When you did so rudely clap

You wore the crown of a khanki in khaki

And your fire was not one to be tapped.

Your coffin was never our mourning glory

Nor a marker of ravaging savagery

Crows refused the breadcrumbs you laid out

Your toes were twisted…without a doubt

And your silhouette flung across a spout

Your ears deaf to your own mumbles

All men wanted, was you in crumbles.

No night was as fateful as you had wished

No day as glorious as praise

No dawn will ever be of a musky squirt

No dusk sharp enough for your voice to be raised.

That night you had scorned with a squeamish smirk

Our comrades out on a stroll

The frolics of our merry martyrs

Admittedly, never quite raised the polls.

That night we had counted from 1 to 10

That night we had sworn off perjury

That night we lost many good men

That night of assumed debauchery.

And let me stand first”

In the ration line upon the Rhine

Where you wondered how much would be thine

After the negotiation between your God and mine.

You seek blessings of a poltergeist

Zeit of zeit is on the zeit of geist.

Scary Larry, stand on the ferry

How does your pardon grow?

The minute dies, the angel flies

Pushing the harbinger through your marrow.

A moment gone

Without a song

It was a sin to your God.

Another passed

With none harassed

That was a sin to mine.

Scary Larry, stand on the ferry

How does your pardon grow?

The minute dies, the angels surmise

Pushing the harbinger through your marrow.

The pulses evoke

At noon’s stroke

The sun, a puppet to your God.

Some souls arise

Not a big surprise

The dead, a puppet to mine.

Scary Larry, step up to the ferry

How does your pardon grow?

The minute pries on the devil in guise

Your spirit is his to borrow.

Though he did win a one-time ticket

A ticket to the world of pickles and cricket

A cricket on top of a tomb.

He knew he would forever be stuck in her womb

Though he did win a one-time pass

A pass to a concert of love-making songs

A pass to a recital of Celts and Bongs

A pass to an exhibition of casts of gold

A pass to partake in games of bought and sold

A pass out of any eternal mould

Forever too young and never to old.

Exchange glares and lock elbows in nudges

In an attempt to appease pretentious grudges.

So much authority over Freuds and Russells

Over herbal tea and Belgian mussels

Why so much angst against contemporary diction?

Why feel betrayed by uncultured fiction?

Too many brain-cells donated to poetry dissection

We call bitching “critique” and hostility, “introspection”

With feet up on the table, we are kings of the globe

We have so much to shatter, and so little to probe.

My friends and I are high and mighty

We slander our own but worship your deity

Our uniqueness is of a common variety

We despise our stagnancy, while calling you flighty.

If once more you try to list my choice,

Masquerade my voice,

Curtail my noise;

If once more the same glory is sold,

Layers are forced to unfold,

On a scaffold of flimsy hold;

If once more the people are frail,

Against the Holy Grail,

Crawling over a pebble-free trail;

If once more my pupils are sore,

Pressed under the dome of bore,

Picturing your days of yore;

If once more blisters go in vain,

Thoughts are made to drain,

Ugh! I dunno what I’m sayin’!

I really don’t know what I’d do

Maybe lend my dog my shoe

Send him to visit the zoo

Try to teach him how to moo.

“Puppy-pup, puppy-pup

What did you there?”

“I frightened the kitty-cat,

And bid it welfare.”

a fraction, a stain,

a penny, one too many,

a nything, quite uncanny

Sir, kindly ding-dong the bell…there are no more stories to tell,

Save the pussy from the well and resume the walk to foreboding hell.

That parasitical squid and its icy tête-à-tête

A bushel and a quib,

Oh, what an alpha bet!

Streaks of clamour, off a seething height

Listening, alright…

Blindfold conscious tight,

O yes, dress conscience right!

Hellstinky rises from under frost too placid

Two feet off the abyss, yet never more tacit

Funeral of the father, a carnival so sullen

Festival of fertility, flowers devour mother pollen.

“Amaze of Amaze! Amaze of Amaze! Amaze of Amaze!”

In the plethora of water, no need to stay ablaze!

Gut destiny, or the closet it hones

Your cigarette kisses its flesh that clings to your bones

Call the fairy draped in fineries of skull and silk

Enough already! Drop the pearl and that quart of milk…

          Boundaries Have Promises of Opportunities!

(seeded by Naeem Mohaiemen vis-à-vis “My Mobile Weighs A Ton”)

Hold ‘em coal fields, Holden Caulfied!

Bill ye holiday of nibbling strange fruits

Wash ye limbs, you got blood on the trees

Slap ye fancy, you got blood from the roots!

“Fanaa!” you shriek, you pigly piece of scorn!

Are you that wholesome, or are you yet to be born?

Boro Didi fooled you with a one world dream

All paths well-trodden, yet un-travelled worlds gleam!

Would you rather be seen, or would you rather be heard?

Salvage of enormity; HAHA! Quite absurd!

The prophet-like paper-monster, does scrunch many a gut

One day in an eon, and across one you, many do strut!

Self-made you have been, by the orders of destiny

Mother-like comrades, fuzz vampires of scrutiny

Vibrations have diffused a rhythm with a seed

Rock n’ roll punk, you are the beat generation indeed!

One silly tattoo and a feel-good vibe,

Slaps a murky pleasure onto a guilty tribe

You slide across the sidewalk, and try to keep apace

But end up following, what you think away you chase. 

I wish I was still daddy’s little girl

…fragile Cinderella agile in Freudian slippers

I wish I wasn’t drumming the waters with my feet

…until my toes wrinkled like almonds soaked in water overnight

I wish he wouldn’t stare so hungrily at the cherry of my eye;

He who wishes that the vanquished dreams that hardened to form a seed would morph into a plumage of forbidden fruit

I wish the world was less adjacent

and more parallel…

so that I wouldn’t get lost

in the concentric spiral where in union we are “me”

and in seperation me are “we.”

(23^rd January 2004…on my flight from Dhaka to JFK)

I wonder what’s so adorable about those “daddy’s little girls”

…those fragile Cinderellas agile in Freudian slippers

      or maybe being a raisin on the lap of sugar daddies

                           would make premonitions sweeter

At least that way I wouldn’t be drumming the waters with my feet

    until my toes wrinkled like almonds soaked in water overnight;

And he wouldn’t stare so hungrily at the cherry of my eye;

He who wishes that the vanquished dreams that hardened to form a seed

   would metamorphose into a plumage of forbidden fruit

Then maybe the world would be less adjacent and more parallel…

so that I wouldn’t get lost in the concentric spiral where in union

we are “me” and in seperation me is “we”

(8^th February 2004…dorm room)

I wonder what’s so adorable about those “daddy’s little girls”

…those fragile Cinderellas agile in Freudian slippers

…those raisins on the laps of sugar daddies

…those that sugar-coated premonitions

All I can do is bat an eye-lid and shed it…

                        pout my orange-piece lips and blow

                        let it all flow

Or sometimes I would drum the waters with my feet

…until my toes wrinkled like almonds soaked in water overnight…

…stares so hungrily at the cherry of my eye…

(He who) wishes that the vanquished dreams

(She whose) would harden to form a seed

(It that) and metamorphose into a forbidden fruit.

…A less adjacent and more parallel world…

….found from the lost concentric in spiral…

                       where in union

                           we are me

                              but in

                           separation

                            me is we.

And I stop wondering….

Wondering…

…where to stop…

Perhaps at the start.

Oh yes he is a cowboy that Bablu!

He’ll sing the blues

If you can tame the tide

He’ll drop his shoes

If you can free his stride

He sees no shame

In letting a pawn guide a game

For a change…

The lies untold

To truths have been sold

Isn’t it a little strange?

For if he does cry,

His lips may pry

On a thought too wry

Of a bee and a butterfly

They tell him to “be bold”

At a brink or a threshold

So prayers may unfold

And through dreams can be told.

So he swings away,

- there are puzzles to break

He flies astray

- there are skies to rake

And there really isn’t much at stake.

But no matter how many roads he takes

At the end of the day, baby

He is your venom, and you’re his snake.

Our story’s not yet at an end.”

The sun has risen, rise with it

Or to the moon’s loan you will bend.

Our consciences want strawberry fields against a tangerine sky,

But conscious demands dogma

The legs crawl out and sneak into a sty,

‘Coz the souls call out to a stigma.

He asks to know me through the cracks of my lining

As if souls have ignited; mighty and shining.

Alive of wind, caresses, and flavour

He springs out of the blue with pulses to savour.

 I may be a “Hard Woman” – hard to please, hard to leave

But he sniffs the riveting snuff I so magnetically heave.

“Lizard queen! So colourfully pelted!”

But somehow still easily melted.

I am water; A messy decorum

Yet strewn across bosoms, a goblet of Bloody Maryum.

He let go of my hand with promises of a reunion,

And climbed down the ladder against my window pane

Then revealed the coins of his eyes behind his hair like caramelized onion,

And they sang me an omen, that for now, I’m just a rock star’s Penny Lane.