The Flavour Of Failure

The smell of polished nails, keeping intact

the coffins of hands and feet, proliferate

in the streets; the cooked dusk watering

the mouths of returning birds; the pears

like electric bulbs obscuring more than

illuminating the room; the night unloading

its perforated paint, in Vincent’s canvas.

The clock echoes the drums of arteries

kicking away against the womb of eternity

only to face a battery in the mirror. It’s sad

how the corpse of snow eats away the worms

of the roof, staining the ceiling with dark clots

of dried blood. There is a botched up mask

in my mind, I wear it during nightmares

only to blotch my reality. The reaper wags

its scythe like the deaf pianist’s thin fingers

on the highway phone booth receiver. He nods

to nothing. The road leads somewhere he

doesn’t even care about. A blind beggar

tells him it’s from his mother in heaven.

She is being boiled in light. You’ll hear

the prophecy someday. Till then, hang up

and hang down. Laugh and cry. Hit and run.

Hammer a dent in the membrane and plant

the seed of promise which will either grow

into hollowness or betrayal. Pluck a thorn

and tell me if you see the blueprint of abandon.

Love with money as crutches is cheaper

than the rum that makes the ambulance

driver return to the site of accident instead

of the hospital. You think me reckless, ¹

desperate and mad, but the thread of result

your argument hangs with is knit by the same

orthodox imbeciles as you. The rapper heckles

your loudness with speed because he knows

the holes you’re so proud of will one day

leak all your dirt. Bleach the collar of your shirt

but first bleach your heart. I know it doesn’t hurt

but that’s because you think emotions are hurdles

that you already crossed. Embrace the demons

you suffocated, so they won’t eat you up one day.

This day is my own but so are my demons. Listen ²

the colours now erupt from my eyes, like two

planets coming together only to separate in

reticence. Suspend the fixation-fragrance benumbed

with trenchant flood. The shrubs plunge up marked

like Cain. The bedimmed bark floating, dreaming

of metamorphosing into the metrical ship of poesy.

The lampblack-ink tortured, squelched and spread

like a lachrymose wench. Tedious this skull of thought

and incomplete worth. What after all are deaths but

the movements of marionettes? The spider immolating ³

its mate, or the crab consuming its fountainhead.

And I keep asking you, “How many more free calendars ⁴

shall grace the kitchen door?” Count them like sheep.

Do not protest asleep, comrade, feigning vigil,

impeding the wakeful, just sleep if you must

for it can’t always not be dry, the lake of will

and it is fine for you have indomitable trust

in murder and the leisure to be melancholy. ⁵

The grammar book in a face-off with modernist novels

and classical music in a face-off with experimental music

superintended by the dictator pelted by anarchists

is interrupted by an audience that comprehends

the necessity of feeling honest complexity.

The mood-war is not pacified by the victor.

En costume blanc clotted in the mud I wake ⁶

every dystopian dawn, until the library is bread ⁷

or pyramid or anything else, just not mere letters.

I chase the glacier of shadows that will allow

me to cross to your shore, from where you shoot

indiscriminately at my carrier pigeons. They are not

your food. I am yet to reach the balcony of rain

in the castle of the phoenix. I cannot always be ash.

Redeem the time, redeem the dream, o’ lizard, ⁸

climbing up your walls. The cannons fire lame soldiers ⁹

that attack your armour instead of your flesh.

You eventually get your victims crisp and fresh.

The butterfly grabs the chicken wings and rests

on a future that argues no sunset. A briefcase

of blue eyes and bruised smiles and paper lies

disregarded by the lawyer opens up a scar deeper

than the grey abyss. The dust swirls and rusts the wind,

scratches the scab on your shoulder, empties the bottles

of wine, irritates the nostrils, as the critical patient

coughs up a dilemma on the operating table that

throws Prufrock out of joint. The cradle is still locked

to milk and lullabies, the chimney choking in its own smoke.

The pied piper asks for a match to burn a bunch of rats.

Em can’t be certain who exactly is the gnat. He thinks

he is Batman but Wayne never got Covid-19 because

he never ate a bat. The bat ate him. What ate the Joker?

A joke? A card? A circus? A mental hospital? You okay?

Why are you looking for a razor blade now? Look there.

The downtown train shaves your armpits and covers in fog

the restless vagabond. You dance on the sofa under the streetlights

as the wound under your feet aggravates into a leper-melody.

The prison-cooker whistles loud and screeches open the eyes

of convicts to the shadow ballerina as the melting rice soaks

the ground like semen. The boxing bag swings until the fighter

punches it to a halt. I defeat, reach the top. There are cans

of liquid and chemicals. There are tanks of distilled water.

There are trees disintegrating into nooses. There are

children trying to jump from the edges. Soon,

the roof extends itself into a mossy crypt.

I mistake the neon for the setting sun.

The bulb has no craters. Footsteps break it.

I bleed yet can't put my grip on the gun.

A shadow crawls between two open windows.

A cat struggles to open the secret passage

that leads to an ancient ritual site where virgins

burn widows sacrificing wedding feasts

and obituaries. The funeral march leads to

a desolate battlefield fought by incestuous criminals

against an army of slaves not to themselves

but others. The rifles are filled with chocolates.

Look at that car. Let it arrive slower than your

hearing but faster than your eyes. Wait. There

are still a few seconds before the end of the world.

The jasmine sheds its skin inside a scarecrow

who shuns his responsibility to the crops

for the crows who are his reason for being.

He comforts himself with a song of denial.

Multi-national companies account for every fool

who find their footsteps echoing calculations

made by computers. The tradition only works

with individual talent, not with mass incompetence.

The clouds come together now in turbulence

but fail to precipitate. The cycle broken in the gutter.

The rider forgetting his own physique only records

that will continue to be broken anyway. What an

inconstant relationship! We all gather to mourn daily.

As the moon keeps spinning webs inside my cerebrum,

the radio like an injured reptile hisses and hums:

I want you to be happy but I'll arrange the fun times

I want you to create art with clichéd lines

I want you to change society while accepting it

I want it scot free but after your inspecting it

I want you to stay silent but I will ring the bells

I want you to be different but like everyone else

I want you to stay inside the box but think outside it

But even if you do I will take ages to go outside it

I don't want you corrupt but I want you to bribe him

I want him to find his own way but you to guide him

I will eat whatever I want but I want you handsome and tall

I will cheat on you if you look or call me ugly or small

Beauty is inherent but a woman has to work to be beautiful

Every flower is different but isn't the sunflower pitiful

Learn for your own growth but in the exams you cannot fail

Life is meaningless but if you murder humans you go to jail

You rest your case in your ability to see.

But what is sight that leads to blindness?

You care less because he is a hero, you are

careful with yourself, while you pluck another.

Fabrication in the fabric of your conviction,

you are a convict of your perspective, you are left

only with ideas and words. A sequence of suns

and shadows, flowers and bees, mosquitoes and nets,

fishes and rods, caves and fields, hell and nothingness.

The sound and the sting in the head, all my own.

The butterfly has remained, the chrysalis has flown.

What is the book to the bark, the bark to the book?

What is the butcher to the meat, the meat to the butcher?

What is a prison to a bullet? What is a convict to a prison?

What is the hollow to the body? What is the body to the hollow?

The emptiness during runtime is popcorn. The runtime

during emptiness is a shot of feeling. Emptiness is a joke.

Runtime is a construct. The space for breath is every second.

The space to register is while you cross the road and end

up in an accident. The accident of realization. And you choke

blood and you breathe heavy. Until the sirens call you to light

and betrayal. What is the ship to the water? A dagger running

through the body without cutting it. The only hollow is the wind

in the sail. I am both the hammer and the dent. The knife

and the slit. The blood and the throbbing. The fire lightening

the black, the black darkening the fire. I am the melting wax.

I am ma. What I do fills. Me. It. No one else. The womb

is the only exception. The umbilical cord. The mouth.

The hand. The nostrils. The other creating the self.

Where is the wound in the shadow, where is the thought

in the reflection? Everything is a stranger to nothing.

But nothing is never a stranger to everything. If time

is the perpetrator of change, time slits the eye of life,

and the blindness of nothingness is merely the growth

of life to death. There is no wound or pain after life.

The peak of dolour is birth itself. So you weep and scream.

All suffering is the suffering of existence. The greatest nail

to the cross is the sail tossed by the tempest, trampled

by the waves. Survival is a competition of painlessness.

Pain need never be compared unless it's for the cure.

Everything is invalidated one day, another's opinions

or doom, neither should matter to the consciousness.

Do not register anything but your self. No one else

is going to register it for you. Live and let live, and

know living is killing. There never was another way.

Fog reveals warmth, that we still live and breathe,

and the heat accumulates against the winter of the world.

Confusion reveals thought, that we still care and love,

against the betrayal and rejection of the world.

Who believes in the want to change? Who trusts

the wish to reveal? The curtain echoes change.

And affection is as tasteless as ash. The lava

erupts worse than tears, and no consolation

is enough. You bind my words which bind

my thoughts which bind my identity which binds

the blindness that plagues the city. What I speak

and what you hear are as different as the dog

and its leash. What you release you will not releash.

What you relieve you will not relive. So, you keep

all that you feel, even if they do not fill. Your refill

never full and the grass unshaken. It is deep

so refrain from dipping your heart in my hurt

lest it bleeds your reflection, even worse your idea.

You aren't Frida or paints would consume you

like poison. The methane in the gutter evoking

the moment we met, Thames glowing under a starry

night in front of the studio behind the gallery,

the same us Seamus wrote that story about

revoking the usual Künstlerroman plot blotting

poise with shutter speed, spitting stew, deodorant

suffocating the rodent, and a cab to take us

to the cabin, where later we would make love.

Are you afraid I see through your mask, hypocrite?

You utter greed clothed in angel wings. Fallen?

You are lost in a crowd that I don't even care about.

Frozen like clothes damp in a room

rarely perforated by sunshine, smell

of fungi and cobwebs stuck to the broom

like a street lamp invisible in a well,

I have awaited the arrival of the dead.

She is lost to the crops lying wasted

in the godown, decomposing a music

arranged with more care than ikebana.

How will I ever explain the pain of the wick

that lost its flame? What is nirvana

to one who has nothing to think about?

Where must I go, to whom will I shout?

To the silence of the abyss, I convey

my emptiness, but it is incapable for once

to echo or stare back. You look away

and like an ashamed heart, the windmill runs

and churns electricity and keeps the earth

alive. Light doesn't know where to keep hurt.

I don't know where to quench my thirst.

I just sing like the darkling thrush and burst.

You have detonated my heart like Lakhvi, the terror

of love, the sound of grief deafening, blinding smoke

making ripples in my nonchalance, why did you come

seeking me after ages of our separation? The mirror

reveals a skeleton charred. I in hesitation choke

my flesh to preserve my soul as you sinisterly hum

our prayer to the summer of our intimacy. What is this

shade, your curls now are my nightmares, my greeting

is a broken whisper, a sigh of defeat. I can't war anymore,

I'm the injured soldier of love, sheltered in this temporary

camp away from society. Leave me alone with my delusions.

The battlefield is desolate and you are the queen of the chessboard.

I am a mere pawn who couldn't reach the other side. Kill me.

I won't turn myself in or change colours. Don't expect me to run

as you approach with your sword and horse, hoofing my

weariness. Why do you talk of an impossible future, why lie

now? If only words could relieve the torment. If I could just

hold myself and cry, cry, cry. But the void is perpetual…

During the heights of my emotional fall you could stab me

with a dagger a million times and I wouldn't flinch or grimace.

Hurt is absence. Hurt sounds like retreating footsteps

that will come back again tomorrow with longing.

Hurt looks like a smile that can't hide dried tears.

Hurt feels like a breath so cold you'd wonder

if this person is even alive. Hurt smells like cigarettes.

Hurt tastes like blood that keeps spilling from the wrist

no matter how hard you try to close the wound.

Hurt is a greater absence. I have only one word:

suffocation. I suffocate daily but I refuse to hurt

anyone else. The demon can't kill me anyway.

Let it eat me away more and more. I have just

one thing to say to it: I am infinite. That is perhaps

why my suffering is infinite too. But I endure

like a ninja. I wish the fox could be infinite enough.

I wish my death could be neat enough.

The touch that seldom offers lenity unearths

countless crevices in the impatient psyche

of my dilemmas soon reducing me to rubble.

I scour for traces of my building, but there are

only bones, no flesh. The archaeologist

studies the cadaver, ponders for a while and tells

the inquisitive gendarme it is suicide

not murder, and the case is closed. I ring the bells

but nothing stops, the movements are so furious.

In the night, arrives a vagrant seeking shelter

and I let him perceive the darkness of my fire.

He understands himself and carries my remains

in his empty pocket hoping finally

to get a good price after selling them in parts

to a scholar or a poet. But my whole

at the idea of further fragmentation trembles

and becomes a wave: a light, a sound? How will

I know? But my escape gives me a form! I kill

my consciousness and touch another building…

Why should you be afraid of me when you

aren't afraid of yourself? Death has no deeds

to grace itself, so it relies on last words, say it.

Perhaps death is untrue, or love loses its credibility

in it. A false faux pas, shaking a spear before the fire!

Our significance turned insignificant by God.

Life is breath yet breathless. Everything happens

all at the same time. The then and now, the memory

and the experience blending like saffron and blue,

like a sunset, you forget and remember at the same

moment. Every moment is a canvas that you paint

with sand. Your tears like the tide, cementing it.

The physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual

selves intertwined like a helix. The turnings of the stair

a necessity to reach the expanse of it. Perhaps

it’s more about breadth than height. The horizon

calmer than the sea, yet bleeding hues softer than

the water. You are the quicksand, I am the tree.

My shadow is a part of the other in reaction to me,

the reaction with light constant. Where did he go,

when he reversed his shoes in the dark? The colours ⁴

you parade tied to a tightrope; a walk in the park? ¹⁰

Do you feel the shade, the wrath? Do you see the shark

missing its mark? Or the lark failing to herald the dawn?

You forget with age the pain reducing, the understanding

increasing. Suffering decreasing yet a different suffering

increasing. The scream of birth suffocated with silence.

With footsteps echoing another. With shoes that fit

and the feet growing. The stranger familiar, the familiar

stranger, calling you to the painlessness of the grave.

The birth cry unto a whimper. The universe dissolved

in a light that you longed had lingered. But that is

the purpose of light. Everything else is darkness.

People in the dark may love the dark but are

always attracted to light. Because they are

addicted to burning, to sustain their ashes.

There is fun in going against the prohibition:

Jo mai na kahu tu vo bhi sun. The bandaid in the pavement

stopping the greatest wound. The flood and the ark,

the forgetfulness of hunger, the chemtrails of one

who refuses to bless his poem. And the song, the shriek

erupting throughout the rhetoric of decay. The meter

erratic like a patient conscious upon a table, the fable

of vacillation. Certainty is never love, God is hesitant

with us. The world is too less with us. Listen to the unspoken

delectation. Deliver unto the cradle the far cry of the broken.

The sweetness of the honey irremediable, perennial. The queen

a whore, the poet a whore, the singer a whore, the painter

painting the whore. Red. Read again. Shed again. Satan

in a conspiracy with God. Lilith eavesdropping. Adam

and Eve unaware. Leaves dropping from the groin.

The titanic wars of show, of TRP, of sales, of Bitcoins;

the stocks bullied and bluffed until the charges were dropped

by the Church. They hang aloft like wind chimes against the door.

The spirit afraid to tread in the head. The brig rigged.

The reformatory mutilated. ThOMas' blue bird still

like The Chinese Wall, the Grecian Urn, Pandora's Box,

the Covid Jar. The ailment milked by vaccines, and hope.

The toilet sealed with tissue, as the odours of the lilac issue

from the kitchen. Preach us not, to dare, to share, to care.

If preached, if taught, it won't be daring, sharing or caring.

Those who run drowning, those who won frowning,

find the course coarse. The core in furor, the spark in disarray,

nuclear scatter, biological tatter, the tongue in the platter,

the voice did good to the taste: the toothpaste self-assured.

Those who stole away found the chimneys beautiful.

The widows in the meadows, the witches in the beaches,

crooning to Sasha Sloan. A black cat moaning in the hut,

terminating the services of the brigand. The bridge burned.

Hagrid collecting sticks, caging the elephant, his mother

wanting him dead, spiders in his head, Ron's wand

broken by Wanda, frightened, Harry's vision obscured,

of course cured by Hermione later, unnecessarily, what?

It's all blurred, Ron's nightmare. Where is the car, the dance?

The crux ordinaria, the ordinary Christ, the whore's crux,

the Horcrux pulverised, Ball de Morgue's ankh, unsettling.

Osiris' angels revolting, re-bolting the spectre. The firmament

of Lain's lion. Galileo's lane blocked by plagiarism, pirates

against the government, the revolutionary father of the monkey.

Who ultimately is the demon? Me? And who is my devil?

The evil is feeble and the Old Age Homes peaceful. Discuss,

don't diss and cuss, there is enough curse upon the bus,

fussing, rushing, faster than the hare in the turtle race.

Who is the sloth, the snail, the tortoise, the trusting face?

The hibernation of naïvety, the peace, the sea, the sea.

Who is the foe? The rabbit? The Rabbi? Count to three.

One, Two… The three dots are my deaths. A cat is thrice

my price. The mice jealous yet smart as Jerry. Seinfeld's crisis.

The journey burning, the quiet frightened. Smoke. Choke. Woke.

Wole Soyinka's telephone still ringing in every ear. Poke. Evoke.

The kindness metamorphosing into apathy. The death of the moth.

Who is the sloth? The brothel of hotspots. Is this verse as ugly as me?

Good. The beauty you cherish will wear away like your flowers.

The ugliness of truth will stay. Lead the way, dismay. Away from the lie.

I am blacker than the nigger universe, perennial, and your transient light

only a moment, your white and red, bleeding yet the same. The same!

Throb, rob me. I am the robin against the white winter. Your pretty snow

only for show. Your coldness, the reality underneath it all. Unfeeling

mess of oppression! The cheap plastic knife of the Japanese Buffalo.

The creep joint of the outlaw. The creepy foreskin of the hoodlum doll.

The matryoshka skulking its pall. I, Vyasa, have forespoken it all.

The masquerade of ens reale, the ens entium of gall and wormwood.

The chameleon ensconced, camouflaged by the zebra and the leopard.

The juniper tree desolate tonight. O' veiled lady, call me Fate tonight.

The haunt and laughter of schizophrenia has made me quite jolly.

Should I carve a smile again in the wall, the shadow of my face

is rotten like moss. You're Arthur, an earthling. Remember it.

The air rings with thy sweet laughter, the leaves and flowers

gain their colour after thee. Filled with nectar yet concealed

from eyes, thy fingers touch the water while thou rise,

floating above this trivial terrain. Thou breathe so free,

the breeze envies thee. To some fairy land thou belong,

where fountains perennial of words and knowledge flow.

The melody surrounding thy every step. Warm fauna

accompanying thy stroll, leading thee to the heart of Eden,

where thou sit with a fruit in hand, and insufflate the pages

of thy dearest book. The oars break, the shores shake, you wake;

the boat of dreams capsized in different banks of the same river. ¹¹

The anarth of unearthing the cemetery to build a university

and is it really joruri to make a joruri out of students?

Kindness is directly proportional to smartness

or you'll trouble trying to help. Keeping your cool

in the heat of arguments, keeping someone warm

even when you're cold, only knowledge can spread

knowledge. Stupidity breeds more stupidity,

eventually disaster. Again, intelligence isn't intelligence

without kindness, so there's that. It depends, who the fool

turns out to be. The greatest irony of course is everyone is.

Everything is doom's fool. Doom is such a mood!

If the mist lessens, har simt I'd fill with cigarette smoke.

If the clouds conceal the lodestar, the firefly at the edge

will light her way. The lesson thus of calamity is a bridge.

Break the connection and you break the vow,

Break the vow and you break the touch,

Break the touch and you break the chain,

Break the chain and you break your tongue,

Break your tongue and you break your life,

Not the system or the law, only your own freedom.

As if you brake to break a butterfly upon the wheel!

You break a lance against the caterpillar which

breaks a leg in the courtroom, leaving the cocoon

out of judgement. You break and enter into agreement

with the broker, broker than the Ten Commandments.

You end up breaking a sweat to become even more broke

than before. Never have I seen anyone this broken.

I break away just like your wife who never cared

for the strife. You break bad, then you break cover.

Your wife and I break even. You break down, end up

in prison. You break ground to break free. But the police

break new ground in anti-escape technology. Those who try

to break loose end up losing their joints and bones.

They break your balls anyway. You break off communication.

You break your arm patting yourself on the back.

You get into the prisoners' baseball team. You break your duck.

You break your back trying to break your lance.

You reach your break point and break the deadlock.

Your win breaks the web. You break out early. To celebrate,

you break the bank. You ask us for shelter but we break

your heart. You break ranks with us. You blurt out

we broke our word but we say we never gave our word.

And you break up with us. And you break wind backwards.

We break off our breakfast and leave the restaurant.

We wish they broke you on the wheel. You wish we got breakbone.

We meet a B-boy in the street breakdancing to Breaking Benjamin.

He tells us he will make a breakthrough someday. We tell him

people like him break the mold. I tell your wife you broke the net

when this guy here is so much more talented. Your wife tells me

the world's unfair as you break the seal behind the bar.

The bartender's wife breaks water. And you refuse to help.

So no one helps you either when the breakdown lorry

tows your car. We reach the break room and get us some food

before the conference. We are a part of the breakout group.

The senior workers break the ice with newcomers. One of them

used to be a breaker boy. In the television, the breakout character

breaks the Sabbath and someone changes the channel.

In the breaking news, the finance minister breaks the silence

on the break-even point, the police discuss a break-in

at the store at the break of dawn, General Lee breaking records

like he does generally, frabjous break-bones sighted at Crab's joint,

break-axe smuggled to the brocalists' locale, Brocken spectres

not sighted by tourists, two wrists broken in arm wrestling,

brocked players cheating at chess, broken windows theory

abrogated after artists' protest, the Queen tested with broken wind,

and the broken record continues. Finally, we hear of your suicide

and realize you were such a broken reed. But don't worry,

no one's gonna remember a broken vessel anyway. We end up

promoted after our conference and married after a month.

We heard no one came to your funeral, does that bother you?

Because it doesn't bother us. We are happier without you.

And that's how many a tale ends without a moral.

The only way to be poetic today is to be outrageous.

Because things are grey. And I am not I. Perhaps you.

Poetic justice? More like poetic life. Life doesn't give a fuck.

Just. Unjust. Trust. Mistrust. Distrust. Destruct. Betrayal.

Trial. Trail. The Holy Grail. The Unholy Wail. Fail. Fail. Fail.

 

Notes:

 

1 Murder In The Cathedral, Part II, Thomas Eliot.

2 The Wisdom Of Life, Chapter III, Arthur Schopenhauer.

3 Lud-In-The-Mist, Chapter 3, Hope Mirrlees.

4 Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov.

5 Paris: A Poem, P.6, Hope Mirrlees.

6 Les Complaintes, Complainte De Lord Pierrot, Jules Laforgue.

6 Living Or Dead, III, Rabindranath Tagore.

7 The Library Of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges.

8 Ash-Wednesday, IV, Thomas Eliot.

9 The Adults Are Talking, The Strokes.

10 The Flowers Of Evil, Spleen And Ideal, Against Her Levity, Charles Baudelaire.

11 Living Or Dead, II, Rabindranath Tagore.