History and Her Mystery

Hail the future hail the past
Falling like brickbats thick and fast
Hail the knight and hail the squire
Hail the pageboy who’s gone somewhere
Hail the king and hail his crown
Hail the kingdom hail the clown
Hail the princess sleeping in her bed
Hail her pigeons – those are well fed
Hail the queen and hail her maid
Hail the poet and the words he said
Hail the worker earning his bread
Hail the soldier though he’s dead
Hail the church and hail its priest
Hail the hero – he has slain a beast
Hail the farmer who’s reaping his wheat
Hail the sparrow – it goes tweet tweet
Hail the cynic and hail his scorn
Hail the Magi for a Star is Born
Hail them all, friends, hail them now
For they’ve got stuck in history somehow

Five Snippets of Solitude

1)
Perhaps darkness was better than light
Perhaps life was better than death
Perhaps the soldiers should have marched back
But the twilight the twilight the twilight…..
Who dares defy the orders of the twilight
in the city of the civil guards ?

2)
Here, in these tired and restless corners
There are no pyramids or totem-poles
to remember the dead moths
Yet, and yet, they are remembered
by those cats – darker than the nights,
who used to make love before the sea

3)
But I shall not seek that city
where time seeks the blood of lovers
I shall not seek that river
where hyacinths refuse to bloom…..
And I shall not seek the room
where the roof smells like death

4)
Must I embark on that dreary voyage
in search of solitude?
Must I refuse the love that comes
to me in tattered robes?
Must I wake up every night
and watch helplessly as my city
burns in silence?
Must I keep on crying in the empty
stone corridors only to hear my
own tears mocking me in echoes?

5)
Ah, these are forbidden thoughts
Empty like the sounds of our
very own footsteps…..
What matters is that you made me happy
I used to wake up to stare at the garland
of a thousand voices and dreams
encircling your naked body as you slept….
You made me happy
Or maybe it was the rain
Aye, the rain…

A Hyena in China

Once there lived a hyena
Beyond the Great Wall of China
It went to a dead lion’s den
And put on the dead lion’s mane
And became an utterly fake king
(I’m not talking ‘bout Deng Xiaoping)

Troubles began soon
Some of them sought the moon
But not the silver spoon
So the hyena ordered rocks from the Alps
And crushed the troublemakers to pulps
Everybody watched the show
And when they had to go
Said “Amen!”
(I’m in no mood to discuss Tiananmen)

A certain big brother outside was busy with oil
And was already perturbed by some other turmoil
Besides, being once bitten by an ally of the dead lion
He feared similar fate in the hands of the hyena’s scion
And so he decided to remain cool
While the hyena’s successors continued to rule
(Don’t think of America, you bloody fool !)

Upholding the banner of equality
They treat all with the same brutality
Except a few who are extremely clever
And wise enough to pay their taxes in silver
But the hyenas are never put to shame
It’s only the mane that gets a bad name
Think twice friends, whom shall we blame?
(If you think I’m defending all things Red
Tomorrow morning you’ll find yourself dead
Lying in the Yellow River’s yellow bed
You better get this notion straight in your head)

Of Midnight Drunkenness

Darkness throughout….Occasional glints of yellow-orange….
Cars rolling by…. Jokers and eroticism

Chaos and hysteria…. Madness prevails
Few goblins digging the mist and silence….
They have a few dead fireflies to bury

Clock hands are but daggers – meant to stab time
And Einstein wouldn’t have denied this
Sudden intense desire to shoot down
all the sheriffs and their deputies

Streets getting flooded with blood
Blood – of my strong brothers and sweet sisters
Blood – of all my friends
They’re bleeding to death
I can hear their mortal screams and moaning
at dead of night
Curtains shake

Breeze, Breeze, Breeze
Skeletons hanging down the street-lights
The lights are yellow
The nights are yellow

Fleshes cry for poison and eternity
Bones are silent
Nights are silent

Lucifer loses his faith, and that’s
the worst possibility….

Yearnings embark on their futile voyage
Yearnings for naked solitude…

An owl sits atop the roof of the public lavatory
down below, across the street
The street reminds of forgotten prophets
The graffito on the wall of the lavatory –
it’s a blue sunflower,
But it smells like tears of old Gypsy storytellers…..

Sky becomes sea – dark, morose, thoughtful –
like Tintoretto’s Paradise....
Sea becomes a wolf
Hope loses virginity
Rain loses creativity

High on saintly delights:
Might burst into peels of laughter pretty soon
Blue halo of clouds around the moon:
Green signal to the tears….
Laughter and tears – brother and sister
Both sired by the mirrors
And hence they come hand in hand...

Silent poetry of being….
Teardrops and petals from the womb of night
Tears are the wings of words
Once detached, words become petals
and fall, lifeless, on torn pages of poetry
Blank pages, blank verse…..
Petals of black rose
Never seen a black rose in life
And that’s reason enough to cry

Never begged for love or mercy
Begged for thunderbolts…
Begging for aurora borealis
Would have begged for immortality in future
had future existed

Shadows fall…
Other things fall as well –
Body, soul, flesh, blood, bones, semen,
lives, epitaphs, stories, empires, twilight
sadness, totems, hermits, angels, flowers
butterflies, fears, nightmares, Jocasta
moksha, parking lots, tunnels, ukulele,
benzedrine, hallelujah, roman candles,
sex-parties, stereophony, unrequited love
etc etc etc

Me standing before the mirror
with a cigarette and some
desired bitterness between my lips –
Wholesome, naked, happy….
Me – laughing…..
Me leaning against the balcony
with a cactus, a cat and a few severed limbs
near my feet –
Shattered, intense, sad…
Me – crying…..

Fifteen Reasons Not to Cry

Right at this moment
Fifteen silent echoes in the valley of magic
have sired fifteen children
Right at this moment
Fifteen saxophones celebrate their birth
in fifteen different tones

Right at this moment
Fifteen little sparrows have fallen off
their nests, chirping
Right at this moment
Fifteen church bells are tolling
near the Gates of Sorrow
mourning their death

Right at this moment
Fifteen young men have decided to become saints
and have set themselves on fire
Right at this moment
Fifteen old men are staring
at those very fires contemplating jazz

Right at this moment
Fifteen boys have discovered
their Oedipus complex and are
too perplexed to react
Right at this moment
Fifteen scholars have submitted
their papers on suppressed sexuality

Right at this moment
Fifteen nuns are enacting Resurrection
in a monastery, clad in black robes
Right at this moment
Fifteen paintings of Giacometti
watch their play from the frames

Right at this moment
Fifteen rivers have dried up
and fifteen moons have drowned in them
Right at this moment
A gypsy poet is writing a ballad
for those fifteen rivers
and those fifteen moons that once existed

Right at this moment
Fifteen lovers have parted ways --
each shedding fifteen crystal drops of tear
Right at this moment
Fifteen flowers have wilted in that sorrow

Right at this moment
Fifteen eagles have perched atop the sun
watching the world go round
Right at this moment
Fifteen elves are seated below the sun
watching the sky fly away

Right at this moment
I have posed fifteen question marks
for me to wonder why
Right at this moment
Those fifteen question marks
are hitting back at me with their sharp edges

But all these had happened before…

Another Child

Downhill and downhill, bitten
but not smitten
Lonesome knight, further, ahoy,
shorn and scorn
The cup is not full yet,
Far away, the fields are green
The sunflowers – like a merry dream
But for nothingness, nothing persists
For the sky the sea is blue
And the tired dreams too…

Singer, sing a song for me !
Jester, crack a happy joke,
For the matinee show
has been a sellout,
though everyone knows the story
of Rumpelstiltskin …

Twilights too shallow to whisper
Darkness too dead to die
There’s a brook down the valley
There’s an inn with bread and wine
There’s a cottage where a candle burns
There’s a girl to love and love…
Solitude not so dreary as once dreaded
The moon might shine, it might not…

Truth be told, I fear death
Cold blue light in an empty room
The parrot flutters in a golden cage
Someday, it won’t flutter anymore
The diamond shines with all its edges
Someday, it won’t shine anymore…

Downhill and downhill, further, ahoy,
The spear is blunt, the horse is thirsty,
The knight is weary, but the crusade’s over…

Fever-induced Articulations on Doom

Last night when I was sleeping my last sleep
Under the last roof of my last shelter –
I dreamed my last dream…

I saw the last flower being
burnt on the last pavement
I heard the last note of the last saxophone
being throttled to silence by the last gunshot

I saw two blind children being crushed under
the boot-heels
I heard their last mortal shrieks melting the
thin dark mist

I saw the last beggar being dragged to the gallows
I heard his last moans being gobbled up by
the last halo of the leper moon

I saw the last sons of the last bitches
playing with gunpowder –
their fingers showed their bones
I heard them shouting the last F-word
which crept past the last blue dungeon
of the last train – like a caterpillar

I saw the last gypsy lady reading
the Metamorphosis of Ovid aloud –
her smile faded out into the womb of the tonic-night
The words played around like an endless ring
of smoke and vapour and fume and such other
shit…

I saw the last teenager googling “Armageddon”
for the first time
I heard him whistling all his hopes away – he
whistled sharp and smart but he had no
lover

I saw the last poet writing his first poem
on love, and burning the pages away
I heard the last owl hooting thrice behind his
window pane…

I saw the last lovers parting for the first time
I heard their tears dripping down with the rain
into the last gutters where the last pile of filth
floated away to the silence of the doves’ breasts

I saw the last military tanks waiting, like
Vladimir and Estragon did for Godot,
to boom out for one last time
I heard their metal wheels ravishing
the shapely bosom of the virgin streets –

I saw the streets bleeding with the pain
of the final Resurrection that never happened
I heard them crying for the last piece
of the freedom-cake that the vagabond night
had preserved for them

I saw the last silent procession of men and women –
Like fallen soldiers they had been hoodwinked
by the falsities of faith hope and love
I heard the march of their feet rhyming
with the clamour of the chains of passion
that had bound them to the doom
of eternity

I saw the last holy book being dumped
at the garbage can
as the last litany swirled its way
up to the tired stars and nebulae

I saw the fumes from the burning river
bringing down the last darkness of the last night
I heard funeral sermon of the last old God
who had finally died…

And then – nothing, nothing, nothing…