungs are like little balloons the flights of which capture the day's essence.
They rise and rise as far as the eye can see.The surface calm as an uprooted tree after a storm with arms as wide as the longing for a fire. A bubble  pierces the surface at which after its first enlightment it is met with the thud of a wave crashing over its head.And there it is,lost in the melee of unrecognizable agents of nature,the thought i had.

Thieving her heart away,i lost mine

Abloom at the heart of her cosmic size
is a grey canopy,the shadow of which
drizzles along her little firm hands

I have often glowed like a tumor
inside a neon bulb
the cusp of whose light is
where we kissed and disappeared
like the first sign of disillusion

A scarlet ribbon pillaged
for an aeon across the oceans
to pay the price for separated existences,
is only just as warm as the one around her belly

I calm myself,for its the jinx of not falling in love
hanging on to a shredder of dispositions

I could lose myself,trying to steal
the seeds of her yield
from the village she built
the first waters where to arrive,
kissed her feet

But she finds me..each time

The last birth of the straight road

I searched an old man's coat for
the last thing i could remember about him
Inside,i found three dead crows,
tied beneath his nipples,
There were dogs with their ribs
scattered over the pavement,that would walk
upto him to snuff
his soul and return to being bones
everytime the sun fell flat at his feet

He did not bark till his last breath
dropped back down his throat
Death was the only house on the curb
he couldn't cross,
for beyond the graveyard,they say
"the road is straight"

Lemonade and a hangover

As whisky can be a reason to leave home,
water lacks the unorthodox walk back,
the feline burps of excitement into each
others nostrils is the closest one comes
to falling in love overnight,
which once over is a heterosexual's
homosexual dream

Lasting

Walking down the street,
walking up which,i was
"dead and buried"

for Annie,hang in there dear friend

3:34 am

All this time,when i was trying
to get myself to go to sleep,
this rock,that i had not enough
money in my wallet to buy,
fell into sea
after thousands of years of being
hung over its enormous belly

It sank like silence at a funeral,
right down to the ocean's pelvis
where it may rest untouched,
like the sky by my wings
as long as men have funerals to go to
and the occasions of night
to wander into each other's lives
close eyed,or lick the floor off the dust
with eyes open like mine

                photo by Ilkka Porttikivi


It has been a yellow room,

Since i last saw it aflame
in sleep,

There were strangers beneath the sheets
As abondoned in a corner was a wrap of arms not known

Everyday i woke withdrawn from calm,
the roof collapsed on me
and i saw myself digging into black sand

Dark figures stood by the door
the shadows of which were framed and on the walls
My breath being all that i heard of myself
i shouted at the walls,so i could talk back

There was a window,i had never visited near
until the day a strange blackness
started to settle over the trees,
the sky rumbled and with it squeaked
a little boy in the yard below

He had never seen me,
His calm prevented from me the desire to join
his fancy,I shook with fear
It began to snow and his bald head turned white
Like an echo from within my void
spilled out words never spoken to me

"You will get cold down there,
Lest the clouds have other places to visit
would you like to watch the snowstorm from my window"

He looked up..without a mouth to speak
or a nose to breathe from where hell was cut into
as around me the snow now fell,
I had fallen off the window
at his feet,where i sniffed the last of my cold blood
The yellow room aglow,
despite another shadow to roam the walls

Relationship

Beyond the white prairie
is a wolf snarling
at a dying tree

Old,beneath its trunk
is the earth frozen with blood
from the wolf's fangs

the organs of love,
dead beneath the ground
as  around the heart

Dusk

The sun,
its setting gloom
meet in my ashtray

as two empty boats
pass each other,
at sea

Poem on the shelf

It has been standing on crutches
i bought from a priest,
Looking over the edge it has seen
the floor weigh itself up and down
like an astronaut tearing off his space suit
years ago even an empty envelop,
would have drawn before itself
a path beyond the roof
would have assumed a galaxy like figuration

In its many lives this shelf
witnessed the burning of effigies
that resembled each moment,
dust and its devices were rubbed off its shoulders

But a poem has heart,
it has character enough
to be the short skirted girl behind
an elevated glass door at 2 am in the morning

My nucleus within itself
argues about the propensity
towards such things
I could take the chair's hand
to reach for it,or to hang myself

But my head,already
is an anthology of dead poems
as my body is of dead men..

Time of death

Three stations waiting for the same train,

A passenger having boarded the wrong one

Fatality of love passing between the rocks

i bought her steady things,
to lift herself out of gloom
i stood between her and the walls
of my room,to stop the echos of her cries
turn her away from home,
She had long been forgotten
like yesterdays forecast,
for that is when i pushed her into
my bed,and asked her why she was a rock
i had long tried to cultivate,
She kicked me in the face
for which i let her eat my soul
If only she knew who i was today,
she would want me dead
for i let her go,and that is why
it is by the edge of the sea,
you will find me,
somewhere between the rocks and her..

Harvest pt2

His auburn skin is just another
swatch to keep a group of leaning trees
above the ground,
Stretched all the way back home is the
feeling of having come too far,
Behind his back,familiar with the sky's
dementia as with her husband's
mother knits with fingers dashed
with partial moistness
the coffins of her last two prayers


                                             photo by nick wheeler

The sky thickens like a recent
memory of being sullen
as the gentle thudding of his mother's
footsteps,is just as deafening as
the feeling of a raindrop
slinking down his spine,
It is poisonous,as if father rescued
them rain drops from his last breath,
and mother o mother you can't help but smile,
you can't help but smile

Harvest pt1

                              photo by nevil zaveri

a thousand harvests east of
of a farmers kitchen,
a toddler
twiddles with the fur of a crooked
shrub,the only ink left on his father's will
is what he would choose to write with it
His shoulders only a few inches wide
are already bending under his fathers head
massive with fractures
as a cloud's heavy feet
He kicks around the earth,enough
to disappear in its buoyant energy,
the latitudes mixed with longitudes
are still only as big as his stride
for the sky seems dry from his mother's
eyes to the horizon

Dry wood

The voice of a blotted child

is what shaved the mountain
off its trees,of its natural thickness
We rolled cucumbers down our chest
wishing to feel the coldness of his feet
as they dived and rose out of puddles
in the middle of the night
it was 4 am,a minute before a death somewhere
there was wood to burn,inside the corset
of a wildly imagined woman,because i had the time
and he wanted some,but it rained sleep in my head
as it rained wood in the forest..

An uncouth closure

With a girth of fury to hold up
his slacking stomach
he sat,gnawing at his fingers
as if it were the only nakedness he had known,
Words slipped down his tongue
and pulled his veins along till they turned blue

In one hand he held a knife
that he were to slice her throat with,
She wouldn't expect it
In the other he barely held on to the last thought,
that had crossed his mind

He cried,blurted her name twice
so he could know her better
There are unsettled pleasures in bringing death
and he could feel his nostrils
inflate at the thought of blood
splurging down the tunnel
of his life till it met a futile end

A click,the keyhole brimmed
and the door opened,she was thrusted to the floor
"Who are You ?? What ??.."
He sealed her mouth and felt a sexual gust
turning his hands cold
"I have for long lived ugly"
he whispered and met her eyes where her banality
as ashes was falling through
Her eyes moved as little with shock
as her body was allowed to
"Why...What...."?? in her head
The next moment he put the knife
through her half naked breast
"It is where i leave this scar,
that your heart will beat the strongest,
and you will feel me there"

He wept in her lifeless arms for hours,
and walked away with a new life within him

Betrayal

farewell old lantern
Your mystique finds a gutter finally,
i have walked around these corners
and forever had faith in your stance
There were stormy nights
on the walkway,when you lifted your
pants and gently strolled behind the oak
In your pocket is the thimble
i wore when the air was heavy with pus,
I murdered a lunatic here once
as he made funny noises with
his boots,
Between her eyebrows a firefly twitched
as i kicked about the body,
A waste such a man is,
a cold tooth in the corner of my mouth
You peeked but never shivered
like a disappointed friend,
But you never told me his
were the bigger feet even though
my footsteps left the loudest noises...