Lord Shiva & Other Poems
Amit Parmessur

 

A Stupid Night

Sitting with loneliness as firm friend

on the void verandah, with vagrant moths flying

the uneventful blackness of the night,

I hear the phone ring monotonously.

It is my faraway rustic village friend

whose father has been expecting a better job.

He tells me around 500 persons

are going to be under his father.

I think, what power!

In the end, what is he going to do?

Cutting grass in a cemetery.

Anyway, I think it’s better than being

like me, jobless and heartless.

Switching off all the stars when day comes.

Sieving the sand of our public beaches.

Playing pop songs in funerals.

Monitoring the traffic in desolate regions.

Cleaning the tyres of aeroplanes with shoe polish.

I think these could be cool possibilities

in a world slumping to dire downfall.

Back in my old sofa on the verandah,

I find that the already tasteless glass of milk

has been clearly mistaken for a pool

with a moth swimming desperately in it.

I feel like a fretful child,

lacking the courage to prepare another glass.

I whistle stupidly and another night goes by.

Trochetia Girl

Posing beside the trochetia with your

magnanimous beauty you are the emblem

of an island whose people‘s hearts have no fences

Your elegant hair spread over your young

shoulders is like the sugar cane fields

undulating in a warm April

The tropical sun on your morning face

is the sparkling song of turquoise oceans

hugging, kissing the afternoon sand and wild rocks

The unspoken words on your lips resemble

tall filaos whistling like playful

boys just before sunset

I wish I could call you a vibrant sega,

the Creole music of our slaves,

danced in patterned skirts

and blouses and bush shirts and liberty

You are one of those beautiful free girls

in Mark Twain’s paradise, with eyebrows

brighter than divine rainbows

dispersing onto the bridge of a cosmopolitan nose

People say it’s not easy being free,

but you’ve managed to imitate the wind

to turn into honey that’s far too sweet for any pot

You must build a few jails in your heart to

imprison your grace, innocence and

patriotic beauty

Glory to thee, trochetia girl

Glory to thee

Three and a Half Victorious Lions

Three and a half lions are returning from war.

Dry dust circling around their firm feet.

They have dragged down the small sky,

Slamming it on their sworn enemies’ bodies.

Angry inhaling and exhaling

Gigantic pride

Muscles rippling

A couple of temporary bruises

The bells of triumph bellowing in their claws,

The livid lions return, intimidating everything.

Lions do not fight every day.

The clouds are becoming orange,

severely tainted by their enemies’ blood.

Go out and see! The sky is gone.

The delirious lions forgot to put it back.

Is it due to complacency, joy or neglect?

‘Only the one who fries the victorious claws of

lions and eats them can flatten the bent

sky and restore it,’ the lions are heard saying.

The silly jungle is dancing, mad in admiration

of their peerless protectors and leaders.

No one knows they’ve fought against ants.

None has the real intelligence to query

about the missing half lion. Deep inside,

the lions know David has beaten Goliath.

Lord Shiva

O Holy hermit on white Mount Kailash,

the invincible mountain of sacred and eternal bliss.

O Lord of 108 names, ardent lover of Benares,

indestructible city of eternal salvation!

It’s one of your fascinating secrets

the way you concocted Sanskrit

from the sacred sounds of a Damaru.

It’s one of your fascinating secrets

the way Holy Ganges flows from your head.

It’s one of your most fascinating secrets

how you fearlessly drank the poison

that threatened to devastate the whole world.

Blessed with sons Ganesha and Kartikeya

and wife Parvati the Supreme Deity of Shaktism,

you have no form and yet all forms are yours.

The sun in your right eye, the moon in your left,

and your third eye annihilating all evil

O Great God of the yogis

you are the most fascinating legend.

The Turkish Moon

The pregnant Turkish moon dies away

from the hectic Istanbul sky, leaving

in the midst of a void the souvenir

of a brilliance bitterly beautiful, again.

In the bittersweet sky now

there is an empty page, one upon which

I am trying again to decipher the promise

made by an unfaithful lover.

I have travelled from country to country,

from simple to starry sky,

but the Turkish moon is nothing different.

To every patient place I’ve gone,

the moon is suffering enormously

from those intent looks of hungry artists,

including myself.

She is suffering from the scars that

exaggerate what she wants to unveil,

her sore flesh looking like a very

pale reflection of a confident Goddess.

Is the stained Turkish moon

another unsuccessful project of our Creator?

Is she another incomplete canvas deserted

by a painter tortured by visions too

beautifully painful, just like those

I see when I think of lost friendship?

Summer Desires

my tongue howls only for sorbet

I dream of wine and frozen strawberries,

lovingly, and without your go-ahead

I want another moth dance

in cigarette smoke,

reawakening my heart’s fire

near the dead fireplace

our pregnant dog ogles at me

every hour as if she knows

something,

as if she feels she can coax me

into sharing her nothingness

there’s a handful of

snow that’s refusing

to melt in my mind these days

time seems too short

way too short to mean anything

it is too long to mean nothing

everything ends in lost days

each time I open or close

the door it hits me

in my cold womb I’m carrying

the child of nothingness

in this cruel summer even

honey can’t sweeten my

thickened tongue

Trapped in a Peanut Coffin

In an old graveyard

 in a coffin, peanut-flavored death,

the heart too frail to find solutions,

I savor stale slices of hope,

 my vision blinking in guilt. I

watch spiritual scenes in my mind’s

eyes—

foretaste of afterlife.

Perturbed with a wife

 praying on young knees, I try

to swear in my mother tongue

but make sounds of a faraway father.

Punching the ceiling

that rebels and coaxes numbness

into my fists

 I aggravate the situation by

releasing a handful of mementoes,

with them rolling everywhere

and I chasing with the slick wings

of a raven along an infinite Elysian avenue.

Striptease

Her emerald dress exuding sensuality,

wrapping tightly a timid body

and a girlish fragrance

unprepared for exposure

yet, very slowly,

as if against her own will

she opens herself and

virgin curves began to appear—

so cherry and so tender;

her protective shield sliding

down, her maiden body

seems less embarrassed now.

Rapt, I watched her rapturous

petals open like holy water

sprouting out

from a fountain for the first time;

seductive expressions,

a cute lollipop

relishing pleasure while

giving pleasure.

Her stem bending here and

there in the serenading wind,

I know she’s the rose blooming

into the smile of my Valentine—

so pure and beautiful.

our neighbors

neighbors neighbors neighbors

bloody imitators

a chapter of paradise imbued with books of hells

brains like a fine assortment of scintillating flowers,

with skulls resembling bottomless vases

rich elephants on rickety wooden legs

ready to judge they have the dirtiest vocabulary

with the most disproportionate antics

neighbors neighbors

transient eternity; eternal ephemerality

a truth of two words: falsehood and duplicity

all the importance that insignificance can carry

the mere voicelessness of a boring voice

beautiful birds in fine feathers,

turning into greedy wolves behind your back

neighbors

the closest strangers, indifferent to your anguish

a double-edged sword

honey-pots surfeited with the blackest gall

as if their teeth perspire

in the heat of abstinence,

they have to gossip about you, shamelessly

neighbors neighbors neighbors!

Belle on Soft Belly

Your smooth body lying on the smooth lawn

Stunning brown eyes looking for a safe horizon

You look like a belle flying in the green sky.

There’re fierce flames burning in your calm heart.

Your lovely navel kissing the grass in melody,

Your village hair caressing your sunny sweet back,

Your soft hips badly need their purity again.

O Bella, I know you love my poetic words.

Let your ears hear me; this world will see your beauty.

Don’t ever fall on your belly in times of despair—

Remember, your fine feet want to dance in heaven

And winds of happiness want to kiss your lips,

strongly.

I’m sure, the wings of my poetry will help you

take off;

So fly, run, swim, laugh and just be your beautiful

self.

Let’s weave some real magic in this mysterious life.

Nostalgic Afternoons

My afternoons are imprisoned in the freedom

of my paintings, twisting the long line of suffering

into the curves of a half-wrecked imagination

Sitting within the low dried bamboo fence

covered by lianas brimming with mauve trumpets,

I would capture the deepest secrets of her jovial face

under the monster-looking clouds, like a

proud pilot in the wake of dire adversity

The huge acacia tree, the strong scent, the rock bench;

they all give me a purpose, hope, an excuse

Watching the shiny kids returning from school I

would see myself there, oozing innocence,

with her black and white photo

gesturing in each and every page of my boring books

My old painting brushes in one hand I always try

to chirp like a merrily sailing bird or whistle,

and whistle like the balmy breeze, ending up grieving

over myself being a too fragile hourglass of love,

with her as a gigantic grain of sand that slipped

out when I was capsized in a sea of freedom

The Dough of Politics

Mould me.

 Beat me.

Make me your vulnerable dough

and mould me

Undermine me to the content of your mind

Rock me on the edge of

your sinister fingers

Whip me with your callous palm lines

and when your tyrannous will

is done wean me off to the

oven of your dirty breasts.

 Beat me.

Mould me.

Make me your dough

and beat me into a drink too

Let me glide along the railways

of your fearsome stomach

Cherish me in the infinite ravine of

your bosom

Let your belches and

nocturnal drinks cut me

I am the people of tomorrow

Mould me.

 Beat me.

Mould me

for

what is the mould without the moulding

What’s the moulding without the mould

Beat me

for

what is the beat without the beating

what’s the beating without the beat

Mould me and beat me and slash me

 but let me be myself, a wee bit

Golden Apple

This apple is not an Edenic forbidden fruit.

This apple is not the poisoned apple

offered to Snow White. It is not

any Desperate Housewives Apple Mug.

This apple is one from

my own garden of the Hesperides, a sleeping garden

that supports nothing more than an apple—

a garden never blessed by any elegant Eve.

This crimson apple

is golden in what it signifies.

This golden apple consoles and

reanimates its prelapserian Adam

deluded and maimed by the trenchant nails of love,

for whom life is poorer than popular Sisyphus.

This apple is the solid symbol of a weak man

who never concocts or tastes any evil soup,

bread or wine.

Modesty will force this ascetic man to joke

that he stole the golden apple

from a jewel shop or it is

a fake crown brought

to his garden by a waterless whirlpool.

The modest man might cut—

or even slash, and share the apple

with the whole world if only an apple

is what remains as eatable one sunless day.

Chinese Cicada Slough

I’m now a civilized hairy monkey,

part of the folk handicraft of old Beijing.

A Chinese girl’s calm has turned my heart of gall

into a delicate ten-by-five millimeter body.

She has dwarfed and sweetened the

black monster found in my blue blood.

Steel has melted into Magnolia bud,

shed cicada skin and akebi, in dire winter.

I can creep into her room every

night with an air of charming naivety,

unseen too, being so minute now.

But I hear people gossip that she

is slipping into madness, seeing

a gentle midnight ghost on her breast.

It’s a pity she can’t recognize me;

I should have stayed monstrous.

I'm So Sorry

I am the glowing moments I spent with you,

I am the fresh air you breathed before.

My fingers are those with which you caressed

the khaki-colored tea cup every morning.

In my absence, I know you would shoot the

birds in the nearby forest to think of me. You

would spread my virile fragrance all

over the staircase. Neighbors tell me they would

hear you shout commands at night.

I have seen death and people

turned to clay while fighting for greedy men.

I’ve gone to war, and come back,

only to see you dead! Self injury.

My tears are stuck in my nose; I’m so

sorry I made you mad.

Let me assure you my love, I looked my best

and gave you a kiss good-bye before

the heavy lid of your coffin was lowered.

I’ll live like a cracked vase with

the beautiful flowers of your memories.

You’ll now live

in the bullet buried near my lion heart.