PERPETUAL WAIT

It is a cold, cold December night

Quite past the decent hours

Been sitting in an emptying café

You are way past the stipulated time.

I still sit here in one manner, half waiting,

Half treating myself to rare freedom,

To involuntary closing of eyes,

Relishing the caress of tickling, tempting,

Consuming cold breeze on my face

From West perhaps…

Snap! I get back. I see

Random questioning eyes scanning me,

No coffee in hand, no company.

I wait not for meeting you, I wait,

I wait till this saturation prevails

And gives way to an endless abyss.

Do I want that? Or is this better?

This waiting, this freedom to anticipate,

No teetering between Love and Hate…

Having a sure seat, an assured ally of loneliness…

You come, you leave, I am still the same,

Waiting in some place, a dark cold night.

You are periodical, this night for me is forever,

Let me hold it dearest, to the place you desert.

When you are gone for good, when I am with myself,

I shall waltz my way into this inky darkness

To be the mistress of all that I love, all those are mine.

I shall raise a toast to me, to you my beloved, and this night divine…

I said I shall, I would have, but…

How troubling these waters I tread!

I wonder which wrong turn I took and where?

Now I have reached a dead end that is you.

Desperate I want to flee. I know I must go.

But this umbilicus tied to your heart cold

I fear to sever, the mess it would make.

Should I paint my hands in my own blood?

Or would you do the honor with mortal hurt?

All in vain, I know, my life an un-writable slate.

In perpetual anxiety, till date I wait.

Now I even doubt the purpose of this ticking

Is it taking me somewhere? Or just an in-thing?

Ah…there you come now, waving in a non-intense.

Again, it’s me who is late, off-time. An inconvenience.

LIMBO DAWN

LIMBO DAWN

I am suspended in between two worlds,

One clouded in dusk, other seeing dawn.

I look at them days rising to the morn

Wearing new robes, their self-endorsed

The Caribbean grows, roots in pre-identities

Its shoot of dewed new leaves, new identity,

They walk on fresh bridge-bar I hang on. I see

Them limbo-ing past me. Happy beings.

I see them and my mind meanders free

To traded souls who incepted in their misery.

Good ones upright, maimed prostrate, they

Fought agonizing life the limbo way.

Filial love pass it on believing re-assembly

From beast to man, man to better man as in

Egyptian Osiris, resurrected Son or the Kali.

Valiant, enduring they threw aside the chains

The slavery yoke transformed to limbo game,

They fought imperialism with imagination, I say.

They survived, now dawned through the limbo way.

EXPLANATION

I am suspended in between two worlds,

One clouded in dusk, other seeing dawn.

I look at them days rising to the morn

Wearing new robes, their self-endorsed

The Caribbean grows, roots in pre-identities

Its shoot of dewed new leaves, new identity,

They walk on fresh bridge-bar I hang on. I see

Them limbo-ing past me. Happy beings.

The poem is a take-away from Wilson Harris’s essay ‘the limbo gateway’ and various concerns expressed by him are represented through the means of a man who is in between two cultures or two worlds and its peoples. One world is the old Africa and its identity – burdened by slavery and degeneration, having no true essence of itself (as a result of years of servitude to others). It is “clouded in dusk”, referring to the fact that the older identity is primitive and it must give way to dawn, that is, the new world, the new Caribbean world with its new identity. People are moving towards this dawning age and the speaker is watching their progress. The speaker is the bridge here. He is hanging on a fresh bar- this fresh bar represents the gateway, the limbo gateway. People, to pass on to the rising world, have to limbo through a gap. It is not easy; it is a challenge that they face bravely and cross over to progress and happiness.

The new Caribbean is growing but its roots are still present in its tradition. They never forget who they truly are but they adapt and contribute to the new society whole-heartedly. They are progressive like new leaves and fresh like dew, they are working towards happiness. This limbo-ing becomes an important phenomenon of their progression and hence it becomes an important part of Caribbean identity.

I see them and my mind meanders free

To traded souls who incepted in their misery.

Good ones upright, maimed prostrate, they

Fought agonizing life the limbo way.

Filial love pass it on believing re-assembly

From beast to man, man to better man as in

Egyptian Osiris, resurrected Son or the Kali.

The speaker’s mind meanders. This is a reference to the importance of ‘imagination’ in Harris’s point of view. He believes that imagination is the one powerful element that has helped the slaves of Africa to come out and demand their identity, imagination has saved their race. Imagination has kept their minds intact in times of unfathomable sufferings and helped them derive a sense of themselves when they were traded like livestock or property. Here, their imagination gave birth to the famous limbo dance.

When slaves were crammed into ships, they sometimes did not have enough space (or were heavily chained) to stand and so they crawled like spiders (the reference to anancy – the spider hero in African literary tradition). Others could stand upright and to have something to take their minds off their plight, they invented the limbo dance where people move beneath a bar that is constantly lowered till people crawl like spiders, chest up, trying to cross the bar without touching or falling it. It was something original, something distinct to be saved and cherished. They passed limbo dance as a tradition.

The lowering of the body while crossing the bar and subsequent rising of the body is akin to progression from a primitive, subjugated race to being the people of the new world. It is what almost the whole world believes to be sacred like Osiris in Egypt, or resurrection of Christ, or the many-handed goddess of Hinduism- Kali who saves the world by creating a barrier between the devotees and evil, a symbol of remembrance of amputated limbs during slavery.

Valiant, enduring they threw aside the chains

The slavery yoke transformed to limbo game,

They fought imperialism with imagination, I say.

They survived, now dawned through the limbo way.

By inventing limbo dance in the circumstances of slavery, the courageous ancestors have turned the tables. They have turned their liability (of being a slave) into strength. Of all things, they have managed to bring entertainment and joy from slavery. Their imagination of limbo and seeing it as their medium of having a distinct identity and that has helped them move on from slavery to the world of progression and development. Limbo has thus become a gateway to reach the dawn from dusk, it is a bridge through which people have to pass (they have to realize it as their distinct identity) to reach the new world.

REFRENCES

·         Harris, Wilson. The Limbo Gateway.

·         McWatt, Mark. “Some observations on the notions of history, time and the imagination in the thought of Wilson Harris.”

·         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(dance)

·         http://www.moadsf.org/about/themes.html : MOAD - museum of the African Diaspora.

Ariel Ariel!

Ariel! Ariel! I command, do my bid.

Cast the spirits and raise the wind.

From deep bellies of the silent sea

Call out the great Eros misery.

Ariel, you minion that roamed Eden,

You who deemed first children heathen,

Gather your forces, evoke a pyre

To burn betrayal in eternal fire.

Surreal dance of destined ends,

Sense, realization, all weakened…

Be my jinn, be my wishes fulfilled.

Banish them undone with guilt.

Ariel, you see them grinning at me?

Backstabbed me in love-lust reverie

I now carry the scar a souvenir of loss

Carry it to the stump of the cross.

When skies open, I’ll bury them all

Painful, bashful or had me appalled.

Then dear Ariel, of them be alert,

Treacherous warts you must inspect,

And when I am put to the test,

Bury me along with the rest.

WEEKEND RITUAL

I look out my window, I see him sitting there,

A beer mug in his hand, surroundings austere.

The distant music fading in and out,

I follow his rhythmic movements.

He’s head banging in tandem to his tapping foot jerks.

Even at this distance the moisture rolls down the mug

And moisture shines on his sweating brow

His hair soft, refreshing like the cold beer,

Occasional smiles at change of songs so dear!

Every weekend as a ritual I sit by my window

To watch him come, enjoy beer – music, and go.

CELEBRATING DIVERSITY

Some big day indeed! I can see

The big red building colorfully alight,

Dotted with Sahibs and Memsahibs in white.

They step down from plush, sleek white cars

To velvet green, red carpet with charm.

I see, I see them, they unseeing,

Men in white but men in dark.

How different it looks out there,

Colorful but in stark contrast

To where I stand; I son of none,

I am, I was forever………here

The black-market mongrel; austere

This place, I call………….my home

Where I design my thoughtful poem.

Together as white, as brown and grey.

They shout I hear a soul-less sound-

The “Vande Mataram,Vande Mataram” rounds.

Pathetic, I pity their perilous ways

Weighed down by heavy pockets, I say.

Cuffed by chains of ‘I’, ‘Me’ and ‘Mine’.

How can they have straightened spines?

Come again, heroes to Rama’s abode

And see how white-washed it looks.

They are all united now, all together-

Fair, dark, olive, sun burnt, all forever.

They now here celebrate celebrities

But name it now “Celebrating Diversity”.

COFFEE CASE WORSENED

The aroma eases through, unlocks doors

That lead to memory’s unending source.

For the first time I close my eyes.

I look inside me and I am lax of words.

Alone in a group of people? Not nice!

Unending time, if nothing, really hurts.

Living up to my lessons, sad to say I am astray.

Mother-learnt values all lost hues.

I sometime wonder what she will think

If she saw me here, if she was near.

And then with a flinch I brush it aside.

Curse me, I say, for carrying insane pride.

Pride that I dwell amongst proofs of alienation,

Pride that is hitting me hard; no realization.

Morn come, things won’t be any the same,

I’ll be back looking at things that seem now sane.

For now, it’s me and my penetrating coffee,

Hot, sweet, bitter. Alive. Stirring within, without me.

Coffee Cases

Bidding adieu to the last dregs of my over-priced coffee,

I sink to the taste of my purple days of unabashed reverie.

From those still-fresh figurines I pick bygone ghosts that haunt.

How they make my coffee more bitter, a persistent gaunt.

Even after I leave the coffee shop, the coffee mug still hot,

The aroma tugs along. The pebbles I kick down the road

Tumble along a shivery path, as shaky as my deeds.

Akin to a sinful soul that’s accustomed to passionate feed.

The rivulets of greed and guilt that ran down the same plains,

Now extinct, dry path, signatures of past like dried rains.

How pitiful, even the most intimate caresses go uncared.

Numbness overrides humanness, chastity not spared.

I burn them all down with the last dregs of my coffee.

I sink to the taste of my purple days of unabashed reverie.

29.10.11

After much seeking I found

What is indeed worse than loneliness.

It’s not quite different, but pretty abhorrent-

Alienation, being an outcaste in a culture.

Worse so, if it is your identity de-cultured

(Or so they say) by ages of separation

From the roots. Severed into perdition.

Now an incomplete adult revisiting.

Need to learn much, cease to be as such.

Know when you turn, you are the issue.

Your dress, your speech, your friends,

All too base, so far removed from norm

That it is immoral, needless pretence.

You can try pleasing, but please, it’s useless.

You eat when they ask, drink when they say,

Sleep when they want. Dream whenever you may

Seek sanity. You get sanity in dreams alone.

And when you have dreamt enough,

Come back. It’s time for another meal.

That’s all there is. If not with sense,

Stuff yourself with food so that you live.

Evening entertainment gossips of congeniality.

Be sure, the moment you leave, you become

The new subject, target showing impropriety.

And some day, from some distant cousin

You will hear of a promiscuous mad woman,

Then you realize, it is you being spoken.

Trapped

In a sweating hillside villa

Hot and humid entourage

Peeping into the folds of the river

Fed by every evening shower

I am trapped, I am trapped.

Willing submission, not the rapt.

Stuck in a bricked room,

Windows so heavily clouded.

Lost my roots, lost my shoot,

Holding on to ward off the haunted.

I am trapped, I am trapped.

Anxious anticipation, ripped into half.

It’s killing, agonizingly slow

The river would not flow.

Jamming into a tiny orifice

Made tinier by them, I miss.

I am trapped, I am trapped.

Sluggish slumber, not vigilant act.

Forced companies, fake freedoms,

Treacherous talks and idle gossips

Weaving around lamer topics.

Should I laugh, cry or just nod?

I am trapped, I am trapped.

Second-hand speech, carefully matched.

Neither here, nor there, nowhere.

My mind hangs in between conversations.

Neither interest, nor relevance to anything sane

And they expect a courteous, eligible dame.

I am trapped, I am trapped.

Painfully poised, waiting a lapse.

Liberal living in a punctuated life

Solicited by dreams, perilous strife

Of wishes and destiny viciously played

To script the legendary days and night.

Characters in and out they move

Teetering there here strengthened too.

Gullible ease exploited oft in the run

In the mad alley the dreamers groove.

Lamed in the leap of expectations bold

Leading to cut-throat edge then sold

To future that naïve fantasies conceived

By lustrous gleam of self glory- ice cold.

Torn by gleam of heathen manifestations

Of success stories, of lauded competitions.

Racing against the clock, failure inevitable

Then what dreams, what expectations…

U n Scarlet

It’s not been all so long, but,

Why does it seem ages?

Only yesterday we loved, we argued.

Today we spoke again as strangers.

And later the day I saw you in the marketplace.

You looked perfect, you have been so always.

            Not alone, were you? Your beautiful company,

            I did not miss her, nor did so anybody.

            Scarlet against the grey world, so charming her face

            Held you in place. Does it matter? You’ve forgotten me anyways.

It’s not been all so long, but,

Why does it seem like ages?

Just now you passed me in the village fair,

You looked, turned back again and again.

Those piercing eyes following in a mad chase,

You sought me out. Remember at least those sensuous days?

            I cried the day you left there for work.

            Did I know you would never return?

            I tried to strangle your memories in different ways.

            But you brought them back, you and Scarlet in marketplace.

Always been used to these ways

Accustomed to these sultry days

Hunched sitting on an empty street

Guarding a bird wounded in feet

Tearless eyes gaze into my solitude

I know they spell immense gratitude

He knows, I know, not far is the end

His speeding heart feel in my hands.

Before you go, please, dear friend

Allow me hug you to my content,

None but you taught me to love, to live,

And now you go into the eternity.

I send you my heart, take with you,

Love it, guard it, as I did to you.

No good to keep it here with me,

I shall lose it again to some unworthy.

strange world, strange people

The house on fire, see them flames roar higher.
Men running, women crying, children silenced.
They look so tiny, with tiny buckets of few drops.
Servants servile, strong ones mobile, the house defiled.
The window on top left gushing out furious flames.
In the chaos, a parrot with clipped wings aflame.

The mistress crying out for her pet, master adamant.
“Take your mistress away!” he bellows at a servant.
Skirts, coats, hems, hair, all singed, stinking destruction
Her heart longs for the pet, not the colored man charred
In a deeper hue, beyond recognition, beyond comprehension.
Strange world, I say, strange people. They guilt and desire marred.

In all hue and cries, the child forgotten, eyes wide open
Lips forming a permanent O. Hair sweat-smoothened.
Tracks of shed tears still visible, unshed tears blocked
The smell of burning toys in a psyche permanently shocked.
The arrhythmic rise and fall of chest holding so much pain,
His only companions lost in the nursery, left humans disdain.

No love lost over the survivors. Sense of loss held high.
Mourning not for lives that went alight into the dark night.
Toys, pets and property, losing these made them so appalled!
Strange world, I say, strange people. They guilt and desire marred.

A dark sky, a darker silhouette stands stark in contrast.

A silent night ever silenced lips lip sing agonizing past.

A disturbance in distance that draws cautious eyes,

That search frantically for fear of uncanny demise.

Wide open, silent, the Indian night sky beckons,

Its children gone wild on passionate moonlit strolls.

The open enticing arms, just a step to walk into

And set free of chains that play a cacophony tune.

Pay your last scary bow to the inky night,

Past devil’s hour it’s an unblemished sight.

Rest your stance. Don a mask of innocent slumber.

Winter is gone, now season of unbearable summer.

Guard your own, watch out for scurrilous inklings

Watch it; here sulphurous summer overrides the spring.

Nights light to day, but days give in to nights again,

Beware then, you too will begin to enjoy the pain.

In tears, in recurrent fears,
In dreams and perplexed thoughts,
In pools of unruly aspirations
And in ripe moments of passion,
I feel your presence, feel you then
As sure as me, as sure as heaven.

In days insolent, in nights that never end,
In thirsts unquenched and in time unspent,
In lines unread, in paths not tread,
And in the moment you just went off ahead,
I see your shadow, it seems so real
As if you are with me now, held so dear.

In remnants of affection, in embers of rejection,
In songs of love and in words of retention,
In between indecisions, in lieu of precisions,
And in scurry of dialogues with conditions,
I felt your love; I thrived in its shade
As if it was all and I still live that way.

IN DREAMS

Your smile that colored my unkempt world

Still colors my dreams. In those dreams you

And I put back years of neglect, ignorance.

You look at me, our eyes meet…it’s a different thing.

In dreams we live every moment that time

Cheated us off, in dreams I make you mine

And in dreams we live together, we dream our life.

How hard would it be to retreat, relive?

Very difficult, I say. We are victims piteous

Of destiny cruel, Watch her flee grasping fingers

Hungry for a meaningful night, if not for life.

In dreams we live every moment that time

Cheated us off, in dreams I make you mine

And in dreams we live together, we dream our life.

I see my empty hands feeling so useless.

Once they embraced, so full of love and of you.

Now they know not how to stay put, awkward,

They grope for hideouts in meaningless routine, coz

In dreams we live every moment that time

Cheated us off, in dreams I make you mine

And in dreams we live together, we dream our life.

The heavy weight sinks me deeper, I fall

Each day into an abyss that reeks with lack.

I know the answer but seeking never stops, coz

In dreams we live every moment that time

Cheated us off, in dreams I make you mine

And in dreams we live together, we dream our life.

And if in dreams we can live every moment so serene,

Why can we not at least try to live our dreams?

You know, it is hard but possible. We can coz

We dream, and…

In dreams we live every moment that time

Cheated us off, in dreams I make you mine

And in dreams we live together, we dream our life.

PIPER

Every day after my daily drill, I return

Like a weary soldier, wanting peace within

And around me, an escape to my world;

I find him, without fail, every day waiting

To alleviate my worries, he plays; auburn

Fingers gliding over the pipe held between

His lips. Melody, melancholy, love, lust,

All flow from him to me as I sit; a cup of tea

On my lap. Easing body and mind at once.

My window wide open, lest I miss a note

He flourishes now and then. Untimely, surprising

Bundles of harmony matched with tap of

Tin with sticks, stones made by gay urchins

Who sometimes visit. I see them come and go

Like sea storms. The piper remains, playing

His soul to all. What he eats, sleeps, I know not.

Except, that is, of the food packages I accidently

Drop near his shabby blanket on the road.

He pauses, I hurry. And he begins a new tune.

People grown so used to him, he will for sure

Be missed, perhaps more than the impugn

Minister whose statue stands at the bazaar, it will soon

Rust more like the State, be rotten and doomed.

The piper pulls his blanket closer each day,

His emaciated limbs curling beneath. I am scared

Every day I return, fearing the black blanket

And the brown piper will be gone unprepared

Into the bliss. Leaving me in this untoward world.

I pray, O Lord, let the piper survive and his pipe keep playing

So that every day I shall look forward to something.

And when the ax hangs on his neck, i too shall accompany

With love of a fellow-being, prepare him for another journey.

TO YOU

Sure, I miss you; it’s so stupid to ask,

Your query transparent, a see-through mask.

How inviting, enticing, how everything,

You were always perfect, like a new morning.

You rose stronger every day, up from my heart.

Your words like melodies, songs towering Mozart.

Why then was it so short-lived, why agonizing poison

Seeping through veins, numbing my brain, why treason?

Bring back those moments; someone say I didn’t love in vain.

No one seems to hear… Can you hear? Time come!

Can I go? I know you’re not coming, can I run?

Can I live for myself finally? You can’t come, I know.

Your commitments betrayed. But can I go

Where I have no more pain, no love gone in vain.

Remember me, that I ask of you, just remember me as I am.

Alas! Realization! The worth of a hug.

Had cared little, but earlier; been ages.

When unceasingly shadows unearthed;

The piety in crusade against wantonness.

Futile fantasies ruin self-discipline and give way

To repressed, suppressed shrieks of soul, every day.

Sigh! You multi-faceted brute! You dare haunt

My innocence. A pin-prick, of emptiness, haunts.

The pain trickling down, up, all around, coloring

The embers of a wasted eruption, still smoldering.

Gnawing, barely visible under smothered façade

Of seasonal emotions. But it pulsates apart….

The feeling of being full, warm, wanted.

Had cared little, but earlier; been ages.

I wash, scrub, polish, I hide

Necessity, not want, to subside

The wounds, I have lost count

Of them. Deepening, corroding

Not just me, but all mine.

And what was mine? Not much

All there was, was and not is.

What slipped away? Not a hunch

Where I am slipping, falling

Endless. Should I cry? Laugh? What?

So many questions. Who will answer?

Incoherence caps self-pity, distraught

Me. I cannot even see myself proper.

No dreams, just sleepless haunt

Of the same face, I want to run.

Watch them and look at me. Different.

It had to be me again. The name

Does not leave my lips, succinct

Moments, memories mummify me.

See how willingly I submit…I do.

Do I have a choice? Not one.

Can I call my own? I wish…I do.

Is there anyone? Someone?

No, keep off. I am good alone.

I am for me, for my own.