Animist for spare change

a visit to a house of medicine

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 21:04:00 +0000

My vocoder box condition, perpetrated by an 18 day cough and presented before a lady

specializing in dispelling myths, did nothing to waver my 16 year resolution that, unfortunately, had been broken right at my moment of beginning an educated explanation.

She asked me questions that seemed futile enough that I had to lie down on the examination bed, and waive the rights for my 1.7 year old evidence of obesity to be prevented from being pressed during deliberate acts of drawing breath. As I had self-diagnosed tonsillitis, I managed a self-congratulatory state of equipoise on a visitor's chair following the completion of the performance, half-expecting a confirmation.

It seemed that I had still left several options unchecked in a mental questionnaire framed by the doc. A 250 rupee price paid for a default allergy diagnosis motivated me enough to fake a missing blackberry in a neighbouring room where I had seen my gravitational pull increase from a previous state thereof. The janitors clucked their sympathetic tongues that produced longitudinal waves effective enough to attract the lady freed from my ordeal.

She commented on my misfortune, and promptly opened her handbag to show that my phone wasn't in.

fiction...the beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:18:00 +0000

"yes, there will be rain tomorrow," the drunkard helping a somewhat crooked dog into a bout of yelping through an unpremeditated use of his feet remarked. sammy was returning home from work heart-in-mouth, and the possibility of the strong urine smell in his vicinity foreboding doom by way of the drunkard increased two-fold in his mind with the heart going out to the canine. he lived next to an eagle-attracting golf course, bookended on the other side by a cemetery that served to reduce real-estate prices in the area and presented chance encounters with eunuchs and devil-worshipper lookalikes.

the intoxicated man ambled along a path away from "dream paradise," while a frightened sammy slowed down enough to not be able to approach the gate thereof yet. "a pair dies," thought sammy, as he exaggerated the doom to the extent of his abode.

the telugu-speaking idiot watchman salaamed as one of several lights exposed sammy to the incomprehensibilities that awaited on the other side of the metal bars.

"did my owner come?" was broken into "owner," followed by an action of pointing the chest with the index finger and lifting the finger towards the second floor balcony.

I am front

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 13:56:00 +0000

"sometimes i think i'm genuinely weird
and sometimes i know i'm genuinely weird
and sometimes i wish they all knew
that sometimes it's my only hope to be a bird"

...so thought sammy sometimes. hoping for some times magazine to publish this excerpt from some poem written some time by sammy sometime. he hopped for some hope like some hoopoe doing hula hoops adopted by whoopi. i am a lonesome hobo, bob, sang hank in a mock tribute that sounded like boo-boo. when in the sixth grade, there is the usual confusion as to whether the jamuna is a tributary of the yamuna, or, whether legumes laugh lugubriously at long-drawn lobotomies. when in the seventh, you happily accept a d- with dread, for the presence of your accountant father does give rise to the possibility of your sins being counted to the decimal prior to your logic deciding that the test scores are printed in ambiguous ink.

(my sexy secretary wearing dr. no clothes was instructed to type this leave letter in the colour of a thistle. and she got it all wrong)

Letter to a Friend about Girls - Philip Larkin

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:14:00 +0000

After comparing lives with you for years
I see how I’ve been losing: all the while
I’ve met a different gauge of girl from yours.
Grant that, and all the rest makes sense as well:
My mortification at your pushovers,
Your mystification at my fecklessness—
Everything proves we play in separate leagues.
Before, I couldn’t credit your intrigues
Because I thought all girls the same, but yes,
You bag real birds, though they’re from alien covers.

Now I believe your staggering skirmishes
In train, tutorial and telephone booth,
The wife whose husband watched away matches
While she behaved so badly in a bath,
And all the rest who beckon from that world
Described on Sundays only, where to want
Is straightway to be wanted, seek to find,
And no one gets upset or seems to mind
At what you say to them, or what you don’t:
A world where all the nonsense is annulled,

And beauty is accepted slang for yes.
But equally, haven’t you noticed mine?
They have their world, not much compared with yours,
But where they work, and age, and put off men
By being unattractive, or too shy,
Or having morals—anyhow, none give in:
Some of them go quite rigid with disgust
At anything but marriage: that’s all lust
And so not worth considering; they begin
Fetching your hat, so that you have to lie

Till everything’s confused: you mine away
For months, both of you, till the collapse comes
Into remorse, tears, and wondering why
You ever start such boring barren games
—But there, don’t mind my saeva indignatio:
I’m happier now I’ve got things clear, although
It’s strange we never meet each other’s sort:
There should be equal chances, I’d’ve thought.
Must finish now. One day perhaps I’ll know
What makes you be so lucky in your ratio

—One of those ‘more things’, could it be? Horatio.

Writ On The Steps Of Puerto Rican Harlem - Gregory Corso

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:11:00 +0000

from Long Live Man

There’s a truth limits man

A truth prevents his going any farther

The world is changing

The world knows it’s changing

Heavy is the sorrow of the day

The old have the look of doom

The young mistake their fate in that look

That is truth

But it isn’t all truth

Life has meaning

And I do not know the meaning

Even when I felt it were meaningless

I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning

It wasn’t all frolic poesy

There were dues to pay

Summoning Death and God

I’d a wild dare to tackle Them

Death proved meaningless without Life

Yes the world is changing

But Death remains the same

It takes man away from Life

The only meaning he knows

And usually it is a sad business

This Death

I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness

I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy

I am able to contradict my beliefs

I am able able

Because I want to know the meaning of everything

Yet sit I like a brokenness

Moaning: Oh what responsibility

I put on thee Gregory

Death and God

Hard hard it’s hard

I learned life were no dream

I learned truth deceived

Man is not God

Life is a century

Death an instant

late night walk in a developing homeland

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:13:00 +0000

slow horns speak the serene language

that the dim bulbs poison my head with

dusty depression deepens distortion -

"leave to fight another day; precisely live"

ponderous prescience; quietly disengage

walking the 11 pm roads, I see a dead bat

having been silenced by rainy day signals

or is that the smell of third-world shit?

my modified motherland mindset trying

trying hard to brave the 9 pm dogs

smelling my underpants from outside

and walking with my sorrow on a limp

we need intrigue not adumbrative love

so sighed my moderated silence -

allowing way for the thoughts to

occupy my offensive smelling return.

the insignificant

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:25:00 +0000

like discovering life
in silent moments of significant torment
like fighting tedium
when driving around the Baltimore beltway
like inventing fears
of falling headlong into the Potomac river
like risking every comfort
for procrastinating impending depression
like playing serious games
to distract sinister spiritual contentment

genius has its best test in routine.

rant on a premature retirement

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:21:00 +0000

mama don't dog me...for i cannot believe that i once lived in texas. the days of imaginary cigars blowing down the polluted underroad stream, which houses a hundred and one eels stricken by abject neglect of the impossibly large larder, appears out of the golden present to occupy a blue neuron dancing away to first case depression. these reminders are masochistically nostalgic, and are washed off by power spikes in the silicon city of bangalore that frequently destroy my computer adapters, microwave, cell phone charger, and sundry semiconducting gadgets of zero will in order to calculate the reciprocal of my conductance.

i am fatter now that the roads are indeed rough. i can neither bend to tie my shoelaces nor bend to touch my toes. i cannot even produce optical illusions with respect to the aforementioned acts. superman is now batman, and the magic has destroyed manifestations thereof with surrounding glares. my only hope is to turn 60 soon.

salad of a pin man

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:35:00 +0000

swastikas migrating to the left temple
blessed by che inhabiting the posterior
of green bleach. is white just like poe
ms not dissolving in hearts toughened
by subroutines? errors in adjectives
will substitute tautologies.

imagine

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:36:00 +0000

imagine if the insurance salesman had discovered the blues
and the knives inside me had stood up straight
right as a texas sharecropper's produce.
imagine if the sun had taken a paid vacation to go
away forever from the pines shading my
insistence. imagine my insistence imagining my ruin.

imagine lands where cellphone signals pay no unwanted visits
imagine running out of cash in godforsaken yazoo county
imagine having to pay with silence during impulse strikes
imagine god's understudy playing with his light
imagine the flapper putting down the chinese kites

what if chairman mao had brushed his teeth, right?

supraman

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:22:00 +0000

a long-standing ennui
addresses the need for
a firm standing in a prison cell

where

some ought to be free
and most others kept busy
in the quest for redressal.

Unnecessarily bitter

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:22:00 +0000

Mannini clears. The industrious Lombardo lunges for the laws of probability to direct the show just before the brain does. No. 10 waltzes in the form of Mancini who stops soon after. Industry and commerce crowd him. Boskov’s geriatric heart skips a beat as Roberto spots Vialli, the goal poacher twin, in his head. The rest of the world, however, merely watches the ball as the defense is split before the second is. A left foot volley drills a hole in the back of the net. Vialli somersaults to close in on glory. A scudetto for the blucerchiati…as I practice my chip over Tacconi who unfortunately is too old to be real now. My head volunteers to play whatever the belly fails to allow. Vialli morphs into Adebayor. And Sampdoria surrenders to the time of Manchester City troubling Manchester United. New heroes, will you please get off my lawn!!

Nouveau-fat man's poem

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:13:00 +0000

1. A method of slowing down a frequency of poetry, the method comprising:
forming an adipose layer over each of a wrist bone, a metacarpal bone, a carpal bone, and a joint associated with each of the metacarpal bone and the carpal bone; and
reducing a bone chill associated with the frequency of poetry using the adipose layer.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising forming the adipose layer such that a ratio of a volume of all of the wrist bone, the metacarpal bone, the carpal bone, and the joint associated with each of the metacarpal bone and the carpal bone relative to a volume of the adipose layer is less than 0.1.

rate gatsby

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:25:00 +0000

stung by serrated rainy day parasols

that distribute crossword solutions

for the rapid benefit of the great gatsby

who waited for his daisy to fit a down clue

"CAN I LECTURE HERE? PLUS A RESPONSE TO THE SAME, PANSY! (5)"

i solve for her yet do not want her

and am not impressed by gatsby too

for as far as "old sport" utterances

are terribly concerned, the parties concerned

were americanized darcies.

mental sales pitch

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:02:00 +0000

mr. x is callous in his inability to break into eye sweat.

i watched him sweat once like a 1 year old in an onion bag for no apparent reason.

my watchful eye had no reason, and not the 1 year old in the bag of bulbous break-sweater.

how tedious are we, the emotionless, say those who are attracted to said tedium through elements of self-torture.

my elements include cultured copper, vainglorious aurum, and the omnipresent carbon.

elements of self-torture, though, include electrical pulses and autorickshaws running to provide shearing force for sidetracked sheep.

i am the immobile, sticking out for the pulses and the deepest de-motivation.

do save a place for me in the forest.

hippie loneliness

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:50:00 +0000

shut up you festering sack of shit
says the old man scratching his nose
and the ginsberg glassed hipster
breaks a ruler in the city lights bookstore
the dog morphs into a paternal uncle
the yachts at sausalito peer mockingly
into a bum telling stories of 12 cent coke bottles
my mother and father are in india
my mouth is parched
my hairs ask for white minority rights
and i better stop this
depressing poem.

savage eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:50:00 +0000

she trains her "beauty" amidst the lavender flowers
while her man chases her around with a xerox machine.
i look out of my house, watch the same flowers with nausea,
and wish for the weeds to swallow all generic colours.

i am a lover.

Snake Eyes - Amiri Baraka

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:03:00 +0000

That force is lost
which shaped me, spent
in its image, battered, an old brown thing
swept off the streets
where it sucked its
gentle living.
And what is meat
to do, that is driven to its end
by words? The frailest gestures
grow like skirts around breathing.
We take
unholy risks to prove
we are what we cannot be. For instance,
I am not even crazy.

brick wall scratch

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:31:00 +0000

the wings are out oh so early
for the chicken to collectively cluck for
an abject closure
how much for a glorious cup of coffee?
how difficult, how bitter and
how undissolved
and I wait for the sugar taste
to appear in the vile fluid
out of the blue and
into the black...like a
pre-historic beast.

fate of poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:49:00 +0000

i saw a vainglorious cockroach

naked and trespassing my non-existent narcissism

as i stood cutting myself at shaving angles

during the filthy creature's admiration of its butt

and somewhere far in my consciousness

i heard brahms brought to life by nathan

the major chords and situational poverty

angering me enough to clench my right fist

to further hit the mirror and smear the surface

with the green goo of the silky insect.

it takes a killer to diminish an image.

Homage to a Government - Philip Larkin

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:20:00 +0000

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It's hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it's been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

1969 (from High Windows)

calculation

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:31:00 +0000

"give me my dime back!
there is no tax on medicine,"
says the no-nonsense citizen
clutching the $1.19 tylenol
on one hand that hides
the $ poverty on the sleeve
and a $1.19 greasy hot dog
on the other that reveals
the $ poverty to aggrieve.

whine

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:29:00 +0000

the bluebird flies above
      my head
                        just
      like everything else
does.

monkey my name

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:05:00 +0000

she swings from the tree like one gypsy monkey
that i tie to the lamppost to spend nickels at the gumball machine
losing coins, gaining patience and getting sunshine
while she dictates one-way treason
that i try to get to the bottom of
as i blow bubbles into thin air and "we are psychic warriors..."
claims my swollen head as i throw away life
waiting for its turn to share.

Merry Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Ramakrishnan Parthasarathy) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:25:00 +0000

Merry Christmas to the prisoners at bay
Merry Christmas to the anchorites who walk
Merry Christmas for the Christmas afternoon
Merry Christmas to the absent gifts for the homeless
Merry Christmas to the creators of said absence
Merry Christmas to the concept of gifts
Merry Christmas to the Santa Claus who's at Walmart
Merry Christmas to the closed church on the day
Merry Christmas for the "No Ministers" sign
Merry Christmas for the trains that run
Merry Christmas for equal conditions
Merry Christmas for democratic tears
Merry Christmas to all closed shops
Merry Christmas to the open gas station
Merry Christmas to the feeling of eating something after 24 hours
Merry Christmas for accepting debit cards.