The chicken ran across the street
Away from scent of frying spice.
The cattle ruminated on
The water draining from the rice.
The kitten on the kitchen wall
Mistook some worms for errant mice.
The monkey stole a coconut
And dropped it after beating twice.
Recovering from urban dreams,
It always makes a morning nice
To walk along a village street
With grannies combing out the lice.
In flipping through some musty myths
You find enlightened lines of lore
Which lionize the fallen foes
Who part imparting wise advice.
You wrestle with their chestnut choice:
Between two rights, between two wrongs,
Two prongs too long to make out from
Their shadowed, silhouetted forms
Which one says, “Life!”, which one, “So long!”
Contextualizing myth to fact,
You strike the matchstick stack of stakes
You had been sitting silent on
In search of sparks of sage insight.
You peer into that piercing light
And blinded by the billion ways
Your day-to-day arrays and weighs
You spit again upon your choice
Extinguishing the only voice
Of reason, seasoned though with noise.
You fall upon your mattress foam,
See lazily the lizard roam,
Admit defeat, you’re not so strong
To choose between two rights, two wrongs.
The lizard clicks its judging tongue,
“No myth is writ, no song is sung,
For candles with uncarboned wicks.
A hero is someone who picks.”
They stared at her and whispered loud,
“So young. It must be hard on her.”
They shook their head and held their son
A little closer, far from her.
Who knows if she’s contagious now?
The son adjusts his plastic specs
Which make his eyes look wonderstruck.
He points at her and asks aloud,
“I want a earphone just like hers.”
His parents meet her parents’ eyes,
Apologize embarrassedly.
Then shift away and scold their son
“You shouldn’t make her feel so bad.
It’s not her fault she’s deaf so young.
See here, they have such pretty frames.”
I wonder at how blind we are.
She’s only wearing specs for ears.
I’ve learned to fear the quiet ones,
The peaceful ones, the bashful ones,
The ones who smile emoji smiles,
The ones who blink and nod despite
Their triggers pulled, their buttons pushed.
Their anger runs a deeper vein
Than pumping hearts can reach with love
Despite exhausting coffee mugs
And treadmill jogs and counter-shocks.
Their anger runs a sharper blade
Than focused consciousness can sheathe
Despite exhausting all its chants
And mindful breaths and straightened spines.
Their anger bleeds into the note
And stains currency’s either page.
Their anger drills into the coin
And punches holes on either face.
Perspective, Judgment, Rationale:
Their worshipped cattle, milked and fed,
Are simply sacrificial dice
Awaiting Chance to roll their heads.
At least, my anger’s in your face.
I feel Athena axing at
My temples in a rhythmic beat.
A clever girl, she understands
The wisest, sharpest, focused minds
Derail, derange, deteriorate,
No longer fit as House of God.
She’ll split my head before I sleep,
Emerging clothed in all my mettle,
In all my cunning, loud and subtle,
But till such time, I will endure
This labor so that she matures.
It’s good I borrowed Vishnu’s urn
Of soothing Amrutanjan burn.
The Chinese Master sipping tea
Invaded my territory
With well-positioned weiqi stones.
I told him I didn’t know the science
Of wobbly stones on criss-cross lines.
He only answered, “Empty moans.”
I clicked my Climbing Silver down
To see the Master’s muddled frown.
I smirked and said, “My head, my game.”
He put a hand into this beard
And pulled the only piece I feared.
“A pawn’s enough to bring you shame.”
I bludgeoned him with Ace of Clubs.
He scrabbled for some Bingo rubs.
My mother called, “Get up, get up.”
The thermometer in my mouth
Confirmed the fever sailing south.
I nodded at the Oolong cup.
I try to fill a nil with art.
To write instead from brimming heart
Is still the skill I need to drill.
Rejecting Life for what it is,
Reacting to all ease, unease,
Is still the thrill I need to kill.
I have, instead, a scream so shrill
That sharpening my poet’s quill
Is still the pill I need to chill.
The papers of the poet prince
Survived despite the palace fire
That crisped and burned his ancestry
So ornate on the tapestry
That spanned the wall behind the throne.
The papers of the poet prince
Survived despite the hungry goats
Unleashed into the library
By hired ninjas sent to end
The living and their history.
The papers of the poet prince
Survived despite the rushing blood
From jabs and slashes on his skin
That soaked his purple sokutai
But not the leather pouch within.
Or maybe someone clever ran
Some propaganda marketing.
I showed the little one a rose,
Which then arose a little smile:
A half-moon toothless pure delight
As flighty as a midnight kite.
Her raven eyes of seven weeks
Then followed the uneven path
Along the branches of the rose:
An avalanche of bugs were close.
So, usually I let them be
The butterflies I love to see.
And yet today I knew I couldn’t.
I fully squished my inner “shouldn’t”.
The horror: itchy silky fur
On milky, velvet baby skin!
Avuncular protectiveness
Effected swift effectiveness.
I took my little angel back,
And stacked my plans for bug attack.
Remembering a previous rhyme,
I let them climb a plate of lime.
I saw them curl and shed their fur
With relish of a predator.
When CIA declassified
A bunch of files on Berhampur —
Oh yes, my little seaside town
Was worth a couple local spies
To CIA’s ongoing watch
Against the rise of communists
In Cuba, China, Russia,
By way of Berhampur-on-sea —
Allegedly, allegedly.
So, yeah, when they declassified
A bunch of files on Berhampur,
I finally, then, understood
Why Russian couples coupled here
And left a little ghetto street,
So full of “Anglo-Indians” —
Allegedly, allegedly —
Who smelled of books and something else
My uncle called “Havana Sweet”.
I finally, then, understood
Why Russian novels sold so cheap
In road-side stalls across the town,
And every man of “cultured taste”
Had shelves and shelves of Russian books
In red or wheatish leatherback.
I finally, then, understood
Why Burmese teak was used to build
These ornate crates for libraries
Of certain naval officers
Who steered their ships on certain days
Away from currents in the sea.
The CIA reports revealed —
Allegedly, allegedly —
Discrepancies in volume, weight
Of shipped-in crates of sugarcane
On cargo ships from Cuban coasts.
Allegedly, allegedly,
Evaporation was the cause,
Along with all the “chipperings”
Of rodents on its dried-up leaves.
The sugarcane unloaded here
And sat with “Anglo-Indians”
Who also owned their own produce
In greenery of Ganjam fields —
The Ganjam fields that got their name,
Allegedly, allegedly,
From yields and yields of Ganja green.
The Burmese ships that brought the books
From mainland China, Russia,
In ornate crates of Burmese teak,
Returned towards the Comrade States
With sugarcane, et cetera,
For comrades sporting thin cigars.
And Cuban ships returned their way
With crates of priceless literature
For farmers signing with their thumbs.
Alas, the Winter of the World
Was soon to freeze Atlantic routes
With missile-loaded submarines.
And Globalising India,
Was soon to freeze Berhampur roots
In greenery of Ganjam fields.
Alas, the little ghetto street
Is left with “Indian fishermen”
Of questionable ancestry —
Allegedly, allegedly —
Who smell of fish and something else
My father calls “Rangooni Gills”.
Minakhi Misra 