ANATOMY OF AFFECTION

I know you don’t believe me
I know you think its wrong.

I wish you could be there
To watch with what precision
They rip me up in pieces
Flashing the long needles
Scissors, scalpels all,
To announce the grave verdict,
With prophetic poise and tone
On the strange case
Of one arrogant wretch.

At least give me praise
For bearing it all awake!

Morning evening afternoon…
You’ll find me all the time
Stretched out alive
Like a frog in the lab
Counting the span
Of each dissecting day.

The reports are all the same.
“He thinks he knows it all.”
“Behavioural problem, you see.”
“He needs counseling, I think.”
“There’s a limit to tolerance, you know.”

Babbling breed of painted beasts.
Sinners don’t stone others.
I am a man
More sinned against than sinning.

I am not showing off.
Comes naturally, you see.
Must cling to something-
Even if it’s a text.
At least I know old Will
Will not come and judge.
Perhaps he too will ask,
Biting at his quill
“Is there a cause in nature
that makes these hard hearts?”

I know it’s all futile,
Resenting all in vain.
Just twist and twirl
Like a broken can
Through the primrose cactus lane
To meet at length the twilight-time
When flocks of doves
Will fly way
Into the womb of sunlit clouds
Bearing dreams on purple wings.

Till then the wheel must turn,
Through all the potholed stretch of time,
Smeared in dirt and filth
To wrest at least at last
The freedom to be me.

kolkata jingles

Songs for Spring

“Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear.”

I

Morning seeps through
The smell of unclean sweat.
One by one the blackened words
Flash across the dizzy rush-
“how many deaths?how?”.
The throng of nameless faces pass-
Jerk, nudge, push, trip.
The mouse in lab begins the run.

II

The whips crack throughout the day.
Ticking clock’s the rhythm divine.
Kling klang beep cling,
Click copy paste click;
Shadows are flushed down the toilets.
Click copy paste click.
Sighs are squeezed through greasy lips,
Sluggish drop the soiled cuffs.

III
Once again the muddy rush;
Waves on waves of stillborn eyes.
At last arrives the promised end-
A riddling roar of digital kin;
Mothers wives and mothers-in-law-
Love weep shout plot,
And bills and lists and calls and bills.
Trembling fingers crawl for pills.

IV

Eyelids muse at scratched up walls
As island-riven bedsheets snore.
Either a daily dose of blank
Or just a fruitless physical drill.
Only during rarest nights,
Shining stardust showers forth
And painting eyes with rainbow dreams…

Torn by the heat of stagnant blades.


A beggar starts his jarring song,
Feebly stretching stinking arms-
A hapless quest for absent alms.

Doomsday dreams

The chips fall down.
The dry wind dithers to and fro
Beneath the blank sky
Bearing dust and dying leaves
And rolls across the potholed road
To sink in stinking open drains
Where flies and worms do nest and breed
And prepare alike for a mighty feast.

The chips fall down,
Perhaps never to rise…

Notes on the Margin

NOTES ON THE MARGIN

I
Still the fire burns
And claims more and more
Across the land
In an anarchy of blood
That knows no end.
Who plots? Who wins? Why?

The answer my friend
Is nowhere in the wind.

II
Who knows what burns
In silence and dark
That suddenly explodes
In a carnival of death.

I know not how to feel
The anguish of those
Who scatter into death
With sanctified hate.

III
I only know the screams
That out of rubble rise;
The agony on the faces
Smudged with dirt and blood
Which knows no consolation
In here or hereafter.

I don’t see a jot of holy or just
Only a chaos of unmeaning loss.