When irritation shimmers
Like unfinished coffee,
No deodorant masks
The salmon on the chandelier.
When frustration whirs
Like turning microwaves,
No epoxy seals
The cockroach in the kaleidoscope.
When anger writhes
Like boiling eggs,
No seatbelt holds
The turkey to the trampoline.
While going through a nasty ‘mail
An ex had sent me long ago,
I stumbled on a nice detail:
A something she had vowed to throw.
I used to slip some sticky notes
Inside the bag she brought to school.
They used to have some poem quotes –
Some lines I found too beautiful.
The data hoarder that I am
I’d logged those in a journal too.
And later with a handycam
I filmed those pages, flipping through.
The film became an Excel sheet,
And then a MATLAB database,
And then again a Google Sheet
I lost around my college days.
I laughed and hovered on reply –
No clue if she still used this ‘mail –
And shrugging, sent a worth-a-try,
Archiving off the entire trail.
A fortnight after losing hope,
The mailman gave our bell a ring.
He handed me an envelope
That had her cursive lettering.
No sticky notes, no poem quotes,
It only had a pocketbook
Of limericks (and mold and motes),
She’d picked up at a book fair nook.
Inside, an old “I love you, M.”
Some scattered marginalia –
I traced the paper scars from them –
A bold “megalomania.”
“You have that silly smile again,”
My mother picked the envelope.
I tried to snatch it back in vain.
“The one who made you moan and mope.”
I sighed and told her everything.
She laughed and laughed and walked away,
Returned with journals bound by string.
“Your mother loves you every day.”
To draw your salary from a salt hill
Left by evaporated relationships.
To fork up the starving seconds
You left on your plate.
To pin autocorrected misunderstandings
With asterisks left on your own terms.
To capture en passant feathering whims
Left linted on your dreamcatcher.
A sanguine bovinity
To graze on self-help aphorisms
Sprouting from fertile graveyards
Of unencrypted philosophy.
Or, an agronomical optimism
To harvest replanted yesterdays
And cook them, by hereditary recipes,
Into tomorrows, tasty only by acquisition,
On the wetwood pyre of a stillborn today.
Or, love.
When does a language really die?
When no one speaks it anymore?
When no one writes it anymore?
But what of texts that still remain?
And audio on the internet?
Will languages now never die?
Elixir of all spoken tongues,
Is internet a condom too?
No human tongues are born these days.
So long, of course, that it is Art.
And if it isn’t, what’s the point?
It doesn’t matter either way.
It matters to the one who makes.
And why it matters tells a lot.
“It isn’t mine” is novice talk.
As if it ever was your own.
As if you never had a muse
Who whispered dreams into your eyes.
As if you never borrowed minds
Of masters who preceded you.
As if you never wielded tools
Before to make the Art you make.
And if you didn’t, then what’s the point?
It doesn’t matter either way.
“It feels like cheating.” Cheating who?
The Audience? They do not care.
So long, of course, that it is Art.
So long as they are moved by it.
And if they aren’t, what’s the point?
It doesn’t matter either way.
And if it bothers you so much
Just tell them AI helped you out.
Unless the means are soaked in blood,
And sometimes even if it is,
They do not care what all you use.
And if they don’t, then what’s the point?
It doesn’t matter either way.
But if you know it lifts your Art
And still you stay away from it,
It matters both to you and them.
You both are robbed of what could be.
You want a way to know for sure
If I am who I say I am?
The answer is a simple No:
Noone, nowhere, nowhen has been
The person that they say they are.
Pretenders all, pre-tending to
Pretensions of their betters far.
I am the one I wish I were.
I wish I were the one I am.
This circularity of mine –
Now magnetised by glorious goals
And now demagnetised by fate –
Is how I waste my energy.
No tense Potentiality,
In ambush, waits to spring at me.
In looking at the books I’ve read,
I only see the books I’ve not.
Too busy, lazy, crazy, sick
To pick the ones that challenge most:
The classics, histories, long and thick
To whom my shelf plays patient host.
A new year comes; it’s time to pick
A conversation with the ghost
Demanding silence – what a trick –
And then demanding my riposte.
But whether I am wrong or right,
The big books always blow my mind.
Is keeping things to yourself hard?
Does Silence cut you like a shard
Of Truth you find embarrassing?
It’s not that you are gossiping –
The Gospels too are gossip, right?
The gossip on one Jesus Christ?
It’s what you gossip and with whom,
To what details your gossips zoom,
That gives me reason for concern.
By learning more than they should learn
They gain a hold on you and me
And I prefer remaining free.
And ’cause we are no Jesuses,
Nor endowed with geniuses,
We’re quite unfit for gospel talk.
No people throng us, when we walk,
To hang on to our every line.
Resist the bragging. We are fine
Despite what anybody says.
To socialise, we’ve other ways.
Mama! Is that a shooting star?
It’s just an aeroplane, sweetheart.
I still can make a wish on it?
Of course, you can. You always can.
But will my wish be granted then?
Just share the wish. I’ll follow up.
But that is cheating, isn’t it?
That rule is just for shooting stars.
And also birthday candles, right?
Yeah, also fallen eyelashes.
But promise you won’t grant the wish!
No fooling you! My Biggie Boy.
I wish to be a shooting star.
Haha! So I can’t grant this wish?
So I can grant your every wish.
You got that from your Pixar film?
Mama! No fooling you, haha!
I’ll get that comic book you want.
Minakhi Misra 