Another rum poem

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spring II

No wonder,
looking at the leaves,
reminds me of a box of crayons.

It is spring.

The chilly saplings
in the pot
may never yield anything
more than green leaves
or white flowers
that whither sooner than
they appear.
But,
it is spring.

Growing up in the city
can take its toll
but manicured gardens get spring too.
Besides,
It is the air
laden with hope,
misery,
Smog,
pollen
and above all
the smell of spring.

There is a strange stench in the air -
of change
that cancer brings —
Irreversible change.

When multiplication
doesn’t mean life anymore.

For the sprouts
there is also
Fresh breath
and through it
Fragrance.

For a part of us
and some of us,
It is still spring.

March 11, 2008

Spring

What is it about the colour
yellow
Or red
That is so attractive?

March 11, 2008

Erosion

When it rains
in the mountains
all night
the water
carries trees and homes
with it.

When the ice melts
it flows
creating sudden streams
gushing out of nowhere.

I wonder if
I will get the time
to call you
when I am dying.

October 5, 2007

So you were saying...

Despite the splits
in my personality
I am just one man.

But, I object.
Because, I am plural.
But, when I wish to be.

I know you will
bring a therapist
or a doctor
they will say,
or one of them will say,
it is a sickness.
Some wise one will say
it’s the pot I smoke.

No it is not a sickness
and I am no angel
but I don’t smoke pot.
Of course,
I smoke pot.

I have my own addictions
because I nurture these
Addictions.

Yes, I can go on
the way I wish to
and want to
with these habits.

I can change
or drop the habits
altogether
But why should I?

I don’t need you
I mean I need you
as much as you need me
but I don’t need you
because you are a habit
or an addiction
or a friend
or my companion

I need you
because I do.

I feel strange
about the conversations
we have
with each other
and with others

I feel pushed to the corner
like a serial cartoonist
who must deliver a punch
at the end
and in the middle
after those silly intervals
that the newsprint manager decides.

These silly digressions
can be avoided
but then,
What is the point of having
a conversation?

Ah so, where was I?
Where were we?


August 25, 2007

Lake-view apartments

Stagnation is
living by a man-made lake
for years.

Growing up
under the shadow
of trees by a pond
and climbing them
is part of being a child.
Smoking and coughing
under those trees is part of
going out like a tired flame.

Between these two states
the pond can
just be a teacher.

Those who grow up by the river
are capable of choosing
between
being still or boisterous.

Those by the still, placid lake
are somewhat repressed.

But, to live by a sad river
is even sadder.

August 5, 2007.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time,
when cars in the city
would stop
for pedestrians on the road,

Big houses
had big lawns
to grow
Mangoes
and for failed attempts at growing plums.

I was young
and loved the shriveled plums
just for variety.

I don’t push my pedal bike
by those houses anymore.

When I do pass that way
I see the trees have made space
for more people and their houses.


But I don’t get sad,
the way I would’ve
when I was young.

But, that was many worries
and many kilos ago.


© Jatin Gandhi, July 8, 2007.

The hero’s last action

I had a strange dream last night.

My friend and I
Were speeding in a car
And he decided
Not to stop at a police barricade.

The police followed us
In fast cars with blaring
Sirens.

But, we were faster.

Then they started shooting at us.

From nowhere suddenly
We had guns too.

But I did not shoot.
Instead, I cried and pleaded with my friend
To stop the car.

In the morning,
I went down the elevator
And shouted at the security guards

For not being careful
With my newspapers.


July 2, 2007.

Untitled

I want my friends
To meet me
But, once every ten years.

I want them to write
Letters
But never write back
When I write to them.

© Jatin Gandhi, June 15, 2007

Dementia

Maria, I have stared,

at the Four black pigeons and one albino,

for many months now.

And, also, at the several dead men

in the background

of the hero’s portrait.

I have wondered long enough

Why that book on the shelf

called ‘Unpopular Essays’

was read and re-read by people.

I have been thinking

and looking for connections

between people buried in history

and books and

the noisy roads below.

I am not sure Marie,

I have the answers.

Do you suspect,

I am not posing the right questions?

Or, is it

That times are changing?

© Jatin Gandhi, May 8, 2007

Addict

I am not up to it.
I can’t give up
this psychotropic fondness
For you.

Don’t try to
wean me away
with anything.

I
don’t want
anything else.

Not even You.

I don’t like the word rehab.
I am not up to it.
I can get up,
stand on my feet
and walk out.

If I am too stoned
to stand up,
or too sick to walk
you can keep the body.

Not, the wandering soul.

© Jatin Gandhi, May 6, 2007

The City

In the city,
On every street
There are thousands of heads
Every morning.

It’s a city that despises walkers
Their paths are blocked.
But each morning
Thousands of walkers
Tread the streets.

Each head in the city
Carries its cities
Within.

A morose man,
Walks with me on one such street.

That is not the only street I walk.
I change lanes and I cross streets.
And, I don’t mind who walks with me
As long as the cities in their heads
Do not spill on to the street.

(c) Jatin Gandhi, May 3, 2007

Untitled

it's this mingling
of the bodies
night after night
every night
and in the mind
day by day
all day
thats running
in my veins,
your veins.
ours.
i wait for
the night
the souls merge
to leave you I
and I, you.

Jatin Gandhi
April 18, 2005

Untitled

His mother died last night.
He’ll burn her and grow older.
He was a young man last year
when his father died
and even after he lit the pyre.

But, now he’s old
He couldn’t leave home like
Siddhartha
or become Budhha

She left before he could renounce
the world

He cannot leave home.

Men, whose mothers are
dead,
don’t make heroes.

They only grow old
and carry their homes
along.

© Jatin Gandhi, November 2, 1999.

Partition

In a colony
of one hundred and fifty refugees,
they marry
only among themselves
giving birth to deformed children.

Weddings and cremations
take place
side by side.

A refugee's son
looks for his roots
elsewhere.

(C) Jatin Gandhi
April 19, 2000

Death

Death,
Like betrayal
kept a promise.
Death and betrayal,
bound by tasks assigned,
kept promises
and worlds
fell apart.

Lest, the world
falls apart.

(C) Jatin Gandhi, April 18, 2005.

Untitled

morning
begins
the way
You are.
bright, sunny,
shady, glum,
pouring.
nights
pass the way
you were.
live,
calm, starry,
cloudy, dark.
the in-between
times,
i spend dreaming
of sleeping
with you
after a life
spent making love.

(C) Jatin Gandhi April 18, 2005.

ice

When I said
I need ice,
Was I lying?
I have been
Coughing these
Last few days,
Having rum
With warm water
And certainly no ice.
It is winter now.
But I say it as a habit,
Each time,
I fix myself another
I say I’m getting ice
Have I been lying?
To everyone
Including myself
Or is just a habit
To call rum, ice
Or is it because
The damned thing is
Just so cool
It does to your brain
What ice
Does to your tongue
In winter?

© Jatin Gandhi, November 16, 2006

silence...and i

when silence and i
parted ways
we didnt
make a noise.
we didnt hear
each other go,
but each knew
the other
would soon
come back.
and did too,
silently.

once again
we were
holding hands,
walking over
crackling dry leaves
silently.


(C) Jatin Gandhi, March 29, 2005

Putrefaction

Love died that night
but I clung on,
for the heart's sake,
to the corpse.
The decay would soon
and did
set in
but I clung on.
The rot spread
and our lives were
putrefied.
It didn't matter,
I told myself.
Wasn't love itself
life,
before it died?


(C) Jatin Gandhi, April 4, 2005

Once

She did, he did
Once upon a time
love each other

(C) Jatin Gandhi

Untitled

He got drunk
Last night and
Fell in the slush

With mud in his eyes,
He wept and thought
- a man must live, drink,
fall and die alone.

(c) Jatin Gandhi, November 9, '04

Writing sometimes...

Writing, sometimes,
Is like stitching up old wounds
And opening new ones,
Cleaning up some
And prodding others.

It’s also like opening
Old bandages to see if
The wounds have healed
And sometimes finding them fresh underneath.

Sometimes,
It is the wound itself.
And pain is not the connection,
Time is.


© Jatin Gandhi, October 31, 2006

To paint a song

I don’t have to be drunk
To sing a picture
Or paint a red song yellow
When I strum the paintbrush
I can smell the music flow
I don’t do grass
Before I wet the sky with words
Or breathe a joyful dance

(C) Jatin Gandhi, 2005

Lecher!

Lecher!

Do you letch at a woman
Or letch for her?
Or is it, to letch for other women
Is because you letch for the one woman in your life.
Can there be one woman in one man’s life?
Or are all women one
To a letch?

Can you letch for a woman
Who is no letch,
Shows no signs of being one
-- a woman who does not bring the lecher out in a man,
would a letch still letch for her?
Is sexual activity one-sided?
If it is all in the mind,
Can a table be an/the object of sexual desire?
Or a glass or bottle –
Empty or full – will it change everything?

Eating chocolate induces the effect in your mind
How many chocolates can a man eat before he feels a limp?
And women? Do they love chocolates more?
Or do they pretend?
Are there categories of flesh?
Is forbidden flesh one?
Can you stop a woman from eating flesh
Or a man from showing it?

(C) Jatin Gandhi
October 25, 2006

Showbiz

…and the mannequin looks on
hand on hip
another on waist
whether or not
if looks could kill.
But the mannequin looks on.
Lamps and lights
The din

T h e f a n s, t h e c r o w d s
And m u s i c too

Cigarette smoke rings
Clouds and wrings.
Dead flesh too sweats,
Trust the witness
---- the dead never lie.

Suffocatin’ smoke
To combat pungent,
Foul breath.

Ignore the stench.
Opaque glass panes and thick sideboards
Do not matter
If looks could kill.

© Jatin Gandhi

Metastasis

It began as heartburn
but travelled
at the speed of thought
and spread.

The brain was soon
infected.
The hate then entered
my lungs
I was breathing it

Next, it ran in my blood
every vessel, tissue, nerve,
cell got involved.


And before I could die
My soul was infected.

Nov 9, 04

The fractured arm

One arm, three bones
And many pieces.
Fractured, broken, split,
splattered, oozing, dripping,
wreaking, smelling, writhing,
twisting, twisted, deformed,
together, apart, all, one, many.
How it happened, they can tell.
But why, can they?
Would reptiles know more than humans.
Snakes, wild lizards or crocs?
Or the lizard on the wall.
Remember Anna,
The early January afternoon?
When, the lizard took over.
When he spoke of Wordsworth
But I thought of Isaac Newton.
He looked helpless.
He wanted to fly but gravity pulled him down
He fought gravity and inertia weighed him down
It is inertia perhaps that breaks spines
But broken bones are no big deal
When the spine is intact.


Jan 27 ‘04

Red

They came drenched
In red paint
Wearing red
Badges and carrying
Red roses

But there was no
Blood

(C) Jatin Gandhi, 2006

Unititled

If cities were beasts,
the one I live in
would be a mongrel.
A hungry one.
Ugly and rabid,
scarred and smelly.
Water flows from the tap
like saliva from
the sun-struck mongrel’s
tongue.

It heaves and pants.
It is noise.
But for those who have lived
here a long, long time,
just voices in the city.
The hungry mongrel
devours almost anything –
food and garbage
with machine-like
Hunger.

The cur took away my voice,
As if it were
A discarded piece of bread.


© Jatin Gandhi, April 25, 2006.

PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS AN OLD CLICHE

Squatting,

(under the huge

tree with red,

yellow leaves,

half-bent, half

falling into

green, brown waters

of the still,

dirty lake

turning orange,

red, gold, silver,

black under

the purple, violet, blue,

turquoise sky

in the red, orange,

brown setting sun,

half drowned in

the silver, gold,

white smokey

clouds)

the poet in the

long, black,

patched old

felt overcoat

and broken,

brown boots

holding

a long, thin, dry

reed

was a poem

himself.

© Jatin Gandhi, 2005

Meditation

I love your silence
My lord
I'd love it more if
it weren't
choreographed.

(C) Jatin Gandhi, 2006

Epitaph

They
who wrote my
Epitaph
didn’t know
I was a
writer too.

(C) Jatin Gandhi, August 8, 2001

Story teller

Meet him,

man who hates other men,

but don’t talk to him.

And don’t look him in the eye

or he’ll hate you too.

He’s a story-teller

who writes of men and women,

children, pigeons and places.

And kittens.

He writes what men talk

watches them when they talk

and listens carefully

sometimes with his eyes closed.

He loves to talk.

But don’t talk to him

just listen

Or he wont tell you his story.

(C) Jatin Gandhi, 1999

Unedited on October 29

Maria, have you heard of a man

with four names?

I know of words with more synonyms

Than four. Five. Six. Seven.

But not names.

And not people with so many names.

I know a man who named his dog

VIBGYOR.

He said was a

Seven-in-one name

Violet.
Indigo.
Blue.
Green.
Yellow.
Orange.
Red.

Its just three colours but.

And then it's one name

Vibgyor

I have heard of violet flowers

And indigo scarves,

Of blue bicycles, green snakes,

Yellow cars,

Oranges hair and red books.

I have seen colours

And met people.

But I haven’t met

A man with four names

All names that mean

The same.




© Jatin Gandhi, 1999.

The rum drinker

The rum drinker

If
he jumped from
the ledge tonight
and died,
will you bandage
his neck first
or collect pieces of
his flesh from
between the cracks
in the road?
Will you cover his
body with leaves
and let children discover
him in play
or would you rather
drink up his rum
before they knew?

For him
to have died leaving
his rum unfinished
was good for us.
But think of him
to kill himself
-- could it mean
death meant more to
him than rum
when he died?

© Jatin Gandhi, 2004

Untitled

There were no vulture cries at
the electric crematorium
only cell phone beeps

vultures don’t come here
anymore
they migrated to bigger cities

too much multiplication
but not enough dead
our city ranks too low
on the misery index

they bury the dead or
burn them
not cosmopolitan enough

men eat all the dead pigs
or sell them
other animals die only in custody

there isn’t enough food for vultures here
they migrated to bigger cities
where bigger vultures
repeat success


© Jatin GandhiFebruary 1998

WAR

WAR

Wet desert sands
And the mirage
In the city
Four walled
Oceans
Of concrete and
Overheated flash bulbs
Under the warm sun.
Screens and curtains
And stars by the beach
Palms and the breeze
Men and Godmen
All delight as
The Opiate torchbearer
Falls in love
With fires


(C) Jatin Gandhi