A golden streak of light,
glowing off the Ganga
like the opening scene
of a fury-destined manga.
The silent, gliding boats
give way to bells and horns
as sadhus leave the ghats
with the fading of the morn.
Gone the floating lamps and flowers,
so ends that magic orange hour.
Assembly Building, Chandigarh; Source: Duncid (via Wikipedia)
The best “futuristic” can aspire to is to become retro-chic —
like the ship sets from the 60’s Star Trek.
Yet, we can’t help but try to capture tomorrow, today —
only to create today’s vision of tomorrow’s dystopia.
If Asimov wrote about a man who finished his work at a typewriter
only to catch a trans-galactic shuttle —
what hope could Le Corbusier have of finding the future?
Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh features elegant, broad boulevards —
running straight, intersected only by other broad boulevards.
Perhaps, the future has arrived:
Where else in urban India can one drive a mile
without rounding a corner to stop for livestock, playing children, or a parked truck.
One can cross Chandigarh in twelve minutes flat.
Crossing Bengaluru requires four hours,
non-inclusive of stops for gas and a hardy biryani.
But that massive tic-tac-toe grid is built
of neighborhoods constrained inside block walls.
As one speeds through town, with nary a car in sight, one wonders
where is the life?
is this still India?
have I slipped through a trans-galactic teleportation portal?
Perhaps, the future has arrived:
Where else in urban India can one see:
battleship gray unadorned by marigolds or ochre
and wonder where the windows of the future went
and whether people of the future
ever idly peer off out toward the horizon?
deep down in a step well
where drab green water stands in dry season
where the light is dim and diffuse
except a solitary shaft that dances against stone and murky water
but only when the sun is high
then dust motes swirl in said light
kicked up by nocturnal creatures satisfied by the darkness
because the shadows shun all that isn’t black
I hear the snap of a bat’s wing
but never see the bat that snapped it
nor who made a squeak to go with the snap
it seems like it should feel creepy
to be in a world where bright light fires only a little oval
while all the rest stays sunk in darkness
but how is my terranean world any different?
they called him “The Kamikaze”
he worked for old mama Stasi
cutting and cupping skull caps
keeping it hush, under wraps
then he’d crash a plane-load of lies
each clad in a clever disguise
dressed up like god’s own truth
sliding past even super-sleuths
a pile of seed for future lies
sitting upon an old, stone ghat
I felt the flow of what was not
coracles once spun down this stream
like dervishes in a wistful dream
now the dream was cold and lonely
sing songs of the one and only
it doesn’t change a single thing
be that one a drone or a king
I’d followed the drums down into a trance
time was vacant from my every glance
and I’d lost track of which world I was riding
your perfection peeks through
not devil-dealt but always denied
I glimpse it faintly,
despite the obscuring cloak
that you clutch to yourself,
huddled against false sins
cast off the cloak
embrace the naked state
as before being imbued with gloom
illusion can’t be flogged away
but still you choose the whip
claiming the sting feels a lot like living
or that some days agony beats numbness
but you think you can crack something loose
something that was never there
I heard your shout of, “Sink or float?”
You tossed me in, in my old, worn coat.
Copper coins pulled me under the waves.
Silencing the pounding tom-tom raves.
There is no me in the float.
No rising tide can lift my boat.
Surrendering to the swarm, drifting down.
Thinking I’ll wash up on the other side of town.
But what sinks down doesn’t wash up.
Unless I never left the pub?
My hands smell of pine oil.
What a powerful soap.
It may not make me clean,
but it shot me back in time.
— a chrononaut blown out the locks
all through the residue of a cleanser.
Racked back to a mid-morning heart attack
when I was washed back in a trial by flak.
One fudged together with a pile of facts
to make quite the story.
I never read it.
but played my part.
All the pain and none of the wisdom
— just the opposite of what a reader seeks.
I listened to two girls tell kiss-kill tales
on a bus to I know not where.
They seemed easy breezy
in the way of those who know
where they are going.
But destination wasn’t in the bus’s program.
It was built to circle eternity,
letting the eager stew in endless moments.
A chill — the big chill — lost in a default mode.
Still, I could have followed their stories forever,
but for the skip every time the bus hit that pothole.
Cluing me in that they weren’t.
hanging bat
still as fruit on a branch
drops
swoops
glides
flaps
tilts
swings
dips
accelerates
dodges
whips
circles
twists
seizes
and hangs once more
