My Blue Alzheimer’s Sky
Poems
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the editors of
- Mud Season Review, USA (The Garden Snail)
- Kavya Bharati, India (The Karur Poems, A Night Moth Speaks to None, Kirkee War Cemetery Pune, Papa’s old Iron Box)
- Economic and Political Review, India (By the Paddy Fields)
- Short List Anthology, All India Poetry Competitions, Poetry Society India, New Delhi (Similia Similibus Curanter)
- Nth Position, UK (Children Going to School, The Sharpener of Knives)
- New English Review, UK (I’ll not Talk to You Anymore of that Sea)
- Poets Travelogue: Grand Indian Express, (The Karur
Poems)
- Michael Rothenburg (Mumbai Blasts)
- Silent River Film and Literary Society, USA (Mother’s Sari Box)
- Anthology of Contemporary Indian English Poetry, Big Bridge Press Menka Shivdasani, India,
- & all Facebook friends for their faith and warm likes.
Contents
Acknowledgements / 5
1. The Rat Trap / 11
2. Mumbai Blasts / 12
3. The Toy Maker / 13
4. A Night Moth Speaks to None / 17
5. The Backyard / 18
6. Replica / 19
7. Oxygen / 20
8. Dolls / 21
9. Rosebud / 22
10. I’ll Not Talk to You Anymore of that Sea / 23
11. She / 24
12. Night Walk / 25
13. Old Paths of Home / 26
14. By The Paddy Fields / 27
15. Children Going to School / 29
16. The Sharpener of Knives / 30
17. Tiger / 31
18. The Talking Graves / 32
19. The Colour-Pencil Box / 36
20. The Fable / 39
21. Hotel Checkout / 42
22. Train No. 69 / 44
23. Murder / 46
24. The Direction / 47
25. The Hundred Year Old Bed / 49
26. Tears / 50
27. Similia Similibus Curanter / 51
28. Air Hostess Climbing the Aeroplane / 52
29. Take Off, Mumbai Airport / 53
30. Papa’s Iron Box / 54
31. Kirkee War Cemetery, Pune, India / 55
32. Morning Drive, Jordan / 56
33. Mother’s Sari Box / 57
34. The Old Shivalinga in Mother’s Room / 60
35. The Easy Chair / 61
36. The Garden Snail / 62
37. Dog on a Grave / 64 38. Mumbai Local / 65
THE KARUR POEMS
39. Karur Morning / 66
40. Afternoon / 67
41. Sun / 68
42. A Day of Blood / 69
43. The River Amaravati / 70 8
44. Amaravati-2 / 71
45. Breeze / 72
46. Temple / 73
47. Evening / 74
48. A Masterpiece / 75
49. The Descent / 76
50. Traveling by Bus / 77
51. Beetle / 78
52. Rain / 79
53. Thinking of You / 80
54. Night / 81
55. At The Breakfast Table / 82
56. Artificial Trees at the Residency / 83
57. The Residency Bar / 84
58. The Dead Village Children / 85
59. The Event / 86
60. Stopping over the River Bridge / 8
61. Birthday
The Rat Trap
Your round blue eyes
Stare at me this morning Through the rusted iron bars Of the rat trap.
They’ll drown you in the pond in an hour now With a loop tightened around your neck.
It won’t matter
That you have the heart of a child Or that
You did no wrong.
You
Must still be punished with the death penalty.
There’s no appeal, No plea.
But,
God could have even made you The Buddha, little one.
Mumbai Blasts
I’ll not write about the Mumbai blasts.
I’ll only write about the fifty pigeons that died
Because the fakir who used to feed them grain
By the Taj International
Was blasted away, and they died of hunger and sorrow.
I’ll only make a passing reference to the paupers
The begging children
The hawkers and the sex workers out on an afternoon stroll
And about Boxer,
That handsome stray pug that used to come
At about 1.00 p.m. daily
To snooze his head upon the lap of The Gateway of India.
He has vanished without a trace.
Thank you godmen, for your afternoon shower, For the severed thumb live in a small pool of blood At the lit feet of Mumbai Devi.
The Toy Maker
Once in Chenna-patna*, there lived a fine toy maker. The children loved his toys; Parents perhaps loved them more.
The elders loved to keep them in their worshipping places To decorate their cars and even office rooms.
The toy maker was quite famous.
Even the town minister’s wife wished him to make toys for her grandchildren.
There were times when the toy maker used to talk to his own toys.
Tenderly, sometimes even with love.
One night while making a beautiful toy, the toy maker fell asleep.
He woke to midnight noises.
Opening his eyes,
He could not believe his ears, his eyes even.
His toys, they were alive, and had even started talking to one another.
Surprised, startled, he uttered a soft cry.
The toys, they became quiet again.
The toy maker was perplexed.
Why had his toys stopped talking, Stopped all signs of life on his waking?
Was he not their creator?
He went over and shook his toys.
They were all dumb, lifeless.
He left his toys there.
He talked to his friends in town
Told them the strange occurrence Of his toys that had come alive.
They all listened to him patiently.
But behind his back
They said, oh, our ingenious toy-maker… Toy-making has sadly gotten into his head… Our poor toy-maker has turned mad.
But the toy maker knew the truth. Hiding behind a curtain, he watched his toys Turn alive… .
He began living with his living toys as in a dream.
But then he had an idea.
He was all alone.
If his toys breathed life, why not create a toy that he could fall in love with?
A toy that would turn alive and love him in return?
So he created a toy, a woman toy.
A beautiful, naked woman toy.
He watched her in secret to know if she would spring to life.
Imagine his midnight joy- she did.
She woke to life in mid of night.
And she seemed so nervous, trying to hide her nudity.
Yet when the toy maker came over, the toy turned dumb.
Still, he then tenderly chiseled and clothed her.
Every day, every night, he would hold her.
He fell in love with her.
But he could not ever love her as he thought he would.
For,
She turned to life only in his absence. What use was such love?
Then the toy maker had another idea.
He made a toy after his own form.
He placed it beside her.
He held his breath and watched what would happen When at midnight
They sprung to life together. And just as he thought and felt They both fell in love.
They moved away from the others,
And as the toy maker watched
He saw the toy he had made after his image And the lady he had made in his dream of love Make love.
And he grew jealous.
Why had it to be that the woman he had made out of his own hands
Would not love him, but would love only his own wooden self?
Was he not there for her forever?
What was the difference between him and his wood? He felt that he had ruined even his last chance of being loved by her
By creating a toy for her after his own image.
So at daybreak, when the toys remained dumb,
He took his image and burned it down to cinders.
There. Now his chances to love his lady love were so much brighter.
That night he watched the woman toy turn to life. He saw her gape at the embers and the ash of the one she loved, beside her.
And she cried once, a feeble toy cry And became silent.
In that deep sad cry, all the other toys that were moving seemed suddenly frozen.
The toy maker waited with deep breath.
Why were his toys not any more moving?
Even in the darkness? Even in hiding?
It seemed forever. The silence.
It seemed the toys, they had forever returned to toy land.
The toy maker went over and picked up his lady love.
She was cold, colder than death.
The toy maker was sad and bitter.
In the market square his friends found him next morning, dejected and sad,
Muttering to himself like one dazed, my toys, my toys, they do not talk anymore... .
Why don’t my toys talk to me anymore…
And his friends, they told one another,
Oh, our toy maker... . Thank God his madness is at last cured...Thank God our toy maker is talking sense again.
* Chenna-patna, in Karnataka is a town famous for toy-making.
A Night Moth Speaks to None
I came in from the night rains.
Wet from falling into a footprint
Deep in wet mud,
I rose darting in the direction of light And fell back, weathered, Past the open window.
An ant inspects me now.
He has sent his message down the stairs.
I am their open secret.
Tonight,
Hearer of prayers,
Who wreathed me this beautiful pair of wings
You’ll turn deaf, To the silence of my rainbow Tearing.
.
The Backyard
That’s a place for old oat tins and bread wrappers.
A place to seek adventure,
And find perhaps a quiet snake
With its tongue out on a wet brick, or even a salamander, surprised at suddenness of sun.
It is where once mother
Threw away a trunkful of my dead brother’s dresses After crying the whole night into them.
Where glass bits of her broken bangles still shine to say That somewhere, she’s still there.
There, a coiled tendril curls clinging to the matted touchme-not,
And it isn’t bothered. And that’s where white periwinkles Spring up in the rain, their petals whiter than washed bones
Alongside the sudden milk mushrooms.
Little ghosts of lives that left
Without telling why or where
Still ride the green leaves and sit invisible
Upon the stones;
It is the backyard where the twilight stains
The last light of sun trembling upon a broken piece of glass;
That teaches much more than the Bible or Sunday mass.
Replica
(Keats- Shelley Museum, Piazza de Spagna, Rome)
I look up at the ceiling, at the painted daisies That made him say, ‘I can feel The daisies growing all over me’.
So, he lay somewhere here, the curly haired lad, Looking up at the ceiling crowded with yellow daisies.
I imagine that blood drop,
The one he stared so hard at, as into a mirror That reflected the slow, hard truth.
There is the distinct voice of water
From the Fountain of the Old Boat, And the wind blowing in the kind of air Keats breathed in, to ease his shredding lung.
Here, Severn must have sat,
Closing him to his breast as he gasped, ‘Lift me up, Severn … I am dying, hold me awhile… I shall die easy… don’t be frightened, Thank god it has come… .’
But it had not yet come.
It kept him waiting till early dawn
Like the unopened letter of Fanny Brawne
That last one,
As his friend kept awake watching death Come alive for posterity
With a sunburn of dawn.
Oxygen
I hear the van blaring,
Throwing up dust, as though the world Would soon end.
All that duet, all that call
Is for oxygen, a brittle word,
Where swim the fishes of this world.
It is the breeze
That smells the perfumes upon the garden flowers, The gesture of rain that speaks quietly to the birds With a fading that asks for light.
Oxygen; a brittle word.
Without it, he now lies quiet upon the table Like a poem on a page, Undiscovered in time.
Dolls
They cry the tears
Of our young daughters
Combing long hair,
Thinking love
Will precipitate The midnight air.
They jump red lips,
Play see-saw upon eye lids
Dream of young heroes
Wink with blue eyes
Dressed with opulent lies
Open their tresses Like news satellites.
How they wet dreams. But unlike daughters, They never slit veins.
They never bring forth blood.
They know no railway tracks
They don’t ever need to cry Or, even think of love’s suicides.
Rosebud
The newspaper boy flung the paper over the gate That fell upon the rose thorns of white climbing roses. I remember that the thorns tore the photograph of him, dead on the hearse.
I held the paper in my hands
And ran to my father still asleep, shouting, Nehru is dead! Chacha Nehru is dead.
I remember screaming.
Fifty years later,
His favourite lines of Frost
Spin history’s mist thickening in the air. The rosebud upon his button hole Fakes a bloom.
I’ll Not Talk to You Anymore of that Sea
I’ll not talk to you anymore of that sea
Or of mighty things that overpower us with such lightness.
Perhaps that blue cannot be explained. It has a density Of the salt of kisses that comes back again and again With its circling memory of fishes.
I’ll not want you to dance to that tune
Of rains that want the rainbow to bend And yield her naked fruit like a woman in love.
It is better to hide, it is better to hide,
What I have for you that you know I have
And pretend you know you won’t know, nor will ever find.
Call it what you want to, call it a covered flame, That burns the heart and pretends it was just a game. But I’ll still call it the sea, the blue sea, the sea I’ll no longer
Talk to you about, nor wonder if you’ll even care
For you have put me down with the salt of kisses
Covered me in flames,
And set me in that sea,
In the circle of your quiet fishes.
She
She’ll not be moved by the tears in your eyes
Shipping broken hearts past the Bermuda,
Wondering about her ocean, to weigh anchor;
Rather, she’ll be amused by the lights Signalling harbour, all lit for her, Waiting for her just one call.
Now from what is known, it appears, The realms of sadness and parting Are not hers. Never were.
Queen of the kingdom of ice,
She throws up to you An icicle of forgetfulness.
One among them in waiting,
Helps her with a red winter coat, And she disappears into the fog,
Having won the night and all its dead stars.
Then the lights go down in the ocean,
Gently, one by one,
Leaving all the poets to wonder.
Night Walk
A little light sits upon the signal post Fluorescent in rainbow silence. The smoke from a ghost cigarette Climbs sans feet.
Wet gnats on the neon dome
Knit patience
With a brilliance of wings Dancing to burn.
Old Paths of Home
Yesterday, after long years, I took the river. The hyacinths on the brink looked pale as call girls In Memory street, bored by their blow job nights.
Nostalgia got fat.
The dusk grew old like grandpa With his Rip Van winkle beard.
I put on my leftover face and sat on deck
As a small canoe waded past, silent and slow,
With the fading glow Of an Alzheimer’s smile.
By The Paddy Fields
There’s a solid woman in the mountain hut.
Her husband is a drunk and deaf And she gives her mound away secretly.
She likes boys.
She is famous for that.
Just fifty rupees and after the act
She’ll serve rice gruel, mango pickles, pappads And smoked fish.
She’s famous for that.
Sadly, today is not our day.
The woman has gone to town.
Her sister is here. She won’t give away just like that;
But she’ll let you hold her buttocks,
Tighten her tits, and she’ll hold yours in her cold hand.
She’s not married.
Sometimes the drunkard climbs on her While her sister turns the other side.
Now we hold her soft buttocks that feel like country
Snails quietly slipping,
Her breasts smelling of smoked tapioca,
Her hands of carp,
She’s been just cutting.
Well, the sun goes down.
It has been a beautiful day.
That night, among water snails, toddy and smoked tapioca,
A solid woman wading past the river lilies
Grabs us boys by our faces, And we all go down, we all go down As she eats us up like country cane.
Children Going to School
The trees above them are dark with green.
It is summer. Birds have flown away in search of grub.
Hot buds wait to break with puberty.
The children. Holding hands,
With the sunshine on their lips
They are going to school. Soon,
They’ll learn their lessons of earth and its motion,
Of God who hid Adam among the sad curved boughs, Of Eve who got beneath with Satan’s red apple.
They’ll grow their hair long before they wear away, Mirroring their teacher’s words That nakedness is sin.
They’ll know why.
And, when the children return after school
Running naked for shelter in the night rain,
Treading upon dead petals under their feet,
The buried roots now clawing their castled blood Will have turned the trees, the leaves, All red.
The Sharpener of Knives
Who sharpens his knife with his back to the sea
On his grazed wheel? So many fish heads wait
To be sliced by the wharf,
This must be done with precision and skill.
Who pedals the wheel, holds the strumming knife to the sun
The sharpness edged to a Beethoven note?
Give one to the murderer, one to the butcher, one to the lover
Whose wife last night lay with a new sailor from the East One to Cain to murder his mother and brother. Choose one that is blunted, dip it in salt, Bleed it with a kiss.
All knives know the truth of infidelity,
Of shaking fins and beauty laid in lust,
Purple gills red with the sea’s betrayal,
And the rim, the silver rim of the fast wheel Spitting slow fire, turning full circle.
Tiger
He used to come close at the sight of us
Ferocious face sunk in love, his tail curling in a black Tattoo of gratitude.
For fear. We never really touched him.
But he was love wrapped up like a black chocolate, And this time perhaps, he was waiting for us to return. The night we came, he wagged without end at the doorstep,
Then disappeared. For two nights, we left his food At his favourite spot that the monsoon rains washed clean,
While the lightning nights returned to us like undelivered letters,
His name that we called over and over. The third evening when
The farmer’s daughter came home, she said ‘it could be
Tiger
There’s hell breaking loose in the sludge at the churchyard canal by the road’.
The boys ran over to look.
Stiff dank ears met them propped on set blood Bricked all over the dark skin purpling among bleached grass;
Red ants boiled upon him like hot lava
Bursting from the planets of his once blue eyes.
The Talking Graves
The newly elected Government decided to go ahead with its grand new four lane Highway project.
An entire forest would be cleared;
It was a mega project that would cut through mountains. There would be kilometer long lit tunnels through, and through.
It would be state of the art in the country, the first of its kind.
But it would run through the revered city cemetery where lay to rest a thousand people.
The church protested.
The graves would have to be saved. So many kith and kin of the city lay buried there.
The town people took a march to the cemetery protesting against the new move of the Government.
But change was inevitable, said the minister’s spokesman. Great changes meant greater sacrifices of the self By the people for the development of society.
The people’s march ended in the cemetery.
They sat upon the graves and decided the future course of action.
Their leader spoke.
‘The graves, must be saved at any cost. Let them build a fly over the grave... .
Our century old grave will even provide tourist attraction for foreigners and bring in valuable foreign exchange.
Why cut and destroy the timeless graves?
Why disturb the peace of the dead for the living?’ Evening fell.
The city people departed from the cemetery.
The night came on, and it became dead of night.
And then it was that the rich man’s grave spoke.
‘How can they do this to me of all graves?
I was the richest, and the most revered in town.
How can they level me just like that?
Am I not the only one here to be inlaid with precious stones?
And who else has a gold lining in his coffin like mine?
How can they cut across me or level me down?’ Then it was that the second grave spoke with a woman’s voice.
‘Was I not the city star singer? They all used to swoon and croon every night in the bar
At my feet... . Even the minister used to be there who passed this bill...drinking all night, staring at me hoping I would give him a second glance!
Now he wants to lay his macadam all over me and wipe my memory from the face of the city!
Is that not a cruel despicable act?
Can they not bend the highway a little so, I might be saved?’
There was silence, followed by the cry of a werewolf.
And then the small grave spoke, that had not even so
Long been recognized by the others as a
Full grave, as it was hardly a grave at all... and had no Mound on it, and even the grass upon it was dry.
‘Let them’, it said sadly. ‘Let them do it... . No one ever cared for me... . As in life, so in death!
Let it be, let it be,
Let the world change... . What does it matter to this earth that I am run over? Who cares for me after all?’
The other graves pretended not to hear. They felt it was
Beneath their dignity
Even to talk to one such who was hardly even a mound Of death.
But another grave a little farther, felt pity for it, And was compelled to speak.
Sure, it looked a very polite, sensitive, fresh grave. Even in the middle of the night,
The grave had the fragrance of wet roses upon it.
It always had.
All the other graves in fact envied it for its abundance.
Surely, it was the most beautiful
And fragrant grave among the thousand odd graves there. And as it spoke, it was clear that the words almost choked in gaining sorrow.
‘I don’t really want to be here... . I would not mind that
The road comes over me,
But it makes me cry when I think of her, Of what’ll be.
You have all seen her daily,
Ever since the day I was chiseled in stone,
She comes with seeds, she waters the grass tufts,
And my name still blossoms on earth
With all her fragrant roses... Though the long years have
Come and gone,
Every evening she comes,
She waters the flowers, plucks the weeds, keep them abloom, fresh and undying upon me.
You would have noticed, how she even sits by my side,
With her daily murmur of words to me,
“You are not alone... I’ll not let you ever be gone,
As long as I am here, I’m here with you... .”
Its’ her very life that breathes here upon this cold marble. Tomorrow if they level me down, I shudder to think, It’ll break her sad heart.
Rather, I would now crumble or burn away... . This time in the silence that swept past, There was no werewolf song.
And then it was that the tomb of the Holy man spoke.
‘How do they dare say this when I am here?
Have they not seen how I was proclaimed a martyr and a saint?
If they mow me down, there will be a revolution.
Innocent blood will flow in the streets
The rivers of this city will turn red... .’
The moon then went down,
In the low distance the werewolf slid back to his grave And a sudden darkness came upon the skies.
A strange towering wetness lashed upon the earth, As the tsunami swept the entire city Into the sea.
The Colour-Pencil Box
The colour- pencil box at the mall shone brand new.
In it, each coloured pencil loved to show off her colour. Each one thought to herself, no one like me... . Nothing like me
To paint the earth’s true colours. The colour next to me Pales before my brightness.
And so they passed time.
The child who came to the store begged his mother, Pointing to the colour- pencil box.
Thus the life of the pencils began.
Each one pretended to be a good friend to the others, But deep inside, each one was colour blind.
The boy first took out the blue, he coloured the entire Paper top with them And called it sky.
The boy then took out the brown, Drew ‘V’ and ‘W’ and called them birds.
He had use for the green, the yellow, the bright red, the
Orange and purple,
And they all grew short and worn out and thin.
But how they gave themselves up, like sacrifice Before the flaming altar of the boy’s imagination...!
And all the while the white pencil, secretly amused,
Laughed to itself
And said to the others turned to dwarfs… Look, soon, your boy will throw you all away And I’ll live longer than all of you... .
What use that you dissipate yourself away,
Letting him win his prizes when you have to give up your life?
And thus, one day, the white pencil, still long and shining Woke up to find herself all alone.
All her friends were dead.
And then, nostalgia became memory, memory turned to sadness,
Sadness turned to tears... .
If only, thought the white pencil to herself
If only the boy would use me at least to draw white clouds...!
But that was not to be; the drawing paper was whiter than starry light.
The pencil box made of cardboard that was so long home,
Was now torn. The white pencil all alone in it
Felt the loneliness,
Of being a lonely pencil. And she wept.
How beautiful life had been among her coloured friends.
Moments of touch, hug, moments of fragrance, colour,
Moments of togetherness, though they were jealous and
Had even quarreled for a place
To settle themselves in. Now there was all the space to be free,
To roll about; but this was not home anymore. Then one morning the white pencil, she, Saw that she had no more home.
Her home was so tattered and torn, that the boy had Thrown it into the bin.
And then, it was that she got a new home. New friends.
New coloured pencils that reminded her of her brethren.
The boy pushed her into the new box. But soon she realized that there, No one seemed to want her.
They did not even look at her or even smile.
It was as though the new pencils thought That she was smelly, and dirty, and did not belong to them,
Who were all shining new. Even the white one there in the new box refused to recognize her.
It was as though she was an intrusion into their home.
No one wanted to be even near her. They always seemed to be working together Trying to squeeze her out.
And so one day,
She who wanted to outlive all, to live long, long,
Longer than the last living pencil on earth,
Who wished to save her beauty and colour forever,
She let herself fall out of the hole in the box
As the boy rushed to school, rolling under
The mad crushing tyres of the speeding traffic in the street
The Fable
A lady lay dying.
They who stood around her weeping
Wished that she would fast recover. But this was not to be, said the doctors.
‘She has a strange illness that is wearing her down. It is Better to call to her side, All her near and dear.
But no, they could not let her die.
They decided to call the village monk, one believed to Possess supernatural powers.
He was brought in to the dying lady’s chamber. The monk closed his eyes, muttered a prayer, then opened his eyes in one breath, smiling.
Yes, he said. I find hope. There is hope for this ailing Woman if you all care so much for her. Would you all let that be?
Yes, they all said in one breath. We need her with us.
Forever.
Only tell us what we must do to bring her back with us. Oh, nothing said the monk. You just have to be here.
From now on, for every moment that you are here, For every minute of your breath in this room, the lady Will get one minute of your life.
So if you are all here for one hour, she gets an hour of Your life… .
She’ll live more, if that is your joy. Ah, every moment counts!
Now you are twelve here now, and its’ so wonderful for the lady…!
Soon, the monk was gone.
The next of kith and kin, they were polite. Some said they were going out to get some food.
Some said, they would be back with the doctor. Some wondered what Medicines she needed from the drug store… .
Soon the room was empty.
The next day some sent in their pets, dogs, kittens, talking birds. There were so many gifts from kith and kin, There were so many well cards, suddenly.
Some sent in coloured fish in aquariums.
As the lady breathed on, lizards fell dead from the walls upon her,
The pets, the talking birds, they all died, The plants, they all wilted before her eyes...
Even the nurses and the doctors on their rounds to her, seemed in a great hurry, as she gained and gained.
But…
No, said the lady in her message,
Please do not send in your dogs or cats or fish or weeds...
I’ll have no more of them!
And then one day
The monk came to visit the lady again.
Are you happy to live now, he asked the lady. The lady looked up at the monk. ‘True happiness, I did not know, O learned monk, is in dying.
I am happy now, my kith and kin, how happy they must be
That they did not lose more of their lives being near me… !
O learned monk, I have learnt…
True happiness in life Is in finding one’s bliss in dying.
Let me now die... .
Hotel Checkout
You look back into each room,
Each room you filled,
That tightened its nudity around you these past days,
As you entered it; filled it
Knowing you’ll soon leave.
Tossed over, the blanket still kittens your bed Not over your nakedness yet.
Half-done wings flutter in sterile light.
You inspect corners,
Seeking what could have been lost,
But don’t know what, until you perhaps find.
Packed, ready to leave, You are still on your bed, The television on. Leave the keys at the entrance, Your mind tolls again.
There are things to forget, even,
Past your passing past every room, Like the shower dripping, With a sound of fate. You try hard to leave no trace That you were here.
The door
Ready to be locked
Stands tall
Like a just divorced wife,
Before whom, before departing,
You claim no word as your own.
The key is warm in your hand.
Soon, she who opened up last night All her past secrets vaulted beyond light, She’ll be another’s tonight.
Train No. 69
In train No. 69, I keep walking
Compartment after compartment, Right through the erect thing. The women are adrift,
Their breasts partly revealing,
As usual pretending, that ain’t
A thing. I see in the AC cab My father, my mother, Fucked up.
I come to the pantry Take a look at the red meat Dripping the Sistine walls.
Someone’s stirring up pulp Someone’s fishing head rolls.
Late night in 69, It is simmering 96.
I enjoy myself really, Singing La Belle Dame sans Merci.
That’s when the EXIT swings open
And God barges in
Asking for my ticket.
Swell ticket collector
He has earned a bad name already.
Incognito as ever And grand inhuman flurry. He’s heading towards me No, I don’t have a ticket.
No. 69 climbs the New moon Shredding light to pieces.
I pull the emergency chain.
Death is the fine for ticketless travel.
The dog is all knowing,
And He is licensed to kill.
Outside fumes the smell of mating snakes again. I push Him out of the running train.
Murder
Murder has its bit of desire.
It tastes of apples
And fascinates like no other.
It rakes the flesh; sends scents Rending across the sleeping night air.
Rubs shoulder to shoulder
With wet tongues of wolves
Moving quietly, that’ll drip,
Drip, drip, all night. It has
Lust that turns in sleep
Showing secret bruise
Of breast, cordoned in the low
Sailing moon. Murder; it’ll move you quite;
And as a cat wading into its watery kiss
Of the wet grave in the ruins,
You’ll go round and round its red slice Crushed with the heaviness of stones.
For deep within you know the truth of murder; It has sprung from the heart of love.
The Direction
Next to the farm house of death Is the small ghost town. God knows the time I took To get here.
Nobody gave me the right direction.
I had to find my own way.
The lights kept vanishing.
Betrayals Turned to fat bandicoots Snorting in the dark.
Love stripped and dumped
Was a stopped moan
Of a raped foetus among the leaves Past its seasons in orgy Crucified by fire.
Ghost town looks neat, quiet, Laid white like a table cloth By a kind nun.
It wasn’t at all
Like they said it would be.
The cherry trees hold still green cherries That don’t need to turn red and fall.
Time puts me in safe mode
On delicate hold;
Yesterday’s rivers turn to ice And flow on.
The Hundred Year Old Bed
A hundred years ago
This bed was not open to light.
The bedroom was dark
As darkness was that night
When the lovers upon it
Turned to lust,
Calling each other love names
In a time that seemed timeless Before they turned to dust.
And in that silence,
Their full blown kisses
Fell as falling leaves
From face down to ocean base.
Perhaps their first touch Was not easy on the heart.
Or perhaps it was.
But then, the nights that grew wild Had broken them to petals Bleeding in the air.
Their lips in oneness
Would then have tamed the twinkling stars
Telling them not to burn anymore,
While all the while their pulsing blood
Kept sculpting their fire breaths
To Time’s Standstill.
Tears
When tears tear down They run a blind course.
They chart a path
Of water among the drooping flowers.
They sit like cuttlefish breathing;
All lost and gaping outside the bowl of the face
Wondering if it was wrong To come out into the open.
We pay with the salt of our tears
For all that to us was once made of sugar.
These tears,
They camouflage the dark;
Then leave like cuttlefish holding their breaths Leaving no mark.
Similia Similibus Curanter
She’s alone.
Her hands grip rock.
A small splint grazes her thigh. She stares at the bloodline.
Fingers along her bruise
Let up a shape
Of red-lipped strawberry ooze.
Pushing through the sun blazed stone
She breaks a basil stem tenderly Squeezes its juice upon the new born wound Tenderly as colostrum.
Deep in between two mountains parted wide Into the secret garden she wades Bathing in its perfumed river.
And wet with fore kisses all over
Her body stripped in love’s curl’d flames
Breathless upon her mountain god
Dripping blood upon her thorn breasts,
She dances, She dances.
Air Hostess Climbing the Aeroplane
Silhouettes of earth’s beauty,
They climb up the airway stairs
With soft utterances
And delicate tread
So their cushion forms Shall not collapse.
One by one they enter
The great heart waiting with aluminium wings
Where they quietly pass the wine,
Lay Cologne, their red lips Wafering, ‘Hello, have a nice day’.
In tented cloud empires, They unroll like Cleopatras To the lilting of Boeing and 007.
Coming down the elevator,
On earth,
They enter sadly familiar rooms to change
Letting their breasts swan down the lonely mirror,
Cupping their wet faces in fading hands by the wash;
Then turn with slow sighs upon thorn beds
Of the passing nights
In a memory of optic skies; With love’s wild cockpit Entering stars.
Take Off, Mumbai Airport
The suburban trains have turned to rusting toys. The grass is grasshopper still; the buildings wear out Like pupae notched onto dust.
In the distance, the bright river flaying the sun Shimmers white, turning to Time’s fossil bone.
Light dozes upon the forest leaves Imitating still ladybirds.
Everything returns to specks.
Like long nails
Curling at the edge, our roving eyes pick up Left over bread crumbs of pain Asleep peacefully out there.
Papa’s Iron Box
I remember papa’s heavy iron box.
Neat at first and shining in sunrise from the glass window, His certificates once bright as the gold ring Once bright on his wedding finger.
Well, we broke open papa’s old iron trunk at last.
The dazed silverfish dived deeper down his interview coat Sewn just before the second world war; As though it knew the darkness there.
Lizard eggs lay fossilized Into small ancient wounds.
It is rust now, the scrap man says, ‘Give them to me.
The house will get some space.
‘What use is a gone man’s coat and certificates?’
The scrap man swung it on his old bike
Letting it cluck like a hen hung down for the machete.
And then I see Papa’s face again,
His eyes wet, his mouth dumb,
Vanishing in a prehistoric dinosaur stampede.
Kirkee War Cemetery, Pune, India
The Pune dust settles with mustard fragrance Upon these young men laid out in neat rows Among the Deccan grass.
Each headstone among white periwinkles
With its unripe angst of youth
Quietly beckons
Brave as Owen, mad as Gurney, Gentle as Brooke.
Morning Drive, Jordan
As I keep driving down for breakfast I open the newspaper. My eyes drive over Hundreds falling in a war.
I shall not turn to see blood drops falling,
But will only turn to you asking, What happened love, last night?
All of them, darling, falling over earth like wet kisses, Falling in our home made war, like beloved rain.
Mother’s Sari Box
Mother’s sari box was peacock blue.
She opened it only on special days.
Like, on that evening when father came home early.
She had her bath spread with white jasmine buds he’d Bought from Nur Jehan Flower Stall By Old Delhi railway station.
The Regal Cinema near Jama Masjid was playing the new Black and white talkie starring Dev Anand and Suraiya. Mother liked me to sit by her side, listening to her story of each sari
Tucked closely in like an unroused peacock feather.
The jasmine fragrance had already soaked her hair, as she laid out the saris one by one,
In a semi-circle not unlike a low dipped peacock tail. ‘Which one dear?’ she asked me eagerly, ‘Which one tonight?’
My sleepy eyes dyed down on her Banarasi, Mughal-A-
Azam Qawwali, Bengal Baluchari,
And Lucknow Chikankari. ‘Or, shall it be your father’s favourite Kashmiri Chinar?’
Sure, each had a story. Each one was a legend. ‘This, my son’, she whispered ‘is the rainbow sari, a gift from your father, from Kolkata,
On Durga puja night... . Ah, he has now forgotten.
And this is the Kancheevaram sari Studded with real gold That your father wished me to wear on our Kerala honeymoon.
He said I looked like... Shakuntala… .
And this, my dear son, is my wedding sari.
Mother kept opening and closing its rummaging silk as though helping boneless wings to fly.
I saw her stare hard at the pair of diamonds pinned on it, That had come along with her as dowry.
And I thought I saw tears that she quickly brushed aside.
We did not choose that.
Mother wore a simple blue that night.
I watched her dress carefully before the long dusky bedroom mirror, folding the blue pleats Peacock crown like, just hovering her navel, as though she remembered the peacock dance.
I heard him call her from down below. He had already started the car engine.
II
When they came up the stairs to the terrace The moonlight lay already unsheathed.
Mother made sure I was asleep, (or so she thought), As father’s hand slipped over her peacock pleats, drawing her close,
Sinking the fangs of the celluloid’s black and white romance into her flesh
With his lips whorled upon her peacock crown.
Her eyes closed. She lay awake, looking through his kisses At the full moon, thinking perhaps, of King Dushyanta, and his fish gobbled ring.
III
Next morning, father took with him in his office jeep, Mother’s tousled sari to Maharani Dry Cleaner’s close to Nur Jehan Flower Stall.
The blue sari would get back into the blue box in the evening,
Among the others awaiting their late night show, When white jasmine buds would once again spread the bath floor.
The Old Shivalinga in Mother’s Room
Mother washed her Shivalinga with bael leaves,
Whispering the Sahasranamah;
Siva’s thousand names, Namasivaya, Ardhanareeshwara, Sankara, Mahadeva, Nataraja... .
She then tenderly smeared sandal all over the wet phallus
Stone as she would perhaps
Smear father’s face with her night kisses. The Shivalinga then looked beautiful,
Like a moonlit penis overflowing with semen.
Mother would then sprinkle rose water,
Lotus petals, and in the ecstatic turmeric overture, All other gods, even her fever’d husband in the next Room could wait.
It was all for her Lord.
But now, in the same old corner,
The phallic stone is scarcely visible among cobwebs.
Dry leaves of monsoon winds
Slap its black face, throwing in a little left over rain.
A long snake beaded like a forgotten prayer
Curls close, tightening round the smegma of the years, Giving away the smell of death, in my mother’s once Young hands.
The Easy Chair
Leaves make a dry heap
Of huddled birds on it
this wet morning.
A few raindrops march upon its dry
Couch, looking for a river bed to fall.
Everything is as usual where it stays.
The pendulum in the stopped wall clock
With its cracked glass looks a prisoner
who has slipped into a coma.
School children we no longer recognize Still smile from a hundred years.
This morning, in misted breath,
The easy chair in the verandah
Opens my cataract eyes, pouring into them
fables of my father dying
in its arms.
The Garden Snail
These past three days
He has been hanging around the room
Having come in
Through the cold water faucet.
He is around, big, scrotum brown,
Hovering around in peace,
Unaware of what I am thinking,
His house, upon him perfectly washed,
The whites in between the zebra brown,
Gently layered in clear lines,
Like independent traffic lanes, on intestate.
He hovers quietly over
Like a satellite on its axis in space,
As though he was receiving clear signals of his
movements,
Quietly pulsing within from elsewhere,
With the poised energy of a calm delightful erection
Warming on the pared flesh of a woman in love;
At first I thought I would crush it like an egg
Underfoot, sending its pieces like myrtle thorns all upon it,
And it would still endure all that with its peace of silence
As now of its wiping movement,
And I would flush it down the closet,
For there are things we must keep on killing To make our appearances clean and pure. But then I let him wander,
A little into the water,
A little onto stone,
His antennae bulging out
With all the love for the earth
With the wetness of a licked fawn;
And as he kept fanning out his being into the open,
Stuck like vanishing glue to the ground,
He splayed as big as the violet underside of a lotus leaf
Browned in the mud,
His flesh blossoming into a bright mushroom umbrella
Into which all creativity and imagination ran
Seeking shelter,
And he was still, so still,
As though he knew time waiting upon him, Because he was the perfect poem of the universe.
Dog on a Grave
He is tired. Here, he likes the coolness Of black marble.
He too has come to rest, to sleep.
He will not disturb the fresh flowers Strewn by someone who still shares a memory.
His eyes keep shutting.
But they are not completely shut, like the one’s eyes
underneath,
Who he knows is not his master.
But he would still lick him
He would love to, For these falling flowers, This afternoon shade.
Mumbai Local
Perhaps I have still not understood The Mumbai local.
She’s our carrier, Like flies upon a leg sore, That stick to it for the pus.
In the crowd, the blind man never tires, he keeps selling
Kerchiefs, pencils, and key chains;
The plump girl with her blouse torn at her breasts has not
stopped selling lemon
As the local crosses Mankhurd.
Char theen mein*,
The epitome of human selfishness
Still bows to its little pretended kindness for the fourth man.
Her smells of last night’s beggar fuck has not yet left her bench,
Her dried betel spit upon the rusted window is as young as Mera Bharat born, midnight of August 15, 1947; The Mumbai local, I haven’t yet understood her,
As she passes Mankhurd, crosses old Mumbai,
And entering Vashi, gathers speed over sea, Over Navi Mumbai’s Old bitch creek.
* Four in a three seater.
THE KARUR POEMS
(Karur, an off coast river town in Tamil Nadu, S. India on the banks of the Amravati river, known to Ptolemy and ancient Rome, was the strategic military location for home dynasties, and later for the British who stormed a fort here to consolidate its dominance over the South of India).
Karur Morning
Far away,
A mirage on the road simmers its water-wings.
A lone plane fish-arcs the sky Petering down.
In the temple, the village god is quiet. You can almost feel Him breathing in
The perfume of the flowers crowding his face. Even the temple beggar comes on slow
As if his alms would always wait for him.
We step out into the wilderness
Waiting like a tame cat.
The morning dust settles slowly
Like tics upon a cow’s feet
Stashed for slaughter.
Afternoon
The desert leaves spread like kisses In search of a thirsty night face.
A kind little wind shakes the tepid green
Like children held to ransom.
The squirrels upon the thorn boughs climb,
No more dreaming of nuts,
With the butterflies among them
Sun-drenched.
Sun
Plain land.
Two bullocks shaking bells,
Search their way to lost grass.
We turn in the bend.
A blood bird awaits us,
The suns’ mouth still hot
Upon its dying wings.
A Day of Blood
The day turns a blank page.
Slow noises come on like fine print.
Upon some days as these have tread
The quietness of love’s last caress
Before a soldier turned to war,
Before the terror of blood became ripples down his neck,
Before the rumbling of the fort
Beneath which the kings,
and their buried gold
Turned to dust.
This blankness splits with heat, Dazzling in the sun.
The River Amaravati
The river holds its fishes
Like sighs of dead widows
Waiting for their dead soldier-men to return.
She rises in a kiss from a naked girl’s feet,
Flowing towards the night seas
Where the moon
Boasts, of its only memory—
Her beloved’s name
In the great blue Alzheimer’s sky.
Amaravati-2
The spinning wheels churn
Soft thread to cloth flowers. By Amaravati,
Time’s thirsting concubine,
The sun, limping on his rounds,
Wets his balding head
In between her flowing breasts.
Breeze
There’s stillness.
A stillness of leaves
Turning into a disrobing woman In the coming storm.
Temple
The temple priest has all the time in the world.
He repeats the sahasranamah slowly,
Actually, a hundred times over
And his God beside listens
Like a patient disciple.
A leader duck, with an awkward gait, quacks his commands
Leading his suicidal followers to the nearby cement pond.
Quiet, unobtrusive here,
History, a concubine left behind in a massacred harem,
Lies in wait
To repeat itself.
Evening
Slow bullocks pass by the spinning jennies,
And the only medical shop for miles.
Red glows the solitary neon of the Residency.
The chef in Chin Chin garden
Is cooking up a slow chicken thigh Surrounded by his bamboo shoots Looking on like green widows.
The music of his stove could even be A snake hiss under your chair.
Even the wine shop here
Is redolent.
A Masterpiece
Legend has it that Brahma the creator Started creation’s workshop here.
The cow was his factory where creation began.
Creation is the grandest poetry of God.
I believe it too.
Brahma could have chosen no better place than here,
For the master piece of the heavens.
The Descent
Ask Rome.
Ask Ptolemy.
Ask the Sangam Poets.
Ask Raja Raja Chozhan, Tippu Sultan, Or the British, who brought the big Fort down
And as usual built a memorial for the dead.
All that gold buried in the dark for centuries
They’ll tell you the story of a little girl,
A chaste woman,
And of fear, in a handful of beauty.
Traveling by Bus
The wind is a hiss on the window.
Outside, the stars flock together bending low,
Drinking from the tip of the green darkness of still palms.
The moon now is an inebriate ear,
Kissed in love’s
Coiled nakedness.
Beetle
The beetle on my hand
Could be a moving leaf;
Black, beautiful,
The feelers, a space station,
God’s silent derivate.
Rain
The morning smells of jasmine
With water-work carvings.
Cooled, butterflies open their wet wings like pared fruit.
A chameleon, dark chocolate
Pulsates in a camouflage
Of pouring rain.
Thinking of You
Distance is a green frog
Wet from the flowing Amaravati.
Its eyes make me remember
The quiet ways, long ago,
When you slipped me by.
But whatever,
Time will not forget for us,
You, me, or our tadpole dreams
And love petalled to ice,
Condensing in your eyes.
Night
The dusk street is quiet
As a lifeline upon the palm of one dead.
Coffee fragrance spills from the village end.
Mari-amma*, the town goddess, pleased,
Prepares for a festival
And Madan at his shrine at the bend Has lifted his sword, and awaits his devotee
With his thrust out red-tongue.
The lights go off without warning, Like the sudden wrath of the Gods.
* / Madan and Mari-amma are popular demon gods in the native Tamil tradition
At The Breakfast Table
I can understand the cut roses.
A face, looking up like ET
As though it would smell the love upon your lips. I mean the yellow one,
The breasted yellow one, with a little tinge of red
As though if you just as much
As whispered to it, It would turn around and bleed
All over the breakfast table.
Artificial Trees at the Residency
You would think the green leaves
Are sucking the air. The leaves
Spread like fingers turned to shadow chapels
Against the walls. There comes
The sound of the telephone bell,
The chime of the clock striking twelve.
It is midnight.
I’m looking into the trees
Waiting for wet birds of morning.
The Residency Bar
I think it would be worthwhile,
And climb the steps to the Bar.
Bottles have the colour of lip sticked girls,
With kisses like torn butterflies hanging onto their night lips.
Saddles without horses, and pin silver stirrups shine.
The mood is Texan.
It looks like early nineteenth century
Where the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Meet, cowboy guns twirling on dead fingers,
With the neigh of the last wild west horse fading,
To the uphill whistle of a drunk log train.
The Dead Village Children
(In memory of the many children who died in Karur village town,
Tamil Nadu, India, following administration of expired vaccines.)
It was a silent village town
Until this morning.
Now, the red church of St. Theresa
Is all filled up.
A fragrance of fresh oleanders
Up the street
Wets the air with a web perfume.
Mothers, sisters, they surge at the entrance
Of the Government hospital,
with the fury of wings of wasps
in heat of sting,
Scorching within.
The crowd parts.
The dead children appear
After the morning school prayer
One after the other,
In small coffins reminiscent of motherly hands,
The colour of vaccines that expired long ago
Lighting their small faces with heaven’s blue.
The Event
The town is dressed up for the festival.
Hordes of hordes of the Chief’s son Who’s trying to make a mark In the coming elections.
He holds a cell phone in one hand And a child in the other.
He is moving over to kiss
The octogenarian
Who he thinks will live long enough Until his voting day.
Stopping over the River Bridge
The darkness is perfect
Drops of rain fall,
They are holes on the river’s dry lute.
I sense the sounds of ancient merchants from Rome,
The fall of gold coins that speak of the pride of conquest,
The sound of storm, pregnant upon the ship’s slit sails.
If Ptolemy came down now,
And saw the river,
The bones of dead cattle, the skulls of our children,
The broken limbs of our dolls begging for alms,
He would hold a piece of bone to his breast, He would cry.
Birthday
I stand alone.
The wind goes by gently
With the perfume of breath.
I can see her shaking
Ripe berries upon the dry trees.
A silence of lights sailing,
Tells me that I am.
In a distance calming among lemon suns,
A butterfly colour is torn,
Curling with death wings
Upon unmindful stone steps.
Everything passes by.
But it is quick,
The chameleon’s stare
Upon a wandering
Fly.
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