d i p p i n g b u t t e r f l i e s

#26 : Haikus

2012-02-06T21:35:00.000+05:30

even on the blast suspect's poster--
a butterfly

an abandoned airstrip--
kids flying
paper planes

bottle rockets #26

Compassion / Step-Father

2012-02-04T10:48:00.000+05:30

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage;
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At game, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes.

(Hamlet 3.3.89-94)

Stepfather, I wanted
to spit in your mouth
as you lay in that casket,
to put beneath your tongue

some drops of moisture
which you scream for this moment
in the piles of hell.

(Compassion, Three Short Poems by Jim Carroll)

Tagore

2012-02-01T19:44:00.002+05:30

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

What says the boy
When we order OLD

MONK &

Nothing else

'Nothing else?'

'Nothing else'

A sip
& I remember

Tagore

at the window

What a total
mess the sky
is today.

Updesh : Hamlet & Robert Creeley

2012-01-31T11:03:00.001+05:30

Krishna & Arjun

So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery

(Hamlet, 2.2.278/279)

Oh wisdom to find fault with
what is after all a plan

(Robert Creeley, Going to bed)

Buffaloes / Not Paris

2012-01-21T18:02:00.001+05:30

drinking guava nectar

in a wine glass by

the back door of

I watch buffaloes

rush

in pairs (not paris)

from the first

floor it is only four

but the sky is getting

dirty it is four thirty

now

One ill turn

deserves

another

What can possibly

make one

even

It did not rain

and the buffaloes are coming back

Ecology of Revenge

2012-01-19T14:36:00.002+05:30

Fish woman by Rene Magritte

This way when I am given to sustaining this silence on my own I can clearly see a Kashmiri woman walk into the coastal waters leaving her burqa on the weightless shore; turning in process the entire coast black.

By midnight she'll become the eye of a record breaking hurricane causing
unprecedented damage to the universities erected by her husband in the honor of his mistress- a Bengali woman with coastal eyes- the one who lies here wrapped around my ankles waiting for directions when the windows of this room begin to smash against the walls.

The eye is moving quick and alone.

Advocating that a chase is on she shapes her navel into a bronze pistol
and wraps it around my waist.

This is the ecology of revenge- a game of carom first played on my thighs when I was nine.

When I went to buy ENO for Ashish at 7:30

2012-01-15T23:19:00.001+05:30

bones

left

on our doormat

by an invisible dog

in the gali

a dead cat

old man raising the shutter of his shop

an autorickshaw

filled

with school children

two coins

& then everything

slips

thru

the hole

in my pocket

the dead cat again

Lethargy or Dissimulation

2012-01-14T02:37:00.000+05:30

The inauguration

Submerged in mist

If some of

It is

Not

(mist)

One cannot tell

One cannot tell

A lot

If it is for

Lethargy or dissimulation

One cannot tell

One cannot tell

Robert Duncan : Some Terms Dec. 1, 1973

2012-01-12T20:32:00.001+05:30

re, res, real, realm, reality from thing, thingness, object, objective realize, to establish the
thingness. One aspect of the work of art or poem or creation is to realize what is thought and felt. The reality of the poem is a language reality. Its things are words.
Hence any poem has for each given reader (including the poet writing as reader) just that reality he finds in the words in their orders.

The only immediate res of the poem are its sounds. The sounding of the poem in turn mediates a potential realm of meanings.

act, actual, actualize, actuality.
     There was actually a chair there. Tho I did not see it; tho I did not believe there was
one; I was not sure there was on . . .
     I actually saw a chair there. Tho there was no chair there. Tho I did not think I saw a chair there.
     I actually thot I saw. I actually thot “I saw” I actually thot to see.
     I pretended I thot I saw. I actually pretended I but imagined I pretended.
     We strive to bring into the actual what is real to us.

Defend

2012-01-06T01:29:00.000+05:30

In January 1821 Shelley read an essay by Thomas Love Peacock, ‘The four ages of poetry’, which wittily argued that society was now sufficiently advanced to dispense with poetry; a poet was no more than ‘a semi-barbarian in a civilized community'. Shelley sometimes doubted the usefulness of poetry – ‘I wish I had something better to do than furnish this jingling food for the hunger of oblivion, called verse’, he once wrote to Peacock – but his friend’s essay roused him into a ‘sacred rage’. He responded with the most eloquent defence of poetry since Sir Philip Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie (1595).

You've got to defend well.
Shelley knew this & so
did Sidney. Though Sidney (also)
did it to stay in the courts
Shelley knew it was
time. So i am here writing.
Three more conceded
last night. What are you
going to do Sir Alex?

Phil Jones in process of scoring an own goal against Newcastle United. Man Utd lost 3-0 away from home.

opening image courtesy - ..

Ted Berrigan : Sonnets

2012-01-04T16:06:00.000+05:30

Sonnet XV

In Joe Brainard's collage its white arrow
he is not in it, the hungry dead doctor.
Or Marilyn Monroe, her white teeth white--
I am truly horribly upset because Marilyn
and ate King Korn popcorn," he wrote in his
of glass in Joe Brainard's collage
Doctor, but they say "I LOVE YOU"
and the sonnet is not dead.
takes the eyes away from the gray words,
Diary. The black heart beside the fifteen pieces
Monroe died, so I went to a matinee B-movie
washed by Joe's throbbing hands. "Today
What is in it is sixteen ripped pictures
does not point to William Carlos Williams.

Sonnet XV (one is (also) supposed to read it this way)

In Joe Brainard's collage its white arrow
does not point to William Carlos Williams
he is not in it, the hungry dead doctor.
Or Marilyn Monroe, her white teeth white--
washed by Joe's throbbing hands. "Today
I am truly horribly upset because Marilyn
Monroe died, so I went to a matinee B-movie
and ate King Korn popcorn," he wrote in his
Diary. The black heart beside the fifteen pieces
of glass in Joe Brainard's collage
takes the eyes away from the gray words,
Doctor, but they say "I LOVE YOU"
and the sonnet is not dead.

Apart from being an implied compliment to the sophisticated intelligence of a reader what has been gained, one might ask, by such an obscurely constructed poem.

The emphasis is on the word collage.

The poem begins by describing a collage (Joe Brainard's) and becomes a collage itself.

Aristotle's definitions of fools

2011-12-28T16:38:00.000+05:30

Bread crumb stars plot the night sky and befool superstitious sailors who never learnt to read maps back in their day and have spent all their lives on this giant ship, which is a distant star itself.

She unhooked her bra and her breasts spilled onto the floor like wine from a drunkard's wide rimmed glass. Welter wiped the floor clean with his tongue and wagged his tail for long longing for more. Her mistress however turned her back and began ..

We halt to pray in the rain for shelter. We get wet. The evening prayer is wind.

Migrant workers in limestone helmets settle for a bargain and begin constructing a distant parking lot to receive us.

We, the circus dwarfs, spend the evening making love in a bird nest. We get wet.

To say, that the stars are superstitious sailors too .. To say, that in a way, we're all emroidered like a meadow, is just another thought.

Ed Dorn: The Mountains

2011-12-24T02:26:00.000+05:30

Hills around Parashar, December 2011

(for the painter, Raymond Obermayr)

Like a distant rumble of undeclared war
the wind shakes all things on our ears
and it’s like the water treatment
or a willful cat how the nerves
don’t anymore fend for themselves.

The base of the mountains
are blue and flecks of moving brown
are there like a lingering image.
But above that base
comes the magenta higher mountains,
steps to green, a rise the eye
can only take, where again lingers yellow
and all runs to a high atmospheric orange
but cut
the deep black blue of
full day.

I know men have perished her
there and all around.

Thus in a cut of all of it
there is the inferno we forget,
descends to the only red of fire.
To go down there is the whole
tension of its mystery.

All lingers. All passes in those hills.

One tempts the perfect
with suggested birds and men
suggested toil, one is reckless
enough to say they are there and forget.
And enough to leave all growth aside.
There is no frame for blue
but blue, but this is a late time
after blue was made.

And the earth herself
lets no such recessions loose.
You can move in the shadows, in that
wild blue, small towns
like specks flourish and go out
there is no coming back from the space
you make.

Hills around Parashar, December 2011

Sun going down on Bandarpunch, Uttarakhand, June 2011

Nanda Devi, Uttarakhand, January 1 2011

At the foot of the Mountain, Paul Gauguin, 1892

Cabinet

2011-12-18T20:33:00.000+05:30

Parliament House- Republic of India

My father tucks his shirt
into is corduroy pants; curtly
rearranges his jacket
collars calls
up my mother & combs
his dry hair atleast
twice. He asks for the time.
He shouts- 'What time is it?'
A quarter past 5.
Is it 5:30?
Looking at me
in the mirror he
murmurs
hushedly
'Mr. Manmohan has called
for the cabinet at 7.'

Virbhadra Singh (Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises ) sleeps during a Parliament session.

Anna Hazare has given an ultimatum to the ruling govt. to pass the Lokpal bill in the Winter Session. The Winter Session ends on 22 Dec. 22 Dec. 2011

Winter

2011-12-17T20:06:00.000+05:30

what awaits us in winters?
groundnuts

Haiku

2011-12-14T15:24:00.002+05:30

mexican oleanders i give up

Notes from the GeanVolume 3 Issue 3

To Reason : Arthur Rimbaud

2011-12-13T04:45:00.000+05:30

Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez

A tap of your finger on the drum looses all sounds and begins the fresh harmony.

One step of yours is the rising of new men and their forward march.

Your face turns away: new love! Your face turns back – the new love!

'Change our fate, eliminate the plagues, beginning with Time’ these children sing to you. ‘Breed, no matter where, the substance of our fortunes and wishes,’ they beg.

Having arrived from all the times, you'll depart on all sides.

Our President!

2011-12-05T17:16:00.001+05:30

Your two twenty a.m.
breasts

dormant

as

Our President!

refuse to rise
or give
way

William Carlos Williams : Play

2011-12-01T06:15:00.002+05:30

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,
By what devious means do you contrive
To remain idle. Teach me, O Master.

The Green Bus

2011-11-29T18:25:00.001+05:30

A Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) bus enroute Kinnaur

like the green bus

it took an entire day

for the evening

to arrive and now

you say its getting

darker like a mountain

it took you a thousand

years to grow and now

you say you want

to stay forever

in the window

Bob Kaufman am i nuts

Plying in the harshest conditions the HRTC is one of the few regular service providers across the world

Bob Kaufman's Funeral March

Groundnuts: Groundnuts mark the Woman selling groundnuts in Bangalore. Groundnuts also mark the beginning of winters in India

Conceit

2011-11-29T11:50:00.000+05:30

falling from grace

is

the same

as

falling from greece

Fame : Bill Deemer

2011-11-28T01:30:00.001+05:30

Fame:

the cows stop eating

to watch me pass.

Charles Bukwoski

2011-11-12T23:21:00.001+05:30

Charles Bukowski walked into a skid

row tavern sat on a stool and ordered a beer glancing

blearily at the woman who sat next to him. She was wearing

stockings and carrying a packed copy of Poems by Kenneth Rexroth.

After a few drinks the woman moved closer to Buk and smiled and told him

that they had met a week before. 'Over at John Fante's place.'.

B realized this and looking at the packed copy of Poems by Kenneth Rexroth

said- 'Fante has never liked Kenneth Rexroth .. the fucker's got no balls. An

idiot.'

'Rexroth doesn't give a fuck.'

'Then .. why

do you?'

to which the lady finished her drink and asked for the counterman.

B with his arms flailing all

over the place said- 'You just did.'

With a wide smile about her gloam face she bended

real close to Buk and whispered- 'I am sleepy'.

Charles Bukowski still looking

at the packed copy of Poems by Kenneth Rexroth said- 'I don't give a fuck.'

Looking into his bleary eyes the woman finished her drink and said - 'You just did.'

She paid her bill and walked

out not

looking

even once at Buk who did not care and looked away for

whores or something.

Ten minutes later Buk realized that he couldn't drink up simply

couldn't get it down. So he walked

all the way to his house climbed ten floors up took

out his typewriter and wrote a poem detailing a chance

encounter between Kenneth Rexroth and a lady

writer and how that night

Rexroth got completely ballsocked by the lady.

Buk stood up and folded the poem in his breast

pocket. He went back and finished his beer.

Two men roll

2011-11-08T01:45:00.004+05:30

Two men roll

a joint under a Shilpa

Shetty poster. Their clothes are mismatched

soiled

and they stink very

badly. They are not

even their own

clothes. Shilpa Shetty does

not like any of it but

she has to smile

anyways.

Waiting for 392

2011-11-04T02:14:00.001+05:30

Waiting for 392
a rash winter wind
all of a sudden ..
I fill the pockets of
my pants with my hands.
That is all i have that is all
they can get

Diwali

2011-10-26T11:57:00.003+05:30

at

the

end

of

diwali

fire

works

stars

begin

Night is a closet

2011-10-22T12:15:00.000+05:30

My eyes oppressed and inflamed like a crown on a finger or (simply) like a thumb
This is how i move like a ninja on all fours not to assault but only to dance

Two a.m. the infiltration of sorrows a tiptoe

Today my feelings stepped out of the back pocket of my pants hanging on the nail on the door and moved downhill into an ambulance parked for a dead lady

Out of sheer respect the driver started the engine and drove them away

All night long
a rabid dog
chased
the moon.

The dawn
was never
in question.

Nowhere

2011-10-11T03:06:00.000+05:30

On the terrace facing us a negro
is agitating
looking into
his cell phone
while another
is growing
tired
of catching
me steal
a glance
of his very
hot
girlfriend
who always
sits
in his lap
and
never
wears
anything.
What
does
he
expect?
Five floors
below
a man
on
his cell phone
stands
in the corner
while another
on
his cell phone
walks by.
Seven
pigeons
on the roof
do not seem
to mind
the fact
that this
is going
nowhere.

It

2011-10-07T00:24:00.001+05:30

How
subsequent is
the flight
of an arrow!

it is 645
on the fridge
on the wall 930

good afternoon Mayakovsky!

'You've got to know when to end it ...'

Ignorance comes
from Old French

What if I don't?
now the fridge is gone

Availability

Charles Bukowski is out ..

2011-09-20T18:55:00.000+05:30

In preparation

for tonight's poetry

reading

Charles Bukowski

is out

in the parking

lot

vomiting.

Certainly not written by me. Its the opening line of an article but its poetry enough for me. Click through to read.

Of dragonflies

2011-08-25T13:01:00.001+05:30

One million Dragonfly Dreams

under Ramleela tents

a dragonfly is Anna too

The faster it gets . . .

2011-08-21T12:14:00.001+05:30

An Afghan man makes sweets in a shop in Kabul on the eve of the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan on July
31. Throughout the month devout Muslims must fast from dawn until sunset when they break for the Iftar meal. (Shah
Marai/AFP/Getty Images)

Anna Hazare a 74 year old social activist, began an indefinite hunger strike to exert pressure on the Indian Government to enact a strict anti-corruption law as envisaged in the Jan Lokpal Bill, for the institution of an ombudsman with the power to deal with corruption in public offices. The fast has led to nation-wide protests in support of Hazare. He was subsequently jailed for not adhering to the Indian law. Millions have come out in support of Anna ever since .. as the fast continues.

A Palestinian boy dressed in a FC Barcelona jersey reads the Koran, Islam's holy book, in the Al-Furqan mosque in Gaza City August 2. (Hatem Moussa/Associated Press)

Indian Muslims offer prayers prior to breaking their fast on the first day of the holy fasting month of Ramadan at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad on August 2. (Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images)

Under massive pressure from around the country Anna was released from the jail with a legal permission to continue the anshan/hunger strike for 15 days.

A Pakistani volunteer pours milk into glasses for devotees to break their fast during Muslims' holy fasting month of Ramadan in Lahore, Pakistan on Friday, Aug. 20, 2010. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)

Dabbawalas/Tiffinwalas in Mumbai wearing Gandhi caps which say - 'I AM ANNA'. For the first time in 120 years on Aug 19, 2011 they broke their tradition and went on strike for 2011 Indian Anti Corruption Movement

Afghan children holding empty utensils wait for food to be distributed on the first day of holy month of Ramadan outside a mosque in a poor neighborhood of Kabul, Afghanistan August 1. (Dar Yasin/Associated Press)

Chinese Hui Muslim boys waits in front of food as they wait to break their fast on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Beijing, August 1. (Andy Wong/Assocaited Press)

People hold Anna Hazare masks during a protest in support of the activist in Ahmedabad, India.

Palestinians struggle at an access point as food rations are given out by an Islamic charity on the second day of the month of Ramadan, in the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday, Aug. 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)


Internally displaced Somali women wait for food supplies at the Badbado refugee camp in the south of capital Mogadishu. Somalia's famine refugees, weakened by months of drought, on Monday began the Ramadan fast on August 1 amid tents and shacks of the world's largest refugee camp. (Omar Faruk/Reuters)

A Somali refugee girl reads the holy Koran at the Liban integrated academy at the Ifo refugee camp in Dadaab, near the Kenya-Somalia border August 2. The United Nations estimates that more than 3.7 million people in Somalia, among them 800,000 children, are on the brink of starvation. The famine in the Horn of Africa is spreading and may soon engulf as many as six more regions of the lawless nation of Somalia, the U.N. humanitarian aid chief said on Monday. (Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

A child sits with a plate of food that was distributed as part of the holy month of Ramadan, at a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday, Aug. 14, 2010. (AP Photo/Mustafa Quraishi)

Transaction

2011-08-19T22:59:00.002+05:30

The dreams today were delivered
by a boy
who drove a bicycle
twice his size
half his age.

Leaning on the marble stare
of my lucite genitals

Leaning on the marble stair ..

He mumbled -
'Fate's needlework
is a lot of
smuggled inflections.'

To which I raised
my eyes

all the way to the 20th century.

Posh hippies

2011-08-01T20:42:00.002+05:30

Posh hippies
        eating an orange
                        in the airconditioned morning!

My preoccupation with beauty
is not an obsession        it is how i react
                  the way a bed squeaks ..

It is 6 of this airconditioned morning
and you are reading books already
One hundred years of solitude
and an obscure German paperback

Last night you were searched
by the State Police   for drugs

and now you are
shifting in your seats!

and rolling down your knee socks
Oh good lord you are all equally beautiful

2011-07-27T11:05:00.002+05:30

afternoon noise-
children fighting
with invisible swords

India

2011-07-27T10:42:00.000+05:30

From Newspapers

We do no more about Norway than Mumbai

We condemn
                      hysterically

                      and sip from mineral water bottles

at the end

Like in the movies

     we are always ready for this

Surviving

2011-07-23T16:15:00.001+05:30

Surviving is a myth
                       too

   like the horizon

from a fourteenth floor

           under
                  construction

Supposing it rains
and you slip

PLOP!

Let the poor remain poor : I

2011-07-20T12:53:00.004+05:30

An exiled Tibetan monk protesting against the Communist/Socialist Government of China

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.

Percentage population living on less than 1 dollar day 2007-2008

The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism - are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.

Roadside Charity

Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

Delhi : A child beggar coercing a tourist for alms

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim.

Gurgaon : A child perhaps throwing stones at sky-high apartments in the millenium city

Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.

Text: The Soul of a Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

2011-07-13T15:18:00.004+05:30



I slept under   rhododendron
All night   blossoms fell
Shivering on   a sheet of cardboard

Feet stuck   in my pack
Hands deep   in my pockets
Barely  able  to  sleep.
I remembered   when we were in school
Sleeping together   in a big warm bed
We were   the youngest lovers
When we broke up   we were still nineteen.

Now our   friends are married
You teach   school back east
I dont mind   living this way
Green hills   the long blue beach
But sometimes   sleeping in the open
I think back   when I had you.

                       Gary Snyder

2011-07-09T19:29:00.003+05:30

Loki's flute-

lost in the forest

waiting

for

the wind

to blow

Scenes

2011-07-06T12:25:00.000+05:30

fighting-
in the 6 pm noise
.. a deaf couple

first monsoon rains-
kids play football
under a shed

A casual poem

2011-06-29T11:41:00.006+05:30

You stood there like an empty window and it was

too much to bear yes i saw you secretly

sweat a humid June poem right there

but i'll stay mum till i say

a
nd then?

and then?

today in the city everything is

skidding and wet

again

(it is raining)

and soon one grows sick of justifications

and the logic in particular for ex.

(it is raining.)

clack clack
clack

you did and left

and now

i am left alone midnite

making gates

moving in

and out

of you

Poem

2011-06-26T13:05:00.007+05:30

(on Djokovic-Baghdatis)

The day continues as before pay
attention to the signboards the tables mean
nothing is a mistake too in a way we'll all concede but thats just another dream.
Now you don't have to win (always) to feel sexy esp. when the wind
is blowing and you don't have any hair to show
that's foolish simply.
Now tell me is this not love - the way our sorrows
keep returning to us each moment stronger than before?

A Sentimentalist's joy poem

2011-06-15T10:44:00.002+05:30

While writing for you last month

I cremated my self on to several empty

sheets of paper. This week I hung them from

a wire in the backyard and they floated as if

they were cheap paper cups, I had always drunk my

whiskey in. I hit them with fingers very

gently and the sky was an ash

grey canopy the entire week is what took me to realize

you have confiscated my senses and

the key to a perfect metaphor.

Stairs, of wood, each, one hundred and fourteen

years old became silent in time once you, stepped

in. It was as if you owned the very place.

(For you)

2011-06-13T13:31:00.000+05:30

the waning moon-

a hole

in my underwear

M.F. Husain : Death in exile

2011-06-10T12:48:00.080+05:30


Out of the four leaders painted by Husain - Mahatma Gandhi has been staged decapitated while Hitler naked.

In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest.

Naked Draupadi

If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all.

Naked Goddess Parvati

The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play.

Naked Goddess Saraswati

And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question.


One of many erotic rites sculpted at the Khajuraho Group of Monuments believed to be built between 600 C.E. and 1300 C.E.

In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. They endure them as the inevitable, and as they cannot mar them, they mouth about them.

In this painting a Muslim man is depicted fully clothed while a Hindu with his back turned to to the Muslim man is shown stark naked, sparking widespread protests and violence.

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up.

A mock painting by Dr Pravan Prakash - aimed at dismantling the very roots M.F. Husain derived his nudist intellect from.

They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.

The Hindu Personal Law Board announced a Rs 51-crore reward for beheading Husain; a local leader in Gujarat promised 1 kg of gold to anyone who gouged out his eyes.
But he did not just upset the Hindus. Muslim ulemas protested his use of Quranic verses to honor a heroine instead of God in a song in the film Meenaxi."I have painted my canvases, including those of gods and goddesses with deep love and conviction, and in celebration. If in doing that, I have hurt anyone’s feelings, I am sorry. That is all. I do not love art less, I love humanity more."

It is impossible for the artist to live with the People. All despots bribe.

Shiv Sena triggered widespread protests throughout the nation following Hussain's exhibitions showing nude paintings of Indian mythological dieties

They are as a clown whose heart is broken.

Hussain .. being burned by the public

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.

Mother India painted naked - the names of states etched all over her body

One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush for a painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw mud. And yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the emperor. In fact, when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all. But there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

A black-and-white line drawing Husain had released to The Hindu. He left India - the country of his birth and was conferred Qatar nationality - something that is very rarely given.

Text : The Soul of a Man Under Socialism

Morning sequence

2011-06-08T11:34:00.001+05:30

first morning of April-
mynah riding a cow
the cow farted!

first morning of May-
arrived at the hospital
wrapped in white sheets

first morning of June-
killed an ant
with a football

Kerouac's Sky

2011-06-02T22:37:00.000+05:30

Courtesy Clouds 365 Project : 6-26-10

One afternoon I was sitting with some children in the grass and they asked me 'Why is the sky blue?'

Hamirpur (Himachal Pradesh) : Zeppelins hanging in blue litmus

'Because the sky is blue.'

Courtsey Clouds 365 Project: 6-21-10

'I wanta know why the sky is blue.'

Hamirpur (Himachal Pradesh): Grey invasion in the afternoon blue skies

'The sky is blue because you wanta know why the sky is blue.'

The Dharma Bums

Clouds 365 Project

Profit

2011-06-01T14:55:00.002+05:30

veins
on the back
of the arm
of a rickshaw
puller
have
risen
like flags
fluttering
in the
useless
wind
gaining on
the day
by
inches

The mirror

2011-05-30T17:11:00.003+05:30

Tengboche - a village in the Khumbu region of eastern Nepal, located at 3,867 metres.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

CYRIL (coming in through the open window from the terrace). My dear Vivian, don't coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods, like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature.


Auli, to the north of Joshimath, buried under the harsh January snow. Kameth, Mana, Nanda Devi et al- mountains belonging to the Shivalik range -most of them exceeding 7000 meters overlook the gorgeous Bugyal

VIVIAN. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.


Morning mist floating on treetops enroute Dharamashala (Himachal Pradesh)

CYRIL. Well, you need not look at the landscape. You can lie on the grass and smoke and talk.

Men camping on their way to Gidara Bugyal

VIVIAN. But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris's poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can. Nature pales before the furniture of 'the street which from Oxford has borrowed its name,' as the poet you love so much once vilely phrased it. I don't complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is entirely the result of indoor life. Out of doors one becomes abstract and impersonal. One's individuality absolutely leaves one. And then Nature is so indifferent, so unappreciative.

Deforestation on the way down from Joshimath - The trees being utterly useless- they yield neither fuel nor furniture- were planted on the mountain slopes by the government hoping nobody would bother them. However the trees very closely resemble the pines. And with the educated population shifting slowly to higher altitudes everything looks stupid

Whenever I am walking in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the ditch. Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates Mind. Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.

Carpenters in an Indian village

I only hope we shall be able to keep this great historic bulwark of our happiness for many years to come; but I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching--that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.


Morning mist floating in a city tea stall

In the meantime, you had better go back to your wearisome uncomfortable Nature, and leave me to correct my proofs.

Text-


There is a pleasure in the pathless woods .. by Lord Byron
An excerpt from The Decay of Lying by Oscar Wilde

Image Credits-

Tengboche courtesy Murat Salem

Spiti village courtesy Seemant Saxena

Auli under snow courtesy Abhinandan Kalia

Mist in Dharamshala courtesy Dheeraj Gupta

Camping in Gidara Bugyal courtsey Ashu M

Deforestation courtesy Abhinandan Kalia

Carpenters courtesy Wikimedia Commons

City Tea stall courtesy Santosh Verma

Goodnight poem

2011-05-27T10:22:00.001+05:30

Listening to
the watchman's radio
while he sleeps
the stray dog
and i yawn

Roof hoof

2011-05-25T22:48:00.001+05:30

to honor the moon
today we sleep
on a roof

larks-
across the moon's chest
one by one

in and out
of smoke clouds
the moon - samsara !

Poornima-
a full moon wreath
for Buddha

too tired
to write another
too dark

Talking of fools/Each one of us is a fool

2011-05-25T10:28:00.000+05:30

bullocks in haryana
chewing
green election flags

Frank O'Hara

2011-05-24T14:46:00.000+05:30

an invitation to lunch
HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?
when I only have 16 cents and 2
packages of yoghurt
there's a lesson in that, isn't there
like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls?
hold off on the yoghurt till the very
last, when everything may improve

- a poem from Five Poems (Lunch Poems)

Spring in May / Better Late Than Never

2011-05-20T10:27:00.002+05:30

Mexican Oleanders
sleeping on the ground
too much of spring

Naked child
wearing a garland
-footpath spring

Buddha Poornima: Buddha and William Blake 2

2011-05-19T16:02:00.002+05:30

The next night William went to the Banyan tree outside the village not drunk but solemn where the monk was preaching a disciple. He could hear them talk of the moon it was a full moon he realized the bindi on the her brow he thought. They went quiet upon seeing him and the monk welcomed him. In their conversation he mentioned Zen William asked what of Zen? He closed his eyes and raised a finger in to the sky letting his hair grab his face smiling he always smiled it was ridiculous at times. William asked if he wrote poems? 'I used to but poems were beginning to interrupt my Zen practice and so I quit'. 'But what of Zen?' The monk repeated his finger to the sky where the moon stood silent. The disciple had left. William went back standing in the mirror raised his finger looking at his reflection trying to decipher the magic of the posture and the finger. He could not know anything he waited a while standing there .. and then it clicked and he remembered. So he closed his eyes. But he could not see anything so he went to his poet friends they were discussing God and the cows and why they were so poor despite the village being so rich. They asked William - he entered the bunch and climbed the table closing his eyes raising his finger this time to the wooden ceiling. The next day while walking down the village square he overheard- some old men talking of a monk they had seen wander outside the village. He entered the drove interrupted closing his eyes .. raising. William had been possessed by the finger he spent hours his eyes closed finger raised in empty fields waiting for the unknown to enter him but he never smiled. He never went to see the monk again. The disciple months later told him of a man who had been imitating him round the village in front of beggars dogs in stray fields in brothels the monk grew furious he knew and rushed down the village calling for William seizing him by his arm. William did not know what to do and the monk took out a knife and cut his finger. William howled and began running away anywhere people were hanging down from their windows but the monk called out to him and William turned. The monk closed his eyes smiled raising his finger to the blue sky. William was enlightened forever.

An April Absence

2011-05-19T11:53:00.019+05:30

April ends-

no blossoms yet

Where are you Shelley?

April will be ending soon no spring still in the cities very disappointing will we see one before the winter comes again read Shelley today very little leaves left in the trees now everybodys watching neon tv sets in dark living rooms we go up to the terrace and console the little moon with our little hearts if winter comes can Spring be far behind?

Buddha Poornima : Buddha and William Blake

2011-05-17T21:20:00.001+05:30

One day a Buddhist monk was sleeping outside the Indian village of Nalanda under a Banyan tree some of whose branches were drooping to the ground. The sparrow kids played around. A slight breeze was blowing in and out and the sun still three fingers from the horizon was mild as a child. The monk was contemplating the image of a mother cooking in a kitchen and the breeze across his face kept the coals red. It was precisely at this moment that William Blake came and sat by the monk's feet took out his bottle of a local brewed whiskey bitter as camel milk the one he liked the most. Not surprisingly William had lived for many years in the eastern deserts. This was also the reason why he never traveled for the rest of his life. The monk woke up to the sound of pouring. In spite of the beaming peaceful smile the monk bore William could not make out how immensely wise and knowing the man might be. Back then nobody smiled or felt happy everybody felt wretched especially the poets who were a rotten lot. The monk said, 'Can I eat some of the boiled potatoes you have?' William had been vexed since the morning a prostitute from the brothel down the street wanted to marry him he regretted reading his poems to her and though he never paid her any money he would have to pay now. 'Only if you deserve them'. William proceeded with the intellect that overcomes a poet while talking to the gentry, 'Do you remember how Van Gogh had cut his own ear?' The sun moving like a wrist dropped down through the dense foliage in scattered slants on to their backs. The monk contemplating potatoes the size of ears cut and boiled said nothing but kept silent. 'It was the left ear. Why then in two of his self portraits his right ear is bandaged while the left has been painted like it was not?' The monk could afford more silence but asked, 'Have you never used a mirror?'. William was exasperated on hearing this he knew the answer now never before had been so dissatisfied he had spent three drunken weeks arguing with his other poet friends and this man right here had made a fool out of them he pushed the little bag containing boiled potatoes the monk had some of them gladly he could have afforded more William asked him if knew why Van Gogh had cut his ear?

Haiku found

2011-05-14T17:32:00.007+05:30

sun about to rise-
the drunks
are fetching another bottle


where the giant cloud

is parked

this blind moon knows not


two a m in March
 creek!  April moon
shifting in the trees

Franz Kafka : A Story (I)

2011-05-08T23:04:00.004+05:30

A common experience, resulting in a common confusion. A. has to transact important business with B. in H. He goes to H. for a preliminary interview, accomplishes the journey there in ten minutes, and the journey back in the same time, and on returning boasts to his family of his expedition. Next day he goes again to H., this time to settle his business finally. As that by all appearances will require several hours, A. leaves very early in the morning. But although all the surrounding circumstances, at least in A.'s estimation, are exactly the same as the day before, this time it takes him ten hours to reach H. When he arrives there quite exhausted in the evening he is informed that B., annoyed at his absence, had left half an hour before to go to A.'s village, and that they must have passed each other on the road. A. is advised to wait. But in his anxiety about his business he sets off at once and hurries home. This time he covers the distance, without paying any particular attention to the fact, practically in an instant. At home he learns that B. had arrived quite early, immediately after A.'s departure, indeed that he had met A. on the threshold and reminded him of his business; but A. had replied that he had no time to spare, he must go at once. In spite of this incomprehensible behavior of A., however, B. had stayed on to wait for A.'s return. It is true, he had asked several times whether A. was not back yet, but he was still sitting up in A.'s room. Overjoyed at the opportunity of seeing B. at once and explaining everything to him, A. rushes upstairs. He is almost at the top, when he stumbles, twists a sinew, and almost fainting with the pain, incapable even of uttering a cry, only able to moan faintly in the darkness, he hears B.--impossible to tell whether at a great distance or quite near him--stamping down the stairs in a violent rage and vanishing for good.

written by Franz Kafka
translator not known to me

Watching a young girl study physics at the hospital

2011-05-06T21:31:00.015+05:30

Your clay wrists looked
Up at your sick eyes    rolled back
Somewhere with the rest of the 'stuff'
                                      When you walked in ..
Curtains locked with creases in them - equidistant
With a progressive and a positive color
Theme 'the work of a professional'

You'll get better
like the rest of us and
wear a light blue striped
suit. There are no sizes .. be careful with
vanity and   the double reversing
steel lock on the inside of our toilet facility

They'll also give
You two extra plastic hooks - portable on the wall
To hang your 'stuff' on
But only if you ask.

typhoid bluesy

2011-05-06T08:36:00.004+05:30

how many stars
does it take
to make a sky?
how many dead men
does it take
to make a morgue?

where do they buy
their water from?
the pigeons on my terrace

powercut in 21A --
the owl on my terrace arrived
faster than the stars

haiku

2011-05-01T06:53:00.003+05:30

living
on the Old Delhi road
four Kerouac cows

when in a lake
the sky
is always wet

the sky-
grey!
as a pant

twenty minutes ago

2011-04-28T13:33:00.004+05:30

a girl left me
a message
at five in the morning
to wake her
up at nine
the same morning
i called up at one
saying
i couldn't
i am at 102°F alone
in the room no meds my body is
hurting too and she tells
me stories about
the inconsistency of her
horizontal corridor tube
lights voodoo crickets who drive
bicycles around them.
I pay
the coffee bills when
ever we meet
and she says two
years back she had a fever too
its just the summer heat. By
the way do you know
the north
eastern
indie
rock band
October?
do you know
any meds i could get?
i know
one of the members
he is my friend
childhood

Daylight

2011-04-20T15:45:00.006+05:30

We have started a new blog - Daylight - for exploring the craft of poetry. Do read it - here. And do write in to us if you want to contribute -

poetry DOT daylight AT gmail DOT com

A mere poem

2011-04-14T17:18:00.004+05:30

       Sunlight has thrown
my window to the wall
like a gesture     mountain
drivers   make each other
               in mountains    (where else?)
Your fingers ran like horses
   providing the llano with trees
      whose branches were folded and
busy like insects. Then suddenly (like a little bonus)
everything opens up : a July sky
or a playground in a July sky.

I donot think months only seasons

(A tractor is making
sections of this road
   fertile.
That is where I anchor
my lies and by evening
   i have grown a pasture
  to rest with your cows)

There is a hole in the clouds
but the sun simply cannot find it today.

Thinking your summer
knees in the shade
of a tree which fractured
its elbow last night
when the storm came rolling in
. . i am seeking somebody
skilled in his trade    like priests
   a woman perhaps
      who can
rearrange me into shelves
so that when i am the top
i can negotiate time
with pigeons sleeping in the garrets (at four)

Outside the rain
is making an eyebrow
on* the faint road
it certainly
is
yours.
   I lost my privilege
to participate
to a crow who is now crossing
the river (Yamuna) without getting wet.

*of

Autorickshaw haiku-like

2011-04-08T12:21:00.021+05:30

Anna will be fasting
unto death my mother
never gives a fuck

Four days ago
Anna
was eating

foolish auto
honking
on the empty road

Dusk in Delhi
Japan
is shivering again

walking in the forest
the trees -
are smiling

looking in the mirror
oh my !
my honey colored eyes!

cardboard nailed
to the dry elm it says-
STAY FOR PEACE

with his beedi-
the old man- is setting
the sky on fire

rain storm begins
in the moonless night-
my windows are clapping

Anna

It is not pronounced an-uh but ä-nna emphasis is on the second unit

Haiku like poems

2011-03-24T08:51:00.028+05:30

roadside walls
all cracked
from the summer piss

in the train
rocking by itself
my mother's teacup

a sparrow
on my window sill
waiting for the sky

two children peeping
into each others
ragsacks - for toys

two trains passing each other
it is raining
in Mewar

my beard
is growing
like a forest

pigeons sleeping
at four in the garret
they dont have a watch

morning leaves
folded on a pine trail-
nature must be a woman

woke up at six
to watch
birds shit

trees kiss gentle
no wind blows they are
doing it on their own

overnight storm
the green tree
fractured its elbow

Pigeon shitting on
a towel --not mine
i keep writing

Sirens on the road
an old man
is dying

in Himachal !
birds bait the clouds
with wings

terracetop --no moon
today birds listen
to stars

night light blinks
nobody on road
i run myself over

the mind of the fan
watches me spin
on my bed- lo summer!

lets toss haiku like short three liner poems to each other and play. post in the comments if you want to

Japan

2011-03-15T12:34:00.005+05:30

Everything is heading
japan the newspapers
are from japan written
in english i never read them
people have gone
missing from my window
the two trees at the end
of this turn look
like fools no
wind today no fruits
no birds they are
not in forests
electric poles grow with them

2011-03-13T18:28:00.001+05:30

In the garret
i took a spider
for my mother

Fair

2011-03-04T21:20:00.000+05:30

The only losses in the rains
are snails curled
waiting for death
which is running late
from all the slippage.

Where linger you?

2011-03-01T10:27:00.002+05:30

Fresh blows the wind

towards home

my Irish child

where linger you?

Richard Wagner

Growing on a tree

2011-02-17T00:15:00.004+05:30

Last night I had funneled all
my wind into your silk navel. I cannot
remember where I lost it but so
when I sit down to write a poem I cannot.
     Its not even
   strange its a disaster
      to hear people
breathe.
You are reduced to an island
between my fingers     in my head marble
feathers on peach trees linger like a thought
before this:
Every tree is a twin
tight    tide     tied to the earth
filled with pipes draining .. but to where?
To love is to unfurl flowers on stems that's where.
I am eating an orange      in my head
you are progressing
like a swimmer
who lost his canoe
to storms
born out of your silk navels ...

For P

Died again

2011-02-04T20:02:00.003+05:30

Two children peeping
into each other's
rag sacks -- for toys?

Amalia

2011-01-26T18:29:00.004+05:30

If the wind blows   (again)   her
hair will climb the sky like vines
growing under my window
sill. The wind had stopped
playing    two days ago she stood
in a corner where you look      now
with her lips un:done and her hair
arranged like branches on a tree
Her gloam face is shot into storms
She is looking beautiful      etc.

Spotted

2011-01-21T15:13:00.005+05:30

Roadside on a giant board
there are neat chicken crumbs present
each the size of man
stacked jumbly
on top of each other
(rather deliberately)
hunger is an accident but
And in big bold letters the importance
of schezwan sauce is insinuated
These are the riches of the man
who sings in toilets
which smell of green tea.

2011-01-04T10:04:00.006+05:30

the buttons
on my shirt
are growing

over the marble
a winter is
biting a knife

under a bridge
parted like lips
i

An ode to wetness

2010-12-29T11:28:00.002+05:30

Having pissed on the dried
brown rocks I now watch it

Evaporate into rainbows : colored stems
and clouds : inflated zeppelins fencing

The stretched colorless sky.

Winter Poem

2010-12-26T20:20:00.005+05:30

By midnight

the dogs

are barking

relentlessly

trying to

seduce

a poem

which sits

on the second storey

..injured.

Baskets

2010-12-24T23:01:00.002+05:30

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off - that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed - he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

-By Henri David Thoreau

Chapter Economy

Walden

Total

2010-12-14T17:25:00.006+05:30

Watching the shafts
exhaled by headlights
move through the dust
towards a circle
of old men and
the peepal next to them : total clean wood
I got run over by a car
but for R. who later said, "Again.
It took a moment for the year to occur".
Afterwards I nodded
to him. This is the essence
of time. It does not
grow on a tree.

Poem

2010-12-09T23:00:00.004+05:30

dust dust dust dust dust dust
dust dust dust dust dust dust
dust dust dust dust dust dust
dust dust dust dust dust dust
dust dust dust dust dust dust
dust dust dust dust dust dust

Buddha Reveals Himself

2010-12-03T09:40:00.004+05:30

One day a young Buddhist monk, also a fresh student of Zen, was ordered by his master to go to the other side of the mountain and take care of the monastery which had been in ruins ever since the war had ended. The monk, diligent by nature, traveled all night long .. without stopping and reached to the other side of the mountain by early morning.

The villagers, on watching a monk descending the mountainside , were inexplicably bewildered. Utter disquiet and commotion ran throughout the village as everybody rushed to greet the monk.

The monk, despite the chaos and a tiresome journey, was still at peace .. with everything and everyone around him.

One of the villagers came forward and expressing great surprise asked the monk, "The entire forest that links our village to the other side of the mountain had been lined up with an enormous number of land mines during the war. How did you manage to survive your journey? ".

The monk replied, "It was easy. I took the middle path."

Cones

2010-11-17T17:33:00.003+05:30

When i go back
i will let the cracked
street lights sew emblems
on windowpanes through out
as if they were suns
unclicking cones in a forest
filled with pine trees.

2010-11-15T10:14:00.009+05:30

It is Sunday today.
It is time       to take a bath.

One  bottle  of  rum
in  my bag
it   is   raining
in  my  bag
it  is  night

2010-11-09T11:02:00.030+05:30

White breasts in lunch
twice i tell you
they are soft.

The wall clock stopped
in '02 i never
gave a fuck.

Stood in the rains
outside -- wet
i felt like a nipple.

Eclectic Dream

2010-11-02T13:50:00.006+05:30

For Tom Clark's health

1.
Light rain falls     your hunger is coiled
around my desires and   the   street
                                                     is wet. The wind
had stopped    playing    two
days ago partial emotions passed
into memories like minutes   sifting through clocks
with no hands. Fourteen flights up the sun still
hasn't set : amzaing joys of injustice
fill these white towers
           she stood
in a corner where you look
      now.

2.
With her lips un done and her hair
arranged like branches on a
tree. The moment arrives and leaves: you
wouldn't know what to do with it.
today you are eager waiting for the nameless on the cusp of
    no:thing in particular    Frantic Marble skies open
up like waterproof vaults. I acknowledge
the vowels on my window sill
                 (for their assistance last night)
with my plural silk fingers and her happy almond eyes.

3.
It is evening   purple pills decay on my wooden desk
  milky thighs on my neighbor's: amazing joys
                                                            of injustice
street light    rains my hunger is wet
with sleep    I paddle across
    her eyelids looking for some thing more
useless      than clocks with no hands.
God is busy making women
                       with almond breasts
happy.

4.
Absurdity (of keeping time) breathes winter and her
gloam face is shot into storms.
                   She is looking beautiful     etc ..
     wooden couples whimper into a corner
on a desk where you never look      for the sake of vulgarity
     Tom is sick . .   again.    In California
trees weep    waterproof tears    fall    purple
leaves    grow    up   on branches arranged
like hair on her face.

5.
Everybody is breathing today: amazing joys of ..
    The sun arrives and leaves
fourteen flights up you would not know what
to do with it. My desires are sick
with hunger hung on the window sill
       where you look    now.   White towers     (silk fingers )
     are coiled around clouds
like a cursed white bra with    no hooks. Leaves disgusted
with death play in the wind which had stopped
playing two days ago.
Tom is sick    again .. (poems weep):   amazing joys of injustice.
Light rain falls.

Good Mourning Poem

2010-11-01T21:34:00.004+05:30

There are bars
across my window.
They cut the moon
into pieces and
by morning feed
them to stray
dogs on sidewalks.

The Cosmopolitan Evening Scene

2010-10-23T15:23:00.003+05:30

Three grey birds sit on telephone
wires listening, till their vanity
defects into giant glass screens

where unsorted fingers stop
to weave the hair into stems
of perfect flowers growing

on kimonos hung in the
futility of French doorways
where you stand

insistently

with both
your eyes

black vacant filthy

like the side walks

where death dies
curiously
in intervals
diagonal

to life

where three grey birds sit on telephone
wires listening . . .

The Language of the Tribe

2010-10-22T22:55:00.003+05:30

The Secretary spoke of the “facilities.”

Under his bald dome the mouth opened and spoke.

The raids, he said, were protection reaction responses

Against the enemy’s anti-aircraft facilities.

That were harassing our unarmed reconnaissance

Surveillance over their facilities.

But might the bombs have damaged other targets?

Under his bald dome the mouth opened and spoke.

Possibly, he said, the bombs might have

Deprived the enemy’s facilities

Of access to logistic and supply

Facilities in close proximity

To primary targets; by which he meant, I think:

“The bastards kept the bullets near the guns.”

- Howard Nemerov

Poem

2010-10-12T11:01:00.020+05:30

For Bhopal

One of these days

I believe

I will breathe

Myself to Death

Credits-

Lone cloud (9-28-10) clicked by Kelly Delay from www.clouds365.com

An illusion of chimneys shooting up clouds into the sky ( How beautiful would it be to think and believe this way. )

The reality by Håkan Dahlström on Flickr

Bhopal Gas Tragedy- An old man by Raghu Rai

Death at Bhopal Gas Tragedy by Raghu Rai and Pablo Bartholomew

Ascendancies

2010-10-05T00:47:00.002+05:30

i. Each night I climb

up to have a seance with

the neon billboards hung

from the night sky.

ii. My heart

is an ashtray

atrophied in the harmony

of sleepless nights.

iii. Her eyes are candle wax

by now. I had left them burning

All night long.

Ordinary

2010-09-22T22:35:00.005+05:30

People never met

While letting the yellow
Light make shadows on
Her face she reminds
Me of a janitor
At the noon show
Collecting day light
For the mid night
Credits and Frank O'Hara
Waiting at the bus
Stop for the elegy
That marks the end of today.

In trains

2010-09-17T22:45:00.009+05:30

Leaning against the wooden air
perforated by a million different
breaths, feeling your fingers
and back on the cold steel pole for
an hour makes you
a    stripper
                    wearing
a pair
                                  of black boots.

You feel special when you
have Gandhi in every pocket
of your pants. Yet the poems
keep spilling out in front
of people.

I feel jealous because
I do not remember the color
of her top.
So she
would not let me
have it.

Poem

2010-09-11T09:55:00.002+05:30

The flight of an eagle

Sutures up the cloud

To stop the whistling

. . That I

Can sleep tonight.

Krishna and Rimbaud

2010-08-27T16:28:00.003+05:30

Le Mal
(Evil)

While the red spittle of the grape-shot
Whistles all day in the infinite blue sky:
While the battalions, scarlet or green, fly,
By the King who jeers, en masse, into the pot:

While the terrible stupidity grinds and crushes,
And makes a smoking heap of a thousand men:
– Poor Dead! In summer, among the rushes,
In your joy, sacred Nature, who created them!…

– There’s a God, who laughs at altar-cloths
Of damask, incense, and great gold chalices:
Who dozes to Hosannas for lullaby,

And wakes when mothers, gathered in their grief,
Weeping under their old black bonnets, sigh
And yield Him the coin knotted in their handkerchief.

-- Arthur Rimbaud

The Lord has left half the country hungry. The remaining half fast for Him tonight.

Debodatt meanwhile, collecting scrap iron lancets in the mud, cries, the entire evening for the one rupee stolen from him by a bully at 5 in the evening.

One rupee is the price of our misery.

By the morning, there is an old rusty water tank parked in a lane.

Through the slightest of seepage in the pipes, Debodatt takes his morning bath. Before he can go to school.

A pencil costs me three rupees.

Krishna was born tonight. Or did somebody invent him?

Four rupees is the cost of this text?

Tom,

2010-08-18T17:27:00.006+05:30

Freshly grown trees by the roadside
have been cut so that she
                                         could paint
her hair green. This
is the munificent
uselessness of language Tom.
I      could       swindle
you even with you
                                 knowing it.

Nearsightedness

India: 15th August 1947

2010-08-15T19:44:00.004+05:30

I got one country. It owns me.

At least today.

If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud. When we dropped the bomb, it was not our intention to kill anybody. We have bombed the British Government. The British must quit India and make her free.

Bhagat Singh (27 September 1907 – 23 March 1931).

Radium

2010-08-11T17:31:00.009+05:30

After looking her up in an old and dusty telephone directory, he decided to follow her downstairs. She was poised right at the corner and a tear had ruptured her name into unequal parts like the moon torn into being a thread of white satin curved, under the weight of its own gravity.

All month long she breathed thick air through columns of bar codes and now the spring had been stalled on her skirt for an entire fortnight. So as he followed her into the empty lane he bore the irresponsibilities of her month long indiscretions.

Wind strolled right around the corner like an empty taxi changing gears on an empty highway being driven for no particular reason. He notices leaves on the tree swallowing the arboreal notion of swapping leaves and notices, scrambling as he did so. The leaves keep falling, their movements, well rehearsed as if they were construction workers returning at five thirty in the evening. The young lady has holes punched in back of her outfit. She has borrowed them from the paper work in a basement of her office's massive glass building.

Being a discourteously crude man he made a bet to himself about the possibility of a phosphorescent void similar to the radium dials underneath her skirt.

"We just need to wait, till it gets dark", he said to himself.

Poem

2010-08-06T14:59:00.003+05:30

At a big bazaar on the Sunday
of first August everything is up on
sale and there are discounts on underwears
and food nobody entertains a penniless
man everyone is rich enough to entertain oneself in case
of emergency break glass says a snippet covered
with glass on the wall's end. There is an exact
note at my office and there are no balls
on sale today. I would have bought them even
if there were no discounts and go
break glass in my office every day one
girl with violet luminous nails is pretty enough
not to be a part of the scene just like
bags of ice tea which have been lined
up like numbers in a telephone booth i pick
one out and they never
will be the same after three hours
i walk outside to breathe and it begins
to rain by the evening a girl on the phone
complains to him about his voice echoing right
through so he talks about the void he has
been carrying and the girl does not give
a fuck about the profoundity of his state
of mind while I am still up thinking about it.
The rains have stopped.