sitting beside the dark river
watching the inky water flow
though balmy, i feel a shiver
abyss, but for a moon lit glow
in the rippling liquid metal
aside blinding light from the moon
i see loping letters settle
in lyrics of an unsung tune
i don’t fear the talking waters
nor the dirge they write for me
for in life we’re all but squatters
i dread the river’s gift lost to a cold sea
“What is your original face?”
Original? Does that mean I have one now?
Perhaps when I mirror gaze.
Otherwise, if I have a face, it resides in the minds of those who look upon it.
He who takes a scaffold built of patches of matter, varying distances from his eye
and reflecting various spectra of light, and fleshes it out in subjectivity owns the face.
That mean thing,
thing of glee,
that by which cantankerousness is displayed
thing of sorrow,
thing of madness,
that ugly-pretty, disheveled topography of flesh
is a faceless face,
or — perhaps — a thoughtless thought.
I was once a kid in the corn.
News at Eleven ran a story
about a child found dehydrated
and on death’s door — deep in a field.
Any farm-boy will tell you,
you can’t get lost in a cornfield —
not truly lost.
Pick one of the two directions
that your row runs,
and walk.
When the rows re-align at right angles,
that’s the endrow —
you’re almost out.
Sure, it sucks if you hit the river,
because then you’ve got to walk
all the way back past where you started,
moving in the opposite direction.
But a kid has a lot of walk in him.
The only way to get lost in a cornfield
is to panic, and lose all faith
in the logic of a field.
In nature, one may walk oneself in circles
’cause one leg is stronger than the other,
and nature’s chaos is omnisymmetric
to an order-loving human brain.
But, in a field, the rows run true,
and the only way to walk in circles
is to feed your fear
and lose faith in the straightness of rows.
One can’t teleport a harvester into a field,
it needs to be driven there on a road.
Find your endrow, find your road.
The crab! Oh, so apropos.
Claw, grotesque and over-sized.
This death won’t know pain or throe.
It’s tyrannically civilized.
Like a crust of frozen snow,
it girds drift, and melt ‘s unseen,
but still will grow into a floe
as host grows weak and lean.
Later becoming gaunt and sallow,
it starts work deep inside,
building out toward the shallows.
And like all who succumb to pride,
the crab builds in its own image.
It makes its host low and hard —
a fearsome face of scrimmage,
with a shell well battle-scarred.
If you can make those scars your own,
facing that hard shell the right way —
deny cold access to the bone —
the crab may be kept at bay.
fractal echoes
prismatic fire
a world seen through a cracked mirror,
but cracked into perfect patterns —
like the jaali at the Tomb of Akbar the Great
patterns overwrite blank spaces
this reality hates the mundane
and how can that machine be so loud?
a motorcycle rode through my brain from fifty feet away
down on a street somewhere below
there’s a switch
i can’t see it
nor can i touch it
it’s somewhere in my brain
and i can flip it
and it zaps me into a reality, still and banal
that fades into pulsing closeness and periodic sound floods
as soon as i love the mundane an instant too long
Careless Whispers: Pritish Nandy Recreates the Best of Sanskrit Love Poetry by Pritish Nandy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the third in a series of [at least] three short, illustrated collections of love poetry. As with the others in the series, the poems are said to be based upon the work of historical poets though not – strictly speaking – translations of these poets’ work. The books were release in 1994 by Rupa & Co. with the sub-subtitle of “Classic India: Images of Love.” This book is different from the preceding volumes in a couple of ways that result in it having a different feel. First, the poems anthologize from the works of various poets rather than having a single inspiration. Second, they changed artists, and the artwork bears little resemblance to the previous volumes except with respect to being erotic in subject matter.
The book begins with a short introduction by Nandy that seeks to both introduce the reader to the anthology which serves as the basis for the poems included, as well as to explain that the poems are not translations but rather work with the gist of that poet’s verse to create new works, and why he took that approach. The source matter is said to have been originally anthologized by a Bengali Buddhist scholar named Vidyakara.
Beyond the introduction, the 50-ish pages are covered with poems and black and white line drawings. The poems are sparse free verse poems. Unlike the previous collections, it is quite clear where one poem begins and the next ends because these are attributed to different authors.
The artist who did the drawings is M. F. Husain. The drawings are not only monochrome, but are more crudely drawn and stylistic. (I’m not suggesting the artist is less skillful. They may well be purposely cruder, intending to reflect a historical artistic style rather than being modernistic like the previous volumes. The previous volumes’ art was very 1980’s.)
Despite the campiness of the titles, which are based on American pop tunes or romantic pop culture references, these books have insightful moments amid language that can sometimes drip with cliché and bland – if lustful — imagery.
If you read love poetry and run across a copy of this book, it’s worth a read.
Unchained Melody: Pritish Nandy Rediscovers the Love Poems of Amaru by Pritish Nandy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the second in a series of [at least] three short, illustrated collections of love poetry. As with the others in the series, the poems are said to be based upon the work of historical poets (in this case, Amaru) though not – strictly speaking – translations of their work. The books were release in 1994 by Rupa & Co. with the sub-subtitle of “Classic India: Images of Love.”
The book begins with a short introduction by Nandy that seeks to both introduce the reader to Amaru and to explain that the poems are not translations but rather work with the gist of that poet’s verse to create new works, and why he took that approach. Amaru was a Sixth Century poet and anthologist. As for why Nandy rewrote, rather than translating from the Sanskrit, he offers an Italian quote that says that poetry translations are like women, “the more beautiful, the more unfaithful.”
Beyond the introduction, the 50-ish pages are covered with poems and colorful drawings. The poems are sparse free verse poems, and it’s not always clear where one is meant to begin and another end. Because the topic throughout is love, sex, and romance, and the imagery thereof, the poems often flow together — whether that was intended or not is not clear. One can choose to read them as short pieces or as a longer flowing pieces.
The artist who did color drawings (the look to be colored pencil drawings) is Samir Mondal. The plates are always erotic, sometimes symbolically so, but in most cases explicitly so – involving nude figures or sensuous lips.
Despite the campiness of the titles, which are based on American pop tunes or romantic pop culture references, these books have insightful moments amid language that can sometimes drip with cliche and bland – if lustful — imagery.
If you read love poetry and run across a copy of this book, it’s worth a read.
Untamed Heart: Pritish Nandy Rediscovers the Love Poems of Bhartrhari by Pritish Nandy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the first in a series of [at least] three short, illustrated collections of love poetry. As with the others in the series, the poems are said to be based upon the work of historical poets (in this case, Bhartrhari) though not – strictly speaking – translations of their work. The books were release in 1994 by Rupa & Co. with the sub-subtitle of “Classic India: Images of Love.”
The book begins with a short introduction by Nandy that seeks to both introduce the reader to Bhartrhari and to explain that the poems are not translations but rather work with the gist of that poet’s verse to create new works, and why he took that approach.
Beyond the introduction, the 50-ish pages are covered with poems and colorful drawings. The poems are sparse free verse poems, and it’s not always clear where one is meant to begin and another end. Because the topic throughout is love, sex, and romance, and the imagery thereof, the poems often flow together — whether that was intended or not is not clear.
The artist who did color drawings (the look to be colored pencil drawings) is Samir Mondal. The plates are always erotic, sometimes symbolically so, but in most cases explicitly so – involving nude figures or sensuous lips.
Despite the campiness of the titles, which are based on American pop tunes (except this one which appears to be taken from an American romantic comedy film), these books have insightful moments amid language that can sometimes drip with cliche and bland – if lustful — imagery.
If you read love poetry and run across a copy of this book, it’s worth a read.
liquid metal
shape-shifting silver seas
ribbed and rippling
tiny crabs
writing alien script
high tides erase
turquoise water
bound by brown patches
a tidal maze
tiny limpid fish
braver than your bigger peers
drifting as they dart
tsunami swamped
moments under water
forever changed
misshapen lumps of dead coral rise from the sea-shore
miniatures of the karst monolithic islands of coastal southeast asia
a tiny archipelago facing constant nightmare tsunami
