Utterances #7

Skins

“Here you are beside me again:

Memories of my companions killed in the war,

The olive branch of time;

Memories that make only a single memory

As a hundred skins make only a single coat

As these thousands of wounds make only a single newspaper article...”

I. THE SKIN OF THE OTHER

The quoits have acquired the air,

The polonaise is done;

Be still, my hands, be still,

It is the very dead of winter,

And its chisel bequeaths

A livelier repose than death’s.

Old man, you surface all the time,

And drown us in your curls,

Every time.

Aubergine fingernails, eternal acedia,

Tralaticious sorrow, your snigger.

Squamulose Snake, you may shed now,

Let the poison die.

Ensconcing in your bed of thorns,

How can you maintain fake amity?

The coulternebs are stale,

The seagulls have melted,

Where are you, o’ Ocean?

This uniseriate gassho,

Let it be done,

The mind’s renegation is too much:

And these are our own abjects,

These, our own regrets.

“…The day empties its images

Like a cup or a room.

The moon's crook whitens,

Thin as the skin seaming a scar…”

II. THE SKIN OF THE BELOVED

You see me a rude owl,

A white patch of kiss upon the tree,

A frown in the mirror,

A lonely victory.

I am scattered in the winds of darkness,

I am thrown to the shards of a peeler,

I have no name, no form,

I live in the temple of the bone.

I do not know

How soon the servant Death

Can dream my genesis

In that bright anchor-ground

Where all topiary lay.

I do not know

How soon I can brush off my own sands

From the twisted words of the hourglass.

I do not know

How soon my own clay

Can lose its virginity.

I do not know

If I can incinerate my own soul.

Fighting with the singing of birds,

With the marvelous aching of the stairs,

With the staggering of time,

And the foray of memories,

I am weary.

The porphyry

Barren.

The plumage is rotten,

The wings decayed,

There’s no Icarus

By the dismayed.

I climb my own prayer,

I stride my own womb,

I am a ghost-town

In my own black tomb.

Let me pollute,

Let me pillage,

Let me commute,

I am not a sage.

Stand upon your plinth,

Act like a fool;

I have my daughter

To drool.

If I cannot preserve my sad diagnosis,

I do not deserve to be down with cold,

I must carry my own prognosis

To the sold.

Stand upon your scaffold,

Act like a God:

In your moribund mold,

There is no Sod.

“…for years, I have eaten dust

And dried plates with my dense hair.

And seen my strangeness evaporate,

Blue dew from dangerous skin…”

III. THE SKIN OF OWN BODY

I can sense insects crawling up my hair:

Flickering like a star,

Distilling smoke,

They invade the within

As easily as faith.

There is no snake-charmer

Who plays the tune of my blood,

I sway like a serpent

To the evening sun.

The river is without us,

The sea is nowhere near,

Wells color my water,

Red, mottled, like cut limbs.

There was a sound!

There is an end to the withering.

Teach us to care and not to care,

Teach us to sit still

Even among these cushions.

“Skin doesn’t have roots,

It peels away easy

As paper.”

IV. THE SKIN OF OWN HEART

We are the light brigade,

And we aren’t just six hundred,

We charge but into nothingness,

We are but to throb and die.

And everything sinks below the verge,

Everything is sad and fresh,

Burning and flowing crimson,

Everything ends.

“Here lies the body of this world.”

V. THE SKIN OF OWN SOUL

“Pus-filled growths, cratered skin, green rings under

The eyes, puffy fingers clasping thigh-bones,

Skull splashed with vague liver-spots

Like leprous growths sprouting on old walls...”

The Chinese jar is hardly still,

Nor does it move when it is:

Its constituents are the same as ours,

And we court war.

Glory be to God for faded things,

He fathers-forth, though He does change,

For He resides in the mind of contradictions;

Understand Him.

I am a parcel of successful strivings tied,

By a bond I, myself, created,

Working day and night,

But which Time clutched,

And hurled waste unto the oblivion.

I have been told to reason by the hand,

But hand, like lead, falls hopelessly.

I have been told to reason by the foot,

But foot, like gold, flies way too high.

Break no promise, bright with flesh,

Bring no memories to the yard, to throw,

Snap no tears by the lash:

The grave is done, none shall rise.

I wither not, nor do I die.

Utterances #6

A Monologue Pretending To Be A Dialogue?

[After all, everything is pretentious these days, nay?]

“We are always asked to understand the other person’s viewpoint

No matter how out-dated, foolish or obnoxious.”

Come through, come through – who says that

From inside a monotonous rainbow? I’m true, I’m true – why does the lie

Say that to my skin? Dew-pages slide off petal-books

Trying to unburden it. You know, it was only yesterday

When the sea, pretending to be tranquil, trampled

The hopes of the moon? And they say, this game of proposal and rejection

Has been going on since ages! My eyes went wide like a jasmine’s

When someone asks it to bloom at day!

I am cool, I am cool, so sorry!

Prithee, tell me now, yes you, did Mr. Herzog connive death to connote life?

Dunno?

But Mr. Sweeney’s feint must be recognized!! I am no Obito!

Sunsets remind you of the pleasure of working your asses off!

Now, why would you say something, people can’t even empathize with?!

You don’t even need an enema, do you?!

How refined you are! I wish J. Prufrock were as glorious!

Honesty is a quality you find in madmen. – In this sword-sharp

Society, do you have the sheath to be one?

FYI, Meursault ended up murdering his after-image.

Now you--

Why do you so like sleeping at night? You can get up at dawn anyway:

Sleeping and not sleeping aren’t much different now,

Are they? Some anime by 6 and some movie by 10--

You do have the time to read Kafka, don’t you?

Hearing some Bob Dylan and some Leonard Cohen,

And placing your voice on a lower scale, like you were dropping your old phone

From the seventh-floor window, you really hope to get a million views on YouTube?!

Yes, paint now! Paint your grief on a canvas as abstract as your grief!

Yes, go on… People will surely call you talented now!

And you’ll be noticed, like a beggar is noticed by a passer-by

And given a coin or two… But remember this:

The snow knows – when and where to fall.

Yeah, but it falls to soothe itself, so you need not worry,

Keep up the beggar-work,

No work is less dignified!!

Especially on Facebook.

Utterances #5

Requiem To The Century

“There are flood and drought

Over the eyes and in the mouth,

Dead water and dead sand

Contending for the upper hand.

The parched eviscerate soil

Gapes at the vanity of toil,

Laughs without mirth.

This is the death of earth.”

The rain keeps falling on the cactus,
And the teenager keeps scratching his overgrown hair;
The phone speaks to the sky,
While the headphones to the dead pillows;
The window lets the noise in,
And some dust and some bad breath;
The wind is in the trees,
While the birds are in the eyes;
And some bad blood between the sofa and the idiot box.

You have more than just clothes on:
I can see your eyes perfectly;
The photographs have burnt,
All of ’em.

There has been an avalanche,
No, not of snow--
Of grass, lots and lots of grass.
And the insects are typing short stories,
On my laptop,
And the choir of cats are singing a requiem.

I'm not sure, who's dead,
I suspect myself,
But no, I see the mouse now.

And I don't trust you enough,
To tell you I love you.

Comes evening,
No, not like the patient;
Like the doctor,
Etherized on the stretcher;
And the sun goes down,
Like conscience,
Leaving our head,
To somewhere below;
No, no the gut,
A little above,
At least, I suppose so.

The way upward,
And the way downward,
Are the same.

Conscience returns at night.

And the owls come and go,
Hooting Edgar Allan Poe.

Well, it's a relief I can't hear the bats,

Or else,

I would have come to life.

The highways meet at the foreheads now,
And the subway walls and tenement halls,
Are devoid of any whispers.

Come in under the shadow of this blue rock,
And I will show you nothingness.

There is nothingness,
Under the door.

There is nothingness,
In that old handful of dust.

Hurry up, it's time.

No, I don't trust you enough,
To tell you I love you.

And no, it's not her eyes that are twisted.
No, it's not her knife.
It's her legs.

The children come and go,
Discussing Naruto.

And, yes, the burnt end of this smoky night,
It's appearing now.

Unreal City,
Is flourishing still.

And the gramophone plays tunes of her own scratching flesh.

She, who was dead, is now living,
We, who were dead, are still dead.

And there is water,
Amongst the rock,
In the mountains.
Can't you hear the sound?
Only it's contaminated.
But that's not the point, is it?

Drip drop drip drop

The birds come and go,
Chirping Paulo Coelho.

And yes, I did toss a blanket from the bed,
And lay upon my back, and yes, I waited;
I dozed, and watched the night revealing,
The thousand sordid images,
Of which my brain was constituted;
But they didn't flicker against the ceiling,
They vanished altogether.

And when all the world came back,
And the light crept up between the shutters,
I heard dogs in the gutters,
Yes, I had such a vision of the street.

Footfalls down the passage which we did not take,
No, they don't echo anymore.
We're all Meursaults now.

And you elaborate far too much,
Eliot.

The devil is already dead,
And so is god.

Come, take my hand,
I will show you fear inside that rotten skull,
Of that corpse.

The whole earth is our morgue,
Endowed by a broke,
And a poet.

And no one knows what time it is,
Don't worry.

They only know how to glance at the wristwatch.

The men come and go,
Insulting Christiano Ronaldo.

I am here,

I am there,

I am somewhere,

In an infinity.

And you, my friend,
Are already dead.

I suppose the Nobel felt good?

Ah! I told you, I don't trust you enough.

And no, not all of them go into the dark,
Some go into hotels to make out.

You say I am repeating?
Something I have said before?
I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again?

Okay,
In the room,
The women come and go,
Talking of Michelangelo.

“What we call the beginning is often the end,
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”

Utterances #4

Voices

“...But list, o' list, so soft and low,

Thy lover's voice tonight shall flow...”

I. THE VOICE OF THE WORLD

Heaven grants no amnesty now,

The world is too much with us anyway.

In the molecularity of clairvoyance,

I find but a single proton of obnubilation.

Tears will never find a way to relieve,

Themselves of their own stress.

Well, I'm no Yaegashi Taichi,

I'm neither selfish, nor selfless,

And most certainly, not a freak.

Ungratefulness, dear, is neither a vice nor a virtue.

Anyway, I was at the desk-operator's house yesterday,

And her own telephone cable was torn:

No, not an accident,

She had, almost certainly, cut it purposely,

Just as she had slit her husband's gossamer throat.

Everything is a mess now,

Everything, a tame goose's chase,

Everything, the ballad of a mind-shredded singer:

I see lilacs and lilacs and lilacs everywhere,

Can you tell me where Juliet is headed now, my friend?

In the end, it is just another Microsoft Word document.

The merry bells ring now,

To welcome, no, not the spring dear,

But the marriage of your beloved with your best-friend!

Now, now, please don't be the fool to eat the apple,

Or be the fool to produce the apple.

Rather steal some other apple,

And give it to somebody who doesn't like apples!

My gentle harps have woken far too many times.

“Tell me, brother, why do you cut the devil's nails?” she asked.

“Well, why don't you tell me why you wash his blue body?” he counter-questioned.

“Because I'm tired of his odor, when he roams around me.”

“Because I'm tired of his fingers digging into my liberty.”

Meet me at dawn

Her boyfriend had said, when we were feeding the ducks,

Meet me at noon

His mother had messaged,

Meet me at dusk

My father had voice-mailed;

Don't meet me at mid-night

I had written to myself.

“...There is a microphone picking every word up,

And it shuts itself off when it is sure that it has heard enough...”

II. THE VOICE OF THE OCEAN

The cuckoo will never be worth listening,

Whether a messenger or a rebel;

There's too much hatred for music,

Too much desolation for the nightingale.

And since, spring will never spring forth anyway,

Let us all thrust the colors into the gutters;

For when nurses with children perpetrate suicide,

The truth of love is revealed then.

And as we wished it, in every half-breathed sigh,

Tell me, will we never be able to convey?

Life is a waste of wearisome hours.

Tell me, poppy,

Indelicately delicate!

What's your hobby?

Just like the river which clots at high turns,

My clotted meat sighs at the flowing blood.

Was there a carousal at the heart's dining hall?

I hope the glass got stained!

There's a freshly-cut dew-drop now,

With black seeds of gerontic warts,

And savory flakes of glucose:

Wanna eat some, Mr. Spider?

“...Fondness it is, for any being free,

To covet fetters, though they golden be.”

Now, the nymph is watering his dry gardens,

And the friar, howling like the moon,

Oh, I've got but only a few drops to fill an ocean!

III. THE VOICE OF THE LAND

“...If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,

And losing her, my friend hath found that loss,

Both find each other, and I lose both twain...”

Before had I, a temple with a thousand heads,

But now a gutter, with a million mosquitoes;

I know I'm a thief, know I've plundered many beds,

But in the sacrilege of killing the flea, I did lose,

Me, myself and my blood: Give me this much credit!

I can love both black and blue, I can love even a fool,

And yes, I have been to the elementary slum school,

I have had my share of the stool: Give me no shit!

I know what android has to offer, so not cool,

But gaze at the catch, illiteracy of the fish-pool!

And not a reverential case, please, oh dear white!

A refugee as well, from freedom, seeks a cell tonight!

And no, tell me, do you even know what needs to be done?

Oh, you're just gonna run your tongue and time away?

What an amazing monarch you are, I'm spellbound!

“The prisons fill with the cries of children,

But you subsist: How do you persist, Land?”

IV. THE VOICE OF THE MIND

When I surfeit upon my own sagacity,

Weary the golden tendrils of ephemera,

I sit wistfully by my hearth solitary,

And hope that I may be able to hate myself.

Sometimes I feel like a sad book, sometimes like Poe,

Sometimes like the seated hills, mighty angels' plucks,

Sometimes like the clear eye, filled with color and ducks,

Sometimes like the sweet, swift lips' Michelangelo.

“...Who is my grief,

A chrysallis unwrinkling on the iron...”

V. THE VOICE OF THE BRAIN

I cry loud when the lone, black fir forsakes the faded plain,

I laugh weird when the sea slides back and the mirrors are sheeted,

I perish when hurricanes blow in rosaries,

Am I crazy?

Because I say whatever tastes sweet to the most perfect person,

That is finally wrong:

Because the most perfect person is the most perfectly sterile,

And what's perfectly sterile is perfectly wrong;

And what's perfect fecund is wrong as well-

Well, for there is nothing right in this world!

Now, a lot of things begin sweet and beautiful,

End but dirty,

Always:

My sole concern,

Why love's among those things?!

Well, personally, I prefer the beauty of innuendos:

Yeah, just after.

Now, now, don't ask me why they leave us with the infinite:

I can not put a fire out!

The road one treads to labor,

Will lead one to more labor,

For toil breeds toil,

Expectations supply fuel to more expectations.

So, now, on the idle hill of summer,

I too will sleep,

And seek the sick worm-eaten rose.

They say:

The fountains mingle.

The rivers mingle.

But do they?

The mountains kiss,

The moonbeams kiss,

But do they?

The waves clasp,

The sunlights clasp:

Yes, I guess they do.

I guess they clasp themselves.

I've lived beside the ruined tower too,

I have seen the young sea hunting for calm,

Give me your shabbiest, weariest love!

Late! Late! Too late!

All things will die.

The liquid notes,

That close the eye of the afternoon: they are slain.

The careless tenants too, have gone.

I've some waters by me that smell like literature,

I've a wilderness not far, of intolerance;

Is that a swamp or clouds? I guess the wine is lost:

Call me up when you have the time, I'm going down.

Besides,

The hole of the lavatory,

The blue Ashok Chakra,

Don't they all symbolize the wheel of life?

What difference is there between a tornado and a twisted mind?

After all, I've tarnished the mirror of life for fifty-odd years.

Ask me no more of all the things you heard,

What I speak is same as the things you hear.

The old clock, striking eleven.

I still can't aver which one, the reflection is.

Even after fifty-odd years.

And the powerless play goes on,

I have contributed enough.

So, dawn goes down to day,

And returns back as dawn again,

For what is gold has to remain.

And when people believe all the big lies,

And fuss over small ones,

Who the hell cares?

The prisoner still gets his wine and bread.

Stronger by weakness, foolish men become.

“See how the motion does dilate the flame!”

It's called the majestic pace, not sad steps,

No, the moon knows enough for that.

When the lute is broken,

Then begins the real melody.

I see the bridge,

I also see the vocal cords,

There is snow in your ears:

Flames begotten of queer tendrils.

“...She, she herself, and only she,

Shone through her body visibly.”

I am a worm.

Blind. Limp. Dull. Prophetic.

And I am a...

Huh, what, no, don't tell me...

“...I’ve looked at our ceiling fan with longing before,

But today’s the first time I actually wondered,

If it could bear my weight...”