Banal Chores

To walk and buy a notebook and a pen it is not a banal chore but rather a quest thru labarinthine alleys a jungle of trees (in which I see everything, every tropical bird, every monkey carrying her young, every glossy leaf.) One is surrounded on the streets by poster advertising, layered and thick, each panel like an abstract expressionist painting or decollage worthy of museum-admiration. The vast amount of people spread out before me the street's familiar beggars atop their livingroom (blanket over sidewalk) complete with naked children, anonymous businessmen fat and smoking Benson & Hedges, random crowds coagulating around (inevitably) a cricket match broadcast. Thru the screaming, life-or-death traffic I wade and again I'm side-walk bound where every five feet there is a charcoal fire being fanned to life exhaling clouds of opaque smoke, a tea stand and a sweet stand right after that, complete with crowd of drinkers and onlookers, beadie-fumes and innumerable marks of red spittle like spackles of blood over the pavement. Animals and insects whirr through the traffic as well, flea-bitten dogs, their multiple puppies in adorable disease-ridden piles, rats scurrying through tiny holes even in broad daylight, all to be stepped over, avoided, danced around, dodged by the parade of padestrian traffic. At the end of the road, down a narrow alley, behind a tea stand, over several collapsed dogs, weaving thru people walking and buying and cutting me in line, I find my notebook-pen-wallah embedded in some crack in some wall. And even then I still have to barter a good price. And so, even after a seemingly banal chore, one must go home and take a nap.

Park St. Cemetary

I.

Banyan tree jungle
festooned in vines
like a Yeats poem rich
covered in moss a jewel
from Victoria's crown
engraved into the city
like monsoon-wolloped
inscription on the tomb.

An older India left to rot
submerged in banyan trees
& vines where crows reign
a symbol of its age as if
the city turns to say,
"Look what I've become!"

Like one's own dim image
behind a cigarette in
smoke-filled sunlight
pours from pub window
like the light that pours
misty & slow thru cemetary
over dusty poetry.

The years inscribe,
"Look at what I was,"
and shamefully,
"Not what I am today!"


II.

10m underwater kelp reaches sunward
myriad fish dart thru barnacle graves
so many dates washed away

Silt builds between Roman columns
trees dip their roots into murky water
swathing tombs with spider-fingers

In the wilderness eels twist
vile snake bodies, the dead rot in stone
under stone inscriptions

The city muffled by the water
its noise blurred, failed fishermen left
vast nets draped over the cemetary

Bright green leaves burst the darkness
like daubs of paint, the mossy walls of plackards
commemorate deceased children

A marker of civilization bereft from India,
a diver might know nothing of the
Baudelairean city above.

Kolkata Windows

Blinking A - N - I nocturnal
neon eyes dormant thru the day's
traffic ambiance

Men's voices up from Ave.
screams, drumming processions
drone of car horns

Pidgeons flittering at my sill
behind half-curtains
made of sunlight

My half-circle room of
2nd story windows more real than
the chaos of Kolkata

A voice thru the telephone
dancing celebration news broadcast
I pretend I live in this city

Where hot bath emerges fastidiously from
plastic bucket delivered
a 10 Rs. note

the 10 Rs. note her mother gave her
the last time she saw her
Raped and murdered on Puja night.

Newspapers daily arrival under doorcrack
fiction's dense foliage clearer than
the cacophony of the street

Unwavering description of a woman
gazing at her naked body in a mirror
noting her own bone structure

and my own image reflected
the clean coincidence of fiction of the
US-India Nuclear Agreement

rather than the unbearable puking
into refuse on coal-smoke morning
the stench of cooking

or naked in the dark bedroom
struggling to weep against
your own reflection

Hotel room is a chunk of America
embedded in Kolkata, in here it's NYC
and out there is India

The space between my window and dingy
gray walls of city is vast
I am high above the street

Stepping outside is the slight gasp of
stepping under cold shower
back into India

into the sunlight masses, clouds of smoke
beggars gently tapping my elbow
mocking my shock

Swept up into the sea of yellow cabs under
brilliance of windshield reflecting
Hoorghly Bridge

Bill

1 bucket hot water
1 pot tea
1 mineral water
1 rehydration salts
1 antibiotics
1 plain toast
like the brutal truth
1 condom wrapped in toilet paper
in the bin
100% humidity forecast
the hotel summoning ring
white hot vomit in
cold bowl

The Flower Market Stroll

A thousand pounds of
flowers tread into mud
bare feet thru the sewage
of grueling poverty
inside ancient ghats
men defacate over deities
disease bombarded by
screaming ambulance
crush of metro, the poison
water of the Horghly
and they sit, so content
stringing strings
vibrant flowers
framed in muck

Nahi Translation

The strangest thing to have no words
No word for I'M SORRY
No word for EXCUSE ME
No word for THANK YOU

The strangest thing to have no words
to ask WHAT IS THE WORD?

Roma Dove Sei

Non é abbastanza da vedere
un quadro in India.
Mi mancha Italia come la aria.

Mi mancha la luce quando la notte arriva
e le chiese scrivono la luce alla piazza.

Mi mancha la luce quando la fontana inizia
e l'aqua é chiaro e la piazza é pulita.

Sto pensando della Strade di Roma
quando gli Indiani mi guidono, brutissimo.

Loro arrivono a venti, a trenta
Mi chiedono Di dove sei? Che fai?

Roma, Roma, dove sei?
Kolkata non puó stare piú bello!

Quando io sento Hindi, mi sento Italiano.
La mia lingua mancha la lingua Italiana.

Mi mancha Italia quando fino una cigaretta
quando sono fuori il mundo antico.

Outside My Country

I am the face of America.
I spout Ben Franklin idealisms.
I practice singing the National Anthem,
lest I ever be asked to recite it.
Like an anthem, I recite
Go Ask Alice When She's 10ft Tall.

Tourist Central

Cloth wrapped streets of permeable architecture
changes moment by moment without order, only
unending noise ridiculous tourist row Hey Hey Hey
My Friend Namaste! streaming between iron wheels
cow pies steaming between infected dogs collapsed
like corpses and buffalo, asses, the whole farm
wandering without farmers through capillary alleys.
Good Hash Marijuana Fly In The Sky? amidst streams
of barefoot pilgrims and holy men with dreds
corroded high onto their heads, ashes of the dead
smeared on their brows with vermillion, pollen,
blood only to be washed away in Mother Ganga.

Pandi Ghat

Laundry relentlessly beaten
6AM bathing men in the Ganges
while temple bells are ringing
Vishnu's conch sounds like an
elephant's trunk.

Is this the only time that's
truly mine?

Accordian drones Hare Hare
to rid himself of earthly desires
the modern fast life full of
riches and deceit.

Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama

The Third World

Stars funnel down thru barred bus window
screaming along thousands of kilometers
narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic
incessant conversation where I stand
teetering, strapped to a backpack.
An almost-asleep girl smiles at me.
I will never understand India.

Amorous Love

like another lung gasps for air
insatiably pulls, a vast undercurrent.

It is the noise when all other noises
have gone quiet.

Under-the-surface despiration when you wake
like the endless drumming of cicaedas.

I thought sex could be anything
we wanted it to mean.