Let me teach you about

Heartache and the loss of God

That is, the loss of

a presence - all-fulfilling,

staid.

Preceding an unlikely joy

 You will find yourself always

Wandering, wandering

from dim star to pole star

One faraway light to the next

Through a depthless silent night

And with me a- strolling

Cold, loveless gypsy light of mine!

My shores are lapped by murky panthalassas

(All land is still one continent)

Where man was never born,

He never walked

And nothing did. 

Tuesday, 3 am to my troubled friend N

Here’s the scene,

I’m going to tell it to you like it is

 one time and one time only,

 the secret of how cities fall,

 and civilisations meet their doom.

And I am aware,

sometimes you ask yourself

Irritated, at your wit’s end

“What was I thinking?”

Well, brother

You weren’t thinking.

Now what you’ve got to do

Is look closer at what you were doing

Where you were doing it before

And how.

 

And I suppose for all of you all together,

That is, society and civilisation

The same applies.

  

Because the only thing worth knowing

About history is

That it repeats itself

And everything as it gets moderner

 is progressively more ironic.

Think about it

But smile, you son of a bitch.

It is

Its right there

Couldn’t you see it?

Rippling invisible thing

You can catch it if you try.

You’ve seen it, I’m sure,

My old agile child!

Maybe out of the corners of your beloved’s eye?

Escaping, forever escaping

Spinning, but you caught it.

Did it slip?

You have seen it, I know!

Like when you were an infant

and you idled an hour

chasing a squiggle across your eyeball.

Like when you were

not yet mature

and your hands would rub your belly

in public.

Felt it!

In the final morsels of a meal –

Meat and gravy.

In that tiny time before you kissed her,

And when a newspaper slid

Under your door and you stepped over it,

Lone pixel in a bitmap, anonymous.

Known it!

When you learnt that freedom is

Only you consecrated

And if the unexpected

Should make things complicated

When you learnt to flee them

Freedom infinity breathing!

And if you are old in soul

Wisdom is a dog

Faithful under a table

And mild-mannered.

I put it to you,

Tall drawn bodily one,

That if you are the amber mare,

I am the road of blood.

Or seen it,

In a corner of a grubby bathroom

At lights-out time.

You have passed it in time,

In grand gestures

And miniscule hand to mouth motions

Or when you got it

At the belly

Or at the head,

dealing in blown-outness,

In put-outness.

Seeing it in ridiculous places unwary

And laughter ridiculouser!

Or alone

Or at a barbers, that one time.

Its in faces.

Like when you saw a girl with a manface

When you were thirteen

And you got it then,

Penis-wise.

It’s in places.

In water and its green worlds

If you’re looking at it right.

I put it to you,

Intelligent arched brooding one,

That if you are the missing link,

I am the diamond file.

Its not in knowledge alone

Or outside it.

Its in the tip of a hat to some

In footwalking streets streets trains

In rain!

In asking

In giving

In taking

Its in your legs!

In the spring of your sole

It passes through dancers eyes

Through sculptors hands

Through the smiling and crying

In the sorrowful it sits; Injustice.

I put it to you,

Things of beauty,

That if you are the clouded moon,

I am the crystal dawn.

Its in mother

Blowing on your stomach

When you were little; with her lips

It was in that little boy

With fish eyes,

When you were a girl,

And in breasts;

as a boy.

Didn’t catch it then?

You were looking too hard.

Its in Sita passing below

Into the chasm

Opened for her alone.

It was in Greece

In eureka and the rest

It sat in our villages eons ago.

I put to you, erudite,

broad- foreheaded one,

if you wish to Jesus these lepers

I’d have to be Judas too,

And I’d do that for you. 

And
there is no pain in suffering
should you know you can teach in song

And
there is no sin in bluffing
should you know you can right your wong

And there was a gaunt man at the window
his palms were on his knees

And
his eyes were almost tears
his mouth a halibut
his ears were almost gills

And there was a lady on the still
hand on cheek and still
Shining bright
seemed topaz dyed
Couldnt hear her
her eyes were asking for a favour

Whiskey breath is old now
and years are marked by candles blown
but there is still
a girl on the sill
Baffled man has paused till
she speaks

And its clear to both of them from time to time
some heads must meet only under the sky

And sometimes generations masturbate themselves to sleep
and generous time will have huffed and puffed
unlearning its patience

Unlearn yours.

Malbenis.. It's a shame,isn't it?
Seems fine to me.

And
he was a fine man in his youth
Odd faced but solid as rocks
And
all his women were fine
specimens of a
common affliction
often the affliction was him

As he grew older though
the woman on the sill never
changed
Malbenis raved in middle age
and loved the people he scared
A common affliction.

She never looked at him different
he bathed forever
in naked splendour
in the pools of her ample eyes
And she smiled on the sill as he banged doors, kicked cats,
drank spluttered and wandered back exhausted.

It took him eighty yeas to
burn through eighty lifetimes

Morning glory on the sill smiled still the same

Rasa - Consolidated

Little Rasa walked off alone to broaden her sight
An orb flew out from the depths of the night!
'Tu whit too-woo!Who are you?"

Choose now, it said all up in her head
Choose! It bellowed and croaked with all its fluttering might
She seemed to twinkle: and Rasa walked off alone in the night.

"Budhha nature".. A fat man shimmered up, knowing and meek.
Robes of Red and Orange, he smiled and went on before Rasa could speak.
"Budhha nature. Budhha- naature is what you seek."

To the face before you were born (that was my face too)
there is one golden path; it will reveal itself to you!
It is you you seek! Not I, I say!
It is the formless to whom those who were before the ancients prayed.

Then the smiler's face froze as the chit of a girl grew bold
"What? Half of it was in parentheses of what you just told.
There is heaven, there is hell! A thin loon on a horse whizzed in!
His head bobbed up and down. He spat. "Learn the rules of the town you are in!"

Two birds then sat in; their wings on fire, not abdul kalam
The black one grimaced and reached under its arm.
"There will always be two, Us and Them"!
That is the only way we will have great men!

The white one, a great one himself, teared up and gave spleen
"He may be right." And he vanished in between
Reapparition! And he placed a funny plant on the ground 
"It is thus that they say the lord first gave sound"!

And so they sat and waited, little Rasa haunched be'twixt them
And nothing was to be seen of the loons and the thin men. 

Rasa skipped off again, behind her shrieked the birds
"Least leave behind your footprints so we can shame them with our words!"

Rasa got tired of skipping after a while: she started walking and went on another mile. A little to the left she observed a clump of trees and beheld a clear pond, clear as dew. Or was it a lake?
And so Rasa plunged in and slowly sank to the bottom of the matter.

There was a boy there.

"Who are you"? The words ran out of her mouth, her eyes saying something else together.

"I am the Prince.
I am the lowly.
I am the damned,
I am the holy.
My hands are ten knives!
I am the dove
whose wings are murder.
My name is love."

About the boy

Rasa sat at a distance and looked askew.
Rasa felt strange. Yes, she felt new.
Gone was the throbbing in her head of many's frivolous pastimes.
The boy glanced at her (along the same lines)

Alankrit

In grey Doon a boy was born
with many neighbourhoods to haunt.
Mama's god gave him words as sweet as wine
but not as sweet as what he wants.

He slept with a weaver bird's nest above his head
around coloured books in shelves.
Around midday baby loved reaching up above his crib
and slothfully stretching himself.

At fifteen he was confused,
society bade him choose sides.
To protest all that was wrong with the world
he left his shoes untied.

At eighteen, placidly among the rabble he took to talking like a sage.
Mother bade him be like the other boys and dream dreams of maximum wage.

"Act your age !"

Away from sallow guitars! Away from plaints of the shattered and the broken...

he ran to the bottom of the lake.

  

Both of them

"I imagined this. You had a guitar." 

Alankrit laughed.

"What brings you here ?"

Alankrit speaks

One summertime Saturday I heard a sound as i walked silently around hilltown Picadilly.

It was the hissing of the snakes. But there was nothing they could do. I treaded above them: just merely, slowly.

Above my head there was a cloud, but inside there was nought.
The beams were tight, the ropes were taut.

Tightroping along with the frayed temerity to pause
to remind oneself of all things - no matter, no cause!

I wrote love, they loved me!
without merciless big city cacophony.

And when I lay awake and absentmindedly strummed my heart, it gave sound!
I sat up with a start.
I lay down again, same outcome.
Since then, in all solstices rose my sun.

She was firm, yet yielding. I entered the building.
Single stair, single step, simple hall: that's all.

And now when they hiss, I puncture them with my bliss.
They weaken. They cannot die, and neither can I.

The Prince
found peaceful coexistence.   

Alankrit continues

I did not run, know this! I cannot.

I walked, I could not walk well either. But the ground feels good beneath one's feet.

Often i think, why does the ground sanctify me? When nothing else does?
But why shouldn't it? It sanctifies all else.

I did not trust vehicles, but it was my raft that carried me forth from the isles of Nietzsche.

It rained seven days and seven nights, but that placid sea gave not a murmur. And this was 
not stagnancy. And I grew to love the sea, and I think I might join it again. But then I saw land again. And curse me for chancing upon it!

This isle was sweet, this isle was green. There were no rivers here, yet soft ground was plentiful. How was I to again find the sea?

I could not see a shore, and the sun chose to bashfully hide itself. But what bakes my ugly skin?

I have just emerged from a cramped space. I discover my arms and legs are long!
Presently they helped me lope along.

"Can you crawl ?"

"Thieves crawl."

Rasa's Lament

They could not traverse me;
I am an archipelago.  
And they knew not how to fly
and the sea made them sick.

I could not forsake me.
Try as i might, I was cursed with second sight
which showed me the darkness in light
and emptiness in the full.

Someone told me to ride the bull to the mountaintop
There I sat still, and the animal meditated in its own way.
Many moons passed, and finally i strode to the edge to see
this pond spread fifty leagues below me.

"Pond? This is the sea."

Call it what you will, I rolled down the hill
and encountered an old hag with a bag.

"You have done well to come this far!
You have done well to keep your seat.
My masters are the masters of this land
and they have sent you treats!"

She leered and pulled out myriad silly things
many, rattling and shining things.
I trembled, I knew not who operated this ride
I cried,
"Where have you sent the other girls and boys?
And why have you brought me children's toys?"

Learnt it, they'd rather have you dead.

You could love them, you could give them all
You could swing it so they never saw you fall
You could mask yourself with the merriest tune
You could smile your prettiest smile with all the tenderness inside..

But all the lovers that you sought
You're just a soul that they bought
You will never have a home
just an ever-empty room with a hint of sweet perfume
that you caught maybe ten years ago..

So I admit it, I do not know how
to live in a dead head
and an ever empty bed where I got lost forever when you left my hand.

O princess of the plains
Why can't you keep me now?
Every sound is too loud and the limbs don't move anyhow..
A man is at your door and you dream of seven more.

Admit it, you'd rather have him dead .

He came through valleys and brooks

Twenty hours for a glimpse of you

He slept on a vomit stain

A trash pile by his brain

But his fate is stranger still, you were just one danger,

who knows what lies in store?

Lock the lover up, for his own good, for ever more. 

Its a sick world, sick,sick,sick.

Poor Malbenis

He shambles through street lamp-lit arcades, a shambles
Dogs howl at his impending demise and growl
They all want a pound of his flesh..
The cold girl, the multitude and the frail contender
connive to kill the deliverer of ill fortune

A little love for this pitiful wreck
stab wounds in his chest and arms, they'll stop at nothing
Oh no, they'll stop at nothing
He will come to an end, and all will be fine..
Thus they pray.

Malbenis lived in an unshaven house with a pubic growth on his face 

All his milk was curdling on the refrigerator – a shame, he is dying.

Pull him to a café, Make it Irish – and he’ll give you mad apocalyptic poetry

And it’s a good deal, he’s cheaper than whores; you should try him

And if the general stench gives you a headache in that household,

Pull a filthy pan from the pile and smack it over his head

May that belter raise a welter

And push his pitiful wits away

They say he has been sat there in waiting for a woman

But whiskey-breath needs to be taught what a woman wants.

“Isn’t love enough”? – BANG! That’s that pan again

You’re doing him a favour.

Angelheaded whores frolic in Malbenis’s gardens

But Malbenis is a servant – and these women are of high breeding

Anyway, who knows if the poor sod can get it up at all?

Hahhahahahahahahahhhhahaha – point and laugh, point and laugh

You can hop while you do it, the whores are having a nice time

Malbenis drank spoilt milk, and he’s puking in the shitter.

Now and then silly tourists come to the door

“We heard of a great old fool who lived here, yes”

And when they see him, some scurry, some gape and tremble

But there was this one guy who got it, he sat right down

His family’s still looking for him

The two still haven’t spoken, it’s getting on twenty years

And the whores wonder where these madmen find each other

But perhaps fifty beards worth of pondering later

They will give us the word.

Let our heroes sit where they do, and we can observe what occurs in the adjoining rooms

where their loves are being stripped naked and fondled by unworthy men, its consensual

And somewhere in working class homes their stories are being told

So that little kids may know better than to play in the bearded man's house.

But i'll be damned if you can stop 'em.

Its a sick world, sick,sick,sick.