Sunday, January 29, 2012

Poetry From Bombay - Volume 5

I was at the zoo today.

I could relate.


............................................................


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.


.............................................................................


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.


.....................................................................


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.


.............................................................................................


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.


...............................................................


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.


..........................................................................................................


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.


.....................................................................................................


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.


...............................................................................................................


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.


................................................................................


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.


.........................................................................................................


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.


.............................................................................................


<

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Poetry From Bombay - Volume 4

As for the winners out there – they’re so fucking used to winning

That they can’t stomach the real shit when it comes shooting straight at their guts

The losers are more used to this. They take their share of punches and then they stand up again

Because they have got no option but to.

And thus, through millions of years of evolution and stuff

It’s inside their genes, and they survive everything.

As the winners get extinct, put out like the stars at dawn.

I remember that hour – i had morning classes to attend when i was a kid

Father used to take me to the busstop and we used to wait for the bus

And i used to observe those stars getting put out,

And i used to think that they are the losers and the morning sun is the real hero of this story

But now i know that it’s the stars and the darkness and everything that trumps the sun every night

But the sun being the real scum has no choice but to get up and blaze through the day.

It takes all the shit –

Clouds, rains storms hail

And worst of all, the night which punches it off every time it gets close to the eastern horizon

But it gets up again alright what other choice has it got?


............................................


My room’s at the far end of this long corridor

And there are several rooms on both sides – each with white walls and each as tiny as the other

And inside, each room has pale yellow walls and each has a vacuous man inside –

Who stares at their television set or at their newspaper or their paperback or laptop screen with the same blankness with which they walk and talk. And each one has to get up early in the morning and Monday mornings are like hell to each. Each has a woman they want but can’t get because had they had the option to get her, they wouldn’t have stayed in this semi-flophouse.

It’s like this hall of death, and it’s really no different from any other place.


.....................................................................


Back in my city at every crossroad below every signal at every zebra crossing a recorded voice says that we must cross the streets carefully because there’s someone waiting for us at home.

I don’t know whose bright idea was it to play this shit but if i ever get hold of the motherfucker, i would just grip his collars give him a good shake or two and say:

“listen you sonofabitch, you dumbfuck moron, everyone’s not like you. You have a house and a family and all that load, but there’re people, and many of them who don’t have anyone waiting for them at home and they cross the streets all the time!”

But back there i have a family too who wait for me at home.

Down here where I am staying there’s no one to wait when i get back to my hotelroom

But they don’t play that shit at crossings here, and whenever i have to cross the streets i remember that recorded voice and i smile.


...........................................................................


At the end of the day

all you can trust

as your own

Are your instincts.

Because–

They are the very first things you get –

You get them before your sex-drive your ego your hunger your greed your love

Your dope your words your job your house your friends your intellect your ideals your enemies your boredom the stuff you do to kill your enemies and your boredom and everything else.

You get these instincts from inside your mother’s body which is the first thing you get to know –

And that is your only sacred. You defend it against every shit that comes by – and for that you need your instincts –

the only stuff that belong to you

to defend

the only sacred you know of.

The funny part is that it’s that sacred that gifts you those things –

It’s self-preservation i guess.

And you don’t need Freud or Foucault or the others who belong to the dreary world of books and maddening numb intelligence and not to the world you inhabit to get to this.

The idea is to look straight and not get distracted by all that shine. And this is what we suck at – avoiding distractions.



.....................................................................................................................


There’s a similarity between my hotelroom and languages and ideas and expressions and thoughts and feelings and love and the capacity to think or feel or love. All these are so small that you seek to break free every moment and this smallness becomes unbearable with time.

You start with rebellion –

You kick and punch the walls.

But the walls are strong and solid

And you are weak.

Before long, you knuckles and toes start aching and in the worst cases, bleeding

And you realise that you have no option in reality

Now you start believing in miracles. You start banging the walls with your head

And before long you get a lump on your forehead and it aches as much as your knuckles and toes

And now with your bruised head and knuckles and toes, you give up – and you start waiting –

For some more miracle – a stronger one this time

But no miracle happens and the walls remain as they are – strong

enough to bear the weight of time through ages and centuries

And now, you start getting tired of waiting, and your faith in the miracle withers away


Now there are three distinct possibilities that might happen to you at this stage, one of these three does indeed happen to you:


1) you go crazy and start behaving that the walls never existed at all


2) you seek refuge in things such as ambition and religion and ideals and fairy tales and intoxication and family – all those hollow stuff that squirm around in the dark of your skull – waiting to seduce you and to pounce on you at the first signs of weakness.


3) you get bored of everything. Plain fucking bored.


As for me, i belong to the third category and boredom i tell you is a ghastly disease and it spreads fast, very fast. When it infects it eats up everything – first it gets at the center and gets you empty, and then it gets at the cover and you cease to be anything at all

Such, my friends, is the deal with captivity. It remains.


...............................................................................................................................


There are times when things change so fast that you have little time to

Realise where you’re hurt when you get the kick

And then there are times when time runs slow and you have all the time in the world

To build yourself a nice warm cocoon and wrap yourself up with all the warmth

You can afford.

But there’s the catch –

It all boils down to what you can afford

It’s like you have the choice between sleeping through all of tomorrow

Or else you can wake up,

Take a nice warm stroll by the sea

Treat yourself to a mugful of beer and a movie

If you can afford.

If not, then stop whining about how unjust everything is and

just sleep

Well things are unjust –

Both of us know that

So what’s the use in complaining?

You can’t change the world

You are no superman and you are no messiah

So accept the deal and survive through it

The idea is to survive, and just that.

Everything else – ideals, ambitions,

Missionary zeal and jealous missions

(not my pun mind you) –

They come from boredom, ennui and

Warped intelligence.

They are there

And you,

With all your shit

Are here. Right here –

Busy surviving

And that’s about it.

...................................................................


And this is for all of you out there who write or want to write –

Stop theorizing.

It’ll take the life out of your words

Like a sharp switchblade

Takes blood out of heart and the guts.

It’ll trap you to the valley of the thirsty dead

Who can see the stream flowing by and who can hear it too

But can’t get any closer.

Take pride in the fact that

You are the God of the empire you create out of your words.

But stop calling it names –

For words, i tell you, hate being called names

They are meant to be just that – words

And nothing more.

And once they get pissed off with you

They’ll depart you

Forever.

So for heaven’s sake, get real and stop borrowing overcoats from other people, other times,

other worlds and other lives –


And just be honest to your words.

That’s the only thing they ask from you – honesty.


..........................................................................


There was one whom i loved and who loved me back so much that i couldn’t take it

And then there was one whom i loved and who i thought loved me but today i doubt

And then there is one whom i love and who loves me too but from behind strange a haze of colours and shadows i can never reach.

Gah i’m running out of bullets fast and soon i’ll be heading for doom or surrender or oblivion or maybe the valleys..

But i think i will stop thinking of this and shut my eyes and fall asleep – fast asleep

And i’ll dream of forests where the lions roar

And of rivers where the piranhas await supper

And of children who play from dawn till dusk without worrying about these damn bullets and this damn pain.

Why the fuck does it not go?

........................................................................................................


In order to survive

You need to sell whatever sells

And to look out for your back

There’re people ready to stab you. And angry mob.

A hell in fury.


Sell whatever sells – your life

means more to you.

Sell your dream, sell the cold feast

Sell your friends and enemies

To those on the other side –


Cold people, they’ll buy if you advertise well

They’ll eat if you cook well

And your prayers will be heard

(of course, for a reasonable fee, duly levied, to be duly paid.)

(and, given that there are so many things you pray for, don’t expect all your prayers to be heard)


Roses bloom in gardens

You see the guru dancing

You see birds getting shot

You see the redeyed red

It’s coming for you.

Evade it.

Run faster than the mob

And don’t trust anyone – all are assholes –

ready to gut you out.


Just sell whatever sells.

And you’ll get through.


.....................................................................


It’s strange how different you feel with the lights switched on than when they are out.

You’re a slave of your senses

And they are the only weapon

With which you fight with boredom and the blue

And your eyes are the king of them all –

They can win you kingdoms and take you places

But once you take the light off them –

You feel too helpless to deal with devil and the waves,

To save you from drowning.



..................................................................................................................


She says i can eat up the yellow void

I can’t seem to see much of it –

Just yellow walls and yellow shades

And that’s about it.

There’s a yellow who’s going abroad and one who deals fast

And there’s one that hangs from the walls,

A Van Gogh imitation that can’t hide much pain with the curtain of beauty

They’re all down today and so is the moon

As we live from one station to the next –

Both having their names painted in black on yellow boards

And God who is supposed to be yellow

Strides from shore to shore in yellow slippers and the sands are yellow too


And she who sees yellow in the void i supposedly eat up

Is going to find a way out soon –

Through the mountains of dawn

And she’ll see much yellow but not much of the void


Thank heavens that i don’t get these visions like she does

And i see things the way they are

And i eat things the way they are

And i shit things the way they are

And i screw things the way they are –

And i pretend to be the holy of my world –

With my yellow kingdom in the concrete yellow zone

Between mist and the mercy of starlings –

What splendid yellow beaks they have! –

Birds, supposedly, of the void.


...............................................................................................................


Neon in the streets

Soldiers in heat

Rats in trashcans

Praying for the love


As i settle for the crumbs

From follies

And

Bad investments –

“he was too rash

But he couldn’t have hurt a fly”

They say.


Banal saints – too lonely for words

Too silent for the world

Centuries in

mud.

We wait.

Rain – rain –

“He ran for his life”


Thus the story goes

Of the knights of these nights

As devils chip through the bulwark

And perfection – with its velvet sabretooth –

It’s there.


Monstrous reptiles crawling through the night

Dead girls walking the sidewalks of historyland

Priests chanting the carnage-hymn

Pale nuns of the dark stripping down

before the unicorn

Gladiators striding the clouds between thunders

Skeletons clapping as the flesh shows its final trick

before the stage vanishes.

Burrows glowing in strange green

Everything catching fire.


There’s a big round hole

In the sky

Where the moon was supposed to be.

And a couple more

In the skull

Where the eyes were supposed to be.


THE HOUR OF THE FORMLESS TIGER APPROACHES.


I stitch no fairytale

Of games lost and won

Of People in the alley

To sleep the deepest dream

And seize the endless time


Rain – rain –


They made it to my brain


It was an Autumn Leaf


It was the Chariot of God


I stole

I lied


I was real.


Flames leapt up and grasped my throat

I saw flowers in the flame

I saw moths by the lantern


I was chained

It rained

And it rained more.



.................................................................................................