Mountains, a moment’s earth-waves rising and hollowing; the earth too’s an ephemerid; the stars— Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in their summer, they spiral Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing lives long, the whole sky’s Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulf before birth,[Read More…]

Abandoned, forgotten passwords, we will be buried and burnt. Or replaced. Our laughter stripped of its sound bytes will freeze in frames. Our conversations will loiter in the marketplaces of lost cities Their wise songs have gone, dashed against cliffs. Wiping off dewdrops from grass lips, the day stretches. Its grayness splits. A bird sings from a branch. Both are[Read More…]

There are hundreds of ways to silence a woman
stare her down if she happens to laugh out loud
in public space especially in the presence of men
where she should be whispering at side lines
make your dismay quite apparent
if it fails to mortify her

The children will sleep tomorrow
Without the waves of the dead
Women will laugh tomorrow
Without bowing near the graves
If we hold our hands
For a new tomorrow
If we have to survive
To host the new flag of life.

He feels she called him out of love,
So turns, his life jumps up, they run
Joyously into each other’s arms
As the snow falls upon them
For the first time,alone to face
The gathering storm.

Hate Taj Mahal as ‘ Muslim’ mausoleum
After visiting it applauding as India’s ‘ priceless gem’
A wonder!

The pain in my mind Affect my body. The pain in my body Affect my mind. Wonder whether these two Had arranged marriage Or love marriage. Since I remain single I am trying to keep away From these two idiots. K.P Sasi is a film maker, writer, activist and cartoonist. He can be reached at kpsasi36@gmail.com  Hindi Translation दिमाग की[Read More…]

A poem for Lorca, Gauri, Santanu and all the other disappearing fireflies

Let’s not extend it to an ‘end’; your lips, thirty two barricades for my fleet
I once had whiskeys of your sigh, I had laughed off the ice
Beyond the border, two hundred lovers in order
Your desire for the garment martyred mine, my gun shot your soul thrice

No God can punish more
And no God can save.
This walk can only be beautiful
With a determined act of walking
The destination can be empty
But those who walk
Need not feel guilty
For their crime
Of being born as human.

Namo…nnamaha! Vande Mataram!
Mothers and sisters, our salutations to you!
Only make sure your limbs are fully swathed
Smothered with textile, yard upon yard of silk or polyester
Head covered, face veiled with ghungat or scarf.

  A boy often falling over other boys Having a big company of girls Trying to be a classical dancer Hands used to move like waves of a sea Giving everything the perfect texture Had Rabindranath, Had Rituparno Girls spending their time with coffee mugs Discussing about the hunky boys Busy in revealing the underwear Alongwith the serpentine biceps Talks[Read More…]

My harvest without a red bell
From my farm
Beneath the well
Watching those eyes burn
Even when few clouds assist
And few turn soft pillows
Making it my debt
I am the last crop

We met at the wrong time,
which, as chance would have it,
is always the right time. No one
who doesn’t know will ever know
what passion can do to calendars.

Load your revolvers with our blood
While we spill you back with words of truth
Bare as the rising sun
You are a mere coward
Faceless as the night
While we are the shifting names that change to resist
Dabholkar, Kalburgi, Pansare, Gauri
The trail of fire is lit
Aim and Shoot

Big Promises, Big Claims
You have often made
But each of these
Have turned out to be fake

This song is for Agartala-based journalist Shantanu Bhowmik who fell last Wednesday to the marauding wrath of Hindutva-Fascist forces who are stirring race-violence based on historical indignations and inequities in Tripura today

We didn’t listen then
and aren’t listening still.
Perhaps we never will.
Who do you think will win
the Doomsday Bowl?

Perhaps,
One of the main mistakes of my life
Was that I was born.
But I can assure you,
I could not help it.
I was not responsible.

On a summer noon A crow perches (not in want of water) Gripping the bamboo bars of your fence And you yell at it until it flies away from your noise You are angry with the silly bird! The previous week when you offered the pinda In the name of your mother The crow didn’t bother, left you sleepless Wondering[Read More…]

Walls may stall
Movement of humans
But they cannot stop at all
Spread of thoughts and ideas

Freedom is like a metro
Rushing through all stations
Leaving us all behind
In full speed
And our freedom is gone.

Is this life?
Is this the life I had dreamed of?
I might have foreseen big, beautiful things
but all I have in my cup now
is a peg of a poet’s anguish and nothing else.

Life can be killed humans murdered
Flora and fauna completely destroyed
But sounds cannot be hanged
Maimed or mutilated
Sounds cannot be dead
Though ‘ voices’ silenced

Dogs live in a world of smells— succulent, sensual: a melange of sexuality–known and unknown, friendly and prohibitive.   They’re color-blind, love blindly, lead the blind (when so inclined).   Dogs live in the world of Now—leaping catching frisbees, canines gripping, tail-wagging; or—snarling, menacing, loyal to a fault—and faultlessly alert to guard their master’s home;   their master’s spies, their[Read More…]

On the green terrain of the fortitude, I have built a house out of the broken bricks, and the pebbles they had thrown at me. And I have painted my rooms bright, with the redness of the volcanic wound they had bequeathed me. And I’ve planted the thorns they had pierced me with in the garden, hoping to see them[Read More…]

  Deep into the pit Surrounding dark sewage and dirt With nauseated stench And Whole body drench With human urination And defecation Manual scavengers clean Risking lives Leaving family bonds Sitting in cozy toilets And air-conditioned rooms Pass our wastage Into long winding drainage We talk of technology Development and ecology But With their bare hands, legs and misery And[Read More…]

“What type of poem am I?” I am as formless as the clouds, and as elegiac as the silence, in the itinerary of the noise. I am not a classic written by the author God. The rhythms of my verses are supplied by the parable of their tears. I am not in me, though I abide within myself. I am[Read More…]

  No glass in the windows a shell hole in the roof wretched tanks, old fighter jets and rust kissed guns lie around as discarded toys. In the distance traits of dust rises from Anglo-American vehicles running after the Taliban cocoons. Fighter bombers passes overhead repeatedly cough, cold and stomatch bug rules. Nearby, a seven year old child picks up[Read More…]

Atmosphere polluted Food adulterated Water contaminated Earth! Why are you silent? Meandering along The strife – torn lands With people lynching River ! Why are you silent ? (1) Crops failures Farmers suicides Wailing bereaved families Conscience ! Why are you silent? Bombings and shootings Killing Innocents with drones Battles on borders Peace! Why are you silent? Rapes and murders[Read More…]

No, my world!
“I shall never be hopeless …
whatever you may say.
I shall rhyme my life with the
rhythm of God’s chime, and
row my boat of love over the human’s core
until the stream of abhorrence runs dry,”
sang the infant to the world.

My hunger is more red and blue.
More holiness craving passion.
More core to me than your imposing
Dark-kindness and darker-laws.

How many more stars we make?
How many more we need to break the silence
until each one of us become stars?

To lie closer, they folded their plicate wings,
ate blood and shit and the sweat of each other,
retched their names in history’s spittoon,
lay blear-eyed, dreamed-out, dreamless at last.

  I flinched and hid myself to evade her but she spotted me, her prey. Clad in a national dress, and waving the flags of patriotism in the air she came and raped me, scratching my face with razor sharp nails. Red, blood red were her eyes burning with rage as she thundered her national song again and again. Xenophobia[Read More…]

  Bloated stomachs and rust colored hair strolls everywhere in the countryside and city slums, obliged to perish much before their time empty, naked hungry and cold, their figures are like the edge of the world an embarkation point of hope. The tears, spilling out from their heart, a concoction of a broken mirror and a cigarette burning at both[Read More…]

To hunt crocodiles, the pond was dried.
No crocodiles were found because they can live on land too.
But all the small fish died.

Every morning,
she stands
at the murky corner of her room,
and raises her finger to the world.

Several Kashmiri shawls, a wreath of roses,
an expired passport, feathers of the bald eagle,
a Chinese mandolin, an empty wine bottle
and some antique Newari vases,
lay across her feet.

  I came into this world not like the river but like a drop of water and will soon evaporate. Though, I am only a drop of water in the majestic ocean of nature, I yearn to create a vigorous ripple of freedom, in the eternity of the water. For I am a man of eternal freedom, and suppression I[Read More…]

Father, I would have loved you more Had you felt happy When I was born As you felt when at the time of my brother … Dear father, I would have cared you more Had you shared your thoughts On life and property As you did with my brother .. But oh! Father, You commanded me like a priest You[Read More…]

Kawade was expecting his first cup of chai as he flipped through Prajavani In the small balcony adjacent to the living room though his roots took him back to Maratha lineage, His Marathi was laced with Kannada The rituals he followed were a pleasant mix of cultures his ancestors had Followed in a land that they tried to suit Kawade[Read More…]

Biswa goes to watch the movie ‘Kuchka Vikas – Unka Haath’ with his class mates

and just as the national anthem is about to start he gets an epileptic fit

and they slap him with cow leather shoes and

sprinkle cow urine on his face and

as he comes back to his senses

he utters feebly

‘Gau mata ki jai’

and the crowd scatters.

  The morning newspaper was splattered with The Chief Ministers face in every alternate page One was even an illustration that made him look a rock cut monument Wherein he was extolling on the tourist friendliness of his government A government that turns a ripe four years, the headlines boasted Equivalent to 90, if governments were to be compared to[Read More…]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

 I am not in you you are not in me. We are as diverse as the stars in the sky; we are not us we are total strangers. You live in the colour of the rainbow and wear the linings of the cloud whereas I live in the silhouette of the tyranny and wear the costume of disparity. You sleep[Read More…]

I am cold
but not numb.

I am silent
but not dumb.

I am not gazing
but not blind.

Plots for Spring to blossom
have been pre-allotted.
Don’t violate the boundaries
and carpet the roads with blossoms
and call it freedom of expression.

Lies propagated as truths
Half – truths and ‘ post truths’
Cannot, for long, hide reality
From vast humanity

During our recent “celebration” of Memorial Day, I heard the rumblings of muscular motorcycles outside my window, on the streets below my apartment in Washington, D.C. There seemed to be many such displays in public places or on TV. A former judge in my apartment building told me about “festivities” taking place at the Kennedy Center, to mark the 100th[Read More…]

  My life Is a ‘ fatal accident’… An unintended incident Clock starts ticking As my heart starts beating Like countdown before a satellite Exploding into the sky straight I become an identity A family’s entity Assume a name, a caste, a sanctity A religion, a member of a community I start becoming greedy Sucking milk from a dead mother’s[Read More…]

a gruesome truth we dare not speak
of violence with its bloody taunt
such terror stories seldom haunt
in lands where casteist pyres reek

it’s really simple. what you need first is
a man, preferably alone, poor or looking
poor, carrying no weapons and exhausted
from work, starving, and apparently
belonging to a lower caste or a muslim.

I wish I remain
In the cozy lap of mother Earth
Safe without pain
Of germination and growth …

As the Devil tiptoes into the room, The little girl’s hands seize the cane As he walks towards doom, His gaze fixed at her bane Brutus will make his deft move, But Caesar’s honour will not demise No longer trapped under his cove, The Damini in her is swift to rise Daddy’s little girl is now mature Ready to strike[Read More…]

Government of the blowjobs, by the blowjobs, and for the blowjobs
Government of the warmongers, by the warmongers, and for the warmongers
Is not war the ultimate blowjob?

Oh! Mother of civilization !
We are out to destroy
The meticulous creation
You nourished for us to enjoy

Three eruptions of unintentional poetry plucked from prose works, on topics ranging from homelessness in India to neocolonialism to death.

But if you risk life
Continue strife
Spread collective power
High over the infinite ‘ Sky’ tower
Will the big brother follow you?

Welcome to the nation!
‘ Doctor President’ Erdogan!
Let dictatorship and despotism
Integrate fanaticism with fascism!

Sun zooms into sky
Like aspirations of workers of ‘ Maruti Suzuki ‘
Toiling daily with casting and moulding
And turning and fitting
Gears, accelerators and brakes
Or cushioned seats and side glasses
In the sweltering heat
And iron rust

Early January 1977 Just out of Harvard Law Looking for a job Landing at Yale Law 26 years old 2 hour faculty presentation In faculty lounge To my right Dean Harry Wellington Arrayed left and right Across the room Yale Law Faculty all Most distinguished crowd   Sitting in the back Directly opposite Clear line of sight Glaring right at[Read More…]

The battle lines were drawn up.
The snow girls with books in backpacks.
The olive green troopers with guns.
An eagle perched on a white cloud
relayed the proceedings to Times Now.

When I hear the degradation of nature I think of the tender touch of Helen Keller! When I hear of the inhuman bombings of warmongers I remember the odyssey of Homer …! When I read of children with hunger I console myself in the music of Stevie Wonder When there are so many suffering around me Still living with hope[Read More…]

Then he thought he should have a drink
And all the bars were closed.
They told him ` get married and you will be fine’
Then he just asked them this:
`Will it cover my nudity?’

And when the dead bodies do not wake up
I keep telling myself
That it is safer to get drunk
On the silence of the graves.

To see the planet whole;
To know our place upon it;
To nurture and restore it;
To abide in moderation,
With compassionate humility;
That the arts might consecrate us—
I voted.

Share the bounty of the Earth!
Make a joyful sound!
A teaspoon’s worth
can give new birth;
let the hills resound–
there’s plenty to go around,
sharing in rebirth.

This is the wall of stone faces
This is the plain of lost skulls
How much blood must fallow
Before we’ve had enough?

When Jesus and the Buddha met
in a meadow of larkspurs, on a balmy day,
the bees of the valley went mad with love,
the sky and the sun were a glaze.
“Let us sit on the grass,” said Buddha.
And they rested their traveling bones.
One in cambric, the other in saffron,
and the air was the color of amber.

The tender coconut that you once gave me
Was certainly more tasty,
Than a nation you have offered
To keep me alive and to shape a meaning
For your existence than mine!

The pain of birth. A breathing child arrives With the loudest unhappy tears Cursing the entry into this planet Yearning to be where once belonged. The pain of death. Clinging to the last breath Refusing to leave the touch of fresh air Hated at the time of arrival. A last struggle to maintain The life which floated on air. You[Read More…]

This time around, Siddhartha let Yashodhara go to attain nirvana instead of you. In your colourful palace she sits forlorn. The colours fail to brighten her day. They disgust her. Yashodhara will leave you with a delicate flower in your bosom. Not to worry, you’ve attained enlightenment, right? You’ll figure this one out too. Look at the forlorn footprints behind[Read More…]

One day
I will open the windows of my dreams
to watch men and women
young and old
hugging and kissing
singing and dancing
without the poison of hatred
and without the guilt
of their silence.