Monthly Archives: January 2015

mashaallah he is doing very well

I
The pus of power bleeds an insane
Miasmus mess puffing creed of new
Upon seethe of old; there is no glow
In this dark, just deference; there
Is no flow and it is stark: dust
Reference. The pus of lower grades
Of hell refines itself in repetition:
Glib follows glob follows inane blob.

II
The condos and the hipster stock
Options, ivy league effulgences.

Step back and let the patronage
Sink in a bit further, and let

The rotting rot as the hipsterest
Of them all winks back at you.

Mashaallah, he is doing very well.

the lotus dithers

The smell of smell in participation,
In visitations by moondusk, by
Heat of sun, by heart of heart.

The breath of breath in the cave
Of cave, by heat of sun; lull in
Beat follows, should I ask now?

The cup of cull, rag of torn:
That too follows beat of beat; ask
Who but the full of red and dew?

Would a circling surface vulture
 know such depths of sky
 as the moon would know?
 would a weed on the riverbank
 know such depths of water
 as the lotus would know?

would a fly darting nearby
 know the smell of Bowers
 as the bee would know?

O lord white as jasmine
 only you would know
 the way of your devotees:
 how would these,

these
 mosquitoes
 on the buffalo's hide?

(Mahadeviyakka; translated by A.K. Ramanujan)

pot of knowledge

I.
Anansi outwits the bees, the snake and tiger so that
All the stories are now in his name, but then he drops
The pot of knowledge in a fit of anger; now everyone knows.

Anansi is the spider that growls lack of knowing in his hunger for
Being known; droplets might form an ocean, but that takes a long
Time: it is quicker to outfox the fox and outrun the hare.

Interpreted from:
– How We Got the Name ‘Spider Tales’
– How Wisdom became the Property of the Human Race
West African Folk-Tales

II.
Anansi outwits Nothing and gets many wives; yet envious, he
Kills Nothing; yet greedy, his family goes hungry in spite of
The pot of food from Thunder; he is punished by the stick.

Anansi is turned upside down; his tales may reek of many
Endings, but the prevarications of the spiderous claw
Are no match for Newton’s physics and the math of Gauss.

Interpreted from:
– Crying for Nothing
– Thunder and Anansi
West African Folk-Tales

The fair queen and the not-so-fair

And their fair daughters & sons & not-so-fair
Who in not-so-fair wiles manage to out-comply
The tradition-monger in fits and starts and
Arduous test of wits and warts – O soothsayer’s
Heart, listen in, comply! What claw of the singing
Dragon awaits the uncaring, unafraid? Better the
trying death than a willing tradition-monger be.

the plush pith of home

I.
Fractally speaking, the curvature is
Abound with nuance, and it is plush.

It is plush so that it becomes a seance
Of actuals and rarefied tropes, and

It plush. It is plush so that the crown
Of slope meets the derivative of hope,

And it is plush. It is plush so that
The limbic blush cuts the panic rush

In half, threeways, fourquarts, quite
The opposite of plush, but it is plush.

II.
I have instructed the soul searching caricature
To commiserate with the yak-yakking blue heart of
Noon. I have demonstrated the heartless wander
Lust peeking at the sought after, the dung heap of
Historical amnesia. I have leveled suitable allegations
At the savory conniption, the bulbous inkling of faith
That descends the ivory tower, dissolves with crushed
Stone. I have cremated the bureaucratic pith of home.

root forms

The root is not to be grasped with
a tamped heart set on rasping
tootle-de-hoots on a tight schedule.

The root is now all grumped up, swearing
grandfather cusses to childhood sores:
middle class, anxiety prone and salacious.

The root is a figure of peach, antiquated,
tactfully tiresome yet peppy with the
preacher’s predilection for argument.

The root is further from the root; it
goes deeper than the root and pretends
to know more than the root ever knew.

The root is class, critique, conscious;
it creates waves while roaring, thinking
out its actions anticipating predestination.

Ginning of straw bands

If the swallow scent goes looming
Out of orbit of snow, then descend,
Gathering leftovers and facades
Of ill hope and smooth winters. Call
It your breach of trust and begin
The twining of rope strand, the ginning
Of straw bands and little things.

If the ginning can make you swallow whole
The beads and parts of pining, the reams
And welts of roughened shore, then cloud out
The salt menageries and withered bowls
Howling menace where once deaf lull was
Sure; when ill hope and smooth winters
Caressed loud, caressed blue and silk.

The lulling deafness of surety will crease your
Panned out soul and brown the layers of
Roughage and grease; where the reams and
welts part the cloud of etched out silver
Pinings; the little things and straw bands
Cast in surefire dips in pools of marrow; this
Will command the soultank to mind its own.

two riffs on cliché

i. hack/need
Lop off the sides of a rusted pun, and
You meet the edges of an unkind wordspace,
Cesspool of stunted form, the vowelled
Repository of disconsonant etches and din.

Think up the residues of the hallowed
Crass, and the pastiche of trite conjures
Up defence of clique, repetition of din
etched on mindspaces resigned to fallow.

ii. surplus truisms
Ask night to undulate in measured breaths; ask
Evening shade to plumb uncertain hues cutting
Grasp of length to size: too much has been under
Stood, too little dissolved in blood; the crow
Will ask night to undulate in measured breaths.

Ask day to circulate the rimes clogging crusted
Words sticking together in pallid solidarity to
Soar for a few more days on a crestfallen peak
Of heavenly aplomb, plush platitude; the crow
Will ask night to undulated in measured breaths.