On the back of the crest
Creeps the fall
To the sound of crashing waves
In the play of eternity
The furious cavalry charge
Rising every moment
To a rapturous peak
Is suddenly
Brought to its knees
With the fort so close
The shore beneath its feet
And the broken waves return
To the slumber of the deep
Where in the womb of mermaids
They are nursed to sleep
There is the small of the back
And then there is the big about it
Keeping my eyes on the one
I can explore
the ramifications of the other thing
by the riverside
in cool glades
if the goats of spring
will find their feed
the goatherd then
god bless him
must be allowed to
help himself to
what he needs
im a regular carnivore
with a bird’s metabolism
im the wisest of beasts
with the metaphysics of
a tadpole
Friday, March 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
(that's) some lust in the time of destruction
That which
Will get
Over soon
That which is
Forever but
Not ours to keep
That that
Should have to be
Decorated and nourished
But what hunger is that
What aesthetics
Will worry over
every detail and
not a wink sleep
a cloud born free
in the widest sky
will gather water
only to rain out
and that is
the end of it
in the fitness of things
what is then
saving for
the rainy day I think
tremors shake
waves crash
people die
True globalization hasn’t stopped at the disasters. That we’ve heard. And have even seen manmade ones cause destruction of fantastic proportions across the lands. But the contrast between what nature wreaks and what man hath wrought lies at the moment 150 miles off tokyo. Tsunami, colossal, terrible swept away much that had been carefully put together. However, despite the scale of the crisis, as such it was going to be confined to japan. But the radioactive leak fears are proving to be something else. Apart from the panicked reaction it has triggered off among opponents of nuclear power who have been galvanized into greater agitation on the basis of the cold evidence in japan, it also made me look up to the sky to see if it was going to rain because I got texted a warning about there being a chance of radioactive ash or something in the rainwater so please use a umbrella. There.
Will get
Over soon
That which is
Forever but
Not ours to keep
That that
Should have to be
Decorated and nourished
But what hunger is that
What aesthetics
Will worry over
every detail and
not a wink sleep
a cloud born free
in the widest sky
will gather water
only to rain out
and that is
the end of it
in the fitness of things
what is then
saving for
the rainy day I think
tremors shake
waves crash
people die
True globalization hasn’t stopped at the disasters. That we’ve heard. And have even seen manmade ones cause destruction of fantastic proportions across the lands. But the contrast between what nature wreaks and what man hath wrought lies at the moment 150 miles off tokyo. Tsunami, colossal, terrible swept away much that had been carefully put together. However, despite the scale of the crisis, as such it was going to be confined to japan. But the radioactive leak fears are proving to be something else. Apart from the panicked reaction it has triggered off among opponents of nuclear power who have been galvanized into greater agitation on the basis of the cold evidence in japan, it also made me look up to the sky to see if it was going to rain because I got texted a warning about there being a chance of radioactive ash or something in the rainwater so please use a umbrella. There.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
nights of long knives
Your ghost
Had his hair
Parted to the right
It is one of the most
Recognisable sights
In the crematorium
When the woods
Crackle and burn
It calls the insects
To the flames
One blindly follows
the other while grimly
you stood
beside though your teeth
you couldn’t hide
you were
only a shadow
in that leaping light
just before the sun
sinks
I think oh what a night
It’s going to be
But before I know it
It’s another morning
The gilded hours
have passed unnoticed
between dozing off
and fighting off sleep
and here I think I’ll be given
to guard the king’s treasury
I’ll woo you
With my spaceman
Promise you that
Hand in hand with you
I shall see my thousandth sun
Then how will you turn me down
When I tell you
I am not of this ground
Even as I kneel
To see whether the sandal fits
You will squeeze into it I know
Though it should bite and pinch
And come away one foot bare
And the other bleeding
With me leading you
Across the moon because
You have the breath of stars
In your bosom
You want to live
In the skies
Had his hair
Parted to the right
It is one of the most
Recognisable sights
In the crematorium
When the woods
Crackle and burn
It calls the insects
To the flames
One blindly follows
the other while grimly
you stood
beside though your teeth
you couldn’t hide
you were
only a shadow
in that leaping light
just before the sun
sinks
I think oh what a night
It’s going to be
But before I know it
It’s another morning
The gilded hours
have passed unnoticed
between dozing off
and fighting off sleep
and here I think I’ll be given
to guard the king’s treasury
I’ll woo you
With my spaceman
Promise you that
Hand in hand with you
I shall see my thousandth sun
Then how will you turn me down
When I tell you
I am not of this ground
Even as I kneel
To see whether the sandal fits
You will squeeze into it I know
Though it should bite and pinch
And come away one foot bare
And the other bleeding
With me leading you
Across the moon because
You have the breath of stars
In your bosom
You want to live
In the skies
Monday, January 31, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
mind it
This one is crazy. utsav sharma actually did what the nation hailed as the thing to do in rdb and was promptly presented as the maniac on medication with a penchant for violent catharsis and a history of assault and battery that was described as having more to do with his mental state than with his motive. In brief, utsav is the 29-year-old who hacked at ramesh talwar with a cleaver because he was fed up with the “absolute laxity” of the criminal investigation in the aarushi talwar murder case. No, he has nothing to do with aarushi. And he has been fed up before. February last year he posed as a journalist to attack sps rathore, the former Punjab police officer accused of molesting ruchika girhotra, driving the poor girl to suicide. That attack was carried out with a penknife. Rathore incidentally got away lightly for his role in the death of the girl whom, when she was 14-years-old, he had molested in front an eyewitness.
Protective parents might have pleaded with the authorities to let the boy be declared mentally unstable and kept under observation and constant monitoring, total responsibility for which they would surely have promised. Indeed, the brazen acts can only be the work of a lunatic. I too feel horribly depressed by the ‘miscarriage of justice’ in this country, my blood boils too when I find our leaders and captains as being no more than venal, corrupt idiots whose claim to respect is not what it should be. I too feel frustrated that we give them that respect regardless. But I sure am not going a killing anyone.
But here’s a thought: maybe, since no one’s died by his hand yet, he didn’t want to actually kill anyone. Just scare them, embarrass them. Terrorize them that they are as vulnerable and exposed as the victims they did to death. There is a reason I say this. Utsav won a gold medal when he graduated in fine arts from the banaras hindu university (I know people who’ve studied there) and has just passed out of the nid last month (I know people who’ve been to nid). Speaking for myself, for all my sensibility, I don’t think mustering a gold medal is any piece of cake. And this is art and shit involved here. Among one of the mental processes of an artist is to find an expression that would echo. A very creative and personal signature but one that would nonetheless have to resonate with a meaning which communicates itself through the imagination.
Now to build a case on the evidence available, it would be too simplistic to term the subject a mental case and pass our verdict. It is one thing to be on the side of civil society and justice, due process and the course of law but to go tut tut and shut away as delinquent someone who wears his indignation on his sleeve because that is not the prescribed way to protest is dangerous.
Make no mistakes, utsav has committed a crime. He should be arrested, tried and sentenced according to the laws of the land. But to brand his activism as an act of madness and keep him under supervision, that is cynical. And it is cynicism of a grave kind because it cuts at the very sap of feeling that makes human beings civilized. For it is uncivilized and vulgar how even after committing great misdeeds our criminals can live among us (to be sure we cannot ostracize or outcast our felons, the shot at re-assimilation is their greatest hope but that is a different matter — can’t be politically correct all the time man) to popular acclaim.
So this man here too deserves his right to be taken seriously. It is a serious thing he is trying to say.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/I-only-wanted-to-hurt-Talwar-not-kill-him-says-Utsav-Sharma/articleshow/7364668.cms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruchika_Girhotra_Case
Protective parents might have pleaded with the authorities to let the boy be declared mentally unstable and kept under observation and constant monitoring, total responsibility for which they would surely have promised. Indeed, the brazen acts can only be the work of a lunatic. I too feel horribly depressed by the ‘miscarriage of justice’ in this country, my blood boils too when I find our leaders and captains as being no more than venal, corrupt idiots whose claim to respect is not what it should be. I too feel frustrated that we give them that respect regardless. But I sure am not going a killing anyone.
But here’s a thought: maybe, since no one’s died by his hand yet, he didn’t want to actually kill anyone. Just scare them, embarrass them. Terrorize them that they are as vulnerable and exposed as the victims they did to death. There is a reason I say this. Utsav won a gold medal when he graduated in fine arts from the banaras hindu university (I know people who’ve studied there) and has just passed out of the nid last month (I know people who’ve been to nid). Speaking for myself, for all my sensibility, I don’t think mustering a gold medal is any piece of cake. And this is art and shit involved here. Among one of the mental processes of an artist is to find an expression that would echo. A very creative and personal signature but one that would nonetheless have to resonate with a meaning which communicates itself through the imagination.
Now to build a case on the evidence available, it would be too simplistic to term the subject a mental case and pass our verdict. It is one thing to be on the side of civil society and justice, due process and the course of law but to go tut tut and shut away as delinquent someone who wears his indignation on his sleeve because that is not the prescribed way to protest is dangerous.
Make no mistakes, utsav has committed a crime. He should be arrested, tried and sentenced according to the laws of the land. But to brand his activism as an act of madness and keep him under supervision, that is cynical. And it is cynicism of a grave kind because it cuts at the very sap of feeling that makes human beings civilized. For it is uncivilized and vulgar how even after committing great misdeeds our criminals can live among us (to be sure we cannot ostracize or outcast our felons, the shot at re-assimilation is their greatest hope but that is a different matter — can’t be politically correct all the time man) to popular acclaim.
So this man here too deserves his right to be taken seriously. It is a serious thing he is trying to say.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/I-only-wanted-to-hurt-Talwar-not-kill-him-says-Utsav-Sharma/articleshow/7364668.cms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruchika_Girhotra_Case
Thursday, January 13, 2011
I am
The light of the world
If I can
Shine on
A little longer
These are
The hot winds of hell
I’m not so much
The burning beacon
As the smoke
That harms less
I have
The confidence of a survivor
A habitual
Idiot, a liar, a scavenger
On the open road
I’m the avenger
Elsewhere I’m abetting the crimes
I wonder whether
Thought precedes action
Or the other way round
I do not much put
My feet on the ground
My anthropology
Is of going from quasi-hunter
To the regurgitating kind
I am
The king of Calcutta
The lord of the crows
With them I hold court
And unleash chaos on
This city of mice and men
I’ve learnt
To say what I want
But I’ve forgotten
The bit about learning
I’ve seen
The spots on moon
And think I prefer
The darkness of its waning
The light of the world
If I can
Shine on
A little longer
These are
The hot winds of hell
I’m not so much
The burning beacon
As the smoke
That harms less
I have
The confidence of a survivor
A habitual
Idiot, a liar, a scavenger
On the open road
I’m the avenger
Elsewhere I’m abetting the crimes
I wonder whether
Thought precedes action
Or the other way round
I do not much put
My feet on the ground
My anthropology
Is of going from quasi-hunter
To the regurgitating kind
I am
The king of Calcutta
The lord of the crows
With them I hold court
And unleash chaos on
This city of mice and men
I’ve learnt
To say what I want
But I’ve forgotten
The bit about learning
I’ve seen
The spots on moon
And think I prefer
The darkness of its waning
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
e=mj2, a new year's prayer
After another old
Is this new
Not a lot cold
But it would do
To grab a shoulder
And bring it closer
Before we start again
Till it gets over once more
When not a little loud
But in whispers too
People come together
Kick off their shoes
Take the lips closer
To the lips you choose
live for the kiss
beat in the booze
And by morning
We’d have come
A little further
In the wilderness
And I’m a little
Closer to you
Now waiting. What will be this year’s defining date? What day will jump out of the calendar and become a part of the history of the post-MJ era after being branded as per the characteristic economy of our superfluous times that has given us such twenty-first century signposts as 9/11, 26/11, 7/7 and so on. The battle for world peace lost a frontline soldier with the passing of the King but b says the way he makes her feel, and b feels she wants her children to grow up in a peaceful world. The reason for this is that at the end of o-ten I heard lots of conversations about the King and I got to thinking that if America has discovered one truth of MJ’s gospel in its first black president maybe after all someday the world will get down to healing itself. Once in a while I dig the world man.
What hasn’t happened
will happen never
and what has shall
never not happen
if ever there
was such a land
to walk it would be
to dance on moon
even if there was
only one who could
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08_Jsfi1dbE
Is this new
Not a lot cold
But it would do
To grab a shoulder
And bring it closer
Before we start again
Till it gets over once more
When not a little loud
But in whispers too
People come together
Kick off their shoes
Take the lips closer
To the lips you choose
live for the kiss
beat in the booze
And by morning
We’d have come
A little further
In the wilderness
And I’m a little
Closer to you
Now waiting. What will be this year’s defining date? What day will jump out of the calendar and become a part of the history of the post-MJ era after being branded as per the characteristic economy of our superfluous times that has given us such twenty-first century signposts as 9/11, 26/11, 7/7 and so on. The battle for world peace lost a frontline soldier with the passing of the King but b says the way he makes her feel, and b feels she wants her children to grow up in a peaceful world. The reason for this is that at the end of o-ten I heard lots of conversations about the King and I got to thinking that if America has discovered one truth of MJ’s gospel in its first black president maybe after all someday the world will get down to healing itself. Once in a while I dig the world man.
What hasn’t happened
will happen never
and what has shall
never not happen
if ever there
was such a land
to walk it would be
to dance on moon
even if there was
only one who could
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08_Jsfi1dbE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)