Afternoon Birdsong

Soaring on the score
Of Poplar leaves swishing
In a summer afternoon's warm breath
The incessant crow holds forth
Hopping from branch to branch.
Birds I never learnt to name
Call back, counsel, correct, comfort -
In a variety of tongues
We generically call Birdsong.

Monday Morning #4: An exercise in self-promotion.

I've been on the move for the majority of the past fortnight now. One of the reasons why it has been a roller coaster was mentioned in the last post. And since this is a Monday and we do poetry on Mondays, I'm going to offer up a poem I wrote some years ago.

Bitter brown espresso

Sweetened with the sweet satisfaction

Of a day spent in your company

Nothing significant   

But I kept telling myself:

Don’t you dare take this for granted -

For this too shall pass 

And pass it did

Into dreary days and watery sunshine

The stars in the night sky mocked me

They maybe be far away

But at least I could see them. 

I should’ve taken to the drink

Or work or men

Or smoking something silly

But I wanted to strike a healthy balance. 

“You’re not half a couple,

You’re a complete woman”

I kept repeating to myself

Over and over again like a talisman. 

But there are days when it doesn’t work

On these days I want to burn my ideals

And grovel and beg.

On these days I want to melt out of existence

Rather than stick around and watch

The multitude of infinite twittering birds

Going about their important days

In important ways 

On some mornings I wake up with Hip hop -

Or coitus songs in my head

On these mornings I look at the calendar and figure

I’m probably ovulating.

On these morning I smile and think

Someone will get lucky tonight

And maybe even make me happy for a while 

For a while I’ll forget

For a while I’ll believe

“This aint so bad, I could make this work”

But then again hope is a delusion you want to believe

Just like I want to believe

That I will one day

Tear two sachets of brown sugar

And stir my cup of sweetened brown espresso

Sitting across from you

And take it for granted. 

Image Source: http://www.murraymitchell.com/

I went through a very low phase when I was in Cal because I had just graduated and moved to a city where I barely had any friends and I was also beginning a long distance relationship. Some of that and how I tried to deal with it makes its way into this poem. I guess writing it down was also my way of dealing with it.

I seriously should get back to writing more poetry but I end up writing so much during the course of my work that I feel like the words have been squeezed out of me. But I promise I'll post something new soon.

On remembering past loves

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/

When I was in college, my friends and I used to religiously make trips to Calcutta to experience the much needed balm of civilization and exhilarating freedom that one experiences only when one crosses the threshold from teens to twenties. I also worked in Calcutta for almost two years after graduation and the city remains my long time muse.

I write a photoblog in collaboration with An Observant Owl and I was going through some old notes because I needed to write something for his upcoming galleries on the streets of Calcutta. That was when I thought of this one poem I'd written about my relationship with the city some years ago. When I wrote the poem I wasn't living in Calcutta and what I felt was definitely colored by homesickness and nostalgia but I'd like the reader to understand that after three years of leaving Calcutta, none of the sentiments expressed on the poem ring false for me and I miss her just as much.

Here it goes:

It was love at first touch.

Your roaring pulse in my hand –

Was the symphony of engines droning,

Harmonizing with the shivers

The river –

Sent up your spine.

Pop Quiz: How many nuts and bolts went into this cantilever beam shaped like a perfect parabola?

None. It is riveted. So am I.

An awestruck puppy –

I still stick my head out every fucking time,

Oblivious to the milling, jostling multitude.

I don’t love you for your bhadralok[1] or the machh[2] or the mishti[3],

It is the stories in folds of your saree[4].

I sit down with a cup of cha[5] and you will always tell one –

Or make one out of me.

I can’t decide if you’re perpetually stuck in a bad tempered adolescence –

Or are you a wizened withered witch.

I love your sweet sick smell of horseshit and scum and how you parade your poverty

And then you’ll turn around and dazzle me with your intricate delicate richness.

You are convoluted –

Full of ironies and paradoxes –

Stuck in a time warp –

And trying to break free –

Unsure of where to go and what to take along.

When I stumble, you understand

I breathe you and I calm down.

Your warmth, your flavors, your smells, your rhythms, your stupid obsessions, your nonchalance, your stories all feel like

I could finally come home

And hold you

And go to sleep.

That’s how we’re strung –

Love.

Hate.

And humdrum.

Like I said, it was love at first touch.

While some of the experiences described are are experienced by majority of people who have lived in or visited the city - anyone will tell you how crowded or dirty it gets or the wealth of colonial buildings that lend an aura of bygone era to the city. Then there are other experiences that are deeply personal. The very beginning describes my very first encounter with the city when as first year college kids we got off the local train at Howrah station and walked to the Howrah Bridge. We just stood there with our hands on the railings and let the sensations of the city wash over us. Also I'm an engineer so I love to geek out - even in poetry. It's riveted. 

I hope you enjoyed the poem. I sometimes get the feeling that it works better as performance piece and its better to listen to it rather than read it. I'll get around to that someday.

[1] Bhadralok: Cultured gentry

[2] Machh: Fish

[3] Mishti: Sweetmeats

[4] Saree: A garment consisting of a length of fabric elaborately draped around the body, traditionally worn by women from South Asia.

[5] Cha: Tea

On Another Monday Morning: An Ode to Wine

Rephrasing another poet I'd like to submit:

Something there is that doesn't love at all,

A Monday's clarion call - 

To return to the tread mill

I haven't had my weekend's fill.

Image Source: https://www.pinterest.com/

Hence I find myself doing everything but 'work'. Today I reread some of my blogs and I found this one I had written a couple of weeks ago on 'Monday Mornings' and before I knew it I was on Poem Hunter reading other poems and it hit me: this is a tradition worth building on. So here it is - in keeping with the last post's intoxicated topic, but far more sensuous - Ode to Wine.

Ode To Wine

Day-colored wine,

night-colored wine,

wine with purple feet

or wine with topaz blood,

wine,

starry child

of earth,

wine, smooth

as a golden sword,

soft

as lascivious velvet,

wine, spiral-seashelled

and full of wonder,

amorous,

marine;

never has one goblet contained you,

one song, one man,

you are choral, gregarious,

at the least, you must be shared.

At times

you feed on mortal

memories;

your wave carries us

from tomb to tomb,

stonecutter of icy sepulchers,

and we weep

transitory tears;

your

glorious

spring dress

is different,

blood rises through the shoots,

wind incites the day,

nothing is left

of your immutable soul.

Wine

stirs the spring, happiness

bursts through the earth like a plant,

walls crumble,

and rocky cliffs,

chasms close,

as song is born.

A jug of wine, and thou beside me

in the wilderness,

sang the ancient poet.

Let the wine pitcher

add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly

the line of your hip

becomes the brimming curve

of the wine goblet,

your breast is the grape cluster,

your nipples are the grapes,

the gleam of spirits lights your hair,

and your navel is a chaste seal

stamped on the vessel of your belly,

your love an inexhaustible

cascade of wine,

light that illuminates my senses,

the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,

the fiery kiss,

the heat of fire,

more than the wine of life;

you are

the community of man,

translucency,

chorus of discipline,

abundance of flowers.

I like on the table,

when we're speaking,

the light of a bottle

of intelligent wine.

Drink it,

and remember in every

drop of gold,

in every topaz glass,

in every purple ladle,

that autumn labored

to fill the vessel with wine;

and in the ritual of his office,

let the simple man remember

to think of the soil and of his duty,

to propagate the canticle of the wine. 

Pablo Neruda

On Monday Mornings

When you're not quite ready to hit the treadmill running,

When you'd rather linger in your bed and catch that last snatch of sweet morning sleep,

When you want to day dream,

And window shop across the interwebs - looking for something amusing,

You find just such a thing from the masters:

A Drink With Something In It

There is something about a Martini,

A tingle remarkably pleasant;

A yellow, a mellow Martini;

I wish I had one at present.

There is something about a Martini,

Ere the dining and dancing begin,

And to tell you the truth,

It is not the vermouth--

I think that perhaps it's the gin.

by Ogden Nash

Image Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/

I could use a mellow dirty martini or a gin and tonic this morning. Except Frost keeps knocking at the back of my head - what was that line about promises?

Happiness is

Biting into a spicey wada pao

And contemplating a setting sun,

A tiny care free break 

Just before the deadline,

A pair of stray puppy dog eyes

That expect to be petted,

A spoonful of gulkand ice cream

Melting on your tongue,

It is all these ephemeral

Unexpected moments

That catch you by surprise

And transfix you

Like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

It is sweet, and sour,

With a hint of bitter.

It bumps and thunks

But you don't care 

That it is rough around the edges.