what moves you

she sat

on the ledge

smoking a cigar

thinking of a picture

of a teardrop in the sun

it was neither day nor night

that it is to say it was evening

not early morning not her hour

and the cat could feel the moist tip of all her electric fur bristling and bubbling with a hot eclair

the cat that lay curled up warm in a satin pillow inert respiring enjoying sensations honey and cream

she let a leg drop on the naked side of the wall and rubbed her heel against the mossy side gently 

indulging the itch not hurrying it into the deep cut which in time it would take and the wall would

bear a mark where unmindful 

of the chafing she had escaped 

into prisms and was working up 

and down her rainbow

the rhythm of her sole's 

brushing the damp brick

essential to keep the beat

while she swayed
to a song of forgetfulness

it is true
we all want
to apply the same
lotion day and night
this one the only one
to unguard and unprotect
itching in a straitjacket
this one unbound undressed
it is true we all want
to be in one piece of cloth
only tied to the bed
christs in cushions
quaking and consumed
in intense bouts of passion
it is true this lotion is true
ageless the most revelatory of secrets
and cathartic to its utmost naked
among animals it is vulture
in fruits it is apple
among elements it is the seed
the secret of the heartbeat
in a drop of seaweed
the unmade essence of making
the salve of the burn
is plenty in the field
the free yards of vast golden
and where the children run naked
throw those parks open
let a moist wind gently
bury in dead leaf
all infernal walls
lets light one big fire
and dance around it
like children of the gutters

if anything is worth writing about it is pain and suffering and how for better or for worse our lives are shaped by the constant struggle of attitudes to despondence and desultoriness. and to write about the struggle itself as if it was matter of fact for it certainly is unremarkable. the only thing heroic about it is the silence. for to express anything but calm in the face of adversity amounts to some kind of petulance. and so i arrive at an overwhelming truth, of life as petulance. a constant nagging for some sort of comfort, some relief and some acknowledgement of our entitlement to all that; without a worry for peace for that has been promised us regardless. peace is irrational. why in life seek the stillness which death has reserved for us. why not be shaken up, be exhausted by living that we may collapse, break-down, cut loose to feel alive. and in between if one can remember what one has seen as each pageant winds up then one can use the blank, morbid hours, when all there is to distract you is you or the past or the gray future, to squeeze out these recollections through the funnel of desolation to get at the quicksilver essence of wanting to live and not being able to live without wanting. nor either to want one thing and keep wanting it. havent we all some time wanted to die. but you are alive.

i see blue flowers
in a green bed
outside a beautiful house
but i am a ghost
i cannot come home
i do not go back home
i know not where home is
a castaway soul i roam
i hang on
till i come by a familiar
road in the early morning dawn
and by your gate see
blue flowers smiling at me

then i enter and die
bury me in the green bed
you water with so much love

on godzilla

feeling a twinge of pity after the beast has been defeated and is dying. knowing that it was either him or you but despite that not being able to help the morbid wonder of life leaving the body which arrests one in the last moments of a creature whose death is far more visceral, if it may be described as such in contrast to the human ending which has canons of rituals, social and sacramental, to distract us. to animals, in their untrained tongues and manners, perhaps the death of a human being is liable to evoke the same kind of feelings as does their death in us. a little hatred for the victim and a lot of cruel intent for the prey is a dangerous animal unless it is really only an ignorant disregard and a more basic separation in it of thought and action. human beings when they do mindless things, in the extreme like when they hunt other human beings and then eat them, usually have come to that brutishness after passing through a long, dark tunnel which it would take all the thinkers of the world to illuminate. but the beast is beastly because it was born that way. it has sincerely evolved its fangs, claws, talons and teeth all through the time life has existed to become whatever kind of unapologetic killer it is as a predator. but our evolution, having been of the mind and progressing on it, can at times very clearly seem to have left us at a remove from nature itself, the first principle of evolution. but the so called mute animal is still very much in touch with its nature. a lucky creature whod never have to worry about problems like the artificiality or otherness of life. utterly nihilistic ideas which espouse total destruction that we may build anew. so the sense of life we make constantly bothers us as being artificial because it is not an organic celebration of nature but almost its denial. the idea that better than harmony is control. not so for the beast which seeks no control, wants no domination but kills only out of an obligation to hunger. an obligation which many millions of years ago our earliest ancestors would have felt towards themselves equally like all the creatures of prehistory, extant and extinct. thereafter, however, evolution put human beings on a superhighway to progress on which the brain could surpass all the possibilities of the body, challenge it and shape it. but that departure into just the mind, for better or for worse, has now made us all control freaks and insecure maniacs utterly unsure of ourselves as we try to fit into a manufactured context which mankind has had to create for itself after the departure from nature. now was this departure conscious or did it take wing at a subconscious level merely wherein man has followed his nature as nature had willed it shall be on earth is a question which charlatan sophistry cannot completely resolve nor can nihilism utterly efface. that in the coldest part of nature some warmth  may still be hiding struck me when i saw the man who helped bring godzilla down look upon what he had wrought with a definite look of regret; he was sad godzilla had to so helplessly die. and although it occurred to me, he perhaps had nobler ideas to cherish from the cataclysm so neither did he break off something from the beast to keep as a souvenir of the day when he conquered a giant.

terracotta warriors and horses

a one-handed man
a left with the weak
hand marked man a
symbol of our
amputated times
dispossessed man
meaningful artwork
for those with the leisure
but in mangled bone
and shrivelled marrow
its displeasure and loathing
the time to pause
on the fate of the damned
when the damned themselves
may only lift their heads
to look at the watchtower
as the chimes sound
to note the passing of
another hour

waiting for the parade
to pass waiting to
cross the road silently
pedestrian anger explodes
then as the cheers grow louder
and the floats drift by
like clouds in heaven like
clouds in heaven under gay skies
it's just that
the deafening thunder
that is the clapping in that
the one-armed half-limbed man
has no part to play for
he cannot clap now look
he is a righthand
in service of
the itch factoryman
he isnt handicapped
but going straight from
unarmed to defanged
feels the loss of teeth
like a bleeding stump

nevertheless a respectfully benumbed
not expected to fight
embattled man waking up
with a heavy head hammering home
the pain of dismemberment
he sees in his blurred vision
a pigeon on the window sill
being watched by a cat
on the wall and he cant
take it no more life and hunger
so elegantly poised on
the razor's edge pain consuming pain
endlessly a cause equally and evenly
served by shooting either bird or cat
or both but then he has always
been a bird in hand man who would
never know which to save which to give up
and so wields he in his astral arm
an axe for all and against everyone
a one-armed man-at-arm

making light of demockersi

pithy remarks can have only so much use in times like these -- putting things into perspective. with the recent goings on in the power circuit in the country it would be fair to borrow a phrase which sums up a condition as endemic in india's socio-political destiny as breeding among rabbits --- crisis of power. something that feeds on itself and is a certain black hole that sucks in all the energies of a resurgent nation. as far as the events of the two succeeding dates of 30,31 itself are concerned im sure its in our national character to deal with it and have closure. that is forget all about it until it happens again. although much couldve happened (a jumpy colleague even suggested that some enemy state might have attacked in the meantime) and though not this time much has happened to indicate that we as a country can just take it on our sweet chin and carry on. not bad considering that for at least 4 hours one fine day more than 600mn indians were without electricityc(actually it was really half that number who really experienced the outage, the rest apparently have no access to power, or so claims http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/08/what-was-revealed-when-the-lights-went-out-in-india.html and it makes me wonder).
domestically so common an occurrence as to be a non-event for so many of our countrymen but the magnitude of this one meant that india was like hit by a tsunami or earthquake or both.what followed can be demonstrated in as few as three simple steps which have now through rigorous refining of the best practices at the hogwash school of witchcraft etc become the hallmark of involved governance in our country
> deny responsibility
> appoint committtee
the above steps have already been attained wherein a reshuffle and a fate is to blame-this is not uncommon/unheard of/unnatural stance-later it has been decided that a high-powered committee is to look into the whole thing
> the third step is obviously something miraculous once all three steps are together seen as constituting the most ridiculously silly con one man ever tried to pull on another.
but given our numbers, at the national level i guess this theft of reason is exquisite. an unparalleled heist. which is to say im not too clear about the third step because inquiries are done, reports are submitted, in between, the drivers of inquiry panel members switch the fans on in their cars while they sleep all afternoon as their lords grapple with the most complex issue who, after having presided over the early disappearance of white ambies from indian roads are now finally at ease about their comfort knowing that ministers' cars are only going to get bigger and the convoys longer.
what the lay public will never wake up to though is the truth, rti or no rti. nor for that matter would they find a remedy. all this makes me think that the great indian circus sums it up. we, the people, of india are circus goers who having gaily resolved to abandon all loving care to the winds and yield the field to a gang of filibusters, carpetbaggers, gerrymanderers, horsetraders, double-crossers and all manner of assorted fly-by-nighters kartabwale that they may amuse us with their endless comedy of deft posturing and bumbling performance, will now sit back and enjoy the show.
of course, the ticket is free and we can stay as long as we want. so we do. this time, during the circus, current went. what to do. i suppose most of the audience would be too lazy to now go out and see whatever was the matter. no, they would rather stretch out and wait. or nod off. the kids will start bawling but they will soon have sweaty teats to suck on. on the whole i think it is this attitude that is going to help us as a country. this belief so immanent amongst us that we are in a circus and how lucky we are to be here. for it is entertainment merely and not art or life or one posing as the other. timepass of  a cheap kind, our politics in the theatre of babel.




up and down we go
up and down under
forbearing eyes of
boulder and fair rock
they twist and turn
these roads they fall
away in a flash or
breathlessly rise
grey phantoms
in the night
this has been my
city of fear and
a city of mad lust
chipping away
at my soul but
this city has air
but i never believed
i was choked