The wurble puss of Jam Tree Gully

considering the usual state of my mind, the strange thing is that its taken me this long to get around to nonsense verse

The wurble puss of Jam Tree Gully

The wurble puss of Jam Tree Gully
Is certainly a handsome beast
In her coat of bright blue feathers
That's stunning to say the least

Its fuzzy wool warm in winter
Sparkling bright in the rain
The careless love larks of summer
Dance round it again and again

You'll find her on Tuesday evenings
Hunched behind the dairy stand
Quietly munching a dahi-kachori
Stylishly held in the left hand

If you're brave, my dear, go close
And have a look at her eyes
But step slowly, hold your breath
The wurble puss doesn't like spies

One's a small brown marble
Warm and friendly as can be
The other's a big black scary ball
That stares and stares unwinkingly

But really she's all right, as long
As her eyes don't turn green
Then its far too late to run
Or slowly slip away unseen

Then do exactly as I say
Touch right thumb to your lip
And turn around twice
But be careful you do not slip

Blink twice at the wurble puss
Quick and nasty like a cat
Skip once forward and twice back
You can't do better than that

If you're lucky or you see some
Pink cotton clouds in the sky
She'll run dropping the kachori, never
The dahi tho - she's far too sly

Once I even found a blue feather
Dropped off her coat you see.
Come visit me, and I might just
Use it to flavour your tea.

The Chocolate Theory of Race Relations - again

I DID like the story version of this I wrote and posted earlier.
But I thought I'd experiment a little.
This is the same story and embedded poem, but with the "plot" expanded and a "character" added.

Let me know how the two versions compare.

The Chocolate Theory of Race Relations

I.

Around afternoon after lunch-time
Rashmi Sinha sits and thinks
Of what she supposes is sublime
And her artist-ego wakes and blinks

And that is me - Rashmi the writer
Rashmi the artist, not the woman
Who's Mumbai-bred-tough-as-a-fighter
I mark paper with spoiled bitumen

Being only half-awake after lunch.
Half-baked inspiration is foisted on me.
Caught helpless in a crunch.
I decide to behave indulgently

Rashmi wants to save the world,
Which is surely a noble ambition.
Visions of Flags of Peace unfurled,
Crowd around in the most naive tradition.

But what annoys me is the verse
I must pen on the silly subject.
I give in, but I am terse -
Four lines to satisfy her object.

In the bright afternoon sun
Of today, skin colours light
And dark melt away into the
One bright colour of tommorow

The verse done, she slips from me.
I relax and wait for her to voice
Her satisfaction, but she dejectedly
Shakes her head, does not rejoice.

She's crushed to realise that her
Words - my words are so trite
And I suddenly feel with a shiver
My death coming with her next insight

Her self-confidence cannot shatter,
Or it will take me with it.
I console her on the matter,
Promise a better poem on revisit.


II.

It is a humid suburban night
In the dark, she lies in bed
Her tongue twirling a chocolate delight
A strange idea pops into her head

Poor Alok who ever so politely
Had just fallen asleep after sex
Is shaken awake, and not quietly
Prodded by middle finger and index

"I've got it by Georgette!"
She says to his sleepy back
"People are like chocolate -
There's no white, brown or black."

"Of course not," he says
"Blood types make more sense"
She interrupts him in a daze
"Listen! Don't talk nonsense."

"All skins are a chocolate shade
Thats what my poem is about
Now I see how it should be made"
Her mind now is free of doubt

Ever so easily, she slips into me
Grabs pen, paper and artistic pose
The poem I slowly begin to see
And then silently compose

On a sweltering summer day
As body after body passes me by
Words for skin - black, white, brown
Melt away into meaninglessness.

Rich shades of chocolate skin
Assail me. Arms, shoulders, backs
Dare me to name their colour and shade,
Invite me to discover their texture.

Skin is beguiling, but does its shade
Really matter? If I put my mouth on
This man's neck and run tongue over skin,
What colour is that intoxication?

Or if I join my mouth to
That man's, what shade, what hue
Can I put to the careless
Abandon that explodes within me?

To my sun-infected eyes, half-open
Shirts and collars assume the shape
Of chocolate wrappers, waiting to be
Opened and swallowed in laughter.

After that, lying sated in the shade,
I could put a name to each single
Taste of skin, but to group them this
Way or that would be pointless.

While I stop and pause for breath
Alok, reading the pages opines
"Men through the length and breadth,
Not a woman in all those lines."

I pause and chew my lower lip
Searching for the next line
Ignoring the movements near my hip
Two more stanzas are at last mine

A woman whose skin flows under
Your arms like liquid chocolate,
Melted by love. Do not judge her
By the paleness or darkness of her skin.

Embrace her sweetness and her bitterness.
Bitterness is also richness. Beware
The unmelting hardness that comes
From long cold years of neglect.

I swallow a piece of caramel
For Rashmi's hunger and mine
The pen four more lines does travel
Inspired by chocolate softness so fine

All children are caramel. Your sweet
Years with them melt away quickly,
Leaving photos, empty rooms to recall
The taste and colour of their voices.

With that Rashmi slips out of me
And considers what was written
She stares at how dissapointedly
Passion has crept in unbidden.

The pages then fall like rain
Onto Rashmi Sinha's right thigh
Flutter with an unwanted child's pain
Discarded with not even a sigh.

Now she feels the mouth that begs
With its tongue travelling round her waist
Responds to the hand slipped tween her legs
Turns her mouth to his with haste.


III.

It is evening now and all quiet
Alone and watching the setting sun
She slips into me as day into night
And one more poem is begun

Today I wrote down words for skin
On paper - black, white, brown,
Nut, chocolate, ivory, ebony
Caramel, olive, sand, wood.

The Setting Sun laid his fingers
On these, wrapping them in
A golden warmth and a glow
That blinded my in-turned eyes

The Setting Sun unwrapped my skin
Like foil - Gold and Silver underneath
Ran through the rivers of my blood
And whispered to my bones

Think of a man - write of the gash
Of Orange Sky between his fingers
Think of a woman - write of the clouds
That float silent in her hair

Write, if you must,
Of the skin of real things
Or better, if you can,
Of the silences between them.

Rashmi and I, the both of us
Read this back both silent
As the Sun sets without a fuss
At once peaceful and violent

"Is this the poem?" she asks me
I say I do not know
For today, lets leave it be,
Come back and write again tommorow

The Chocolate Theory of Race Relations

The Chocolate Theory of Race Relations

It was on the fourteenth of April, a humid suburban Mumbai night, that Rashmi Sinha was on the cusp of discovering the key to World Peace. It happened like this.

She was lying in bed, in the dark, eating chocolates from a box on the night stand. Next to her, Alok intermittently tossed his semi-slumbering bulk around. As she twirled a caramel centred piece around her tongue in delicious abandon, something struck her in the small of the back of her imagination. Shaking her groggy bed-mate awake she said, "Alok, wake up, wake up."

"What?"

"I just thought of something. People are like chocolate. There's really no skin colour like black, white or brown."

"Of course there isn't. Blood types are far more important in dividing..."

"To hell with your blood types. Just listen. All skin colours are just different shades of chocolate" she said in feverish excitement. "I have to write a poem about it. After people read it, they won't be able to look at each other the same way. Are you listening to me?"

"Of course I am sweetheart."

Alok looked at her sleepily as she switched on the bed light. Her long hair hung ragged round her oval face and on her shoulders. Her forehead bulged forward a little too much to let her be pretty. Her dark eyes, turned inward now in concentration, lay above a sharp nose and a small mouth and chin. He watched her, as then and there, in the dead of night, she began the misty process of composing.

On a sweltering summer day
As body after body passes me by
Words for skin - black, white, brown
Melt away into meaninglessness.

Rich shades of chocolate skin
Assail me. Arms, shoulders, backs
Dare me to name their colour and shade,
Invite me to discover their texture.

Skin is beguiling, but does its shade
Really matter? If I put my mouth on
This man's neck and run tongue over skin,
What colour is that intoxication?

Or if I join my mouth to
That man's, what shade, what hue
Can I put to the careless
Abandon that explodes within me?

To my sun-infected eyes, half-open
Shirts and collars assume the shape
Of chocolate wrappers, waiting to be
Opened and swallowed in laughter.

After that, lying sated in the shade,
I could put a name to each single
Taste of skin, but to group them this
Way or that would be pointless.

Rashmi stopped scribbling, and looked expectantly at Alok for a response. With the experience of having walked this tightrope, which could leave him facing either tears or crushed silence, Alok simply said, "But that's only about men. What about women?"

Rashmi turned back to her pages, chewed on her lower lip for a while and then wrote.

A woman whose skin flows under
Your arms like liquid chocolate,
Melted by love. Do not judge her
By the paleness or darkness of her skin.

Embrace her sweetness and her bitterness.
Bitterness is also richness. Beware
The unmelting hardness that comes
From long cold years of neglect.

Rashmi, for artistic sustenance, bit into another piece of chocolate from the box, which led Alok to say, "I thought there'd be something about caramel in there." So she put in one more stanza.

All children are caramel. Your sweet
Years with them melt away quickly,
Leaving photos, empty rooms to recall
The taste and colour of their voices.

"Well?", she asked, "What do you think?"

Alok weighed his choices carefully and decided to take the suicide plunge of honesty, "Its all sex."

"What?"

"All of it. Its really all just about sex. Look."

Rashmi stared at the pages, frowning. "Well, maybe after a second draft." She then began her diligent job of redrafting. And this is the point where tragedy occurred. If only Rashmi Sinha had been less conscientious of spelling and grammar corrections, if only she had safely put away her first draft in a drawer. If she had, it would not have mattered that by the time she had added her second momentous comma, Alok's mouth had begun to do unfairly interesting things around her waist and that by the time she had corrected the metre in the third stanza, his talented left hand had slipped uninvited between her thighs. The fragile pages housing her poem were soon crushed and scattered about the bed. If only she had remembered them as she fell asleep, or in the morning before they were swept away as trash, things might have been different. But they were not. Now, the world is condemned to move from summer to summer, sweltering in the chocolateless existence it always has, and perhaps, always will.

Duck

Duck

Out from the mouth
Of an inter-city bus, I
Emerge gingerly from the mist
Of early morning sleepiness.

A small forgettable stop,
Like so many others where always
The same cup of tea bubbles up,
As if from a shared reservoir.

On a grassy patch a duck
Squats half-asleep, its neck
Turned backwards, bill buried
In the feathers of its back.

As the bus leaves, it stirs briefly,
Tastes the morning air, full of the
Danger of lonely departure, and sinks
Gratefully back into soft feathery sleep.

one more insult

one more from the insult verse category.... this time not really aimed at anyone in particular...

Unsent letter to the office whore

Your punctuality my dear
Has to be seen to be believed
Exactly two hours late every day
Is a talent not easily conceived

Of course I do understand
Squeezing into clothes three sizes small
Can be an ordeal for you
Do you use that gym membership at all?

I know little about military matters
But a little treadmill action
Might improve those ill-concealed
Weapons of mass seduction

You do of course get your exercise - verbally
Those cigarettes you puff all day
That give you that charming asthmatic cough
Not that in a conversation you have much to say

Except for that delightful Hyena laugh
That can curdle blood
Or any other liquid. No wonder
There's dahi every day in the canteen food

I have to admit though
You are a modern liberated woman
I applaud how you never wear a bra
Why submit to that male subjugation

I could call your career a rudderless
Boat adrift but with your admiring cohorts
On second thought its a tramp steamer
That calls on most lewd sailor's ports

I could cut loose and call you
A bitch, a slut, a whore
If only your best friend didn't
Already call you by these and more

I intended to add these things -
The way the sides of your mouth
Crinkle up when you smile
Naturally instead of fakely pout

The way the sunlight caught
Your hair this morning
That suits you better than the make up
You always insist on adorning

Or the way you show genuine concern
For the abandoned pup across the street
And ignore a human being
Lying unnoticed at your feet

But these are better left
For another poem, another time
Its a poor sort of rant or curse that
Turns bitterness into a confessionary rhyme

and more exercises

One more caferati exercise, insults in verse...
this one aimed at myself(where could I hope to find a better subject)..

Self-flagellation, verse and worse

I sat down to write some verse
On you of all unseemly things
But fell asleep fore the first curse

Had left my lips, which brings
Me to the first of your faults
You boringest of Caferati's underlings

Of course you do spew out vaults
Of horrid verse and rhythmless prose
All those brainless verbal summersaults

Princess stories, love poems and those
Too nauseating to mention
GETTING A LIFE might end those woes -

But saying that I should perhaps then
Consider the disadvantages you suffer
Starting with that weak receding chin

You manage to look even more a duffer
With that receding hairline
Forgivable if you were tougher

But your tendency to whine
And permanently lost look
Make you appear perfectly asinine

I find you unkempt, uncouth, and a kook
A net addicted disaffected nerd
What was the last time you read a book?

Cursing you is easy , you're so absurd
But I have only so much time to waste
On such a hopeless piece of turd

Go pop em suicide pills with all due haste

lyrics

and for a change of pace, some music for your entertainment

lyrics courtesy yours truly
music courtesy Nameet
vocals and instrumentals courtesy Nameet
crazed female fans flinging bras onto stage courtesy lurid imagination of yours truly

the song link
Kashmiri Girl

and the lyrics

Kashmiri Girl

[guitar intro]

Met you on a monsoon day
Sweet fairy shivering away
Forgivin' of bad pickup lines

Couldn't get you to stay any longer
Than the few months when the
Seasons change between two lives

[chorus]
I want to.. take you down off your.. snowy bed and kiss.. away
All the places.. you silently.. bled your life.. away


Washed our feet in laughter
Streets like flooded rivers
On drunken rainy days

Boys like brown frogs in water
Never saw them trippin' on gunfire
On cold lonely ways

[repeat chorus]

[lead]

[bridge]
Me drunk and helpless while
They took you out to die like
A shower of rose petals on the snow

These nights I search the sky
For the colour of your hair but find
The stars mocking me so

[modified intro]

(How can forgiveness grow
On ground where shame still burns?
Your breath accuses me now)

[repeat chorus]

On a Mumbai monsoon day
I beg the rain to take me away
Down to the silent snow

and more parodies...

and a parody of Suniti's poem, The Unicorn and the Maiden Fair

The Unicorn and the Dark Maiden

In a magical forest
In a faraway land
There lived a Unicorn
Who great stature did command

No ordinary unicorn was this
Most unicorns have manes of snow
But this one was jet black in hue
From nose to tail to toe

His mane obscured the sun
His snort blew leaves off trees
His hooves thundered the ground
But the unicorn had a rare disease

Unlike other unicorns who traipsed
Around with all manner of Maidens Fair
He despised these apple cheeked blossoms
Still there was something quite not there

He galloped through the forest
In a mad furious flight
And the dust clouds dark
Turned the day into night

He reached a lake one afternoon
And his eyes beheld on the lake shore
A girl With skin dark as a nut,
Weeping. The unicorn paused unsure

And then he approached and said
"Lady, I bring a gift"
"A gift?", she screamed
"Sir twas better you practiced thrift

"I've been mocked and fooled
By so many charlatans before
Keep your fairness creams and potions
Your spells and charms and lore

"I'm dark as night, ugly as sin
Princes and paupers pass me by
Taunts from ivory blondes and brunettes
Long ago ceased to make me cry"

"Lady, I bring a gift"
The unicorn said again
"But tis not for you
Allow me to explain

"Long have I searched for
A girl with skin warm as earth
With hair bewitching as the night
And limbs that move in such sweet concert

"Take a single hair from my mane
And bind it in your own, you will not
Change a bit, but it will open the eyes of
These foolish men who care for you not a jot"

The girl dried her eyes, approached
The unicorn and raised fingertips
To pluck a hair from his mane and
Let his mouth gently brush her lips

She bound the silky thread
Into her dark lustrous mane
With that the unicorn vanished
And she never saw him again

Thereafter, fools and princes alike
Fell swearing undying love at her feet
Tho at first bitter memories ruled her heart
One fool carried her to a sweet defeat

These days she does not cry
Except in happiness
Her days and nights are warm, she
Basks in her long awaited bliss

Still some nights as she lies asleep
In her lover's arms, it seems
A dark mane just brushed her lips
She smiles, closes her eyes and dreams

parodies

huff .. puff..
been working a few caferati writing exercises

here's an entry in the parodies exercise

a parody of Jhumur's poem, Tempt me Tonight


Tempt me tonight

Tempt me tonight,
Come home before midnight.
Slip past the ogre boss,
And short-skirted secretary

Startle me tonight,
Tell me your mother wasn't right,
About every goddamn thing.
Name a dish I cook better.

Trace your longing,
In silver foiled chocolates,
Flowers or perfume or
The bestseller I haven't read yet.

Let the taste of pleasure,
Not be some hidden treasure,
You only seek after planning and plotting.
Turn me over like a bag of sweets.

Journey through
The so very few
Things it takes to please me.
Say "I love you" to me again.