Poetry From Lucknow Volume 2

Couldn’t sleep last night

so i went to the balcony, naked as usual,

and lit a cigarette

down below

a bull was sleeping in this huge open space

amidst much filth

and suddenly, it woke up

and, like god, it rose above the grime

and sent its presence, brutally durable, booming–

lordbound and high

like heroes and monsters

that aim at the stars and settle for nothing else

that beast was standing, tall,

hooves rooted to ground

and shaking dust off its head and nostrils

it was all or nothing for it

it was all or nothing for me

as we stood, me, smoking

and the bull, shaking its head

as the world slept like a baby

and the night watched us,

all still and inanely silent

and that’s about it.

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There’s this guy who said that my each of my poem has many lives

Bullshit, i said

And bullshit, i maintain

Once it’s written down, it’s finished

With all its lives and all its death and whatnot

What do i care?

You can have all these and give me one life

One bloody declaration of mortality

And that’ll do. He didn’t understand.

He still doesn’t.

It’s springtime now.

The cuckoos are making sweet love.   

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A few more stations to cross and that’ll be it

I’ll reach there and there’ll be a splendid virgin whore

Waiting for me on a splendid white bed below a splendid ceiling of a splendid palace

And she’ll come down and she’ll take me up and she’ll undress herself and then she’ll undress me and she’ll press my mouth to her erect nipples

And as she’ll turn her rotund back and smooth ass to me i’ll see three round red warts on her back and there’ll be a strand of hair jutting out from the top of each and a pearly drop of puss shall ooze out of the middle one and i won’t get my pecker up and no matter how much she kisses it it’ll stay there, limp, like a civilization beaten into centuries of clueless submission and soon she’ll give up and move to the other room where she’ll be waiting some other motherfucker who has also crossed the requisite number of stations and ticked the right number of correct answers and filled up the necessary blank spaces in all the essential forms and etc and etc shall be. Maybe the other one will get his one up or maybe he won’t but all these won’t matter to me and all these don’t matter to me.

Once i knew of a man who had three sisters. One drowned, one got the flues. So he raped the third one and strangled her to death. O did i ever tell you of the lion who got shot by this man who had gone to the bushes with his rifle to kill himself. Well, he just saw the lion approaching and got mightily scared. Of the lion. It doesn’t matter whether God loves us or hates us. What matters is that God loves a good laugh at the end of the day.

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I’ve become godawfully fat in the last few months – so much so that i can jingle my belly now

The world’s getting sadder every passing day and i can feel its silent serene grief trying to cut me in two straight halves right down the middle.

My bones are bending inwards with the weight of this night on my shoulders

There’s a guy in dusty torn clothes i cross every day on my way to office and he has his ears pressed against the radio al the time – maybe there’s a channel through which the universe enters his brain

But what do i care? I can’t even think of prophets and messiahs and of the great El now.

I am drunk now and all i want is a lady, a real lady with real flesh approaching me from across the alcove,

And wanting me to fuck her.

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Whichever town I go chasing down pieces of bead and ass

And whichever hotel I check myself in – be it cheap of expensive –

One damn thing never changes:

These fucking walls staring at me, blankly, and indifferent to my blankness

And me, guzzling down my beer and puking on them, pissed off at their indifference

These are the times you get tired beyond fatigue

And hopeless beyond despair

And I forgive all, and I forgive you and I forgive these walls and this beer and these undigested bits of my 20 buck lunch thrown up all over the wall, the table, the luggage and the bedsheet. I forgive  wall, the table, the luggage and the bedsheet and I forgive the timepiece and the fairies and the whores and the empty streets outside and the dogs barking at erratic automobiles and i forgive the automobiles too. I forgive all as I stand below the shower cleaning myself of all this shit.

 I must rise above this.

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