Dynamo

It is the dynamic
…the dynamo
Its moves the definition of
Lustful electric innocence
That core – an alloy
Of the machinery of weakening
Beaten, forced, burnt
Moldable turned durable
Wired around a perennial turnover
Turn – on, off, on again
Many a switch handed over
Burning the probing culprits
For it was never your remote
Neither is it the one-channel tv
Observing its working needs patience, paranoia, distress –
The experiences of maneuvering Kathmandu traffic
Its love of the power show
Will raise your spirit into upper abodes
But the fire within stellarly lit
Falls a hapless victim to the radical self-instability
Explode, destruct, deflate…
Embezzling you deep into underground
What would you know?
The evil black hole swallowed your dynamo again
Courage diffused, its magnet defeated
Those rotations that lit your life
Couldn’t long handle their own
Caught within the viscosity of repetition
Darkness will never be its end
Your dear dynamo simply awaits a spark of an alighted start…

Mahadevi Makar

She ran behind me feeing foul
Like fermented Parijat
Her blinking was a red traffic light –
Warning all the way
Too cold for tropics
Those eyes never seemed to have seen at all
The cigarette butt on the guilty ground
Acrid, pungent, acidic fumes
Showers of profanity
Upon the city-girl who had enjoyed its smoke

The moonshine bar stank nearby
Was the werewolf on its trail?
When girls outside box their way into their futures
Rahu casts a sly shadow on ours
Hot, humid flatlands busy burning witches
While tin-roofs blind the pain of brothel girls
Once bitten, twice shy; fangs refuse to hide
Let fate sleep uneasy on swallowed destinies
Awake enough to know now, Parijat "weaves" despite vengeance
As she ran before me, I silently worshipped a Mahadevi.

Poet’s Note:

My personal theory is that poetry should never be prone to explanations, rather be allowed to be interpreted. But in the past I have realized many times that sometimes an explanation actually helps create a better understanding of an abstract piece, especially if the writer had personal references in mind during writing that the rest of the readers may not be aware of. Mahadevi Makar is one such allegorical piece. Having said that, I would still welcome any interpretations that you all can give. I believe that the more varied perspective a poem can have, the more its appeal. Every sentence in this poem has a meaning deeper than what may appear at the surface. Here is my attempt at explaining its intricacies:

Overall, the poem is about women empowerment. Broad as this may sound, I try to approach it through the eyes of a symbolic Nepali lady who I refer to as Mahadevi at the end of the poem. The Parijat could either be the flower that many of us know but Parijat was a prolific female writer who can be called the pioneer for introducing feminine issues in Nepali literature. Parijat was always ailed by diseases and had a life of suffering which explains the term "fermented".

The term "bhatti" translates to moonshine bar. The stinking is in turn symbolic of the putrid hearts who are all too willing to sell women across the border. The werewolf is the agent who sometimes even goes to the extent of marrying a woman in order to convince her of his innocence. But this werewolf changes faces when he sells the woman. The boxing reference comes from my having watched two movies on the subject of women boxers, namely "Girlfight" and "Million Dollar Baby". "Rahu" refers to the astronomy that still plays such a big role in our lives, especially in the latter part where marriages are concerned. Burning of witches is not just about women in Terai region accused of practicing witchcraft but also the incidents we sometimes hear of where a family can go to the extent of "burning" their daughter-in-law due to unsatisfactory dowry. I once read of an article about a village who traded their daughters for tin-roofs. The "fangs" slyly refer to the all so talked about virginity. I call this symbolic woman a Mahadevi in the end because despite years of suffering, she chooses to use her vengeance to "weave" which I look at as a creative way to channel and counter wrath.

I hope the explanations helped a bit in your understanding. Again, I don't mean to take away from you all, the pleasures of interpretations! So please feel welcome to provide new perspectives.

Impasse

Always there and not there

So prominent and noticeable

and yet mingled and mashed with the background

Looking out when there's nothing to look out to

It's all shrouded, engulfed in the misery of the fog

and whatever I have is within feet

The rest is water – inviting –

so ready to drown me.

Guilt and exaggerated emotions

the Karma keeps coming back

in daunting circles.

This may be fickle and trifling

and I don’t know if I can spend days floating

I would start to flail and eventually drown

and not once would you know of my sinking

not once would I call for help…

Don’t bother being the middleman in the see-saw

and keep knocking into her arms then mine

depending which side goes in the air

and which side can weigh your emotions down

I don't want to play that game

I don't want to go back to those murky depths

of blood-filled water, slit veins and upturned eyes

Oh those intrusions – the universe of coaxed

confessions.

Photo copyright: Mark Stacey

Charade/Halcyon

Curious peek -- no spectrum

Neither Floyd, nor Physics

Instead the space stared back

Welcoming in its chastity to concoct

Colors bleeding from recurring fervor

If it were just presumptions to belie

Taking would have been the sole intent

Of any handful that was left…



It’s no mystery now -- ablution be myth

Aroma be only a ceaseless mirage

Endless tales of drifting dots

As glimmers of interest flicker

Prior to ambers losing ignition;

Engulfed in guileful inferno

Transform into a feast of cheaps

King, drama be thy name…

मेरी अध्यारोकी अनामिका

ऊ छे
अहिले पनि त्यही छे
त्यही झ्यालमा
मलाई पर्खीरहेकी
मानौ मैले सुम्सुम्याएको कुकुर
ऊ नै हो
अनी शायद ऊ पनि
मेरो फुस्रो स्नेहमा
मेरा आँखा अगाडि
र म गए पछि पनि
पुच्छर हल्लाउदी हो!

उस्ले चियो गर्न चाहेकी होइन
मलाई थाहा छ
ऊ त केवल
एक साधारण मान्छे हेर्न चाहन्छे।

दुनियाँ नबुझेको अबुझ
आफ्नो कुवालाई संसार ठान्छ
आफ्नो भाषालाई सभ्यता मान्छ
गल्ती गर्नु सम्म गरे पछि
त्यही गल्तीलाई
कहिले आविष्कार (?)
त कहिले संस्क्रिती (!) -
उस्को परिचय भनी मख्ख पर्छ।

ऊ अबुझ होइन
त्यसैले त ऊ मलाई हेर्दी हो
कसरी मा दिन भरी जीवन वरपर घुम्छु
केवल रातमा मात्र आफ्नो जीवन भित्र घुस्छु।

मेरो मौनताले मलाई भगवान बनायो
मेरो हिडाइले मानव मोडेल
ऊ आफ्नै ढुक्ढुकी सुन्न सक्तिन
त्यसैले म उस्लाई कतै परबाट
आफ्नो ढुक्ढुकी सुनाइ दिन्छु
यध्यपी यो मेरो अपराध हो
म उस्लाई मुटुको नशा सस्तोमा बेच्दैछु।

दुनियाँका लागि ऊ शान्त भए
मेरा लागी चुल्बुल, चन्चल
जकडिएका बन्धन तोडेर
ऊ आफु बन्छे सीमित उज्यालोमा।

राती झ्यालमा भुतहरु तर्साउन आउँदा
उस्लाई मेरो कोठाको बत्तीले तानी रहन्छ
म सुते कि सुतिन (?)
फ्याट्ट एक झलक दिन्छु कि (?)
उस्कै लागि जागेको त होइन (?)
उस्लाई लुकेर हेरेको त छुइन (?)
प्रश्नले मागेका उत्तर शब्दै बिना
दिन नसक्ने भएर त म साधारण भए!

म घर एक्लै रुङेर बस्न पर्दा
मैले उस्को गहिराही
धैर्यमा देखेछु
ऊ मेरी अध्यारोकी अनामिका।

मेरो नाममा रचिएका कविताले डायरी भरिएका छन
राती म झुल्कनासाथ उस्को
लेखाइ शुरु हुन्छ
हृदयलाई काखमा राख्छे
दिमागमा जोडै नदिइ
कहाँबाट ती पन्क्ती बाध्छे
त्यो डायरी चोरी म हेर्न चाहन्छु
के मेरा धुन उस्का शब्दले गीत बन्लान?

अरु पनि होलान उस्लाई हेर्ने
उस्ले मलाई हेरेको हेर्ने
मेरा जटा, मेरा खोस्टा, मेरा बोक्रा!
मेरा छायाँ अनी उसको एकोहोरो आलिङ्गन।

I, Predator; You, Quarry

Do away with your conjectures

Those ephemeral hallucinations where you deify me

I’d rather shun being governed by apotheosis

And stick to an erring autonomous humanness!

You’ve condoned my minor offenses for too long now

Those forgivings must have clogged your morale

Shun me! Go on, shun my intimidating existence

Your unblemished horizon deserves my shadowings no more

Rebel, refute, rebut my replenishing resources

I’m guilty of tiring your dainty girlhood with those

And I regret to tell you for a fact –

“My abstruse anomalies were never analogous!”

This ruthless saboteur rummaging your confidence

Has found felicities to arm itself with

You have unknowingly become music

Played for my dance of delusion.

But may you be saved from vilified slanderings

Now recant thy vows to company

Liberate thyself from the quagmires of chauvinism

Salvage thine sanity from the quicksands of chagrin

Thou shan’t be trampled under my ‘Tandav’!

Liquiefying my love assets

I crave for the credits before “the end”

To put bubbles of dialogue over your picture

To make stills into motion as if you were but a cartoon strip!

Now not mine or yours, dear, ours

a world with exaggerated motions…

frames ringing of over-blown clichés…

emotions—running amok, animated to fit.

I hinge your imaginings on chaste words

as you break the door to my bookish figments

and seep through my non-porous air of calm.

Inside that door you find my feelings on a platter -

looking exposed, weighing naïve, running risks of infection

all for the convenience of your scrutiny.

And now I crave for the waters before “the end”…

to thwart your ill-fated voyage

I check your buoyancy for flaws—holes made because of standards

Meandering is futile just as is my ignorance

of the wake left by your prodding

We’ll drown despite ourselves—unleashing the wills of destiny,

unburdened by glaciers of the past…

Looted by vulture eyes…

He suffers many a tailspin

Lying in the grayness

Between dense black misgivings

and stark white conviction

There’s no suppressing

the power he feels

with that amulet of authority

tied to his being

It fills the holes

left by his bullets

Hears his subconscious –

how it crawls…in silence

into his drunken stupor

becoming what defines his stasis…

the charades of suffering!

She walked with poise

brimming full of innocence

until his vulture eyes

became ravenous

to imprison her gait

to detain both ‘She’ and ‘her spotlessness’

from aimlessly strolling

the alleyways of youth.

His hypocrisy –

oppressive and two sided –

perhaps never applies the brakes

to confine his wanderings

For every innocent

passing his vehicle of age

is cursed into decries of fakes

This is the exhilaration

that he so enjoys

in rides of self-indulgence,

away from the boulders of guilt!

Nicotine

If you’re feeling guilty

just don’t, please don’t

because I’m guilty too

for exaggerating any expressions

over why you are so full of smoke.

I am in need of cleansing

a stagnant dust inside the powering walls

of hurt and betrayal

A world away from these throbbing conditions

or the trails of many ashes concealed within them.

It’s a mindless submission

into scars of rationale and feelings

fighting to pile up their selfish empires.

It’s in your eyes

in all that doesn’t escape your lips

it’s in the oxygen that is forever lost

for a killing you so badly want

A future contract unfurling

in every puff you take

eating the present in installments …

“Inshallah”: If God Wishes!

You may see and not see

how I’m looking in your direction

out of your sight but focused on you –

how you turn, the way you speak

what catches your eyes

something that turns you on or off.

You may tug at my seat

or not look at me at all.

Bathed in worldly illusions

I may be just be one of the many

or among many ‘the one’

To talk would be to connect…

Do you despise being tangled

in my meticulously woven webs?

In your Koran, my Gita

who refuses to let us talk? No one.

It isn’t religion that forbids

It is the walls within us…

The cowardly fright of growing closer

makes the walls harder to break.

“Why am I clumsy?”

My rags of misdemeanor

so contrast your mannerly opulence!

I drop things; I drop low

to come up in your eyes

The eyes that you cover

with goggles of “Inshallah” –

if God wishes we will talk,

we’ll walk the alley from acquaintance to friendship

we’ll be bound by cords of knowledge and feelings.

It isn’t love for I don’t know you enough

It isn’t an infatuation because that’s a small word

incapable of containing, tending to overflow

when filled with the feelings I have for you

For the way you look

sometimes in my direction

Just a glance that I could have misdirected

but not misjudged.

For there is something which makes me suspect

that you want to know me

or someone else!

He didn’t tell me to write about him

This world is too much to take

The other one’s a blur

He hangs on dearly to our lives

One side then the other

Dwelling among the barely clad

His ego sweats to keep up

Elusive, phantom, much hyped…

His studio alone constitutes the world

Absurdity at its best – theories conspire

Do we even pause to hear him laugh?

After all; it’s his strings, his mud!

Effortlessly, he finds his way to us

Beauty enslaved, perfection redefined

Crying…he warns in light and sound

Too many pictures…all mute to our queries

Is our eternity only a train-ride away?

Is inflicting death a pain to his faith?

Lust, greed, riots…so much of smoke

Must sting his eyes

But he looks on – upon his own

Through and thorough

Slaughter, slaughter…all that blood

Spills in his territory

In our perishing, what gets he?

Bored and lonely, he cooks emotions

Shhh…secret recipes

A human heart and a thousand guinea pigs

A blue-black canvas spreads where crystals float

He sells it to lovers as a starry sky

I call him my friend

He slashes my heart

Elaborates my emptiness

Moves his strings and makes me cry

Then he gifts his words

Inside the ruins of broken dreams

And hides behind his own shadows

Last night, his sparks ignited my dreams

He was too modest to tell me

But I somehow I knew – God deserved a description!

Vacant or the absence of being?

I am that chasm

where light becomes darkness

creating illusions of the space I am not

I trap hopes

bury them and create death

I’m the decay – spoilt, rotten

brooding, waiting, sly, deceiving, punishing

Undeserving of the bridge that would define me

Would wake me from my delirium

I slither into depths unknown

as far as I can from the heights

which measure me.

I’m only the absence of structure and symmetry

Devoid of substance – I’m opaque

A reflection to the endless shadows of myself

Don’t slash me, please

with the over-expectations of geography

or categorize me into columns of acceptance

Unmatchable – I am that extra without a pair

Your try at complementing or supplementing

would never fill me

That would just empty you

Don’t color me and call me sky

I defy those shades that make life a worthy portrait

The lesser you give me, the more you’re left without

Don’t give me voices in an effort to coax my own

You’d only tire of hearing your own echoes

Take away from yourself the feelings

you evoke on my behalf

It is just pretense – your invented cover-up

for my inability to reciprocate

Your bickering over me is your own battle

with the multitudes of the person you are

I could never hope to be

even a fraction of those luscious folds

Leave me hidden until I learn to bury myself

in a hapless tide of calamity;

something, anything

that would bereave me of my selfish tales

Leave me to be a presence that never was!

Lamentation: Lacerations

There were wounds.

Big wounds. Bad wounds.

I was slashed day after day

with a heartless dagger

carried and maneuvered carelessly

by two of my creators.

They first put me together

and with a right attached to that

they cut me into pieces.

Parents, anyways?

The wounds turned into scars

painless in blissful ignorance;

attention and care would only hurt more.

I learnt early on that it’s best not to care

and fuss over little things like your emotions!

So my heart was buried.

It died a slow death

that was eventual and obvious to them –

those who had first longed to hear it

now waited for it to stop

and as they thought it did

they carelessly (again) snatched it from me

and made it one of their own.

All our three hearts buried side by side

when it could have been a different story altogether.

Hearing fights I thought was every child’s pastime

for I heard them all the time.

in the presence as well as in the absence

of a proper excuse.

I heard them – their voices escaping the ears

of the plaster, mortar and paint

heard, because seeing even through a peephole

something would inadvertently poke at my eyes

warning me to never disclose the secrets I saw

for word was to be kept

that ours was a happy home!

Champion! Me? I was heroic at school.

There never was a question of underperformance

what with a shadow I now call pressure

permanently attached to my identity.

Excellent! Me?

Performing for two, my heart throbbed

every time the results came

maybe due to the thrill of seeing happy faces

emerge from the scowls, at least for a day.

Or maybe because I would exist, I would be noticed –

applauded…unlikely

criticized…surely

made an object of discussion

my efforts under scrutiny, my performance being cross-examined

They told me I was always ‘okay’ but never ‘good enough’

never appreciated…why?

My pride would grow?!

My childish ego would swell?!

Encouragement, fatherly pats, motherly hugs…

these were others’ candies.

For me there wasn’t even the forbidden sweetness

of mild acknowledgement

but I labored on without these

for there never was an option, anyways.

Another examination, another result day was inching closer.

The astrologer, the miracle man, made predictions

about a girl he had never seen and would never see:

‘She’ll grow worse every year’

Worse?! Define, please.

They chose to believe in the stars above

but not in the person before their eyes.

Any which way I grew, branched out, bloomed, bore fruit

was evil…so not right.

‘Our child has been brainwashed.

Let those who did it be cursed.’

“Let me be cursed.”

It was my own mind that got courage enough

to break the mould and spill out.

There isn’t a third party involved here.

What’s wrong anyways?

Your speculations are coming true –

something you always believed would happen

is happening. Finally.

Isn’t that nice, mother?

Your child isn’t your robot anymore.

The circuits have long burnt

and the pain is coming back.

The numbness, just an imposed delirium of long ago,

has been replaced by a tingling soreness

the stinging clarity of hurt.

This thawing of a frozen life

this emergence of a living portrait

this diminution of an enforced dementia

assures me of my humanness.

I was walking one day

waking with gazes, that threatened,

all around me.

So afraid they would spot little fragments of pain

embedded on my skin or hidden behind my eyes

that I lost direction,

found myself trapped in an impasse

Dark, wet, murky corners before me

and my past behind creeping upon me

too bloody for me to crawl back into…

And then, there, right there,

waiting for an escape that wasn’t to be found

my heart skipped a beat.

Heart? Heart! Heart?

Muffled beats unheard before became throbs –

threatening, reeking of revolution, shy of a façade.

What had been taken away then?

Something snatched in haste

they must have snatched the lungs or the liver away from me

Some bloody anatomical tomb

that never had a life

that never pumped life into me.

That Doctor Just a House Away

The tears that glisten

as they stream down my cheeks

won’t satisfy your qualms

about a pair of eyes watching you

everyday just seeing you move

in and about the perfect life.

I seek solace in things

that’ll never happen between us

because in imagination I’ll not be angry

and you can’t shout

just because I made your house the wrong way

gave birth to retarded children

hold a job that I bring home everyday

All you can do in imagination

is to be you.

I can’t hear you because you’re too far away

but near enough to seek solace.

When you just show up from nowhere at all,

I tell myself it is for me.

After a while pretense hurts

and I realize that I don’t exist for you (!)

because all I’m doing here

is watching a normal person

Something which I can never be

Someone whom I’ll always love

but who will (quickly) detect I’m abnormal

more or less than normal

and throw me out of his life.

Your ignorance—I don’t blame you for that.

You’re smart.

No really, I want you

to hear this.

You’re smart and funny and happy and successful

In short, you’re everything that I’m not

and can never be.

That’s why I watch you

Just to feel with you

what your life, it feels like!

I don’t spend all my time here

I come precisely when you come out.

Believe me, it’s not planned.

It just happens.

Don’t blame innocent fate or blind coincidence

for making me come to see you

and letting me invade your privacy.

A horn takes me to the window.

You coming by? Notify me beforehand, will you?

So that I don’t come running to the window

Shift the curtains—enough to hide me, enough to reveal you.

Except, it’s never you.

It’s always someone else.

With time I made this cover

It’s what you see of me

What lies underneath is not your concern.

Neither is it going to be anyone else’s.

The cover-up needed expertise

When you’re hurt everyday, you learn to shield yourself.

Meanwhile, you forget your sadness;

forget sadness…hmmm

wake up to tragedies…hmmm

never sleep…hmmm

You lose all hurt and you lose all life too.

Your mama and papa away, Big Boy?

I can see you’ve got nothing to do.

I fidget when the to-do list runs out.

So I stock myself for years to last

lest I remember what I was born for.

That’ll hurt me all over again.

Don’t remind me!

I can’t build cover-ups day to day

With ashes of my life.

So I pretend I’ve got many things to do

except for what I was born to do.

Make me not think.

Big Boys don’t make anonymous cry!

If tears, my tears, didn’t spill

You wouldn’t know that you can play this game too.

Just pretend and model and show off

Every bit of human in you.

Now, that’s enough. I don’t want you to model.

It’s not about your clothes or shoes.

It’s about your heart.

I can’t hear it beat. Show me how it beats.

I should understand why it beats

without having to hear my own.

Doctor, are you?

May be I can be your patient

and license you to play God.

I should talk to you

Humor you into believing I’m the best thing (?)

that could have happened to you.

Of course, that doesn’t include your hard-earned degree

that lets you make or break.

Play on…God!

Then you come closer

So close I nearly glance at your soul.

And you smile because it’s your turn now

to watch

how breathless I can be

how mystified from closer

so different than the shadows you saw on my window.

I’m not a shadow but my shadow hates to be me too.

My breath quickens, it may stop

by the knowledge of being watched.

Loving is not about money.

It’s about standing by to see her dreams fulfilled.

Not only yours.

Having enough belief in her.

Letting go of her.

It isn’t about hurting her

and healing it with ice-cream.

One moment you love her because she’s a success

and the next she gets beaten because she failed.

Where’s love then?

Inside that ice-cream?

Hiding and cowering

so that it doesn’t get beaten too.

Love her as a part of you

Not like someone who’s going away without your permission.

The city lights make me feel (I’m) naïve

because I can’t carry all that light in me.

The lights in your house give me life.

Inspire to prove to you

I’m not awake for nothing

I could have been lost in dreams by now

But I’m awake. Rooted in being awake.

Looted of beautiful dreams by the minute.

I am like the dog that you cuddle -

wagging my tail

at your face and behind you.

I cling on to you…

Impressions, glimpses, retakes

whatever you give, I take.

If it’s anyone, it’s you doctor

who can cure me of this obsession for you.