my poetry journal

Vultures

2011-07-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

You lie there with your back
Half dug in the dirt of the hospital bedsheet
They change these sheets
Almost as often as you soil them
But then, you also bleed and spit
Involuntarily.

If it was an open field
It wouldn’t have mattered
You could just lie and see where
You were going
The vultures circling above
Keeping an eye
Till you stopped seeing
Where you were going.

In the hospital
They don’t let you see
Where you are headed
And you can’t see
The vultures waiting for you.

July 19, 2011

Hope

2010-02-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

In spite of
what we say and do
it’s not going to be any different
this time.
Again.

It is pouring heat outside,
and we thought it would rain,
when we meet again.

You were gone so long
that I mistook your return
for a change in fortune.

We all do it in our own
sinister little ways –
burdening change with expectations
beyond its means.

I let another spring go by,
unconsumed.
I wanted to be just happy to see you
when you first stepped in.

This stressed excitement
is so different from what I had hoped for.

I look back now and think
what more can planned happiness deliver?

Hope is such a disastrous beginning
to anything you hope for.
The next big war
I hope, will be fought against hope.

How am I going to hide the fact
that I collapsed because you gave in
so easily and so soon?

How many questions am I allowed
to ask myself
before the time for answers runs out?

May 13, 2009

Steam

2009-10-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

The man gobbled
up a plate
of assorted snacks
as he spoke.

With his mouth
full of potatoes
still releasing steam,
he spoke of the storm
in a language
I don’t understand.

It was raining
so he didn’t seem
to mind the steam.
It gets cooler here
when it rains
like it does in most
other places
I have lived in.

He spoke of the storm
and quoted lines
from a poet
in his language.

I don’t remember
what he said
because it was raining.

The raindrops
get noisy
on the tinned roof
and the café wants
to fly in the storm
away from the cigarette
smoke we plaster
its walls with.

The man with
dry eyes
came and sat with
us there on another
day and he wiped off
the eyes drops
as if those were his tears.

But that was
quite another day.

August 12, 2009

Dark glass jars

2009-08-11T20:05:00.001-07:00

I didn’t eat my plums
when I had them.
Never put them
in an ice box
nor in the fridge.

I punctured the plums
with wooden
toothpicks instead
and left them
to ferment in
sugar.

I soaked
them in spirits
and hid them in
dark glass jars
for months
together.

Let the spirits
sap the plums,
let the juices
turn to spirits.

There are no
plums now.

August 12, 2009

(I wrote this on the morning of August 12, 2009. I woke up and logged in to Facebook. Dilip Chitre had written about staying up the previous night, making tea for himself and eating plums in his status message. I was reminded of WCW's "This is Just to Say".)

Untitled

2009-04-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

A thousand and six years
have passed
since she sat down with
her head drooping
like a withered stalk.
If you go closer
she is a fresh flower
closer still
a dead stalk after all.
She sits, smells, stinks
she sits and does not
smell
-- an odourless stone that she
Is.

The inscriptions on the stone
hide a story
the bent head hides the
inscriptions
stories lie in
the forgotten grave.
Forgotten she is
but only till the thousand year
old wind passes that way.
Till it arouses
only to numb again.

The body of stone turns epitaph.

The epitaph that speaks
inscriptions that tell a story

© Jatin Gandhi, 1996

I love the colour red, but...

2009-04-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

They have been in a bit of a tizzy
since they heard of the rainbow's
plan,
it won't be Vibgyor any more
it has said.
It likes red the most,
so it must come first,
followed by blue, yellow and
then, other colours.
They are quoting naturalists and physicists,
to get across the point that
a rainbow can't change colours
without triggering chaos.

They don't have to worry
the way they are.

I am not a cynic,
but I know new year resolutions
don't last long.

January 4, 2009.

The last few sips of doubt

2009-01-16T02:11:00.000-08:00

It got out of hand at
some point,
the comedian’s act.

There was a psychoanalyst
in the audience
who came for a drink
with her sociologist friend
and spoke what she thought
the comedian meant.

They argued over this and that
in the act
till the comedian had heard them
and then left.

They passed through the old road
by the older tomb
where
seven tramps with eleven eyes
between them
lean on the medieval wall.
Every day.

It won’t give away
any time soon.

The journey on the
sunlit patches of the road
is like a dream
that they will dream of
sleeping
or awake in the time machine
later.

They will hold hands
before they part
or may kiss.

They will write
To each other
Till they meet again

But the comedian’s
not what he used to be,
he’s busy digging for roots
each time
under the follicles of hair
on his head
of what he said and what he meant.

January 3, 2009

The seventh admission of a manufactured personal history

2009-01-16T02:07:00.000-08:00

In this mix of sleepy insomnia
and ennui,
I have carefully crafted a nostalgia trip.
I have booked us on journeys
through places that don’t exist
and plotted events that never took place.

I have it all laid out along the paths
of memory –
small, round, distempered, white
stones
relocated from free river beds
and lined up like soldiers
or school children waiting
for the march past
like fake anecdotes.

I have it all ready,
the blue prints
and the maps
of a relationship
that never existed.

I have imagined it
all here, waiting for you.

But come soon.

The road to madness is about to end.

December 10, 2008

Ahmedabad

2008-11-02T09:58:00.001-08:00

They met over some hot,
acidic coffee and pungent
garlic bread.

Writers, poets and more poets,
eating, chatting,
reading and talking
texts.

A short story began
germinating
and will grow up
to be a novel
soon.

She spoke of relationships
and alienation,
that co-exist but last a lifetime.
He
spoke of gory impotence
that is part of a bureaucrat’s life
who lords over villages.

Then,
they who think too
of relationships
but
in a different
sort of way,
struck.

We saw it on TV.
And read it in the paper too.

A boy,
just seven,
his long story
cut short.
His skin cut through
with acid hurled
by the aliens,
fighting
scars
and the pungent
hospital smells –
the smell of dead flesh
that the living carry
and of living but
decaying layers
of those,
already dead.

July 28, 2008

TV

2008-11-02T07:19:00.001-08:00

They put a few coats of golden paint
on the bigger clay statue
and made the smaller
metal statue look like such a dud.
That’s the power of makeup.
At least on TV.

Oct 21, 2008

Secret service archives?

2008-11-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

I opened the page
to type a few words
and the computer said
it was a new document
that I must name
before I start writing.
I never thought I was
creating documents
that had to have names.
This is interesting
in a sinister sort of way.

October 21, 2008

The setting sun

2008-11-02T07:15:00.001-08:00

Do twelve bizarre
thoughts
put together make a poem?
Not during normal working
hours.
No one writes during
normal working hours anyway.
That’s the time when we
gather poetry
like fairytale characters
collect
berries, flowers or mushrooms
in woven baskets
the sun setting unexpectedly –
the reversible twist in the tale --
their only big concern.

October 21, 2008

Compulsion

2008-11-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

I am going to sit here
tonight,
all day tomorrow
and so on
searching for what I want to write
in what others have written.
Because, my pen has
run dry.

October 21, 2008

Fracture

2008-10-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

It didn’t pain half as much
when the finger fractured
than it did when
when the ortho surgeon tried to fix it
by setting it right back
the way it was.

The child screamed, wailed
and clung to her mother
the mother shed tears silently
and held on to her husband’s sleeve.

The doctor was a nice man
but he was late already
for his lec-dem.
And, his car was
parked to the wrong side.

September 12, 2008

Another rum poem

2008-08-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

Rumi, the great Sufi,
is in a way, three-fourths Rum
and a quarter I.

Yet, how blasphemous
would it be?
if I said
the flask of rum on my study table
doesn’t merely fulfill
the need for poetry or lovemaking
but fills in for dead parents and
friends long lost,
lost forever.

It fits in exactly
where the pursuit of happiness
and renunciation, failed.

An old wise man
whose presence
takes you on a high
can be your guru –
living, demanding, superior being.

But here, is this durban
who opens all doors
for a little bakshish,
takes you to gatherings
where everyone is just another you.

And the fleeting resonance in every
mirror
of this hall of mirrors
is your own.

Who needs gurus and godmen
Or gods
when you have schizophrenia,
a flask of rum
a table to rest these on.

A laugh marks the beginning to end
of sanity; insanity,
comes distilled,
trapped in a bottle
you can fill a few flasks with.

The only power that stands
in the way of my being a complete atheist.

August 12, 2008

Book of songs

2008-07-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

I found a small book
at Fact ‘n’ Fiction
one day.

A book of songs.

It has songs of all kinds.
Songs that make you
laugh
but sad
at the same time.

There are songs
full of anxiety
and desire,
of freedom
and longing.

Some songs are like smells
sweet but strong.

Or like the breeze
that touches your eyes lashes gently
and blows just
before it pours madness from
Thick
grey clouds.

Some are like paintings
I can’t paint.

There are more songs than
I can talk about,
In more shades than I can see
in a lifetime,
I tell myself
as I slip the book
back
into its shelf.

A few songs is
all you need.

I hope I can keep coming
back to it.

July 19, 2008

Divorce

2008-07-18T12:46:00.001-07:00

This business of switching sides,
of a door hanging
loosely by the hinges
most screws gone,
is intriguing.

The hinges aren’t
the way it was planned
Years ago.
But is that reason enough
to walk in and out of a door
as you please?

In a house with no windows
they couldn’t shut all doors
at all times.

You can keep a door open
and still put a sign up
that says
“Do not disturb”
at the cost of upsetting someone
even if it is your own
Self.

I would’ve called you my shadow
sweetheart
and I, yours.

But, from the time I heard
about the divorce
I have been careful
about the words
I choose.

July 19, 2008

The bar

2008-07-08T22:00:00.001-07:00

I can sit here all night
talking about the virtues
of rum
with my friend
or his friend.

But, this woman
swimming and dancing in my glass
is bothering me.

It is not because
she is a woman
Or because it is my glass
she is dancing in.

You can go for a swim alone
and you can dance alone
but she is dancing with herself.

Look, she can’t even dance!

But, she seems to enjoy
this celebration
of being alone.

I can’t swim
and I can’t dance
I can celebrate being alone.
But, not like her somehow.

We are all different, I know.
and a woman dancing
or swimming
or singing
can attract or distract.

But, this is different.

I will leave the glass here
with my drink unfinished
so she can enjoy her dance.

on the bus back home,
I will think about how
she got into my glass.

July 9, 2008

The last time

2008-06-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

The last time around
we were together
You spoke a different language.
Things have changed now.
It is raining,
this time around.

June 27, 2008

Is it raining?

2008-06-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

Maria,
look out of the window please,
is it raining outside?

Again?

Or is just
the old man’s roof?

Or am I dreaming
again
about one of those
things happening?

Did it rain
last night?

Or sometime
early this morning?

I thought I heard raindrops.

It was a different sound
then
than it is now.

But, that’s common isn’t it?
When it rains
how the wind blows
changes the sounds that we hear.

Does it happen to you?
Or is it just me
who hears the rain
making a different sounding love
each time it goes to the mud?

Is there mud on the ground outside?
Or is it paved now?
Maria, will you please look outside
and tell me?

June 21, 2008

Mountains and the spirit

2008-06-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Coming back from the mountains
and going back -
out on the city’s roads
driving all by yourself
is like recovering from a fever.
It feels like you are done
and you have had a good rest
lying in bed, sleeping
and dreaming
for all those days:
Long hours of sleep, cold sweats, nausea.

But, its worse when you get back.
Every few steps you take,
you feel tired and queasy.
Though, it isn’t the reverse
of sleeping with a fever.

It’s quite the same.
You break into a cold sweat
or sleep deep enough to meet
strange beings in a nightmare.

Imagine dying in the mountains!
Just falling off a cliff
or drowning in a river
running so fast
that you never know
what killed you,
-- the water or the current?

But then there is rum
that lets you choose your death
and there are those on the way to death times
that feel worse than death,
at least till you are alive.

June 17, 2008

My rivers

2008-06-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

What is it about
early rains, seeping walls,
choked drains
or apologetic drizzles
that leave mud
between your fingers and under your soles,
that is so much more convincing
than angry, boisterous rivers?

I meet a river every year.
Sometimes, every few months,
for work.
There are some that kill,
others that are dying
and some others that just flow
or as seasons change,
stop flowing.

I know a lake that is an extension
of a river.
The rocks and the logs in the river
and the birds in the lake,
The weeds, the snakes they all are real.
But a river, is still a good place to have
a beer by.

June 17, 2008

Partition II

2008-06-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

For every single step he took,
his feet weren’t sure
they had found the road
under the snow.

But, the postman managed
to deliver
day after day
every working day

So, one day, his son
could return
to the city by the village
and teach scholars
what it means to be a refugee’s son.

June 7, 2008

Revolution

2008-03-13T05:26:00.001-07:00

If I gloss through
the pages,
in my mind,
of the diary
I never wrote
and notes I never
took,
I can join
the dots
and show you
a picture.

Don’t ever
get drunk
again
and
shout at me.
I don’t care what
the big picture is.

I have my own
coordinates.
and I make my own
pictures.

I am no Einstein,
Gandhi
or Russel
But I have been
working,
with just being what I am,
on truth and relativity.
And it all fits in very well when
I look at you.

It fits equally well
when I don’t look at you.
So you must understand
you are not relevant.

Please leave.
And, shut the door
when you go.

Those dogs outside
and the fireflies
are just as avoidable as you are.

March 11, 2008

Reason

2008-03-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

It is not easy
to finish things off
in a few words.
or a picture.

Images
or words
aren’t always enough.
You need breath
or water,
maybe colours
or soil.
A woman’s womb sometimes.

The way we see light and
the way it is
can be so different,

like the impressions we carry
about life
or they way we express
them,
from the way
Nature does.

March 11, 2008