Monthly Archives: April 2017

which silent drawl

α.

To reembed the sense of the possible in
horror is to sing; to

dip your beak in the ink of the symbol is
to sing; to kill the

pronoun/ced active part/iciple past/iched
is to sing; and we do

β.
      the run of the poem is
Life  its gut
becomes soothe as it coils   it
sings when the roughage has sin
as work   it will deepen & care

γ.

what vitriol, which crumbs of emaciated fill of hate can perjure?
what
    tangent
    drawn, which
    silent drawl
    can spout this bowl’s venom and punch the foreign green?

δ

To break the journey with sound, with
a tinned accompaniment

defining horses & violins, with the
grief of strangers in

fractal shocklayers denuded of the
whole, this is to mix

age with sound, the fin of the rain
with what is dying here

today, now & begging for yet another
not.

ε.

The druid of unplan has
gaped and it

runs muckless circles
aghast; there

is a sullen momentum to
it though, as

if the garb of the fulcrum
of each circle

has memories of being a
point –
etymologied.

Look, in the world

Hark
The list of the risen sea is fallen
Dough; hark

This moot of all mootships has nulled
Its beak now;

Hark

The Seventh Sense – Audre Lorde
Women
who build nations
learn
to love
men
who build nations
learn
to love
children
building sand castles
by the rising sea.

Look, in the world – Basavanna
Look, the world, in a swell
of waves, is beating upon my face.

Why should it rise to my heart,
tell me.
O tell me, why is it
rising now to my throat?
Lord,
how can I tell you anything
when it is risen high
over my head
lord lord
listen to my cries
O lord of the meeting rivers
listen.

from factoids to theory

a new theory
if science, the life of facts, monotony,
cross-classified

dictation & sweet temper are as pale as
the mummified

non-betters, unmistakable spoons in the
cot of life,

where then is the sap but in individual
hells coppered

in observatories, primed pulp for atoms
to gorge out

a new theory.

factotum I
ten follicles
of hate
red with mask; ten
stipends giving
the state of being

hasten hark hem
here with
abandon; ten wishes
of hate
red with mask & being

factoid II

                  an angle in turn
 towards the inch that
burns away eclectic/un

named

           through the dark that is
           yours only when the ceaseless river
           climbs

           through the dark that is
           plumbed in channels speaking animal
           chimes

           through the dark that is
           visible as is the uncanny momentary
           crime-

the cipher raised

the cipher raised to the power of n
one – we greet

this god and fork our tales in appropriation
of one or more

in fact, in loose affiliations of the
porous and torn

the cipher raised to the power of n
ought – we claw

our mist into beginnings and renditions
of embalments

fragments of undiscovered song – II

Addendum to fragments of undiscovered song

iv.

To share my rust/fellow
                 tales of
                 far off
yesteryears pronged/lunged
                 to morrows
                 far off
to rust along with you/I
                 call tender
                 shoots

v.
A new mist reminds that day is
but the child

of a further debt   what
seems is further

than night would want   what
the sunk deeds

of my river could want is not
even belief

in the archer’s eye   at the roof
of my furthest fruit.

vi.
This forever is tinier by comparison
        to the stillness
        it is larger

Than time, fuller in circumference if
        only in silence-
        that is because

the red of a bloated circle outdoes its
        white, the plenitude
        ignorant of each.

fragments of undiscovered song

i.
Your madness is amenable to song, the
treachery of sword

is to be pried open by word; this word
remains unspoken and

this thread remains untrod – your
poignance is amenable

to song, the tumble & sink is to
be pried open by ink

ii.
Birth upon birth, caged with mock/
her stillness

carved with numb necessity – birth
upon tomb, with

municipal breath/her stillness has
cave as mother

iii.
transitions frighten the crumbs of day as
solemn; we tag along

the possible – we whose voice is rubble
now grudge no tear

no shard no hemp – we whose noise is
rabble tag along

Women in strange situations, trying to be courageous

“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety” – James Baldwin
—
The image of change is that of dying
Soft life wants fire

The brush on each woman’s guilt is
Tied to man and woman

Seeks fire; the guild of women strikes
Stone and three wonders

Cry a lone dream to sleep; we wonder
Who dies & whose knife

Cuts through night.
—
Dreams Bite by Audre Lorde
I
Dreams bite
Dreamer and legend
arm
at the edge of purpose
waking
I see the people of winter
put off their masks
to stain the earth red with blood
and on the outer edges of sleep
the people of sun
are carving their own children
into monuments
of war.

II
When I am absolute
at once
with the black earth
fire
I make my now
and power is spoken
peace
and hungry means never
or alone

I shall love
again

when I am obsolete.
—
The dream
My dream was full of women in strange situations, trying to be courageous. In one part of the dream there was a wedding in which a girl was wearing a tight sherwani with a dupatta accessory to cover her front which was choking her and her face had to be covered by it, like a sehra. So she was a bride dressed like a man, yet veiled. Even had a turban on her head. So a bunch of her cousins and friends got her to take everything off in a huge tent like traditional Swati smock and go get a coffee away from the wedding madness. One of my friends from grade school was one of them. Then there was trouble. Suddenly a group of plundering men descended on the village and set everything on fire, and one by one the women found themselves in the same spot on a roof, looking around them to find escape but then their dupattas or clothes caught fire. And one by one they all got burnt and disappeared. The last girl was another childhood classmate of mine. And I felt her desperation and confusion and mindlessness as if she were me. And then she/I jumped off, still on fire. And then in my dream I went off into a reverie about whether it was better to die crushed on the ground after falling from a height, or burning to death.