Poetry From Bombay - Volume 3

And there i was

In a train

Seated beside a stained window

With broken panes

While another one was crossing through

In the opposite direction.

Till i saw it, and felt the first kick of air against my face

i had laundry bills to pay and dirty linen to wash in private

i needed food, some money to see me through, a kiss,

God, and i badly needed a shave -

all these

until the other train passed by,

And i looked at it. I could see through.

Faces, mostly

Soiled and rusted with care and servitude

Drunk and dry, with arteries and veins throbbing with

all sorts of stuff required to maintain the motion

faces seeking tender touches, eyes needing pure sights

and fingers dying to touch petals, velvets, thighs, and whatnot

and soon it was all smoke and skulls gaping at the madness

and the other world. Not death, mind you

just the place which is not this. The that we know but we can’t speak of,

because our vocab stretches till the furthest end of similarity

and likelihood, and nowhere beyond.

The beyond was there, hurtling through with severe vengeance, striking me off the this

And off the that. And it lasted for the eerie 5 seconds in which i had no laundry or hunger or unemployment to worry about. It was there, and i was there too.

But it passed, and before long, i found myself trapped once again.

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At the end of the day,

It all boils down to

Blinking idols close to the hummingbird

Who know that you can’t feel beyond yourself

And everything else you do is just a part of the curtain

To hide your void.

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His Majesty the Ego – well preserved, well nourished

And now that i’m all alone and mostly naked inside this tiny room

It’s stronger than ever. And It’s getting stronger and rock solid every passing day

It preserves Itself well and It lashes like a wild cobra when hurt

It finds Its way out through my words, mostly

And It glistens like a knifeblade in moonlight

And soon enough, It shall break through these sickly sweet walls and the roof

And It shall find Its way out to the mad world – all ready to take on other

Formidable rivals – other Egos, other Narcissuses other Dreams.

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I’m struggling hard to prove

To those sons of bitches

That i’m just better than them

And i don’t care what they think of me.

I talk to them and i be with them

And i pretend to empathise

And i pretend to agree when they say how unlucky they are

And how lame the guy who could have given them the job but didn’t

Or how arrogant the chick who could have given them the fuck but didn’t

Were. They think that i understand. Or maybe they think that i don’t –

But honestly, you morons – it’s neither theirs nor luck’s fault.

And the worst part is that they think that they’re right

That they are the smartest kids in the block

And that they will get their food stuck in their mouth

And their dicks will get stuck in some tight wet soft pussy

By itself.

I wish i could have the guts to let them know

That they are the sore scum who think that they are

The ones who will rule one day. They care about ruling this shithole

Unlike me. And they overestimate themselves too.

I am trying my best to prove them wrong.

But maybe if i stop trying, i’ll succeed.

Or maybe i’ll never succeed, because the two worst features of sore farts are that

They are sore farts

And they don’t know that they are sore farts

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A sick rose

Made its way

To the machine’s heart

And the machine got to know

That it was just as empty

As the one next to it.

The dawn was pink

The rose was sick

The shadow was a reptile

The day was a disease

The sick rose

made its way

Out of the machine

And into to the saddest street

The street picked it up

And gifted it

To the pink dawn.

the reptile-shadow

and the diseased day.

The rose told them

of the machine

and of the invisible worm

They told the rose

not to bother –

It’s just Blake toying

with eternity and damnation,

With the paleness of being,

With strange lights that burn the mind at times

And chains of flesh that are here to stay.

And Charlie Chaplin sitting

At the twilit haze

Between the dark and the light

and watching

and smiling –

both with his sad eyes.

It’s just that

And nothing else.

And now the rose knows

But the machine needn’t know

So the machine didn’t know.

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This is where

Every orgy

Leads to the snow

Every monster

Gets a nightmare

Of bright love

Every sonnet

Breaches the pact

Between bodies and forms

This is where

We imagine

That we imagine

This is where

My mother and i

Perished in the dark.

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I hear the guy in the next room snoring

I don’t know him, and our paths shall never cross

I think he too makes boxer-fists while climbing up

The crowded stairways of railway stations

And thinks that rain is thicker than life

And he has fought the demons as well

Before kneeling before eyes that glow in the dark

And all the reconciliation you need

Before you forget how to smile except for courtesy and plastic

Is closer to his being here than mine

And just like me, his closest companion rests in his brain for a while

Before the trumpets blow

And before the moths get fire in their wings.

His sweat is not for soft hands, it’ not meant to be jewels for the

Nightingale through his restless nine to five

And he knows that deep inside it doesn’t mean anything or to his own self – this

Self, the teachings of the guru. Balzac leaning out against the sky – he doesn’t know of Balzac or of the magic of the senses or of wet wings that prevent the flight. He wades through muck, his muscles get ready for the next hammer, he dreams of angels descending from paradise and his eyeballs roll inside his eyelids. He knows of the treasure much more than i do. He leans against the dark, his pillars speak of all the splendid jewellery

yet to be stolen.

She smiled. It could’ve been a section from hell or voices and eyes that mean kindness through flight. Loud voices in the corridor. He shall don the robe of dawn’s emperor and order the death of the saint and pillows while signing the book of questions & validating the pacts.

He’s there snoring his way to glory

And i’m here dousing the week’s lifelessness with the last drop of beer

And the damp wall between us – it observes us with cold precision

I think the wall knows it all.

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The lady in the counter

Knows of your hapless sorrow

She nods her head as you pass by the counter

She is not pretty but she’s plump

Her lipstick is too loud for her mundane face

which has the candour of a hermit

But she knows of the falseness of the loud lipsticks

And the truth of rents and electricity bills

And so, if in names uttered through trusty lips

And in faith through strange violins of sad jesters

You find yourself chained to the rocks

If you think of Hydra or of the goats

If you think that truth will come to you through sadness and failure

Look out for plump ladies in counters with mundane faces and loud lipsticks

They know about the pain

And when they nod at you,

Though it’s not the Sybil revealing to you the contours of history

On a much lower scale – it’s the truth of grocery and electricity bills

Of trudging through the sidewalks which are wearier than you

Of employment exchanges

Of being shot down by the sun the moon the stars and the world

Of broke players by broken pianos

Of hopeless climbers of broken ladders

Of this intelligent design of gut-belly-dick/pussy-heart-and-brain

Of urges desires and pangs bookmarking your loneliness

Of smiles slithering like plastic snakes

Of the sudden warm alcoholic rush of happy amnesia and greatness

Of trains stopping on empty stations

And of a million other cheap brittle bricks that make you up

And of the rusted old beams that support your pillars though you don’t know for how long

That she nods at. Try and nod back when you can –

For you too know of her falsity and truth the same way she knows of yours

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It’s five past eleven in the morning and i have just woken up

It’s a Saturday today, and i was drunk in my room last night

My room has no window and so i can’t say if there’s bright sunshine in the world beyond

I have a massive hangover and i can feel the blood rushing through my temples

And there’s not a drop of water to drink. This pain, like many others, is real

I had a hectic week. I am trying hard to impress the ones behind the desk

So that i get a job through this internship. And so i drank a lot last night

Alcohol takes me away from the plasticity and brings me closer to the elusive crazyass blackbirds

Close enough to try and touch their beaks and wings before they fly away to the next branch

I called up the one i truly love and we were having a nice conversation before my phone ran out of balance. That’s the trick of the world. You can communicate only if you have enough money, and there’s no exception even when it comes to the one you truly love.

The place I am staying in has a washroom which you need to share with fifty other boarders

It reeks of their sweat and excreta, its floors are black with all the dirt of the holy world

I’m cool with all that, but when i’m drunk at midnight, it seems miles away

So i decided to pee in an empty bottle, but i got the laws of physics all mixed up and sprayed all over the 7 by 5 by 10 feet room.

And so the floor, the luggage, the unwashed pile of laundries and even the bedsheet is wet.

Even the plate i ate my kebabs from got its fill. And somehow during my complex manoeuvre

I have managed to turn the dustbin upside down and now there are cigarette butts and bits of rotten onion from last week’s salad and random pieces of paper and ash all over the place.

The bottle i tried to pee in is rolling over the unwashed laundry like a sombre proof of crime – infallible and always there – observing my every little movement, judging me in silence

i guess Pandora’s box might just look like this when it runs out of shit. I’m running out of shit too and i’m running out of it pretty fast.

I just wish i would have sprayed my piss all over the world instead of just my petty confine.

And now i’m sitting on my bed which seems like an island cut off from the rest of the world by a vast ocean of lonely filth. I’m lonelier than ever now.

I had to give my clothes to the local drycleaner

i had some urgent work at the local bank which will close in two hours because it’s Saturday today

and i had to go to the local cybercafé to shoot a few necessary mails and catch up with the virtual society i inhabit at times.

But the drycleaner the bank and the empire of photons seem far far away from me know. My head is aching like hell and i can’t do anything about it. It’s as lonely as it can get.

I am pounding on my laptop keyboard with mad vengeance now, and i don’t know who or what i am warring against. Or maybe it’s just the intoxication of words and of spaces between words that keeps me going in times like these. This madness doesn’t help me to escape from or to forget the pain. On the contrary, it brings me closer to the pain, it helps me to accept and reconcile.

And this shit, i tell you, is bloody real shit. I know.

And there’s nothing much you can do against reality once you know. You can fight with the wolves, the moon, the world, and even with the gods. But this stuff – it’s just there and that’s about it. And you can’t escape because it comes chasing after you everywhere.

Victory and defeat are for fools and philosophers.

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I have decided that i’ll spend the rest of the day

Inside this room.

They’re renovating the place. Drill-machines are roaring out loud and clear

For Hemmingway to wake up where mountains roll out against the sky

And thunder his canons out to the breast of eternity.

I don’t know of all these. Breasts to me are things to

Suck when you have a couple in front of you and to think of and masturbate

When you don’t have.

But i’m not in the mood for fleshy thoughts. My body is wearing me out

And i feel like i am thirty years older then what i really am.

An i am not in the mood of the tiger or the horse –

Or, for that matter, of the swan or the dove.

Cats and moles and mice are closer to me now.

And outside, there’s a world

And there’s anarchy.

Automobile engines bursting out,

Rifles and machine guns blazing through the noonfire

Waves and ripples in the ocean of people – talking, walking

Buying, selling.

I can’t make the fake out from the real

And i’ll feel worse if i throw myself out into the middle of all these

with the sickening headache i have now. I don’t know whether it’s the cold or the hangover

But it’s getting worse every moment. And i can’t do much about it i guess.

I lack the wrath of God or the placidity of monks. I fear the Furies and i tend my blackbile

I live and i survive and i exist and that’s pretty much the dead-end of me. Nothing beyond. There’s no phantom, phantasm or phantasmagoria involved.

It’s all too blank to be untrue now and at this hour

And so be it, then.

I won’t move an inch outside the room for the rest of today

And if solitude chokes me or if the angels of angst find me writhing in this shit

I’ll tell them to fuck off. I’m just not in the mood for them today.

I’ll just ‘be’.

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