children

Three Wing'd Horses

I have overtired my self
Like an old man pulling wing'd horses by a string,
Lost and ignored, on the side of a street.

It requires much of art, and of diplomacy
To prevent their escape, for the string, it may break
And they take to the sky and fly away from me,
These bothersome beasts, struggling quietly,
Sidling glances, questioningly:
"And what exactly do you think you are up to?” they ask.

And then Pharaoh, in a sob, spoke thus to his men:
“We have come to a city where we’ll leave not a trace,
Not a face will remember we visited this place.”
-And when the stone rolls downhill,
Push it back up again!

Oh those three wing’d horses,
Caused this…
But to stop the tape there and then,
To pause the frame, to step out and observe;
Discuss with esteemed panelists the position
Of a Pharaoh in the face of a Red sea split three ways,
One is forced to confess: “If you just do as I say; if only…
You do as I say; after all, I mean
I know what is best. I have seen our lives
Lived a hundred times. I know. I know all.
I am Rameses, Pharaoh, man who'd be God.
But they resist...
And I am left in the steam puffs from nostrils
Of wing’d beasts that submit not their will;
And they will not submit.”

I feel I have overtired my self, overstretched my ambition.
So now a good night’s sleep for a man,
Who, though his horses are mad,
If he raises his hand, is afraid and confused:
“For after all what is this, who is who?
And am I being hit or am I hitting you?”


The Legacy

The lit match illumined for a bit,
The room where I used to sit when I smoked.
The lit match burnt my fingertip
But it made no lasting impression;
A spark that illumined for a bit.

I used to sit, in the toilet in the dark.
I noticed that an old woman –long since dead-
Sat in the tub with her hands crossed
On her knees, looking at me,
“Has your mother sold my bracelets then?”
Her voice was shrill and echoed in the dark
“They were new and heavy; they were all pure gold;
Perhaps only just a century old; not an age to be sold.”

I remained as I were, quiet, and bit my lip
As the lit match burnt my fingertip
But made no lasting impression.
-I was thinking of other things;
Deliberately trying not to look in the mirror:
Anything but that! To be stared at by my self!
No, I fixed my glance on a spider's dance
I focused on the tap.
I tried to theorize about the dripping of the drops;
One by one as they crashed against the wet tile
I distracted myself, to pass the time, the while...

“Oh don’t be so coy, look at me little boy;
See this white dead hair that I wear on my head?
See the markings of a hundred winters etched?
Long gone? Is that what you say? All gone?”

I could sense her shifting about in the tub
Like a creature or an insect, trying to wriggle out,
Sliding back into the cup from which I drank.
She was there, I could taste her, and I shuddered.
She would crawl up my spine like a slippery lizard.

“This will not end, not like this,” I could sense
She was tired and frail but resolute. Out of the corner
Of my eye I nearly saw the mirror. Panic mounting!
Racing heart, beating drum, a dull continuous thud,
I put my left foot forward and the right itself followed
As I locked the door behind me and slid the key
Under the carpet. I'll never forget...
This was the last time that we met.


Best Before Served

I have this business enterprise
With Allan; who’s my friend and associate.
To accommodate his clientele
Underground.
He says, “The job is mean,
Beneath me, and unclean.”
I say, “It’s fine, I don’t mind,
‘Cause you see I treat people so
The soil don’t get lodged between their teeth:
I wrap ‘em up in long white sheets;
And they all resemble candlesticks;

Fresh flowers next to their tombstones keep
For a day or two…and then, well…
Dogs dig up their dead old bones and dart off.
I chase ‘em, hat in hand, around graves and holes
Puffing, out of breath, with each step;
And they jog away, ears pricked, smiling at my nerve,
Unbothered really…frankly so am I…
The dogs and I, we’re much the same.
Except that I bury what they dig up again.
I read to them the words of etiquette,
The book that says they mustn’t rob the dead
But they tilt their heads and bark at me,
Their eyes don’t seem to follow what I read.

In summer time I moisten dirt, you see,
With my own sweat. And they drink of it.
I scrape the frost when winter settles in,
Inside a grave I have dug, for someone else;
Lying there, staring out at me,
Like a stiff, dead dog,
I find a dog lyin’ stiff, every now and again.

I lie quite still, I lie compulsively:
“Nice meeting you, do come again.”
In my bed, I pretend I am dead, like our clientele.
I live in boxes; everywhere there’s one
Or two. I keep no count (of course I do.)
I mean it’s not easy to be at ease
I never know when to say, “Thank you or Please;
May I; Shall we; I love you; that will be all Mary.”
And there’s a time -with every nine I stitch-
For one more and another; they keep on rolling ‘em in
While the dogs from the windows keep staring in,
Tongues hanging, slobbering over the ledge;
Large, brown, happy dogs, not even black,
-They’ve got no sense of occasion…
And yet so cheeky, or, perhaps, who knows?
My job is not to know. I just do as I’m told.

He says, “Someday you’ll be a client too.”
It’s true! That Allan never lies to you.
He don’t lie, it’s right but then again hey…
Who knows who the customer really is!
Those who pay or those who eat for free?
And they stare and await, being served by me.



The Traffic Jam

On that dog day’s barking end,
Before it trailed into a howl,
With its tail between its legs, and shuffled off into night,
If she, that lady, in her rolled down window
On that colourfully clogged and miserable street,
[With the Lead-Free smoke:
Like a dead town's ghost, hovering over us all
Monitoring patiently our progress
And the masked surgeon's surgery,
As we by-passed an artery into the heart of the city],
Had only felt how it stung;
What her sight meant to me, and how it stung,
Then who would not, from a height, drop himself to his death?
But such a one as has lost all of hope...
Or has yet to fall in love,
And the fragrance of life has not escaped from his breath,
On the wings of a mad probability...
[What if... And if so! Then so on and so forth...]
Like a dream, wherein sense has been muffled by the sound;
Overpowered, overcome, and then drowned,
Defeated in its entirety.
Outside, and from within,
By the din of the traffic

At night, when it all dimmed down
And the noise had receded and proceeded with
The process of licking its wounds, curled up in a corner,
Leaving but a few marks of the scuffle behind;
I thought of my progress thus far:
Triumphed over by a sense of my sin,
A small child -bullied by a lobster-
Clawed-red, ashamed of my own skin.

Children

Tell us what it’s like to stand in between
Two long legs, and to find, from one side, coming down,
Reaching for your hand, another hand, just like yours,
Only bigger, fleshier, moist and warm,
And knowing that at any time letting go of the ground
Only means you would swing by your arm,
For those mighty oaken fingers never slip. Not at all!
Tell us what it’s like to be small,
To believe.
To be young, and never fall in love, but be loved
Feel a feather float on down from a tree up above
Be a bird sitting ruffled, fluffed up in winter
To be naked and yet warm -be bathed by your mom-
To sleep. In spite of it all!
Tell us of 'it all' but never speak -not like us.
Let us guess what it’s like from the colour of your cheeks,
From the smudges on your face and the scratches on your knees,
From the brightness of your eye
And the laughters in your smile,
Playing for a while and eating what you eat…
Filling in the gaps in between missing teeth;
Tell us what you like; tell us why it’s always sweet.
Tell us what is life; what it feels like;
The unshakeable security of looking up
And feeling small,
And looking down, for the best spot to crawl on…
And knowing, for sure, that one day,
You shall be tall
And all will be well.

Mistrust

The Suspicious mind turns fingers sticky, and thinks
Thin thoughts that look like jam but stink like butter
Gone bad; rancid opinions wrap around,
And trap unheeding insects in gleaming webs
Where they are slowly taken down;
Their tough skin peeled and the kernel within,
Laid bare, corrupted, exposed to malignancy
And sunk in unnatural thoughts.

Meanwhile, we the devout,
We in our soft-backed recliners send our prayers out;
Lock them there and make sure the cat-flap is shut tight.
And they scratch at the wood and they cry in the night.
But find no way inside.
"These hearts are closed, we are indisposed."
Once you have fallen prey to the Suspicious mind,
You are a ghost.

Mad River Blind

Is it now time? To turn on the light?
Has enough of it passed? Shall I breathe at last?
And illuminate the situation as it were…?
And how, like in flashes of old projector slides,
There is a youngness in the poor colour quality
Of my life. And how it whirrs, the film,
As it goes round the aged mechanism of my mind.
And how it serves to remind…

Back when it was all in Technicolor Reality,
I knew that it would be a worthwhile investment
To buy some film -the best there was-
And so I gathered up all my years
And rolled them up into a bundle and went off
In search of you;
With my passed life rolled up and tied to a staff, there,
Slung over my shoulder, I went off in search of you.

And I walked and I talked and I sat and I stood
And for a many million years
I performed my act.
(I sold it in fact!)
I tried very hard to convince 'em I was good,
Wholesome Entertainment
"Bring all yer friends! Bring yer wife and her kids!"
"Come one come all to the greatest show of all!"

But never even once did I share. I couldn't care;
Not for them. They were only just a crowd,
Meaningless and rushing on and always very loud
Like a river headed out and knowing not at all how
It’s all the same in the sea -so unlike you and me...

See, I was waiting. For your call...
And it came. And I saw, there
Walking in the crowd, a different face,
I knew, of course. I touched your elbow
Lightly, gently -I was sure you’d recognize me-
I had never met you before but i was sure.
So I asked for you to step for a moment aside
And the crowd flowed on like a mad river, blind.
And I think that it bothered you standing over there
On the wet muddy banks of society…

I remember how you looked at me
And for the first time in years since I’d left home
I noticed how old, how ragged and unimpressive
My time-worn and torn-up clothes, were ugly.
But I was sure it mattered not how crude I appear;
That what I had with me to show would compensate
And clearly state that I had lived,
And was not afraid to live again.
But your eyes, they wrinkled, as did your nose;
As if your skin cringed at the sight.
And you didn't know that I could see
Everything that you could feel, projected
There, upon a screen, upon your face,
Where my life seemed so...
Inadequate.
Was it pity? Were you ashamed?
Were you mortified of me?
Of being seen?

I shook my head and with a laugh
Was about to set down my old staff
And unroll that precious bundle,
Which for your eyes to see,
-I'd carried years! I'd carried years with me!
I suppose I had waited for a lifetime,
Hanging like a dust covered coat in some cupboard,
Wrapped up in plastic, unable to breathe.
And then to tell you my tale, I was about to exhale...

But you stopped me with a gesture and said
“There is no need. I don't wish to hear...
I have a meeting! There, with my friends, at three;
I mean it's a function arranged, for charity;
I would've bought what you here sell...but
I have no money for you at all. A worthy cause,
It calls me out and I am gone. So I’ll see you around.”

I stared at you. As if you joked, perhaps,
And would break out in happy laughs and slap your knee
And tell me. And we both would go. You know?
But you really did think I had come
To sell you junk.
A peddler of trash; of expired sorry dreams.
You saw my act but not me…
You misunderstood.
And that is, as it should... I suppose…
You apologized or maybe not.
And I felt hot.
I went back home and it looked at me.
And that’s why I turned the lights out.

Is real?

The Other

Magikal smells, swirling clouds of
Thick aromatic fumes of exotic, spicy,
Doe eyed, nympho Women,
Churned out of bespectacled chimneys
And Orientalist pens; gushing forth
Tall tales about Dark people,
Harems, and Love, and Subjugation.
A haze of crazy trickster gods, their
Heretical squint-eyed oily men
And a generally ‘come-hither-to-fuck-me’ East.

And here we are sitting,
Wondering, is this us? If so, then
Where did all the Magik and the Temples
And snake-charmers go?
Must’ve slipped out of the scene,
Slithered away into obscurity
While we were still too young,
Too young then, compared to them;
And what do we know?
It’s why we read our histOree
In foreign books.
Our lineage interrupted thus...


So defiled, we shed our skin, unsure
Ashamed, impure, revealing more
Of what we thought was Our lore
But was in truth a lie, a cloak to hide
A festering sore. We undress to cure.
Meanwhile, to add insult to injury,
Our flag smiles sideways:
A green eyed, flashing white,
Toothy grin, like a crescent.
And one feels somewhat uncertain;
Does a plan lurk behind that starry eye?
Watching over us all -the while we’re
Voting for the lulls? A laughable Democracy?

"We’ve got no Magik Smells," we moan,
"We borrowed everything we own;
Beneath this flag we’re all alone..."

And just when we were getting wise
They rearranged!
The Spice has gone; The books have changed;
A bit differently we're now portrayed.
In a different light and a different shade:
In columns high of ash and dust
And fiery clouds and burning lust
-An awesome sight- Gun-powders rise!
Piercing through Their modern skies,
(We're bombing Them and taking lives...)

-Or thus their pens exoticize-

So is this us?
We're foriegn still to Ourselves, upon Their shelves,
Magik sells, it's true, we know, but
Smells must change when the price is right;
How does one fight the flow of ink?
When they've all been spreading the word on how,
A threat has just been sighted now:
A new -coming-hither-to-fuck-US- East
There is no way to tame this beast!



To Israel

Go ahead and kill my zebras
I have two donkeys white
I shall paint them black in stripes
And will children still delight

Plokij Pack (Kettle to Pot)

Yes, I say, it’s all ok, but
All that tiresome jumping
Will end with you asleep
And in your weary snoring slumber
When tie is loose and tongue dumber
Surely you shall see...
And perhaps then, friend,
You'll feel a fool
For having stomped upon my dreams.


The Carpenter and the Washing Lady

Inviolate is my cupboard; how it smiles. All those neatly folded laundered rolls of towels that I see, surface smoothened by a hand. It is standing on its feet, by the seat there next to which upon my desk is my own clock that has a face and you can see how well it shows that all the time of all the world is going round. It has a door that I must close and I must guard it really well or those old moths will sneak inside and there they’ll hide and leave a hole lot of mess.

And I can see with my own eyes, how the door smiles, when the light is bursting out and deep inside sitting there upon a chair working hard the working man of whom I am an only son and how he smiles when he can hear the creaking sound of my footstep and then the gods of squeaking hinges laugh and merry are. And merry are the pets and all the pots and all the pans and there are reasons why we can thus always smile but who knows how it all began?
There was a girl, who was in luck, and then a boy of whom I know who made with wood the very form within now which I keep my towels well insured against the moths and all the time that goes on round. How it smiles; my cupboard is inviolate.




The Auditorium

i deleted this poem
and i am not afraid
because i know that it was
the best one i ever made
and who would ever wish
to be remembered for one?
when i have all the stars
what would i with a sun?

idle mind

i was wondering, the other day, about my progress as a human being and i suppose i still am that, a human being that is. my progress, if it can be called that, though i suppose i use the term quantitatively rather than in any positive or negative sense, has been full of unrequited love. i say unrequited love when what i mean to say is that my journey, as it were, has always been surprisingly unfullfilling, in the sense that so far as i can tell, there is no end to it. although the illusion persists. the illusion which encourages me to carry on pursuing who knows what to what end...but then there's the next thing and the next after that and so on.

the term "human being" itself is suggestive though and i should perhaps have picked up on it earlier: of the two words that make up the term, the present continuous (?) verb that follows the word 'human' implies in a way that there will always be a continual process of becoming or evolving, changing, and generally never ever any end till the end. so then a human being only really and truly becomes a human once he or she is dead. death becomes us. it is what we aspire to perhaps, without knowing it. so then how do i know that with so much certainty if we do it unconsciously? i don't really. i just said it. it's an assertion. but then what more will you do when you're dead? eh? nothing. and that's exactly my point. to become, is to die, and to die is to be no more -at least from a neutral, earthly sort of point of view. whether you aspire to it or not, death is the end of all endeavours. the fact, however, remains that all i did was toy with the idea that language describes us with a finality that we ourselves, severed from language might not be able to. but no, wait. human being was never the correct term in the first place. it is homo sapiens that we're interested in. the human being is a homo sapien, which means literally, 'wise man' or 'knowing man.' knowing what though? what makes me wise? it's the carrot at the end of the stick again. the illusion persists and though now what i covet is knowledge, is widom, it's still either a wild goose chase or a never ending story. because there is no line at the end of the race where i will be patted on the back by someone who is really in a position to say that i have attained wisdom. and i die and then someone says, whosoever it might be, that i was wise, that i knew, or that i was an ignorant buffoon, insensitive and useless. but where am i in this picture? am i the object to somebody else's predicate. so it seems. i am sad.

so why did i say that my progress has been much like or full of unrequited love? it implies 3 obvious things. firstly, that i know, or seem to know, or am pretending to know what unrequited love is. and secondly, that the time i have spent trying to become, has been similar in terms of heartache. but heartache in this sense would be a mixture of loss, shame, guilt, disappointment, fear, isolation, a sense of diminutive self worth, self pity, and a lot of wallowing. it's the sort of anxious fluttering in the body that doesn't begin or end in any particular area but has a general presence which makes one want to stop it, to sit down, to speak to no one and to be questioned or answered by none. but all of this has strong overtones of loneliness, as opposed to failure. thirdly it implies that i know or have some concept of what a metaphor might be and how it can be used with some measure of success.
is the unsuccessful man a lonely man? does he not have friends? does he not have a partner? does not having friends or a partner imply lack of success or characterize it? more importantly, is an unsuccessful man a homo sapien, a human being? but this again is simply a play on words. just because someone chose to refer to us as a species by the name 'wise man' doesn't mean that anyone who isn't, is no more a man or a part of the species. and taking it further, it also implies that our language expects of us, if we're not wary, to behave in a particular manner. it shapes our thoughts and presents ideals.

the ideal, in this case, is a wise man; being compelled to achieve an objective that can never be achieved is perhaps not such a great idea. or is there an end to wisdom? can you ever know it all? but before these questions ought to be answered, i need to understand whether language really does shape our thoughts. who in this world believes that he or she must satisfy the prerequisites, as it were, of a homo sapien? who believes that unless he or she satisfies the assumption entirely, of being wise and so on, they have failed?
what if in another language the word instead of homo sapien is one that suggests no more than bipedality? would the users of such a language be satisfied with life once they start walking? wouldn't they ask: alright so, i'm walking...what now?

where is this going?

no but really, why did i say that my progress was full of unrequited love? it's easy to answer that; much simpler than giving multiple reasons for having used that particular phrase. i said it because that is what was on my mind when i wrote this. what is still on my mind now. what will be on my mind tomorrow and perhaps indefinitely.
i don't like the idea that language shapes our thought. but does it? well if there is an absense of a word from a language, for instance, if the word 'depression' does not exist in many languages does it mean that they, the people who speak this language, don't experience it? well they do; they just describe it symptomatically. but then isn't that a difference in behaviour from those who do possess the word? but language comes later, i would think, and man comes before. language was not present for man to come and pull over like a sweater and parade around in. i assume that he actively constructed it piece by piece. which means he chose not to have a word for depression every now and then. this means that thought is what came between man and language. so then thinking differently made us different. language was just present in the wrong place at the wrong time and got blamed for having made us all different. we think differently. because we think differently we can never think alike. i suspect that even if the English language defeats all other languages entirely and becomes the only language of the world, it will not make any difference.

at best, there will be just one tiny moment, just an instant when the entire globe might speak the same language and then that moment will disappear. it will be like a pendulum returning from a wild swing and reaching - just for a millisecond - the point where it had been at rest. then it will move in the other direction. so will all people devise vernaculars that are different, because they think differently. even if you kill everyone except yourself, you will find that after a while you're not really the same person you were before. if you're not the same anymore then would you kill yourself too? should you? are these dumb questions? more importantly, why did you change? did your linguistic capacity or ability alter in some way? did your aloneness - after everyone else died - change your language? or did you just start thinking differently and let language morph accordingly? what a lot of useless questions.

we're homo sapiens...but we're not really. we're just walkers and talkers and doers and stoppers, and rhymers and singers, a thumb and four fingers. that doesn't really mean anything but neither does homo sapien. tell me i'm a homo sapien when i'm about bursting with the desire to defecate properly or reach in time the designated area for such activity, and i will not care. so where am i now? and how did i get here? it started with unrequited love and that's really all there was to it. that and laziness. or is language shaping my thoughts? am i being unduly burdened by the societal conception of the homo sapien? or am i just a human being; still in the process of being? but that's all airy nonsense isn't it? what really and truly is, is that i am - and i think - but not so much - and when i can - i try to think myself out of what i know needs to be done. i avoid knowledge as if it were out to defeat me. i don't trust knowledge. i don't trust anything. i trust myself. i fear this world and having to be, because i am very sure that i am right. and nothing matters more than to relax, discuss our options, relax some more, flick a wrist to stretch a line of colour on canvas, talk, laugh, fall in love repeatedly and never know that there is, out there, a real world, one that awaits to tear me to shreds and employ me and waste me and, when i could've spent time talking to those who interest me, buy my time and in return offer a strange sense of sterility or stability, offer an alternative life to what i had in mind. what i had in mind was a thought. it was a nice thought really. i could not express it properly in language. not poetry nor prose would have served me well, perhaps because i am not smart enough or perhaps because language isn't smart enough to shape my thought. my ideal life cannot be represented in language because it is more a feeling than anything else. my ideal life is a fiesta of the best feelings imaginable.

did i just describe my ideal life using language? no. i just hinted, somewhat. and that too might change. it might become something else. and the process of being continues. so what an odd shapeless little rant this was. there was no objective, i didn't really try to prove anything, or end up proving anything. i just said stuff and then i stopped.