lycralyricist

THE FRIENDS

2010-03-11T07:18:00.001-08:00

THE FRIENDS

“Come, roam over my dolphin-cold body”,
I spoke to the Wave and her sisters, the Wavelets,
“Pour salt seas through the orifices of my pleasure;
Drain me.”
Then, laughing fish leapt out of my hot nostrils,
Ears and mouth, singing:
“We drown you and spit you out onto shore,
Flap awhile and be still, forevermore.”

“Come, caress my wild comet-haired body,”
I spoke to the Star and her sisters, the Black Holes:
“Penetrate with light the orifices of my pleasure,
Enflame me.”
Then, coal-scarred asteroids pummeled my chest,
Arms and thighs, singing:
“We set you adrift as pinpricks of fire in space,
Twinkle awhile and die with the night.”

“Come, pierce with sharp nicks my ripple-fed body,”
I spoke to the Wind and her sisters, the Breezes,
“Waft and warp the pores that bleed and weep,
Choke me.”
Then, butterfly-teeth tore into bits my soft sinews,
Stomach and loins, singing:
“We cast you afloat on the leylines of memories,
Remember and be tormented.”

“Come, tempt with fragrance my destitute body,”
I spoke to the Flower and her sisters, the Petals,
“Stab me, scrape away the skin that envelopes,
Wither me.”
Then, thorn-fingers put out my dark-lashed eyes,
Tongue and navel, singing:
“We steal from you all you are and ever will be,
We leave you forever empty.”

THE MEETING PLACE

2009-10-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

the meeting place

so we meet again, under purple,
two shadows, not yet blackened.
inevitably, again reversal meets,
under purple, not yet black-end.

why do we meet? who are we? two
or many? multiply legion to soften
one another, insatiate eyes remain,
tolling, blanket of purple, a soft-end.

where did we meet? to what end?
end to end on end, head to feet,
toes to nose, navel to navel, even
the purple unfolds, uneven deaf-end.

and we are those that meet under
purple to sink into black, to shake
hands with eyes and eat bread in
secret, to flow satiate to dead-end.

ELF_ASURA

samia's original version of the poem animated

2009-03-13T06:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8gZhyV1wWs

influenced by beckett.

2009-02-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

They come,
Different and the same.
With each the insanity is different,
With each the shape of lust is the same.
Shameless.

Darkness over the face of the deep
Earth, shapeliness forming out of
Waste,
Void.
Nothing.

Empty.
With each the lack of love is palpable.
With each the relief they get after they fall or fail lifts and buoys them up.

Different and similar?
Different in the end
Though the same.
I remain or have ended up sane.
Behind the seemingly shapely-shapeless shamelessness of my lust.

They still come.
But.
Love is Elsewhere.
Yet.

my take on samia's poem

2009-02-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJhDjQIp7Tc

OPEN, EYE

2009-02-24T00:42:00.000-08:00

A bunch of pale-yellow, wrinkled Indian

Women wrapped in grey, cotton coverings

Chant-faded, wind-blown granny slokas

Worm-holing, eddying, meaning less and less;

Oyster-shell mouths, closing, opening

To drone a requiem for dull-clad Indian

Women dyed in yellow, orderly saris

pleating a culture of blind humming,

drumming up the ancient, spent, ashen,

sperm of routine, illusions and emptiness,

Voices drowning, bowed down Indian

Women lie down, thighs pried apart

by lusty, wheat-eyed industrial men

Carving up, fragmenting Sita’s purity,

burning, pock-marking, disemboweling

This bunch of cow-ish, cowed down Indian

Women bent down, beat low, eating dust,

Offering cold-spread buttocks to fascists;

Pink-soft vaginas speared by black lingams;

See now, watch how, the Third Eye opens.

krittika sharma's new poem -edited by a.v.koshy

2009-02-21T01:10:00.000-08:00

Pink.

But how could she tell her mother
The room she saw a week ago
Had pink walls, pink toys,
A pink tape-recorder,
The volume peaked to drown her shock,
Give her a new notion of the colour?

Always think of pearl,
The beads that fell yesterday.

Always think of pretty flowers
Like the aging bougainvillea.
Always think of lace,
Grandmother's kerchiefs.

Always think of lip gloss,
My lips when you smile
And for summer days,
Think of candy floss.

samia's new poem

2009-01-31T05:52:00.000-08:00

remind me
how i was
remind me
who i was

so self-assured

remind me
of my posture
remind me
of my voice
that mesmerised you

remind me
of the gentle words
that made you agree
to dance with me

remind me
of how i talked
of beauty
of music
of the lyrical
and of art

remind me
of myself
so ready
to embark

the journey
to discover further

remind me
how i needed you
even then

that's where my

downfall

did begin...

how i let myself slip
from my hands into yours

how i let my mind
waste
wither
rot
stupefy
slowly
kill me,
my serenity
calm water
birds in the sky
my joys

only one
that was left
you
and through you all

and i know
it's all my fault

and now i tread
the longer road
towards the road
i walked before
on my own
SAMIA SINGH

Des Profundis

2008-12-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

past nightfall and midnight
i cast my hook, my BAIT
no phantom mouth comes to
eat my worm and die
i wait
LATE IS THE TIME
i sit, i'm lost,

sleep overtakes me and i keel over, mate
with its tentacles, foamy scaly blanks
in the depths of hell glows a were-light
each night, each sight
by weeds of indulgence
or forced abstinence it blights
waters plights
its troth with my words and fires
unwont-
i do not know where the path lies
i tire
till morn comes and i do wake and bathe
emerge finally at least not wan not pale
wake wretch each morn
the dawn does harbinger
some new thing good or ill for all the world
where nothing's certain there is hope of good
i understand why, now, He first made light.

another one by krittika and koshy

2008-12-22T01:05:00.001-08:00

1. Sand - man2. Coal - hole3. Dust - viper4. Gurgle - gushes5. Granular - stone6. Echo - Floyd7. Cobble - Dick Whittington 8. Rare -entry9. Organic -structure10. Skin - trim11. Nature - human12. Water -piss13. Grain -paint14. Bare - breast
15. Nocturnal - bat16. Iridescent - light17. I -why?18. Greed -lust19. Asymmetry - power
Thank you so much!You're welcome
Krittika/Koshy

Aditi and.... alliteration

2008-12-22T01:03:00.000-08:00

Alliteration – combined poem written by four people, namely Aditi, I , Allwyn and Solomon

artless airs
buried byres
catchy calls
darting deeps

uneasy understandings

eon eaters
yeah
yeah
now you're rolling
rolling
failed fixes
game goners

hushed hopes

invited insiders

gurgling gushes

jailed jams
keyed kellings
sorry keeled keenings
or keeled kennings

kissed keyholes

larders laid
yeah hehe
that's very poetic
married misunderstandings

haha

natty newts

mysterious muse

operatic o.p.d.s
yeah
I'm going through the entire alphabet
paid purses

optimistic opium

wow
cool
queer quims
lol
raided radios

queer qualms

hehe
screwed sails

racy requests

trading troubadours
underpants underfurnished
no
undefined undergrowth

lol

unsaid understanding

that's deep
but common
i want frivolous, frivolous is fun
not common but more like cliché
true
frivolous fun

frivolous fallacies

veering verisign
yeah
veritable vacuum

warped whims
that's better than verisign though verisign is weird hence interesting
warped whims is good

aditi lost the internet connection :(
xylophone xenophobia (allwyn)
yolk years
zen zenith (solomon)
full stop

Aashim - coming of age and comeuppance

2008-12-18T12:25:00.000-08:00

You and me

A beginning
fast,
and unknown.

My eyes
shaded
I loathe
this
magical tree.

This spectacle
in
arid skies.

I lost
You.
I lost
You and me.

Hovering,
this craft
waits;
for glimpses
of hope.

Time perfects
this wander
Around you.
With you.
You drift,
I wallow.
Eyes prying.
you hide
while
i fly.
But still
I miss.
You and me.

just Us.

Fumbling and faltering
I reach
for that shade
I first fell under.

time to remember tagore's gitanjali

2008-11-28T02:21:00.000-08:00

Where The Mind is Without Fear

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore

mumbai

2008-11-28T02:16:00.000-08:00

thinking about my homeland that i still love, india , mumbai

Today at 2:44am Edit Note Delete
Every revelation is a revolution
no time to lose , no time to be personal[ edit delete ]posted 11/27/08
when significant things happen one has to set aside one's owm pettiness
history has escalated into moments that change things
the world was changed by 9/11
india has been changed by gandhi's death, the babri masjid demolition and now this mumbai attack
india is either going to be destabilised and broken up or it will go the hidutva way now unless we can raise enough voices to counter the change - sane voices that speak sense and hope for the future
i am proud to be an indian though i am no longer in india
i grieve for today's dead and for the injured and their loved ones
they are my brothers and sisters
i am proud to assert again that there are many in india in all its religions who are not fanatic or fundamentalist or violent and with these i take my stand
with the many here who honourjesus, buddha, gandhi, martin luther king jr and the other pacifists who made a difference to the world
i do not see any other way forward
violence is no answer except for self defence
justice is the answer, not death sentences
we will fight
we won't give up our hopes and love for our land,
every inch of which we treasure
may a new dawn break over the india i dreamed of as the india of the future
may tagore's poem still come true
long live india
victory to india

Shyamli - Prudence/nice cadence

2008-11-22T02:38:00.000-08:00

Dear little Prudence,
run far and widefrom the entangling vines.
My arms,
They call to you in temptation.
Reaching towards and snapping at your
Dancing feet.

Dance your way out,
Oh prudence from the south,
Swing away from the beguiling smiles of men who pat beside them, the ivory sheets.
Beckoning for you to sit beside them, although these sixteen years of yours in this moralistic world would've,
Probably, taught you otherwise.

Oh dear prudent one,
How times have changed you, and carved into your frail translucent palms,
The name of the one who holds your heart, tight
The same callous hands that tug at your veins.
Mere strings tied to your limp, tired arms.

Ah, prudence,
With your lovely ballerina slippers,
Mace and satin - twirling and nodding,
Gracefully, smile heartlessly and unfeelingly still, in the cold while spotlight.
Twirl - nod – smile,at the empty rows of seats.
This echoing colleseum of unwatching eyes.
Unpresent.

At present, prudence, you are alone.
Possibly the only one, in this wayward town who still believes,
In everything you're told is right and
Even the rigidity of those rights and wrongs.

So sway to the words of a jilted Madonna.
Dance little lady dance.
Sway, sway away from all dem bad things.
Sway, sway away from all dem bad things

Arpita - 2

2008-11-22T02:35:00.000-08:00

A legend passed me by
A stolid color
It seemed strangly appeasing and quick to pass
I seemed to leave the found
Sooner than I had picked it up
Let it be
The younger
Still waiting
For the two of us
I turned the corner
And emerged
the white countenance from the greyness around
the younger sat
behind his vocal set of two
and warmed me
With his accepting being
he questioned my calling
and showed me
two foreign lands mix
with my heritage
the objectivity broke
and clear reasons abridged
he cares for his art
and for survival
a condition of balance
with clear perspectives
the reason remains unanswered
it's still unfinished
with the first nail out
and the whole coffin to go.

Arpita Rawat - new poem, in progress

2008-11-22T02:33:00.001-08:00

I met with time late that morning
Couldn’t tell my day’s running
And when I did step out
That’s when the wind turned
Murmuring the calling
With a feather in its cap

The crossroads is where it stood at
Unfailing and rich
The compromise was on its landing
Its space
Its sanctity
Its religion
I felt the sweep again
Further I went to the force
It paved itself for me
With waste from a gypsy land
With stolen smells from the past
With a touch of interspersed life
With style
And so I stood before it
Feeling the gnaw I knew not of
Feeling, and yet not knowing

Uncertainty strengthened my steps
While keeping in sync
With the rhythm alongside of me
She breathed her calmness
Relieving me of trepidation
And giving me focus
(To cross over and not to fall)
To my calling
To our calling
It had arrived
I felt no thunder
No revelation
There it stood
In the clothes of the ordinary
No light no thunder
It wasn’t a revelation
My calling seemed…
Ordinary?
Mundane
And
Unworthy
Of the day long siege
For the glory I hoped to find
I sought my lens
And saw through it
So opened the demon-like mouth
With blood stains and the darkness of a forest
But
Then came the words
The melodiousness of which
I describe with tapping fingers
With harmony in them
With innocent pride
In the words of a shishya
An artist
A performer
A dancer
He sang high to the tunes
Of what was
Of his asset that is movement
Of his deep lineage

Happy with the nonconformity
Of thoughts and flexibility
Of ideas
I redirected myself to
The younger, with deeper faith and knowledge

The path seemed smaller
Yet the magnitude of the realm
Increased beyond the highest.

mandira sharma edited - i don't get it but it's a good poem - maybe about mother or place or city or nation or lover?

2008-10-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

When the days are about her
'She' is in all her form,
When the rose is her
And so is the thorn.

I lie there under her Blue,
I am surrounded with freedom,
Now true, I am now grounded,
I know my elements,
I don't belong to the fragile supplements,
I am part of her, I was 'Born'.

With her it's easy,
To think of the 'Infinite',
Rhyme becomes breezy,
Close my eyes, I just might.

But it's never a complete darkness with the sun,
And it's never a complete daylight when it's all done.

I toss between 'Life' and 'Me',
They are not the same, I am sure,
'She' can be with me and I with she,
But life knows how to lure.
It drags me to the edge
And then releases !
But she is the pitching wedge,
A lofting stroke, yes, please.
The game begins again and I run,
Wire, maze, player, all that's done.
But will I return, oh yes, I will !
Will I return, oh yes, I have to !
Game of ladder and bill,
Somethings I can never do.

Clock strikes mid-night,
They run inside the caves,
For it's the time of monsters, silly plight,
For if you open your eyes in the days,
Their silhouettes are visible in broad light.
The night is scarred for ever,
But it belongs to her,
And she is so soft, oh yes, sir !
Then why all that terror ?
The match sticks strike,
There is light,
Darkness and her now alike,
There is still freedom if I might.
Rhyme has a different meaning now,
Life is not the 'Belligerent',
Me not 'Neutral', that I vow,
For now I am as indifferent
To her, as life to 'me' and 'how'.

Prerna

2008-10-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

is working on a film on Indian gypsies.Interesting.

Samia's new blog

2008-09-30T00:47:00.000-07:00

samiasingh.wordpress.com

MORE NEWS

2008-09-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

Shyamli made one of the best pixtella's in her class.
Farewell to Aditi, Shyamli, Prerna and Roanna too.
Last I heard Roanna was doing a kind of film on the MAIS Principal with Philly.
Aditi was doing the creative writing course. Along with Shyamli, Aashim etc.
Prerna is still writing.
Pol Science is much in many people's thoughts these days. Radha Mahendru, for instance.
Tejus wrote something on Taare zameen par, which I thought a worthy attempt..
The show must go on as does the bandwagon.
I'm reading Lila by Robert M Pirsig, a book given to me by Pratap, and doing research on Bob Dylan, writing to friends and writing, in that order.
Arka is busy traveling and performing.
Avy has superb stuff written and put up on his blog.
http://avygravy.blogspot.com/
Am I like a rat deserting a sinking ship?

Phantastikon - modern Tagore

2008-09-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

Hooked.

My voice has many shades.
It pours out of my inner body,
Throat and neck.
At the end, empty
I feel like a fool
And wait anxiously
For anything,
Even an echo,
In return.
But as usual, nothing -
Silence.
I switch off,
Nauseated by, my voice;
Switched on,
Permeated by, your Silence

Till the next, time.

What is poetry?

2008-09-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

Ezra Pound said: Literature is language charged to the uttermost with meaning.
If so: Poetry is langauge charged to the uttermost with significance. - Koshy.
Poetry is prayer. - Samuel Beckett.
Phanopoeia
Melopoeia
Logopoeia
That is poetry. Plagiarized from the Grecians via Pound.
Amen.

News

2008-09-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

Roshan is back and still writing, wrintg poetry and doing it well
Look at his blog often, please.

Goodbye Couplet

2008-09-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Should have had time to split a beer
But - am too busy, and the time, too near.
:)

More news for and of the lycralyricists.

2008-09-25T01:58:00.000-07:00

Roshan is somewhere in some forest figuring out whether to write or not and the validity of poetry.
Samia, Aashim and Pratap are all fed up with design but not with art and literature.
Aashim's working on his mother's poems , hoping to illustrate them and has publishers lined up.
We still want to bring out a lycralyricist collection of poems,
Culling out the best from this blog,
Vaibhav has written a book that may get published by UNICEF.
Ashwin is busy doing his dip film with Vinay Ghodgeri. Promises to be good.
I'm leaving Bangalore on October 2nd - Gandhi Jayanthi - and India on October 3rd.
I will be in King Abdul Aziz University, English Language Centre, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and hopefully they allow use of mail and gtalk.
All this has some kind of cosmic significance no doubt.
"we are stardust/we are glowing"

Poetry makes nothing happen

2008-09-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

In you, in others,
In all around
I see
By change, or chance
Or
Mystery's decree.

Can't be scanned
Anymore than
Feelings can.

This Wingspan.

Never paid (me) a single cent
Yet
(I) pay for the privyleague.

My palm spread
A-cross, your cups
Local area networks pan.

Make something happen?
Un-open, unhand?

Our liquid gold for your finest starland.

Be done by as you did - the poem I read out, edited.

2008-09-17T08:55:00.000-07:00

If anyone has a moment to spare
Listen, please:
They're killing our brothers and sisters like mice;
Some hide in the jungles to get away
From the death-bringers.

Don't Christians in Orissa have eyes?
Are they not human? Are you truly Advaits?
Do you really think you're Arjuns who've run
The gamut of the karmic wheel?
No. The Jaganath's chariot rolls on
And will crush beneath its mighty rim
Your women and children
Or make them join
The party of those you hated enough to kill.

History has many contrived, cunning corridors,
Blood violently sown always reaps its desire.
Not as one thinks. It turns against
The ones who made it unjustly stream.
See, see, Christ's blood streaming in the firmament.
One drop could have saved Faust but he just couldn't
Get hold of it, nor any drop.

I wish you'd taken a leaf out of Sree Narayana Guru's book
Who said in reply to Gandhiji's query
Should conversion be allowed?,
Whatever the religion,
It's enough man improves.
But you've probably never heard of Sree Narayana Guru.
If you'd been there at that conversation,
You'd have killed him.
Now you've appropriated him in my naadu.
The kind of pretentious thing quasi-intellectuals do;
What the Pharisees did with the prophets
After persecuting them.

George Bush Jr., Advani and Osama bin Laden
Saddam, Khomeini, Hitler and Stalin
Togadia and the Hindutva murderers,
And the Taliban and terrorists of every other hue
This plain-speaking, harsh, so-not-a-poem
Tells you the hell of hatred is all that's left to you
Unless metanoia comes, as it yet may, strangely,
Even as it did once to a Saul of Tarsus!

And you others who have never seen how
The maruts caressed their ordinary faces
The faces of the dead ones, green twigs snapped to pieces
So suddenly
Just as zephyrs still do yours
Or don't know they too heard the kisses of tender lips brush by
Touched thunder rolling across wild, green places
Tasted the nectar of raindrops on the sly
You who never smelled the scent of the Oriya Christian's sweat
To realize it had the same sweet, sour, tear-stained smell as in your armpits,
You indifferent ones, continue pretending until
One day they come for you too with their tridents
And there is no one left to help you by then
Because you purposefully did not intervene
(In your turning away from everything but your petty lives)
Though they were -only - Shylocks, like you,
Not trouble-makers going around
Carrying pictures of chairman Mao,
To make it with anyone, anyhow.

Nothing else I can do at present but write
& pray and love the Logos and believe.
I write all this just to let you know
I am trying to walk in the footsteps of the dead
And their loved ones whom you didn't consider human
The martyrs' blood relatives, their spiritual kin, and their wives and children
Who have to forgive you all, now
You and you and yours and yours
Like Staines' wife once publicly did.

Blood seeds the hearts of the next Generation.
Of those who are like-minded.
Like Jesus
Buddha, a nameless Zen master
Lincoln, Ramana Maharshi
Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
& Nelson Mandela and Tiananmen's students.

Behold, Mahabharath, I show you a miracle.
By the time your next pogrom comes around
Our tribes would have increased,
With rhyme, without reason.
Dark, sand- coloured cockroaches in your tumultuous barns,
Unquenchable, like your innocent children's eyes.
May they shine endlessly, in the play of lights,
Like little Chinese lanterns, like pretty Indian diyas
Or Mozart's twinkling stars that still make some of us marvel
In the distant reaches of the unfettered sky
Candling and beaconing us to some beautiful thing Else.

May man as he is today never set foot there
Except he dares to change beyond hatred's dare.

by A.V.Koshy

Ruchika - finding the flow

2008-09-10T02:45:00.000-07:00

DEW-DROP

Dew-drop

On a leaf top

A universe within itself

Sliding and twisting

Hopping from one leaf to the other

Gliding towards destiny?

The quest cannot be completed

The thirst unquenched

Unless and until

It loosens itself fully

Destroys self

To meet the river

Flowing under the tree

Unnoticed

Carrying carefully

Uncountable siblings and lovers

Together?

Samia - self/reflection

2008-09-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

It is I I detest

not you

for you are not

affected by anything,

not by me.

I am.

I scatter them thorns

carefully,

around every door and window

and keyhole

that I see,

I scatter them thorns

while I take my shoes off.

For I wish not to escape.

For I am scared,

I am scared

of my failure,

of the moment

I will know

I am not

what I think myself to be.

I paint dark shadows

I think them thoughts

that are poison,

that do nothing

but grow

into more, multi-rooted, underground

beneath my skin,

beneath the words,

beneath my eyes.

I poison myself

for I am afraid

I have entered

Into a wrong turn.

And I cannot grow here.

I poison myself

for I am with you now,

and this is not

how I played it out

to be.

I poison,

as I am lesser

everyday.

The better bits of me

have vanished.

Rotten,

fallen off,

stuck in distant places-

all that remains is this

decay.

This mass

I hate to call myself.

News update

2008-09-04T23:12:00.000-07:00

hope you guys keep looking at roshan's blog - there's damn good poetry still coming up on it

http://fromsoultosand.blogspot.com/

Dear, dear friends, lycralyricists of all hues, sizes, ages, and colours and shapes.....et al

2008-09-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

I will be reading a poem or two along with Arka at the Maya Contemporary Art Gallery on Nandi Durga road or thereabouts on this Sunday, Sept 7th. I hope you all come along and read your poems too. It will be good to get together once again. If you're coming please reach there by 6.45 because Arka seems to have put in some stuff about registration and such- like things which is needed for things to go in an orderly manner I'm sure.... come along for old time's sake and also as a kind of last/middle/first appearance of all of us together....!!!!! Can't really say not knowing the future.
I promise to read out my poem in a way that will hopefully (not) rock the house.
Arka will correct me I suppose/guess if any of the details here are wrong....

A Poem for a Grandmother

2008-09-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

For Mahamaya Sarkar, died September 13th, 1984.

I remember not crying.
At four o' clock the school bus had dropped me
At the appointed place, like everyday.
I don't quite remember who'd picked me up, now.
I remember asking after you, suddenly, and being told
You had 'gone off to god', which I could make no sense of.
I remember being startled by many strange faces.
I don't remember your face too well,
I remember a white clad figure on the cot,
I remember playing with your lips, opening them
Giving you funny faces. You did not resist.
That wasn't surprising - you never did.
I remember your teeth were somewhat brown.
I was hurriedly pulled away by adult hands -
I don't remember whose.
I remember you had made 'tribal costumes' for me
Out of palm leaves, and crowns that had cost no blood,
And flutes I could not play.
I remember you wearing both your glasses to amuse me,
And when asked how you looked, I'd promptly said, 'like an ape'.
You almost fell down from your chair, laughing.
You never had any money to speak of, yet when you came,
All the way across town, your hands were never empty.
I expected them not to be - it was my right.
I remember, better than your face, your stories
Of a childhood in Tripura, coming home at sunset
On a buffalo, Men who'd been swallowed whole by pythons
But survived. I remember crying my heart out,
More than a month later, at Indira Gandhi's dead face
on the TV screen. Years, lost kingdoms and eternities later
I'd realize, that I cried for you.

by Arka Mukhopadhyay

Aashim - new love poem

2008-08-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

I LInger

Stars bright,

All accounted.

I float

Overwhelmed

by fleeting glances

I hum.

My place

Intoxicated

Intertwined

I hum.

sheep frolic

options emerge.

A glint

from a glance.

music softens.

I hum.

this liberation

stands

still.

Breathing

this Orbit

I hum.

Treading softly

into arms

I wait.

states of mind

melt concrete walls.

yours/mine\theirs/ours.

I hum.

with you,

I linger.

Karno Guhathakurtha - A ghost story

2008-08-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

Pitter-Patter Drops
The water works commence
Pitter-Patter Drops.

Just a little left,
Only a little left now.
Still, pitter-patter.

Another day spent
Making way from the Gallows ……

Ugh, still more to come.

Night hath come, once more.
She acts mysteriously,
This specific night.

There is a Moon this night.
A subtle glow lights my path.
I thank thee, O’ Night.

Homeward bound, I am.
To the place where my heart is.
Oh, but for these Drops.

The incessant Rain.
She seems permanent,tonight.
Vindictive and vain.

Came on hard this night.
Cuts mine skin. The slivers fly.
There is none in sight.

From a short distance,
I see my abode – calm, fine.
Am nearly there now.

Aaah! I see it now.
Hot coffee and a nice book.
Home sweet, almost home.

Just a little left.
Only a little left now.
Like a hop away.

Sounds of keys. I arrive.
I enter my palace. Yes!
I breathe in and look.

Everything. Perfect.
The sweet scent gets me always.
Everything. Exact.

I take the staircase.
My room is on the first floor.
I need to clean up.

My room. Everything mine.
With its bed and a cupboard.
And an attached restroom.

No power tonight.
I enter the dark restroom.
Moonlight aids my vision.

I freshen up.
I feel cleansed. Just one more chore.
The mirror is tilted.

I look into it.
Nothing has changed. I see me.
It has been quite long.

Time has passed, since then……
The flesh hanging from my face.
My bones, visible.

It has been long since…
The 10th of May; three years back.
I breathed a new being.

Steve Jones did warn me.
Mixing chemicals can harm.
Boy! Was he right then!

“You’re doing it wrong”.
Maybe I should have listened.
My looks suffered. Heh!

Hmmm.. This is me now.
Oh well, should have listened then.
Now for some coffee .

Aditi again

2008-08-19T06:20:00.000-07:00

Childhood and Innocence

Say Cheese

Looking for the green smell in crisp gold

The heart seeks solace in reminiscence

Nostalgia becomes that sweet pain

That balms the scars of today

Gone are the days

Of mellow smiles

That shone in eyes

That did not carry the burden

Of being grown up.

-----------------------------------------------------

Do you realize how old you are?

Act your age.

Act mature.

Act responsible.

Act sensible. Behave

How can you laugh so uncontrollably?

That too at something so stupid !

Keep a stern face.

Be Serious.

Stop doing this,

Stop doing that.

It does not suit you

Stop grinning this way.

Stop being so silly.

Stop making mischief.

Stop getting cheap thrills out of small things.

Stop playing pranks.

Stop laughing.

Stop smiling this way.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

This is what kids do,

Not adults.

At this age?

You got to be kidding me.

That's more like it.

Calm and composed.

Not an emotional sentimental Fool .

That's how we grown-ups should be.

An example.

Now where were we?

O yeah...

Such a pretty picture

You were a really cute child

And O my !

What a smile?

Precious.

Just too precious for words.

A poem on India

2008-08-12T00:17:00.000-07:00

Independence Day

India of the reaching out
Reaching forth
Reaching in
Reaching up and down and……
Over
Where my people have either too much or too little
O India

India of the bad roads
And wide, open spaces
Environmentally virgin and raped
Polluted, happy, sad, poor, rich
"Dvd, vcd, cd, id, icecream"
No other place has such sign boards
Full of poems
Where else but in India would I be able to understand
That clichés and mistakes and typos are also part of the attempt
And lead to interesting quirks in the
Writing of great poetry
O m' India

India of the "deathly hallows"
Where each minute someone dies
Dogs men women children the old
Dying
Mourning
Born, each minute someone laughs
Someone cries
Nothing changes it's horrible
The tears of the world remain a constant
Quantity
O Beckett.

India of the jostling
Terrorists and betrayers of the innocent in the attempt to catch terrorists
And the terrorizers and the terrified
That bans the minority's student group that turns violent but not the majority's student group that does so too

India of the varieties of all the insane and sane
Beautiful
Terrible things in the world
Where everyone is crucified except the rich
And they are empty
But don't care because money lines their empty hearts
Even Buddha wouldn’t forgive them but they couldn't care less

India where I can freely plagiarize
Dylan &
Piss on the road or shit
Break traffic rules and not get caught
Give money to beggars and drunkards
And be politically passive and correct
And politically incorrect and an activist all at the same time
India of the largesse
Divides & integers

India of her independence days
Where they should hoist flags in international schools like the one I teach in
But don't usually
And hoist them where they needn't, in regional schools like the ones I learned in
Where all is inside out
Upside down
And freedom advances steadily
Like an ever vanishing mirage
Of rainbow hues
Made by the splashes of petrol wasted on the roads
Reflecting the ozone-layer affected sun

Once I wanted to save India
Now I love it helplessly
And want to leave it
Though it will never leave me

Yeah, India of the metros
Of flies and crows, not mynahs
People endlessly queued up
And no Dalits anywhere in sight
Cowshit, dog patties, human excrement
Skyscrapers that mushroom cloud up everyday
Beyond the reach of the lousy common man
Who never existed
Middle class mayhem and in between suddenly occasionally patches of white and blue skies mocking the entire tapestry of crap
"Howl." India.

I remember there was another India in my past and in history
And a future one in my dreams
Things I won’t explicate on.
This is today.
I salute
Another independence day
Free of nothing. Free
of everything, especially
Free of saying it's all gone
Down the tube
When it's only in the pipeline & arriving faster than the speed of all light still.

Arka Mukhopadhyay - Morning/ A Single Poem of Linked Haikus.

2008-08-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

Sudden shock of crows
Tearing apart the fabric
Of a slate-gray sky.

Early morning flight
Brings in weary travellers
From a distant land.

The paperman throws
Stories of yesterday's world
Within my four walls.

Sounds of distant death
Shatter the silence within
My half-waking mind.

In some dark corner
I hear the lizard ruling
Its empire of death.

Jibanananda - two translations by Arka Mukhopadhyay

2008-08-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

1.Sky-sublime

Suranjana, do not go there,
Do not speak with that young man, there;
Come back Suranjana;
In the night of silver star-fire;

Come back to these fields, these waves;
Come back to my heart;
From distances to distances - farther distances
Do not go with that young man any more.

What speech with him? With him!
In skies beyond the sky
You are like clay now:
His love sprouts like the grass.

Suranjana,
Your heart now is the grass:
Winds lie beyond the wind -
Skies lie beyond the sky.

2.O Heart!

O heart,
Quietness?
Are there but dead forests everywhere?
Up above, the moon
Scythes through clouds, forever seeking a path.

On the owl's wing,
The firefly's body
On the blades of grass, there is a dew-like grayness.
Does nothing shine?
Is there no more sound?

Still, life dancing like a thin myna
On two yellow feet, says:
How old are you now? Forty?
Many hours of desire came and went
And yet without consummation?
Who are those on mule-back, in the sun,
In bloody, tireless voyages through mountain tracks?
Must Patanjali come and tell you
The difference between those
That but sit and fall into death's pit,
And those that fall off mule-backs,
Vomiting blood?

All the dead forests,
All the dead forests of my life perhaps say:
Why must you go to the world's sunlit din?
Why needlessly do you want to walk
Beneath the sky, blue-throated
From drinking the poison of creation?
You won't, won't find anything anywhere;
Death alone lives, as eternal peace
In the endless darkness
Of dissolved forests.

Yet, I say,
The few days that I live, let's walk in the sun;
Let's see how the grass of this earth;
From creation's poison-tip and
Crushed humanity's darkness
Brings forth the blue universe;
Let's think - let's think -
If you but dig into history - penetrating
The many, many deep mines of sorrow -
You can hear, like healing,
The sound of a hundred waterfalls.

Pig's snout on a stick.

2008-08-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

Life, what they all hold ‘most dear.’
Their many hands, clutching mobiles -
The many mouths, moving, the teeth, the tongues, the lips, 'moving' -

And the children excited, laughing, shouting, running, weeping -
Tears: a luxury the news just brought in.
The grown ups, grown up: as it becomes clear -

Apocalypse is undoubtedly a wake.

Fear is a smell:
Lavender, for no reason.
And one wonders why
One wonders why
The clouds still amble lazily
Across the gray-dark, rain-laden sky -
This friend of mine, meanwhile, dressed in fluorescent pink
Complains how the unheard explosions blew her plans
To sing in the "Glorious" choir that evening, away –

Yet, as death and life go by,
Hand in hand,
Sundered strangers,

No one really seems to want to die.

THE ACCURSED - By Avy

2008-08-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

Accursed are they who live
heads turned away,
twisted backwards,
swollen eyes peering
inwards,
tongues grey with night-moss,
licking
dog-like at the sores of others,
leper-fingers feeling-less,
pointing
to what lies beyond the circles
of dead penises and dry vaginas
excreting
desires denied;
accursed in their certainty
are they,
the devourers of pink life.

THE INCORRECT CORRECTED - By Ragini Ramanathan

2008-08-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

They rot on the streets,
Completely homeless.
Let them rot in camps!
They are nothing but pests!

No!
That's politically incorrect.

Lesbians, gays they're everywhere,
We throw stones, curses and sniggers.
Let's lock them in a cell!
Our aims will be better!

No!
That's politically incorrect.

Our mothers, sisters, wives
Our slaves.
Lock them in their homes!
Let them never see daylight again!

No!
That's politically incorrect.
We corrupt, we loot,
We cheat and succeed!
Let's take over the world!
Let it fall at our feet!
No!
Because we're politically correct

Samia's new poem

2008-08-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

It is to our end I drink

To our beginning

To steer myself away

from those tired stagnant waters

To our new beginning

My friend

My love

Our last ritual

For nobody got closer

than us

to me

We live now

like we should

and you know it

Free

Thinking

Drifting

Breeze

I do not know

What will become of us

Ever talk

while sipping tea?

It's time the frills disappear

We

now stand here

Still connected

through something

even though it does not appear

A toast to you

my dear

May we meet again

as old, old friends

on a sunny day

in the green breeze,

when time would have made us

what we have always wanted to be.

News

2008-08-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

Aashim says he wants to start his own magazine.
Ashwin is hard at work on his diploma film that promises to be both lyrical and poetic.

Roshan Ali

2008-08-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

As you all know Roshan has gone more seriously into writing than ever before.
Here is his blog - visit it to know how his writing gets along more powerfully than ever before under the star of lycralyricism.
http://www.fromsoultosand.blogspot.com

Vaibhav scores big

2008-08-02T08:42:00.002-07:00

If you can check the latest Down To Earth issue..... some pics I shot and stuff I wrote/copy-edited has been published ..... hehe.....

Vaibhav
email sent to me on June 20.

Pratap's new poem

2008-08-02T08:42:00.001-07:00

Echo’s Unheeded Warning

The loneliness.

Of walls built into strongholds.

Green fields. Once nourished with golden light,

Now barren, dead, quiet.

In the silent stillness, grey constructions,

Loom over murky skies;

Smooth stone facades reveal nothing.

Buildings multiply, the city grows – evolves

Clouds engulf, conceal,

the light of a perhaps wise past.

The golden lining really a shadow.

Where does the future lie?

The city expands.

Clanking factory wheels and crankshafts multiply.

By the second. Time saved is progress made.

The scheme.

Mass produced, cold steel boxes of intellectual misconceptions

Packed and mailed through my trusted synaptic network.

Birds lie belly-up under ailing apple trees,

As rotten as their fruits, clawing at the sky;

Pungent air, thick with viscous poison,

We suffocate, breaths rasping. Pleading.

The sun implodes into white light - the original emptiness.

The end is not near. The melting landscape whispers helplessly so.

We must yield; submit to the Shadow whose wrath

Spits incessant fires from hell. A juicy boar on roast.

Take it nice and slow. Don’t forget to let the skin

become golden crisp; and leave the meat tender inside.

Delicious.

The city explodes. Devours my green pastures.

Walls coming up by the second. There. There. There.

And there. All around, their steel sheen beyond my control.

A few steps too far in, or perhaps many. I cannot turn.

The only way is forward. Inside.

Sucked in like an acorn into the voracious depths of a black hole.

I can only hope what my colossal journey reveals will be beautiful.

If it doesn’t, I shall look out for the raven that waits patiently,

To pluck my eyeballs out of their hollow sockets. And I shall say,

Thank you.

Aditi's poem -after a long time

2008-08-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

Fragile smoke

Twilight bliss

Some shadows

In some light

Fraying hope

Of a reunion

Long awaited

Parched eyes

Inked with

Unrest

Of white nights

Dizzy hands

Humor the anticipation

Ticking

Mocking

Sniggering

His last word

His last glance

His last touch

Before they parted

Still etched

In her moist breath

Black wisp's caress

Silent tears

INABILITY

2008-07-14T01:08:00.000-07:00

By Ruchika Jajodia
PID 401
11.7.2008

Sometimes when I read a poem,

How do I ever write one?

I toil at it,

yet nothing rhymes or flows from within,

Nothing lyrical,

Nothing poetic,

Nothing simple,

Nothing complicated,

Nothing at all.

Just blankness. A space.

A space so empty and white and hollow.

A space so pure.

Yet it beckons confusion, irritation and frustration.

Why can’t I do it? I waste.

Why do I feel like that?

Too much do I expect of myself, maybe?

Too much do I go against the tide?

Pushing extremes,

Managing expectations,

Of me and my neighbor.

I question – Why do I do that?

What am I trying to prove?

Nothing!

Nothing at all…

Or maybe a lot.

I guess at the end, I achieve nothing

but pain and suffering,

is self-inflicted,

torturing

More than anything else.

“Life is a suffering” said The Buddha.

So, am I trying to negate it?

Go against it?

What stops me from accepting it?

Why don’t I just accept it?

Acceptance is the key

Something with the ability to sail the destructive storms

to serenity.

If I am peaceful within,

Then I am peaceful without,

And there is nothing to fight about.

Nothing to dwell upon,

Nothing to relive,

Nothing negative.

It destroys and removes the garbage,

Clean.

Just blankness. A space.

A space so empty and white and hollow.

A space so pure.

I have the choice.

I always had the choice.

Either worry and trouble,

Or happiness and peace.

Being comfortable with my own self.

Accepting myself the way I am.

When I am happy

Good thoughts flow in,

Good things happen,

Expectations are not burdening and over powering.

So maybe,

One day by the grace

Of the power

Much more greater than I,

I’ll be able to

Write a Poem.

Isn’t that what I intended to do in the beginning?

So for now,

I am not going to get perturbed,

I will let my thoughts flow as they want to.

Is there anyone who has been able to stop time

Apart from The Greatest?

Let go and let in the Almighty!

(END)

Ruchika Jajodia

11.7.08

Shyamli Panda - that delectable mocking tone!

2008-07-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

To these honest proceedings.

You stand hollowed,

Hallowed more

by your own misconceptions

and discontentment.

I wish you would see

reality as i do

as real, is never

the same for us two.

I'm preoccupied as ever

with my need to sneer, at

every brainwashed, unfeeling

Slave.

This mighty parade.

They surround me with

their shuffling narrow gazes.

Their uncaring disregard for

their own path.

Watch!

They stumble on their own toes...

You stand so well amongst the

Circus bearings,

so loved, adored and adorned

with your false sense of pride.

of self consolation only bring,

More scorn from me and further

Acceptance from them.

You rise so high,

Head filled with the likes

of helium and vacuum.

I meander, distracted as usual.

So you see, you will do good.

"I will only weigh you down."

This blog's on fire and doesn't stop rolling - Krittika Sharma this time around

2008-07-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

Skin Leopard Guns Filth

The leopard never understood why guns were harmful. That was probably because he was dead and on someone else’s skin before the sting hit him. I told him it was frightening- the sound, the metal, and the filthy relationships it created between everyone in the world. But the leopard was fascinated by it. Guns are beautiful he said. I would press it to my soul.

I can’t think of a single designer who has not gone through the leopard skin phase. Some replicate it, but some actually buy it from the dirty poachers who carry their guns into quiet forest and kill the poor animals. Like my leopard here, other leopards are curious about the gun- like a diamond to a lady. The spark and the charm lures them, not realizing that their guts mix with the mud and make the earth filthy. The stench of the leopard’s shocked breath, the rotting smell of the last drops of urine and the fresh smell of defeated blood. It's all for the skin, after all.

aashim again - on a roll

2008-06-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

Through to my head

these droplets fall.

Admiration

Rages through

Uncontrolled

yet aloof,

my mind..

Blank.

as Gargoyles sit

portraits speak

I listen.

Vibrations escalate

Bubbles overcome

This day beautiful.

Nights of ecstasy

Raise towers

and height's

Peak.

Betrayed

yet

content

I listen.

I listen

To hallowed depths.

I float

amongst wet cats

and sleeping divas.

Willfully accepted

feelings contained

I feel softly.

a spy?

biding time

effort.

a call for CHANGE

screams through.

cliches aplomb

I reveal

this air

as I

listen

to

voices stare.

Aashim again, with a knock out post-love poem

2008-06-02T22:11:00.000-07:00

A fish i did catch.

i let go.

only for want

i swam back

i searched

water murky

mind aloof.

fleeting glances

memories curt.

i still

i still

drown......

Keshava Guha - on Narendra Modi

2008-05-31T02:25:00.001-07:00

The Greatest Gujarati

I was born as a refugee from Karachi

Rolled through Delhi with his army,

Indoctrinated and impassioned, en route

To rescue Ram, to raise his spirit.

Call me Advani's accident, then- my

Mother reached the hospital by slipping

Through the cracks of the Sindhi god,

The man meant to save us all from secularism

And its related ailments, who failed. Our

Sins, and values, and constitution lived on

Surviving even the hand of Ram, and his kar

Sevaks, monkey soldiers reincarnated.

But it is Gujaratis, not Sindhis, after all, who

Make Indian history. And in our haste we

All forgot that Ram is dead, and dead forever.

That our hero was younger, bearded perhaps,

Charioted, a he-man, not a sadhu. There is

Only one saviour left, and it is him. His

Coming was prophesized, after all, for who

Has not heard of Kalki?

Aashim - new series?

2008-05-31T02:24:00.001-07:00

Illusions?

Scenes of resentment,

brave gestures falter.

Stories told,

memories unfurled.

Laid bare....

We sought...

comfort?

The facade falls.

You loved I didnt.

I loved You didn't.

Head strong

stubborn to admit.

admit to scorn?

I question faith

belief maybe..

I fall

EyEs unforgiving.

truth...

the truth?

I loved you for me.

Roshan's latest poem - as usual, in good standing

2008-05-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

I have seen the habits of necessity,

Traverse the lengths of many electric poles,

That flash by.

Each one, another segment that goes unheeded.

And as-if to mock evolution, everyone rushes to survive,

Some knowing the truth- but there is no other time-grinder,

Nor dignity-spout that can match the ease of struggling.

When there is no agony of choice, there is none in the chosen.

I have traversed those distances,

That flash by like montages of passed things,

Sat among those who have fleetingly seen,

What flashes by, only to look away or beyond.

Beauty is a luxury that they cannot revel in.

Other things have taken the place of love and beauty,

That drive the world by whip and tong.

And it is to this that they have pledged their duty-

As was done in the White City, to pay a debt of life.

Only to find that the served was living in death.

To be among them, who travel by habit,

To see the joy of a crisp morning, pass by as just another one.

Choice ground to a habit like powder,

Taken every morning with a word of faith.

The world must be free, to revel in their hearts.

praps - rewrite - now it's tite

2008-04-25T00:43:00.000-07:00

(untitled)

Like a musical instrument or a blank page,

I sit silent – potential energy

of infinite permutations and combinations.

The turmoil, the conflict, the urge, the reluctance

Constantly meeting into those singular points of existence –

here and now.

A drop of ink falls on the page, slowly spreads,

Dries almost instantly. It’s the thirst. The thirst,

That cannot be quenched by water or wine.

A root shrivelled into disability,

seeking neither water nor wine. But what?

Something; I’m not sure but I think.

The thought. The root of perhaps madness.

The coin thrown, falls silently, infinitely;

Into the fathomless depths of that dry well

And probably lands on its two multiple faces.

The thought. The thought.

I think.

In solitude is comfort. And the root,

That sucks in biased truth.

In truth, the wall lies; growing steadily stronger,

More solid, “further” removed.

In truth sits that dayglocrazie,

Like a blank page,

steadily disappearing into oblivion.

pratapaditya n deb - philosophy

2008-04-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

Like a musical instrument or a blank page,

I sit quietly – potential energy

of infinite permutations and combinations.

The turmoil, the conflict, the urge, the reluctance

Constantly meeting the lone points of existence –

here and now.

A drop of ink falls to the page, slowly spreads,

Dries almost instantly. It’s the thirst. The thirst,

That cannot be quenched by water or wine.

A root shrivelled into disability, seeking neither water

Nor wine. But what?

Something; I’m not sure but I think.

The thought. The root of a possible insanity.

The coin thrown, falls, silently into

the fathomless depths of that dry well.

The thought. The thought. I think.

In solitude is comfort. And the root,

That sucks in biased truth.

In truth lies the wall, growing steadily stronger,

More solid, “further” removed.

In truth sits that dayglocrazie,

Like a blank page,

steadily disappearing into oblivion.

I don't understand the phrase "in truth lies the wall" but otherwise the poem makes complete sense to me.

Shyamli - a lovely magical romp of the imagination

2008-04-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

An idle Sunday.

There is someone at my door,

Addressing me,

with regular raps on the hollow wooden frame,

calling out at intervals,

what I believe used to be my name.

I would apologise, my friend,

But I am too preoccupied

with my own absence,

Or, atleast pretending the same.

For I, presently, am too far away.

Caught up,

in a giddy swirling mass of a day dream.

Lying here in my half crimson room,

Smiling slight…slightly,

at the ceiling, which grows higher,

Spiraling way,

way high into the stratosphere.

There is someone beside me,

Murmuring honeycombs,

humming faintly into my ears.

And thus I, so raptured…

find myself unable,

to answer your calls.

And a spangled rodeo horse

Neighs and canters

around my feathered pillow,

chewing at my hair

as I swim..

through Dollops of creamy mists,

engulfing sight and mind.

Maybe another day, my love,

Will I stumble to the door way

and turn that knob…

Today however, I am sailing

over my own body,

Rowing with my tiny oars

through this choppy mess of winds.

(atleast, the mist has cleared)

I can see the oceanic vastness, barely though,

through the fluttering dayglo wings…

purple velvet to a gauze of gold,

Blurred by their own velocity…

Choo choo.

My ferry turns wayward,

Misbehaving, in this flickering excitement.

Static, a tense restlessness,

Glows when I smile,

through my teeth.

I see my reflection break,

into ripples as I step through

this hall way of mirrors.

Only to be sucked right out

of the enchanting illusions

by your rudeness.

you knock yet again!

I meet my bed with a dull thud

And a sigh.

Your persistence bothers me.

The development of a frown however,

Is intervened,

(you’re a lucky bastard)

by my white horse…

Neighing, cantering, chewing…

the ceiling still spirals.

AND, the rolling thunder,

tumbles around as

Falling cars and misshapen cats fall

Unsoundingly,

around me and my tambourine umbrella…

I sleep… drowsy slumber dreamy sleep.

I sleep through it all.

shyamli - this poem is for a friend who recently passed away.

2008-04-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

We hold on

to our mistaken identities,

Thoughts.

Glances.

Misread and misinterpreted,

Meander slow in beads

of viscous sweat,

Down,

Leaving behind trails of soot,

Purely for the sake

of remembrance.

You nurse your bruises,

in the shade

of the giant vines and canopies.

Brilliantly coloured orchards,

in your simpleton backyard.

No abysses, darkness or voids.

No scorching suns,

to spoil this day.

Wandering through the wisps

we meet, yet again, in your

Vivid delusional escapades.

Through the nights,

we shall hold on to each other

and a warm cup of tea.

The wolves shall eventually tire

and run away,

we shall be safe, alone,

yet again.

I put in the context because I felt that then we get to see that it's such a deadly poem.

rebana - some poems - they seem to become better as they go along

2008-04-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

so i 've attempted some editing

A word full walking

Moved a melting gaze

Into an embrace

Of gibberish darkness

-----------------------------------------------------

Happiness is an allegory,

Unhappiness a story…

-----------------------------------------------------

It’s funny how the tables have turned…

I finally find a self, I call it mine,

I build it up and make it a shrine

Then I search for my star in the darkened sky,

My star that’s lost in a blanketed lie,

But the planets have moved, sliding around,

To match the fate of a table turned

* - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - -- - - -- -- - -- -- - -

This was the poem that inspired my 2nd fiction film (although my 1st real passionate attempt)….it was a strange experience trying to create a film from a poem… but it was the only way I could do it…

COLD DEAD SLEEP

Coffee day, cold coffee, cold sleep,

yet again I grow sleepy.

Eyelids leaden with chewy sleep.
as the corporately dressed feed me their smiling lies.

Their feet adorned in steeped precision,
Only serve to sever my true ambition down to a cursed rendition of many a so called stalwart condition.

Existence isn't a mystery to one
Who contends in history.
Each word that was written once,
by the powerful faith that moves mountains,
Builds, brick by brick,
The wall that surrounds the destitute prostitute of our plentiful times.

This isn't no poem that will entertain your lustful tongue,
If I should rhyme is very much my own decision.
I detect your wry smile at my wistful folly,
A sneer is all I have for your unhearing ally.

Faith can move mountains or drench a mountain's work of pride.
Its powerful innocence pulls a wanderer's quest to its demonic end.
What a sad pity it is then, to settle for corporate heroism,
With its coffee & quiet delinquents lurking in the corners...

With all my growing likeness to an evangelic angel,
I begin to drown in the lurking drowsiness,
Of what the death of a society brings to heroic celebration.

samia - can you retell a story?

2008-04-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

Can you retell a story

like it's never been told?

For you seem easily bored.

Memory only is beautiful

for the good is what is chosen to be retold.

Time is precious

for it stitches together

you and me.

The lover and the loved-

our assigned lives,

how did it come to be?

Revive?

Like a song

you cannot get rid of

for you are enamoured

by each note, word and pause

and that itself

begets its death;

no warning

no apparent reason-

until it's that season again.

Love was never meant to grow cold

old

mould.

Haven’t we walked down

this way before?

We have reached

that point again,

my love

my friend-

save this water

from flowing away,

my cupped hands

and I re-tread that way.

I look

a reflection

looks back at me

yes

it is still me.

I do not want to become

disheartened or cold

I do not wish

this dullness to remain

unfeeling, numb

disdain.

Is this the best

we will ever be?

Loneliness is worse

when somebody is there.

Silence is louder

when you are here.

aashim's back in action - wolf, wolf!

2008-04-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

Time wasted….

Pondering…..

Over fragments and doors,

Frost holds minds,

Eyes held on the floor.

“Bow to thy master!

You are but my kind…”

An invasion,

Accompanies the ice.

In it’s being,

They would not suffice.

I lament its origin,

A floundering school.

Error a margin,

Faith lost in its pool.

Futile were my chances,

Bemoaned by my pride.

I scream.

An error.

A change in tide?

An excuse.

Time wasted,

Awe consumed,

I

Retire.

I

Retire

another new poet -second poem - very tight and having a good vocabulary

2008-04-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

introducing Radhamohini Prasad

A rummage of alphabets fall
Out into the abysmal zone
One must know, the closed gates said
Those who innocently tread
Routes of the eventually accused
Only those shall seek refuge
Who, heinous of crimes have someone's predilection
In this meditated lacunae

Hours framed by the district magistrate's well nurtured diction
Yet nothing more wholesome
Than a failed human
Dying by the hour.

I've decided to expland the blog -new poets coming in

2008-04-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

Introducing Kasturika Kumari -finished poems -something rarely seen

1.

Piece by piece

minute by minute

in the folded bud

of an orange flower

the insect

disintegrates,

dies.

2.

Onslaught of winds

Caught in a vortex

Of blue clouds

Autumn leaf.

Hanging by

a moment ago.

Alone

on the dead, dead carcass of

blackened wood

Torn asunder.

3.

The imprints through a hundred

Lined pages

The sunlight through a hundred

White sheets

The sound through a hundred

Ear drums.

This is how the heat in me pounds

The pressure swinging through

taut strings, pulled to bareness.

Edges frayed and

centers.

Two more by Shyamli

2008-04-08T00:48:00.000-07:00

Disappointment

I am left here,

With no words,

tears or ache.

No sense of feeling left

in my fingertips as

they claw at my eyelids.

Cover bleary eyes,

ridden with bitter…

Bitter grief.

It escapes slow,

as I comprehend

your decision

Slow,

In anguish I squirm.

Only one thing burns

Clear,

Crystal in the cards…

It glimmers.

I shall, in return, do you harm,

"Your home will be in flames."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The present.

Wrapped, in a spectrum

of superficial lies,

A glimpse of thoughtless hope,

I saw you looking my way

And you saw

that glimpse of foolish faith.

Thus, you,

Conniving heartless, you

wrapped a viscous black

Plague and sent it, in a letter,

Fat, stuffed obesely with

NOTHING,

just another crushed dream.

I tip over, towards that white cold void.

Fragments…

shards…

blood.

I move on.

roshan - well, what can i say , almost no word wasted...

2008-04-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

I am new to this world.

And yet sometimes I drown myself in music.

Gather the sheets closer to me, bunch them up in front of my heart,

Lest a stray shot pierce it.

A drunk stranger once told me that there are places where,

Hiding is not escaping.

Beneath the orange autumn I tried opening my eyes.

but I did not see- the immeasurable beauty of freshly sprung yellow,

Nor did I see the smiling eyes of a proud mother.

I will never see the fine dust from a crumbling leaf.

Yet there I stand, I can see the fire approaching, beyond the orange glow.

Beyond the fierce orange of an angry sunset,

I can see the pain- twisting.

What is this life?

Shyamli - my petite

2008-04-07T00:22:00.000-07:00

My petite,

my shallow petite

William Jones,

I am not … your girl.

Not anymore.

I am, however,

the unfeeling shore,

waiting,

Sandy dunes and all,

waiting, for another wave.

As I wait I feel the green

Lengthy vines sprawling,

Indolently yawing,

Over my bare bodice,

Trenchant, deep…

prying for something to thrive on.

Azure, the flowers,

now bloom

Over my body,

I wait,

Not for you.

They bloom still,

expanding and heaving

with every gasp that racks me,

As I bury you

in my grains

o’ white and yellow

and at times,

the crimson

Onto which I reflect…

your reminiscences.

I loved you,

And I never shall again.

My dunes are erupting slowly,

Embossing you with gold.

You are beautiful William Jones,

But you were a fool to believe,

(that) the clamorous silence was for a reason.

We are, presently,

in your car

and I can barely see your

non existentiality,

Or perhaps, it is probably

my lack of existence,

that simply deepens in your

wraithlike shadow.

And the wheels still turn.

I

am

not… there.

You were foolish, William Jones,

you never Were.

As I never am.

The dust,

I am just the dust on your temples

You lay on your dreams…

cloudy, dusty, dusky,

Dreams.

I never am/ was.

And thus, I never left you behind.

I just went slightly astray,

Clambering down the burrows

that haunted the fork,

we once reached.

I crawled,

to pick up the fallen.

The stray fallen bits,

of talk, of the conversations,

My solitary chronicle.

And thus, though I loved you, William Jones,

I never shall again.

The vines have embodied me.

I.

I.

Me.

No - one,

I am.

After a long silence -Shyamli - and what a voice!

2008-04-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

A year, days, months, an era has passed me by, since I last indulged my cynical critical ego. I sit here, this black keyboard on my lap. Realization sinks in, about the stagnation that seems to have plateau'd itself, and it sits poignant and smilingly smug, in and around me. My mentor, you, my reader, you, I apologize, I have no more beautiful words to enchant you with as my thoughts have puddled up in the centre of the wooden floor, around this high stool of utter ignorance that I sit on.

The purists have killed me.

The death of experience as mentioned by my reminiscent and equally wistful colleague is a farce. As if there was such a thing then how is it that I am experiencing it anyhow? It seems as though the whole world, my mind and soul included is caught in a rut, of greed and apathy… this is the epitome of foolish materialism and I can feel the corporate rat of a world sink its teeth slowly into the flesh of my calves as I sit… blissfully dreaming in this cave lit by the flickering light of my computer.

I pine as I belong nowhere and yet I belong to my comrades who too belong to this nowhere… I am the undead, caught in between two wholly different species of human intellect and mind sets. And it seems they are both equally skeptical of the other. I am tired of trying to explain my thoughts and thus I shall not bore you, and expounding my theory would imply my presumptions of you as an ignorant and intellectually lower being.

So I’ll stop.

Right here.

I believe I strangled my child like pretentious poet when I realized how small and insignificant my worries are… and I only hope now that others do too. Stop with this verbally infested carnival of freaks… self involved narcissistic FREAKS.

I shall not be one with you and your games… I shall not humor you by being brittle and vulnerable. I shall not be beautiful.

I am not beautiful.

As beauty itself has abandoned us… she left when we became what we are.

Apes.

I mock at you… and spit, at you your naïveté. Do you not see how meager your feelings are. Love isn’t even a feeling anymore… and pain? APATHY?

Get over yourselves.

The cosmos has spoken and we shall rot… our skin shall burn and blister, our gums shall reek painfully bleeding as we pick at them with our jagged nails, and our foolish politicians shall sit on their thrones and pretend they aren’t the lepers that they are. Corruption isn’t just a word… it’s a phenomenon and we my friends are in eye of this storm of hurricane proportions.

But I, as I scorn denigration, shall not speak anymore… for fear of hypocrisy...so thus go my last words.

I will sit here,

Not reminiscing,

nor waiting

As I have now exhausted,

All patience,

only for it to be replaced

by an angst, which needs no vengeance.

Thus, I sit.

Silently still,

with a blunted axe in hand..

and a warm blanked in another.

I do this for you.

The world is burning.

Roshan - a new beginning/ an incomplete poem

2008-03-24T19:24:00.001-07:00

This is an interesting development - where will it lead you, Roshan?

Sitting,

Shirt dull with dirt,

Watching the whipping by,

of barren lands- with budding life,

underneath the brown dirt.

Watching,

Convergence and practise,

Rails intertwining to form the thread,

the path which we so automatically tread.

Bright eyed and cavalrous young,

and one who lies there with silent eyes,

in the darker corner,

where the harsh light of a still dead land,

cannot reach with it it's twining fingers.

I cannot see.

Chugging along the metal lines of exploratory man.

I have tried to see the stones-

the subtly exposed skin beneath the neck,

so white and untouched,

under the carefully crafted bulge of an adolescent breast.

Careful, calculated smiles that hide their arithmetics.

I cannot see the origin- the heap of it all.

I have heard many times,

standing in the musty bookshelf,

the sound of silent footsteps that scatter around,

before finding each other in the middle.

I have heard many times, the cajoling voice of God's best creations,

urging the young to sit down- and when they are gone and the dust gets heavy,

and they cannot keep inside their explosive selves- they ask softly,

to the things around them- why do they speak as-if he speaks to them?

for if there was one who Watches and is Wise,

the purest would be the things that cannot think.

Samia - for my granddad/ finding one's own voice - it's such a mature one

2008-03-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

I fly

I fly to you

I fly straight

in a calm line.

Little beauties

change my line.

This big cloud-

this soft-hard cloud,

I touch

its boundaries

its edge

I touch.

My only curve

in this straight

journey to you I fly.

The meandering silver

glistens below,

moves so slow.

The meandering lights

on those

clover shaped cement strings

the lights

they move so slow.

The stars above look at these stars below.

I fly to you

I am here now

Your love by my side

She looks at you

and tinkling years

in her tears

pass by.

Your kids

look at you

and their thoughts

about you-

float in sad clouds;

to you they fly.

Your friends touch you,

they talk of you-

when you were young

my age

they talk of your spirit

of gentleness

and humour

of love

and communism.

The red flags fly.

They talk of your bravado-

of will and grounding.

Your poems,

your seekings-

my dispirited heart flies.

I touch you,

ice cold

eyes half open.

I talk to you

my words to you

Yes, they fly.

They take you

with tears,

they set alight

these years

of memories

their last physical

contact with History.

Fireflies,

Ashes fly.

Up and up these

mountains which you so adore

adored

adore

We touch the ice cold water

flowers and ash

ash and water

ashes to ashes

dust to dust

you ethereal

you fly.

Samia - a kind of mediatation on cows and sheep that makes a lot of sense

2008-03-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

Who am I to you?

Who

are we to you?

I see you everyday-

you walk the path I walk.

Turn away.

I wonder what you think of us

and I wonder how you think.

Your walk is steady

slow and

somber

We were like you once…

I don’t know if im correct in saying that

for you seem much more content

and graced.

I honour you,

for you walk amidst us

on this barren grey earth

that we have destructed,

yet you maintain

yourself

as you always have.

Roshan Ali - memories

2008-03-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

How do memories come back?

They travel more than us, through lands lit only by a moon.

Through tunes that ride them till they reach one's tears.

Do we even see what they mean?

Are they only ours?

I can tear through my heart, combing out the ones that mean tears,

And ones that mean nothing.

Thoughts of long stretches of sand where the footprints follow no human pattern.

These long stretches follow no particular pattern.

They stretch across my forehead.

The morning that I fled was colour-coded,

With the bright being home, behind me, and the dark in front, being dark.

Fleeing the bright orange of home, into the dark.

Feet flowing like the sand, scalding the surface upon which they stood.

Home- with the bright orange and the scalding memories of intense times.

Times that have been branded into my life, only to be brought out, to be exposed,

To be shown at the time of judgement.

At times where I stand to be judged- but there are no judges, only I.

And to look at myself in the reflections in the sand, seeing no face,

Or recognizable form.

Only to see a little product of failed efforts.

They come back clear, branded into thought,

the smell and the talk and the

the shapes that mean so much, that define the shapes of your life.

They fly back, into the very air that you breathe, and swallow

like life-giving food.

You are your memories.

You are what we call thoughts from a distant past.

Prerna too still writes poetry - here's her latest - yay!

2008-03-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

Dressed as a fairy

He stood on the pedestal

Composing another of his fairy-tales,

Ate alphabets from the air

Making words disappear

Melting the minds

Cementing the layers

With tunes of human despair.

Each soul sang the song, frozen in his throat,

This was my song.

The milk from his udders flowed through me

Trickling down, vertically

from my eyes to my knees.

Mimicking mirror, showed me a coward,

bedazzled in his prism of cries.

he asked me for some direction, saying he lacks conviction.

Haunted by Certainty, his beloved mistress.

He wondered why he always found Curiosity, her sister,

In his bed.

Yet more Roshan

2008-02-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

One evening the sun set with rotund orange,

And orange such that will form only with a setting sun,

Deep and smooth, fiery and fire-like.

A sun-made plastic orange.

And to turn and see on the other side of their sea,

The moon so white and glossy, and salt-white,

With pockmarks and not a shred of finesse,

But set out like no man’s creation,

Softly gaining in strength, with embossed edges of silver light,

It floated not far from the arm, but closer to the head.

Being orange with such quality, the gray crept into the sides of the sun,

Slowly tugging at it, to hide beneath what was one’s world, and away!

Away, below our world, below what one will see.

Glancing one last time at the subjects of it’s immortal glory,

Surrendering us to the craft of the night,

And the gloss of the moon.

To ask, “What do you see in the setting sun?”

And to hear the quiet pause such as in a forgotten line,

With small gasps of nervous hesitation,

And the small hands grabbing at the edges of our shirts.

Listen to the quiet sounds of thought, as their nervous fingers,

Do nothing but twist.

To pace gently, softly rolling your heel on the ground,

To not appear more nervous than them,

We wait.

Wait for thirty years or more, and wait for leaves to fall,

And the call of the regular bird to end.

And finally hear, like the quiet whisper of mouse feet,

A voice say, “orange.”

Standing beneath the still eucalyptus,

Watching nothing move, but the stillness of the limp leaves.

The fading sky beneath resting its tired eyes, closing them gently.

Gently enough to let the tree watch the changing light

And to form its own conclusions on the nature of night.

Leaves stir a little, like the anticipatory fingers of a pianist.

The beetle climbs slowly, after its nap, to the highest point,

On the mound of sand at the base of the tree.

Yet it cannot see what breathes in it.

Oblivious to all but conscious of the expanding dark.

Roshan -

2008-02-25T08:40:00.000-08:00

Below the quiet evening air,

A layer of talk grew into a conversation,

That spurned the entire world, and then the universe,

Shredding in its path all that it laid its convoluted words upon.

And after that, it continued down the soft asbestos path,

Treading quietly on previous versions which begged to be restored.

They lay broken and enchanted by the present,

While their unfinished selves withdrew into the basking glory

Of the past- hard and chaffed, yet more gentle than skin.

Words of the previous times rode on their backs,

Humming and hovering around their eager ears,

Satisfying what they liked - for they were satisfied when they heard what they desired.

And cruelly they spoke among themselves,

As-if all of time had bundled itself up for this one moment,

Where it could explode into stillness and bring change.

Yes, time is our hero - our only hero,

Among mortals and peevish newspaper men,

Who walk from their homes thinking of desire,

And go home to compulsion.

Time is our only prophet- who changes the world endlessly.

Every movement and there is infinite change.

Change, change and everything in between,

Simply another movement of time.

We must bow before time, for without it,

We will be stuck in a bland moment in history.

Roshan - prolific

2008-02-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

There in front were the stars,

almost at eye level.

Although the stars were there, so close to the touch,

they did not sparkle like her eyes.

They drew out, on the canvas of the black night sky,

her absence.

The flowers were lovely yellow yesterday evening,

and they grew wholly, like carpets of dreams,

but today, they were nothing in comparison to her.

Their yellows were duller and their stalks less turgid.

Below there were no roads to travel, that had not her voice

attached to the wandering signposts, as they whipped by.

Their wanderings were just a walk away.

What should i sing, or utter to stop comparing her to the world,

for she is everything in the world, nothing less.

Knowing her is almost like talking to the universe or playing with life,

until one sees the secrets all unfolding.

Passion is passive in this world, that so cruelly takes her away.

Aditi again - new poem sent to me after a long time

2008-02-25T08:33:00.000-08:00

Silent whispers
Sniffle in nostalgia
Humming a familiar tune

The mind plays
Recklessly
With the heart,
Like the sadist wind
That ruffles up
Crisp raked memories

Every thought has an appendix
Of old habit and decayed love
Which it carries along
Like a vestigial blister
That refuses to be balm

Meandering emotions
Seek absorption
To still the change
But they still churn
Like the frothing sea
Unleashing
Venomous nectar.

And endless war fought,
Sought not by me

Deliverance I beg for
From the battles of
I with Me

Roshan's latest poem that he showed to me.

2008-02-12T00:59:00.000-08:00

I was touched by beauty today.

A soft fleeting touch of merciful beauty,

That brushed my hair, with soft fingers,

And drew within me, figures of naked beauty,

Drawing within me, exquisite ideas of conspiring get togethers,

Where there was only me and it, writhed in such ultimate pleasure,

That the moon paled in comparison and sun blushed,

Until under the stars (yet there were none, for we saw nothing),

Gentle breeze blew and far away a hurricane brewed.

It too conspired against others- but impersonally and unknowingly.

And yet we did not see time beyond the seconds that we breathed together,

Seconds that grew from our mingling bodies.

We created time, destroyed others through our thoughts,

Eliminating time that would too conspire against us,

If we had let it- but time too was powerless.

Without action there is no time.

And there was no action in me- just beauty that flowed through space,

Substituting time.

Without effect the action means nothing,

And there were no effects- just timeless beauty.

In that moment that lasted forever,

We created and destroyed the universe.

Breathing something that was not air,

Surviving without oxygen.

Update

2008-02-12T00:55:00.000-08:00

The exhibition came and went.
Different people liked the books according to who they were.
No book went entirely unliked.
The compilation hasn't happened yet.
But Roshan still writes poetry.
Maybe the others too.
Arka is on the way to becoming a famous poet
Prerna has recently made a poet friend
Things keep happening
That's good enough, I guess..

the poetry makes nothing happen exhibition

2007-11-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

ok, dear friends artists poets lyrcists designers or whatever else you'd like to term yourself, we're starting to roll on monday coming week 19th morning 8.15
the srishti library main shelf is our showcase
i only have eight books to put on show - as of now
the librarians have agreed to give us the comp for our use too
we can put the books on the shelf and ashwin's video on the comp, plus the books too in etext format if you have it...
to begin with i need from each of you is a poster to be kept in front of the library with your photo , a brief write up about you - two or three lines, only facts, no crap please, it's a public space, though fine humour can be allowed i guess, and one of your poems on the poster , preferably one written after the course - like pratap's cube cube, aashim's prayers and aditi's later ones, roshan's lace etc...
each day i want to try and keep each book open on a new poem
the books will be a accompanied by a feedback book so that readers can put in their comments
so please gather by eight in front of srishti library monday 19th to do the needful
once we kick it off we will get new ideas and can better the exhibition which should run at least for two weeks
remember the plan includes soon making a book of twenty poems at least - 2 from each of you minimum - designed by all of us together and perhaps getting the newspapers to write on this exhibition... if any one shows interest...
please acknowledge receipt of this mail - the main ten participants especially
vaibhav and ashwin put your poems into exhibit mode
samia, shyamli, sorry i couldn't get in touch with you yet but here is the gist of everything...
take care, all of you

pratap's beautiful delirium continues

2007-11-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

( )3
Gullible savage
Fall.
Stumble into your own
TRAp
Fal l.
F all
.
For we wer e
Doomed
T o be doomed.
Suck ed through
The one-way valve,
Trapped in this ( )Reinforced
br eak-proof.
Rubber balls, we bounce
Her e inside
Happy, unassuming-
Healthy wealthy wise
Fr ee. Do as we please. And
Never stop bouncing -
Because we love bouncing
Keeps us sane, safe, happy
Inside .
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
bounce
and
and
and
and and
and
and

And don’t forget
T o tak e us down with you.
TRAp
But I will not bounce
I will not be fr ee, wise or healthy.
I will sit her e- still, inside . I will be sick.
For my sickness can tak e me
Wher e you could never have.
And my horrible sickness
With its toxic acid ooze, will
Eat up these r einforced walls.
I will escape this
This I didn’t volunteer for.
And I will fly
Through this acid-ooze-eaten-through window
Ther e, outside.
Truly fr ee, I will fly. And
Never stop the flying-
Because I love flying
Keeps me on my toes
The uncertainty-
The adventur e-
The wonder -

( )Reinforced
br eak-proof.
fly
fly
fly
fly
fly
fly
fly
and
and and
and
and
and
f l y
f l y
f l y
f l y
f l y
I will be sick.
I will be sick
- inside outside.
design: dayglocrazie
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3

Aashim - Prayers: a very cool poem

2007-11-01T04:15:00.001-07:00

Prayers.

High in skies

far above the blue,

air surrounding me,
transparency wafting through

this fire,
stretched red on
my sentient desire.

traveling unseen
water
spills this gullible green.

beckoning mirth

a shadow of yellow

upon this

enchanting earth.

"the torture never stops" - frank zappa

2007-10-30T08:52:00.001-07:00

Three new poems by Pratapaditya with a little help from his friend

ALONE

The silence is oppressive-

An ominous presence.

The alarm clock in my head

Warns- time to ring…

The massive machinery

Lifts an enormous piston

And slowly kicks itself to life-

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

rrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn

nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

nnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggg

gggggggggggggggggggggggggggg!

The ringing is comforting-

A primordial distraction,

Keeping me from finding

Myself.

The Savage Associates:

As the clouds part momentarily,

A glimpse of the ancient woods

Where those great old men

Keep watch.

Majestic old men,

With long smooth gray beards,

Majestic noses,

Chins held humbly low.

Winded wizened skin, wrinkled

By their perpetual frown/s.

Why?

Creeping old age?

Or something you know

And I don’t, yet?

Are you a savage,

Like me, or

Have you evolved?

Are you trapped

In your coarse wizened skin

Or your igneous mind,

Like I am in mine?

Do you exist outside my mind,

And I, outside yours?

Or have we created each other

In our mutual error of association -

That spark of imagination called life?

Dusk in God’s Hand

Vehicles on a far away road,

Winding and whining, their sound

Filtered through

Swirling wisps of smoke/

My y)ears.

Another day,

Alive only for a day,

Changing seamlessly to night,

My temporary co-passenger

Who leaves before me.

It's God’s hand -

This beautiful landscape,

This imaginary fore-/background,

That exists in my head.

Piquant children,

Singing evening songs, their voices

seemingly (e)merging.

A distant bird,

Its name escapes me, a clutter

Of names, calling out simultaneously,

And it's difficult to say which one’s right.

Aditi's new beautiful poem

2007-10-11T04:54:00.000-07:00

You say it's divine to love

And love shall

Help us find you

We love.

We love, we feel happy

That happiness lures us

To just let the love grow

And then

Then we suffer

We suffer

Because we have loved

We suffer

Every moment

The burden of that feeling

Heaves upon -

Difficult it becomes

To pull along

To breathe

We love, we suffer

We suffer and then beg

Cry out for help

For cure

For deliverance

We finally come

Knocking at your door

You are quite honest, I guess...

The poet of Wry Lives is Back with "Lace"!

2007-10-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

Part 1

Remind them of reminiscence,

And see the sky turn gray over where I could not.

Carefully perceiving the others motives, - (is it other's or others')

And the wind between the trees- carefully blowing.

An October afternoon, quietly in-folding,

Breathing in the fumes of an imminent clash,

(Intimidate the other and half the fight is over.)

Foreign soil, poured into ours does not teem with plants here.

Here the Grapes are fresh and heavy, bending the bow upon which,

They see life and rain and sometimes sunshine.

Bending the bow upon which they reach their sordid purple state,

And shine with purple-ness, and glitter with the power of

hands and nothing more.

Come sad October afternoon,

And rub the shine from my day.

The polish was too tainted with grime,

for you to ignore.

Come and float slyly over the quiet scene.

Let no thought come between you and your subterranean lies.

The traffic was faint at points,

Rustling through various leaves.

And after that there was some smell of alcohol,

Decayed, old, uncomfortable alcohol.

Despite the afternoon, the road winded,

Stretching between one side and the other.

The cars were one with it- there was no separation between,

the two creations of reckless man.

And indeed we did look up, and see the Empty,

Stretching between the stars, so much,

Stretching between the stars.

We did somehow realize, and we do realize now-

Breathing into it will not create life.

Part 2

You did say to me, summer of winter,

That there was something to see in them.

I have not seen much yet, swimming inexplicably inside them.

Is that why?

Why me, summer of winter,

Why not you?

Or

Why not them?

Can you say, and try to feel,

Something happy or good to me,

Without you.

Can you say- I want you to find meadows, filled with carrion?

Can you say- I want you to sit still in a bowl of clear water?

And can you think yet again- I want you to be?

Can you say this and say this without you?

For if you can, oh Gardener of the East,

Then you will be one with me,

One with you,

One with them.

And one with them.

Part 3

Begin to suffice in tranquil scenes,

And see clearly, what you tread on.

Must I say to hear vast speech?

After the first word comes the second,

Unless you are higher than most.

One leads to the other that leads back to it,

And sometimes, they lead to nothing, but each other.

And that is nothing.

You know not what I talk of?

Do you not see it?

Walking beneath a glimpse of wanting,

Wailing beneath brightly lighted windows,

Full of white light and flickering screens.

Full of shallow questions about the night's show.

They lean against each other- these uncreated men.

And submit to each other their occupational forms,

That mark their joys.

And when they come to a brightly lit word,

They clap and pat each other on their backs,

But their cheeks hurt.

But before they part for the day, to tend to their wives,

They ask each other to draw the sunset.

Tomorrow it will be different, my poetic friend.

And come tomorrow too.

Part 4

Palatial establishments spread far,

And so do the dying embers of cold fires.

Cold fires spreading through.

You stand and watch the bull's blood being swallowed.

Do you cut it up to satisfy a gastronomic fancy?

Or do you view the universe in it's torn behind?

Vast palaces glinting in the light of dawn,

Pink and glorious, its marble threads, weaving away into the distance.

Behind lie the acidic green of an immature forest.

And beyond rise the remains of yellow mountains-

Diseased and yellow mountains, those glint in the morning light,

That beckon like desperate housewives, raving into the morning light,

At the milkman, who hurries away.

And the screen whirs and flickers, like a destitute widow beckoning wildly to a passerby-

Be it a man or a woman.

But from a distance they feel nothing.

Except the fury of a missed meeting.

If at some point, you decide to be free,

If at any point you decide to be free.

Look behind into the shadows- you may be followed.

Hello everyone - how the course is graded

2007-09-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Here is my criteria for grading the course.
Eight poems plus one intro - out of 45 marks (5x9)
Attendance - 10 marks
Book - 45 marks - lyrcism, poetry, design, art and timeliness plus effort
will be the denominators here. (5x9)
All submissions have to be in by sharp Saturday nine o'clock.
submission before that too are extremely welcome.
This is one thing I insist on.
Another is - no poems from before the course.
To repeat ad nauseam - the book must have at least four illustrations including the one on the cover, a decent layout including a cover page, a title page (inner), page numbers. a contents page, an intro and at least eight poems.
Thanks for all the active participation and inputs so far.
All the best.
Agenda for last class:
Feedback on course as to what worked, what didn't, what could have been done better and checking to see if learning outcomes match learning goals.
Lunch together. We all go Dutch.
See you all on Saturday.
Intro's yet to come in for checking - Prerna's, Ashwin's, Vaibhav's and Roanna's.
Ashwin's video and three poems are still pending.

Aashim - Intro (Invitation)

2007-09-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

My poems will give you

reason to believe,

that you re-live

this intricate weave.

These threads

they put on your plate,

are embedded

notions which conflate;

Forever changing

forcefully raging.

A part of me

Now it becomes

A part of you.

Leave your fears

and confront them.

A head-on collision
with my mind's Vision.

roshan's latest poem - intertextual stuff....

2007-09-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

Do you know and not know,

From where or where to?

Or did you sit and turn to watch the lampshade?

Did it throw its shadows rashly?

I treasure my shadow.

It gives me more me and watches my back.

Do you see and not hear the shadows,

That laughed at your childhood and your children.

My shadow remains with me through the ice.

And it cracks, to reveal sluiced sense.

What dies and seems to die in the shadows of time?

The city cracks and weeps.

Its omnipotent towers throw themselves to the ground.

Beating the earth with conquering terror,

Come the soldiers- breathing burning flowers.

Pick it up and rinse it.

Crush it beneath your fleet of fleas and flesh.

Alter time with space, lord of the Fleas.

Remind me of grass greener than pig's meat.

Lost in a garden of wild fruit,

Dripping in wild secretions,

Syrupy, sweet, and poisonous.

The maiden of the East makes her delicate way.

Her fresh white feet, leave no marks,

Upon the viscous mass.

It turns to see all, twisting into itself.

Looking beyond the world, into itself.

Lest we forget ourselves.

Brick and stone, turning the land,

Twisting the land

See the land being softened, like hay,

Or liquid rubber

Or hay in liquid rubber, in a furnace,

In a hot corner of a dirty factory.

With dirty, black-faced workers,

Smiling to themselves, remembering,

Lest they forget their own lives.

aashim's latest/last

2007-09-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

Emotions wasted

patience tested.

I fall from my

cliff.

Privacy explodes.

leaving its debris

strewn across my

mind's plea.

I crouch and evade

the quips

and attempt to salvage

these ruins of a charade.

I dream

I still dream.

But even dreams

Cry with nightmares.

These fiendish nightmares

a poisoning stain .

I ponder with fate,

remembrance detained.

My hand quivers

with enlightenment.

Dawn surprises me

the moon a sliver.

Stars light unlit eyes

to see

before them

clouds in guise.

The eyes circle in fast

spiralling fast

falling

on conclusions last?

I breathe

I breathe in the sweetness

of moonshine

forgiving

and yet I feel

obliged to decline.

a moment more in this charade

and I shall lose

the intent

of my serenade.

For those who want to know more about Paradjanov.

2007-09-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

Why Paradjanov & His Films Matter

Sergei Paradjanov. Imprisoned. Respected - highly - by Andrei Tarkovsky. Was he really a homosexual? I don't know. He was a threat to the Communist system. That can't be disputed. Something Socratic about being arrested for purportedly corrupting the youth and on homosexual charges - trumped up or otherwise.

His films. His art. If you see Ashik Kerib , the protagonist is definitely a glorification of the homoerotic. One would seldom find a male as beautiful as the Ashik of the film.

I remember seeing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors first. I'll never forget the way he directed the camera, the way it captures the felling of a tree in the beginning. I'll never forget the movie, although it was typically Russian, or rather, Georgian. I saw Ashik Kerib next. Then I heard that he died. My friend who was crazier that I about him did a painting of him and wrote an article on him. I did too. Both our articles got published. It was my second piece that saw the light of day, as they say.

Many years later I met a genuine lover of film on a railway platform and offered to write an article on Paradjanov for his magazine. He took me seriously and sent me copies of The Colour of Pomegranates and Paradjanov's last film co-directed with Dodo Abashidze. The Colour of Pomegranates had the same kind of magic as Shadows, but somehow the last one, the Legend of Suram Fortress, didn’t appeal as much to me.

I tried, but I couldn't write about him. His images defied me. They couldn't be spoken of. So I broke my word and did not send the article in. I still have the films. But my abdication has never stopped bothering my conscience. This is an attempt to set things right because I feel that I now have the requisite distance to write about him. I showed some of Paradjanov’s paintings to an artist-friend of mine and he told me that they were reminiscent of Da Vinci's. I showed sections of the film twice and got diametrically opposite views – once, highly appreciative, from a younger audience, once, primarily negative - from an older audience.

But let me speak of his images and their flow and see where it leads and what you think of them both, when they are described to you in mere words.

I do not agree with his religious position – Orthodox – although Mikhail Bakhtin would have. I agree only partly with his political or nationalist and ethnocentric views and his heavy foregrounding of culture. But when it comes to viewing and reading his films as powerful signifiers I am forced to acknowledge him, forced to use but two words to sum it up – radical mastery. Of a unique kind. Of, I dare say, regardless of objections that may rise from any quarter, the “essential” kind, primarily made up of excitingly audio-visual lyricism and poetry.

Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan - these are three of the places he celebrates through his three key films. The film Colour of Pomegranates deals with the life of Sayat Nova, an 18th century Armenian poet, whose poetry is characterized in the film by Paradjanov quoting Valery Briusov, as one of "the greatest triumphs of the human spirit." Paradjanov tells us in the beginning itself that what he attempts is not a straightforward narration of the poet's life and works but the creation of a cinematic or filmic equivalent for the uniqueness and beauty of his poetry. One remembers T.S. Eliot's famous critical terms "objective correlative" and "unified sensibility" while watching the film. Paradjanov works in a medium that can only appeal to two of our senses, the eye and the ear, but he gives us an impression that all our five senses have been fed along with our hearts, spirits, wills, souls and minds. This list which includes the body by not naming it is not fortuitous. His is an attempt at holistic art, non pareil.

For someone like me who has watched four of Paradjanov's major films, what remains challenging is the range and sweep of Paradjanov's unforgettable images. "I am he whose soul is tortured," we hear repeatedly in TCOP in the beginning, a line taken from Sayat Nova's poetry. It is even possible that I am quoting this line wrong. Possible, but not probable. Not that it matters. It captures the essence of Paradjanov’s films. The line fits perfectly not only Sayat Nova's ethereally anguished life but also Paradjanov's harrowing experiences in prison and elsewhere.

What shape(s) and/or form(s) would be the equivalent/s of a tortured soul?

Ivan's face in The Shadows of (our) Forgotten Ancestors is a typical example of masterful casting. After the death of his loved one, he looks haggard and woebegone. ‘The very picture of misery.’ We see more about what Marichka meant to him in the crow's feet around his eyes than in the scenes before, sorrow piling up on itself and making us feel its intense pangs. And the shots of Ivan in a tree plucking an apple, Ivan eating an apple and then soon after marrying another woman for whatever reason, be it sex or her will, haunt us too with their reference to the story of Adam and Eve, but with the whole thing given an unexpected twist in that the second woman is shown to be Eve here. Did Paradjanov know about the legend of Lilith?

But it is in TCOP that the images flow freely, like salt, stunning us with their grandeur.
Three fish, two dead, lying on a pale, plain background, but with one fish in the middle flopping around in agony , drawing its last breath with pain in this harsh world to tell the story of....
Shakespeare, inevitably.
A foot crushing a bunch of grapes, the red juice flowing from it like blood. Someone told me Madonna borrowed it in one of her videos.
A knife on a white cloth, stained with spreading red...
A page of ancient manuscript on which is written poetry that is not decipherable if one is not Armenian...
Shot after shot transfixing us...tansforming us into thinking of the meaning of words like beauty, imagery, painting, “sculpting in time” and space, framing, composition, shapes, colours, form and... life.
Into thinking of direction, the camera's eye, movement conveyed by its lack of movement, by things endlessly moving or spinning in the background, language conveyed by the lack of dialogue, audio-visual ambiences, the language of film and the grammar of cinema; music, rhythm , structuration and editing.

If Shadows is about first love and how true it can be, beautiful in its innocence and ghostly in its everlasting nature; TCOP is about how hopeless love can be at times and also how impossible it can be. Ivan's sexual initiation and awakening is beautiful, although heavily sensuous, when as a boy he plays with Marichka in the waters of a stream and they throw water at each other, both naked, he but a fresh adolescent and she little more than a girl. The play of light and shade in this section makes of their relationship exactly that; the play of love awakening into knowledge of its own glory and loveliness. It is different with/in Sayat Nova - the precocious boy who has already understood the power of words and images and the imagination and turned away from the stifling nature of religion - who sees the world in a lopsided artistic fashion and sees things others don't - when he turns voyeur and watches his father being massaged and bathed, watches men bathe and finally watches a woman bathing -
In one of the most memorable shots in the history of film we are shown things from the boy's perspective - we become the child-voyeur
What we see is a woman's breasts - soap and water running over them like a pretty little waterfall and a shell covering one of her nipples but we are both awe-struck by the carved perfection of those breasts and made uneasy by the thought that formulates in our minds as we look alternately at them and the boy's expression - that catching sight of these breasts is going to mark him as separate from all others because they belong to none other than his mother - and this marking is what is going to make him special.
The child grows up into a man but he embraces the word for beauty's sake and not for the truth's sake. He seems self -possessed or driven to do so out of his understanding of the subtexts of music and the colours of cloth-dye the women in those parts excelled in making. Paradjanov uses images of half - opened, broken pomegranates to signify the complexity of Sayat Nova's (and his) personality.
Each object becomes for him a signifier he can sing poems about - of transcendental significance - his real object being perhaps to somehow forget the one unforgettable, ‘terribly beautiful’ sight of his childhood. Jocasta's breasts.

The boy grows up into a man. He carries around with him a musical instrument that only an Armenian will recognize, their equivalent of the harp, the lyre and the sitar. The Axe of their space, the Armenian equivalent of the lute. It helps him sing and its round back looks like a woman's breast codified by now into an eternal pattern. He has become a poet. He has to sing to a princess. She falls in love with him. He falls in love with her. It is the old/earlier story repeated, of hopeless and forbidden love. He cannot have her, she is too beautiful and too far above him in station. He is born to be the tragic poet par excellence, the object of his desire is like a deconstructed text, like every text, perennially deferring meaning, eluding his greedy grasping to arrive at its significance. The images continue to fall into the vortices of our eyes like rain on our favourite roses' petals, blinding us with too much beauty. They are no longer alone but coupled, tripled with theatrical tableaus and the kind of music that can only be called unearthly because we haven't heard its sort before. The music of the Carpathian mountains thrills us in Shadows but Armenian music sounds eerily beautiful - a mix of Persian and Russian that is indescribable. Paradjanov goes for many single shots and his editing is of a rough kind but the effect is strange, it carries us into the past effortlessly - it never fails to transport us into his mind where shells and peacock's feathers and precious stones and dyed cloth and rare shades of colours and shapely vessels mix together to remind us of a word in the name of another of his films - arabesques. Arabesques of pain that make us feel happy, somehow?!

If I had seen The Legend of Suram Fortress first and only that I might have disliked Paradjanov. His collaboration with Abashidze somehow fails to evoke in me the same feeling of awe I felt when I saw Shadows and Ashik and TCOP. The sources he draws from notwithstanding, his work, like that of all greats, including Shakespeare, is not even. In Shadows he is on familiar terrain but easily transcends the best. In Ashik he enters such a strange realm of excellence that even I don't have the courage to follow him there by trying to describe in words the curious "spectacle" he serves up, so vastly different from anything I have ever come across that it defies verbal narration. A scene from it has haunted my poetic imagination - returning as an image I often write about - images of driftwood and a desert where tumbleweed flies aimlessly about in the shifting and rollicking sand and wind. I have not yet been able to conjure up a better metaphor for mere meaninglessness.

Till I saw the films of great directors like Bergman - Seventh Seal & Through the Glass Darkly, Tarkovsky's Sacrifice & Andrei Rubliev, Antonioni, Pasolini whom Paradjanov thought a film god and rightly so, The Marriage of Maria Braun - Fassbinder, Satyajit Ray - Pather Panjali etc. I did not give much credence to the rumour that the audio-visual medium could be as powerful as the word. However, after viewing these along with films like the ones crafted by Paradjanov I began to have second thoughts about my basic premise. It seemed to me that a book could be written on comparing Tarkovsky and Paradjanov that would have as much right to exist as George Steiner's book on whether Tolstoy or Dostoievsky was the greater artist. I remember fighting with my girlfriend one day and to forget the pain going to the public library in my small hometown and spending time in the company of books written by all the authors who had won the Nobel Prize. To forget my so-called sorrow I wrote several things sitting there, and one was a piece that was in praise of the Russian national character for producing maximalist works , how they belonged to a tradition I could only envy , an incomplete Russian cathedral made of giant bricks like the works of - and it was here I began to subversively include not only figures like Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova and Issac Babel , whose works broke out of the maximalist mode, but also great film makers like Kosintsev who will be remembered for his magnificently Russian Lear. and , of course, Tarkovsky and Paradjanov. It was to justify my own "love" of the minimalist/miniature that I brought their names in. But to return - .

The flow of his images.

The love affair –craven- and running riot in symbols and emblems and motifs, with masks and frozen bas-reliefs of living figurines galore. Who can describe the richness of these scenes? I would have to be a Keats to speak of Paradjanov's films. To describe with exactitude what he saw etched on the Grecian Urn, Keats had to be a visionary. I, on the other hand, am only paying back a debt after it has ceased to be relevant, perhaps, and in a manner that is actually a mockery of my good intentions. The journalistic trick of filling in my narrative by suitable slides from the film which I could cut and paste here to embellish my narrative wouldn't work in this instance. But I may be forced to do it, to reduce the uni-dimensional to just two dimensions on a flat surface. No, I refuse to. Let that task be left to the editors, if necessary

Having been separated from his lover, Sayat Nova goes to live in a monastery. It has nothing to do with being religious. It makes for the right kind of experience for one who has not been able to enjoy requited love. The chief bishop dies and is buried. The sect is the Armenian Orthodox church and the symbolism in the rituals is surrealistic and makes for rich tapestries. The boy who was defiant and wiped the blood of the sacrificial cock off his forehead when it was drawn on there in the shape of a cross by his father is now quite at ease in the old dispensation of the religious order. Maybe he always was, for both poets and the many religious sects and divisions and denominations of Christianity are word -centred. He see dreams of his father, dying, and his mother too and finally of "her." Having become old, he has his most powerful dream yet, of invaders breaking the church down, of her again and finally of his death. The last comes true, telling us the invasion will too. But there is a clear indication that, like his poetry, his land with its curious mix of Islamic calligraphy and Armenian culture and Christianity will not yield to the new invaders' creeds and ideology but will survive and stay for ever young in the hallowed memory of people like Paradjanov who like the poems of Sayat Nova. From whence came this incredible movie and will come again, as indeed it has in history, Armenia’s resurrection. The invaders have been driven out. Olaf Palmuk has won the Nobel Prize for literature. Strange are the games that destiny plays with the men and mice of this world.

This article has taken interesting twists, turns, diversions, digressions and detours as is the usual wont of any article I attempt to write. But I must not forget that my main theme is Paradjanov's wizardry. Part of it lies in his ability to find sources that are translatable, flexible and malleable like gold. Like Jorge Luis Borges he creates anew from the shadows and works of his forgotten ancestors the material that he needs and can mold into great art in his cinematic medium, illuminating the politics and history of his time by reinterpreting them to get them to say what he wants to. Mikhay/ilo Kotsyubinsky's unforgettable love story set in the Carpathians, Sayat Nova's poetry, Mikhail Lermontov's poem that tells the story of a wandering lovelorn minstrel, an old Gerogian foktale, Pirosmani's arabesques - in his hands they get metamorphosed into celluloid that people always end up comparing to poetry and fine art and sculpture and painting. Although the world's acceptance may mean nothing, of him the adage is true that a "prophet is not honoured in his own country, among his own people or by those in his family.” His films faced severe criticism in the USSR but kept winning award after award at every international film festival they were screened. Awards they richly deserve, as time testifies.

It is as I dreaded, knew in my bones. I am unable, like before, to write about his movies to my satisfaction. I remember the golden bowl, the light aimed like a spear at the cathedral's roof and it caving in, the paintings on the walls, the man who when he was young looked like a Muslim and a girl but as he grew up had a face lined with sorrow, slightly long hair and a beard and a moustache reminiscent of Christ's and the typical imagined, stereotyped ig-noble Russian Tolstoyan peasant. Colours never used before, shades of green and red and blue, stylization, the eyes of the actors who are clearly only pretending to be the characters locking constantly with the camera, the unearthly wailing of the music, the symbolism that means too much and is oblique, obverse, indirect, surreal... But how can these things be explained, it has to be seen to be believed - along with the rough grainy look and feel of this period film, the camera's odd jerky movements, the rough editing – yes, no, I am repeating myself. I would not be able to write about Ashik Kerib either,or. Except to say that it is a mix of Muslim and Christian imagery with the stress given to Islamic notions of beauty - in that, very Lermontovian. These films resist even the verbal magic of an advanced adept like myself.
I could write about Legend but it doesn't interest me except for the Georgian element. I could write about Shadows. Let me write about truth and beauty and love and tie it up with Shadows to end.

Truth to tell, The Colour of Pomegranates and Ashik Kerib are not films I relate to with my heart, they have a cold detached desolate kind of beauty that appeals only to my intellectual side. The same isn't the case, however, with Shadows.

Ivan and Marichka love each other deeply, with total innocent abandon, as if theirs is the only love on earth, but tragedy strikes and she dies. The grief stricken Ivan wanders around alone and has only one friend left , an idiot. Marichka comes back to haunt him. A woman who falls in love with Ivan's handsome body gets him to marry her. He remains unhappy. Finally Ivan dies, is killed, in fact, fittingly, by his wife’s jealous lover, and we see him being reunited with the cause of his death, Marichka's spirit. If ever a love story that praises eternal love has been shot with aching poignancy and nostalgic power it is this one. Starting from the muted red and brown tones of the beginning that makes us think the film is in black and white to its gradual unfolding into muted colour it fascinates us with Paradjanov's visions of how the camera should move. We are introduced into the mind and heart of Ivan, the parallel of which one generally sees only in a Dostoievsky story. This is a very difficult thing to try out in film. The movie has a typical Russian and Georgian feel to it, the background of the Carpathian mountains, the music, the poor folk of the land, the lovely women with their attractive garb, the dances and the epic feel all testify to Paradjanov's ability to belong to the great Russian tradition. Why did the Communists find him so threatening? Because he reveled in and extolled the past. Revolutionaries know that it is dangerous to begin to understand the past. But artists know that the past is the only material we have at hand to work with. No one has worked with the past, whether of these now war-torn places and their rich cultures that he seems to know inside out that he brings into his films or the past of film itself, as well as Paradjanov. That is hyperbole, it is true, but deep inside I still hold to what I wrote about Paradjanov long ago - that he tried to raise film into the same levels as religion, beauty, love, sex and truth and his failure is one of art’s happiest successes. Finis.

Pratap's interesting intro - and last poem (not in proper foramt)

2007-09-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

Bonsai is a plastic-man who lives on the planet Plastique, existing separately from you and I, yet in the same time and space our planet now occupies. He worked in the Exhaustive Science Research Organization as a Research Executive before he went insane.

He was then recruited to the ESRO Labs so that his “anti-progressive behaviour” could be studied and cured- the perfect system taking perfect care of him and his unstable state of mind.

The poems in this book are written by him.

He is a creation, not mine, but of myth: as we all are.

While in/ writing my myth, I stumbled upon these poems, in what used to be his office and has now been reduced to a ‘dark, dingy’ store room loaded with E.S.R.O. junk.

From the little I have understood of him and his poems, I would say that Bonsai believes his poetry can never be truly understood- it can only be (felt?). He also believes that his idea of poetry can only be understood through his poems and not anything outside of it. The poems are the closest we can get to understanding who he is or what poetry means to him.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My poems:

hope-tiny glimmering silvery specks

elusively slipping through my fingers

in this b(l)ack-water of The Light.

My/ your life(s)

your/ my mutual/ exclusive existence(s)

(in) our exclusive/ mutual mindscape(s).

Our,

conditioning(s)

logic(s)

hero(es)

myth(s)- primordial fodder,

poet(s)- arch-e-typ(ic)al spoon-feeder(s)

spoon-feeding (us) delicately;

(not) knowing

we are all (in)

the same feeding ground(s)-

the spoon-fed

spoon-fed

by our real hero-

Mythos- the White sun

White Sunlight Eyes

subtlest potent fractal

casting its brilliant blinding Light

on/

on/ on/

on/ on/ on/

on/ on/ on/ on/ on/

on/ on/ on/ on/ on/ on/

on/ on/ on/ on/ on/ on/ on/

our corroded armour(s)

as we dance together,

clanking lifelessly

around the cold embers

of our dying camp-fire(s);

mirroring the B(l)ack shadow(s)-

the (real?) light of the brilliant White sun,

(both) chanting in our horrible

rasping, tin-can voice(s),

our hollow tin-can inc(l)an(k)tation(s):

here we go round the control tower

eating ourselves

eating each other

here we go round the control tower

till none’s left to

d-e-v-o-u-r:

Last class - some reflections

2007-09-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

Watched Sergei Paradjanov's Colour of pomegrantes
Read Archibald Mcleish's Ars Poetica
and Marianne Moore's "Poetry I too dislike it"
Read excerpts from one of Rimbaud's letters - all with aim of getting inspiration for intro for the book.
Then Koshy read out one of his works in progress.
Shyamli's intro was also read out from the blog.
There was group discussion and individual review in the afternoon of titles of collections, contents page, copyright page, cover page, inner title page, order in which poems can be put , illustrations etc...
Aditi and Prerna are going for manuscript books.
The rest for print. Shyamli's is partly hand done and mainly print.
except for Ashwin who wants to do eight poems plus an intro as an MSWord doc and a video of one of his poems that's audio-visual.
The minimum number of poems has been fixed at eight but maximum number left to each individual - the only condition being that it should all be work produced in the course.
Pratap, Shyamli, Aditi, Roshan, samia have all written their intros and sent them in and they're up on the blog for all to review.
Submission is at nine thirty sharp on last Saturday, that is next week.
The group hopes to have an exhibition and a compilation of best poems from the material produced during the course later.
For enquiries, help and monitoring of progress this coming week please keep contacting Koshy by email.

prerna's eighth one - black cat white cat

2007-09-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

Running a marathon

With my mind and my brain

We reach a space

With beads for eyes

All white, all white

I stared at the wide

Blue black range

We Followed,

that strange smell.

Flurrying

Flowing

Flipping

We frayed

Denying a departure.

It stayed with us.

From the day of my birth

till it numbered my corpse.

unfolding

unfurling

we rose

with a new hope

to find her

Not making a mistake this while

we started the search from ourselves this time.

Roshan's poem - last in the poetry collection

2007-09-24T06:12:00.000-07:00

See the Beginning

Towards the earth, towards time,

over the hills and under the line,

and over the times where we were sad

and brought together another's times

Reach out father and give out your arms,

give out your brother to the other's demise.

See not what we thought or did,

but distinguish from the other what we did or bid.

Before the farm, over the sand,

The birds from the forest begin to smile.

They did but see the sea of smiles,

And rode together the wind and the tide.

Rather than reach out, they bore among them

The other world's freedom and our demise.

Sadder than salt in your tears, and bolder than the soldier's gun,

The other sat before his ephemeral fire,

And brought together the sand and the stars.

Breathe together and keep our souls,

Smile together and breathe our souls into your heart.

Over the hills, talk rode clear,

And from beneath rose another's trumpeter,

Fallen from a musical pillar,

Racking into the other's tune,

And hanging on to but a few notes,

Their little arms and little fleas broke free.

Forever free, not broken- but free.

Do not but see, my dear's love,

Begin to begin and you might hurt another.

Begin to end, and you satisfy many.

Begin to see, and you might see the beginning.

And then you will end.

Samia's introduction - word perfect

2007-09-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

Poetry

We all drift along -

float side by side.

So many moments;

how

does one

live

fully,

if not to

dip

oneself

deep -

beneath

the water.

Sometimes warm.

Sometimes ice-cold.

Sometimes barely there.

Dip.

Soak.

Wet.

Feeling every

single detail;

Your

trace

of being alive

and living.

Aditi's intro - again solid

2007-09-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

THE INTRODUCTION

(1)
it's a Saturday
i wet my lips
with a few sips
of sweet wine

a vineyard i visit

familiar
but only with
the fragrance;
now i taste
different drops
from different goblets
each
the best of its kind

a hand guides me
to the succulent fruit
the best
the perfect
the chosen ones

the feet taught me
how to blend it
the perfect fruit
the perfect way
to make
the perfect wine

yet to be a connoisseur;
but i now learn to appreciate

flows wine
from my hands too now even
sometimes sour...

(2)
on a quest to learn i trod on a path of self-discovery; poetry was the dam that made the emotions flow.. subtly, sublimely, channelized it...

(3)

like a soft, summer shower
it came as a surprise
i soaked it in till drenched
till i myself
became a drop
i soaked, i drenched...

they say the shower
has now come to an end
but has it really?
i don't notice

my skin is still damp.

Aditi's latest poem - "The Hollow Men" revisited in a powerful way

2007-09-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

Degraded mind

Degraded soul

Devoid of emotions

Hollow to the core

The regret

Of having a heart

Mourned for

Long ago

Pretty you

Pretty me

Unallowed

Un-pretty

Convexes here

Concaves there

Black is pretty

Only for hair

Love isn’t beautiful

Love isn’t true

No one loves another

As He loves you

Love is wilted

Love is dead

It’s what you get

In the back of a car

Knock me

I might make a sound

Now that I‘m hollow

All around

Hollow mind

Hollow soul

Hollow heart

To the core.

Roshan's Introduction

2007-09-22T03:24:00.000-07:00

The world has seen many billions go by, but we remember only a few.

We do not remember those who sat by their fire-places content with its warmth, when the promise of a cold, new blizzard raged outside their frosted windows.

We do not lament the passing of cowards and the weak, who did as their masters bid them to, until they had only their masters to bid them...

No, we do not remember those that did not speak and think and feel and create.

I have tried, I can say, to conquer cowardice and weakness.

Into these lines I have poured my tears, my laughter and my thoughts, freely, openly, and sometimes even a little rashly.

The world has taught me the verses, moved my fingers and my heart, until I put them down in words.

I have seen the fake and the smiling, the cruel and the taught.

Nature has shown me its little beauties, and touched me with its tiny designs.

But most of all, love has shown me true beauty - true beauty in everything.

What better way to express true beauty than poetry?

There is none.

Roanna's latest - not running out of steam but gaining strength

2007-09-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

It was back
banging against the lampshade
again and again
hypnotized,
crazily.

While these forms shifted and melted into one another
in this twilight hour
you seek the dark,
the cover.

You call your cry
moving, mingling
losing yourself
feeling safe there.

The night throbs
smelling so strong it drowns you

Moving mouths
talking

But I can’t hear
I am seeing
finally
this mad play of bodies
of chemicals

Makes me swoon

This elaborate play enacted

This huge never ending stage

So useful

All the necessary doings
to conceal the animal
instinct
feeling the heat
inside restless moods
leading you to unchartered territory
where the red tape seals it off

“caution;caution;caution”

Excuse me?
May I help you?

The person:
a pretty young dark-haired creature,
opens her mouth and smiles sideways

Sign of attraction…
I’ll move my mouth too.