Poetry From Bombay - Volume 5

I was at the zoo today.

I could relate.

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A great white hand

Waved goodnight

Another one

Came closer,

Called.

I drew my gun

I didn’t know

That

It fires backwards

The next thing

I remember:

The Black hand

Waving goodnight

The White one

Coming closer,

Calling.

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The first time i went to school

I was scared

The first time i went to a whorehouse

I was scared

The first time i shot myself

I was scared

The first time i woke up

I wasn’t

I don’t know why i’m saying this

Maybe too much of the same shit fucks the brain –

And roses freeze up

in November.

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I want a window – one bigger than the world

One from which i can see the moving lights

And i can see the owl staring at me for i don’t know how long

And i can see the city turning into a leopard at midnight

With dark black spots in the yellow blaze

And pouncing at the midnight

And pouncing at the sea

And pouncing at the ships in horizon

And pouncing at endlessness

And pouncing at me

but the window is to be stronger than the city

and i am to survive the city

and i am to survive its yellow blaze and dark spots

and i want it to see me surviving

but for all these to happen

i need a window – bigger than the world

and sadder than the dusk

and lonelier than the owl outside

and more aimless than the shooting lights

because when i am sad and lonely and out of shit which i quite often am

i want to look at it,

and outside –

at the owl and at the lights.

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Sparrows fly in to my brain

Every night

They chirp

They have things to say i guess

And the cat sitting close to the clock

stares at the sparrows in my brain

Will it jump at them?

And the huge black dog at the door

Rests its jaws at its paws

And stares at the cat

For an eternity

Through the fog

Will it jump at the cat?

And one by one

The stars disappear

And there are little holes in the sky now

Blacker than the night

And from each hole

A gun comes out

And each gun

Points at the dog

Will they shoot at the dog?

I am God so i need to save them

And so i drive the sparrows away

The cat walks away, disgusted

The dog falls asleep, bored

And the guns move back – out of the holes, relieved

And now the sky is dark and blank

And so is my brain

And i think – they are one and the same.

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Words are life

With raging flames,

With heroes riding out against the storm

With clocks fighting for a piece of time

With trains asking stations to back off

With the boozers asking flowers to bloom

With the madness waiting in fear

At laundry rooms and cafes and volcanoes and at the great beyond

With speedboats cutting through the heart of the sea and shooting straight

At the horizon

With rats peeping out of the sewers

And looking at the great big city.

Words are life

Words can look at the awe in the rats’ eyes as they look out

Words can breathe the sadness away from the mountains

And can bring more sadness to the death of poets and cougars

Words can piss at the eyes of god and can cower under flophouse beds fearing the thunderbolts once the act is done

Words can roar out the glory of Lord and wait for some favour from the great one as He tramples out the vintage

I’m not saying anything new and i’m not saying them in any new way either

All of these have been said and done before

Words have often been used to pat their own backs and scratch their own bums

Nevertheless, without them i would have been way worse off than i am

And the skies and the earth would have chewed me up and have shit me out and i would have been flushed down into a putrid sewer – one that would have been far closer to hell and away from the soothing sea-breeze than the one in which i am rotting now.

So, i am writing these words, and these words are life,

And they don’t care if you approve of them or not. And as i write, i hear the dogs barking

I hear a car screeching. i hear the whistle of the ghostwalkers and this woman (whom i knew from when she was a girl and i like her though i liked her more when she was a girl and now she’s doing her best to resist the shit that the world’s been trying to put between her ears like the world always does and i won’t say that she’s doing a good job but i am sure that she’ll learn with time) texts me and asks: “what do we do ‘bout the void?”.

Had i had a reply, i would have given that to her.

But this is where i stop and this is where words and life must stop and are forbidden to go beyond. I can’t use words to answer the question and i feel imbecile powerless and dishonest.

Or maybe someday i’ll learn to use words and shapes and symbols and characters and syllables and forms and all other lookable-hearable-thinkables as weapons and wage my war against the void. And then i’ll get my reply for her ready. I hope she waits. I hope words wait.

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After typing out the previous poem

I was thinking of how much i love poetry and of how much i can give everything away for it

When all of a sudden i realised that i needed to take a piss

And so i took out the key to my room removed my luggage and opened the door and was locking it from outside when a great grandfatherly voice from inside my head asked me:

“if you have to choose between dying of this pain in your urinary bladder and poetry which one would you take?”

I said,

“poetry, any given day”

Now the voice asked:

“are you sure?”

I realised that my urge to pee has increased at least fivefold and that it’s really hurting now

I said

“yes”

and i really was sure

and as i entered the washroom (which, by the way, is one i have to share with all the other boarders here and is at the other end of the corridor from where my room is) and as i let myself go and felt the pleasure of the pain going away, the voice asked me again:

“and would you choose poetry over this joy?”

and i said

“yes, trust me, i mean it and sincerely so”

the voice smiled (i wonder, can voices smile? That one surely did)

and said:

“it’s okay. Take it smooth and easy, let life be; things will fall in place”

to this i said:

“no, poetry isn’t smooth and easy and it’s not out there to let life be and it’s not something that falls in place and it’s meant to remain out of place forever. Poetry is cruel and i am ready for its cruelty.”

The voice has not said anything in return yet.

(Or maybe it said “We shall see”. I don’t clearly remember)

It was a warm lonely voice.

I don’t know how the speaker looks like, but he seemed to be just like the voice: warm, lonely and placid.

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It was a relatively quieter day than most

I didn’t drink last night which i mostly do before holidays

I woke up at nine in the morning which is way earlier than the usual time i wake up on holidays

And i took long walks by the sea and felt the breeze against my face

It soothed and cajoled me a lot and i felt at ease and at peace with the world at which

i didn’t have to take my claws out and gnash – something i have done so often that’s not even a thing to write or think about now.

And when i was returning home, the skies had gone from faint red to dark

My hotel’s at the second floor of a very cold old rundown mansion

And i had to walk up the rickety wooden staircase

It was then that I came across a middle aged man, more old than middleaged

with what seemed to be a six day stubble

at the landing.

He was pale and thin, with a slight hunch and the grains of his stubble were mostly white.

His clothes were dirty enough for him to avoid the tag of affluence

But clean enough to dodge that of rubblehood.

And he was trying to open the lock of the collapsible gate of the first floor

With a bunch of keys that jingled out their rebellion

Even the lock was resilient and stubbornly silent.

But he managed to unlock the gate with some effort and did to it what Moses had supposedly done to a sea once

and entered the first floor lobby and locked the gate from inside

It was a cold, damp and dark lobby just like the one at my hotel on the floor above, except for the darkness

and it had doors on both sides, just like this one

but unlike the one at my hotel, all those doors were locked from the outside with what seemed to be really heavy and rusty locks, and, evidently, the rooms which were hiding behind those deathlike masks had not been inhabited by any human being in the recent past.

The other major difference was that unlike the hotel lobby which has the bright blessing of electricity, the one downstairs had got only one bulb and that too at the far end, and it gave out a faint yellow haze

So this man, who, at that point, seemed to be as lost and as faint as the bulb, entered the lobby and he disappeared inside the dying yellow.

That was when it came to me – Mindfuck

It followed me to my room

And since then, it has been staying with me

and from the look of things, it doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to make me renounce my position as the host

it has been here for what seems like an eternity now and we have become good friends without sharing a single word or sigh or cigarette and we have been looking straight into each other’s eyes. I can’t read anything from its gaze and i don’t think it can read anything from mine either and each pair of eyes is as fixed and as stony as the other. It’s as if both of us are looking into a mirror.

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Strange algorithm attached

A lover got his wrist slashed

A pig flew to heaven

The road to coolblue is uneven

The robin sang to the train

Reptiles ate his brain

Eliot caught a moth

The lonely and their wrath

Strange algorithm attached

The winner wins unmatched

The loser loved his mother

The God is the Other.

The robin sang to the train

Broken bits remain

Your eyes are in your head

Bills best left unpaid

Strange algorithm attached

The doors are safely latched

But you are mortal, Effendi!

Wherever the fuck she is, do send me.

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Everything you do

Stems from

A feeling

Of loneliness

Everything you don’t

Are children

Of the sacred

Mother

You never knew

You had.

The circle of light

Is small

All you see

Are faces in the valley

Rotting

Like dead fishes

And you do whatever you do

Because you want to

Look away.

And things you don’t do

Are for the trashcans to store up

For when the heavens open up

And the circle of light becomes redundant

You will be charged less for your symmetries

And extra for your shit

You believe in this

Because they told you to do so

And you believe in them

Because they are sitting on the other side

And you must obey the ones

On the other side

Because those on the other side know things

which you don’t.

The candle burns out

The circle is gone now

And now the ants crawl to your bedsheet

And now the wolves come closer

And now you know why.

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I

didn’t

tell her,

but that night

i dreamt of zebras.

The moon was

shining

over the forest. The moon was

N A K E D

because she doesn’t need her robes

in wilderness.

A snake

sprang out

of

my head

and went for

the dahlias

Flowers

were

burning

(and contrary to popular belief, they don’t smell good when they burn)

A red line

moved

across the sky

A hunter shot

an arrow

at a deer

but he missed

A sailor

F U C K E D

a fisherwoman

A night

died

in the cold

A snowflake

glistened

A city

shed

a tear

for the night

which wrapped me

as i slept

and dreamt

of the zebras.

By the time

i woke up

The night

had died

The arrow

was stuck

to

an oaktrunk

The hunter

was walking

H O M E

dejected

The deer

was

lost

in mist

The sailor

had sailed

A W A Y

from

the fisherwoman

The flowers

were burnt.

I won’t tell her

but

i

still

have her earrings.

hidden

safely

from

the world

in a drawer

And I had

never

dreamt of the zebras

again

And

i won’t

ever

dream of them

again.

The next dream I had was of me sleeping

inside

my

M O T H E R

And dreaming

of the

F L E S H.

(A dream within another, a life inside another’s. There’s a sense of security in all these for the inner ones.)

Maybe i will tell this to her

someday,

That the zebras

have gone away

That the earrings are the relic of

a red line

that had

passed

through

a city

which had

cried

because

a snowflake had

told her that a night was

D Y I N G

while the

moon

had gone to

the

W I L D E R N E S S

and a snake

was

approaching

the

D A H L I A S.

And maybe

i will tell her

that

my mother

still wears the bitter robe

of

D E T A C H M E N T.

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