Supermarket Oscars

This film is shot
every morning, every evening
same location, routined times,
come rain, come dry.
And the stars of this film
neither love nor die for love.
And they never get nominated
for the Oscars.

Savour the occasional repeats
on your local channel
if there is a case of misdemeanour.
Otherwise, supermarket cameras
record those uncelebrated films:
Art houses won't screen,
Anthony Lane won't review,
Odeon won't hammer billboards,
Blockbuster won't shelf...

And you won't find the soundtrack.

01.iii.08

Settling Down

A subtle euphemism
for Slowing Down
is Settling Down.

Give me one good reason
And I shall surely settle down.
I shall gleefully embrace a life
both predictable and proximate;
I shall slowly follow the herd.

A caveat though, the poet in me
will commit a brutal suicide,
only buying flowers on
birthdays and anniversaries
valentine's and truce ceremonies.

05.iii.07

Never, Never Retire

If work is love made visible,
do all retired people like me,
sipping endless cups of tea,
have somehow become loveless?

If I draw from this rich reservoir
I gleefully call "experience",
is it really an euphemism
for all the mistakes I've made?

Every newspaper is a daily treat,
still on reaching the final page
How do I greet when I meet
the angel of elite boredom?

If workplace has the hegemony
of defining one's societal identity
Am I now without a business card,
a nondescript "pensioner-at-large"?

A silent toast to bygone years,
But tell me why does retirement
have a connotation to befriend
better whisky and bitter men?

You can take it easy but beware
the casual death of your soul:
You'll lose your prolific fire;
Never, never retire.

kobial, 01.xi.06

Opening line borrowed from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Hat tip: Farhad M for the concept, on a jazz inspired night out

Suits Me Not

I don't like the idea
of wearing a suit
of wearing a tie
The motley crew
of the business world
of the power world
A homogeneous approach
to work culture
to corporate mantra.

Suits are unimaginative
Oh the drudgery!
It sums up pure drawl
the sort glossy pages
of a recruitment brochure
will sell you in plethora.

Suits remind me of clerks:
paper-pushing,
pencil-eating,
photocopying,
mail sorting,
ad hoc clerking
and of boring accountants.

I want to quit the suit
grow my hair
go unshaven for days,
weeks on end
or months, liberating
my ruffled nature,
at ease with proto-success,
to write poems in Havana.

kobial, 27 . ix . 06

Commensurable Love

I see you sit some six inches or more
from me, gripping your coffee mug.
I could close the gap knee-to-knee.

I see the dark hairs of your eyebrows
prickle and rise out of your skin.
I could write about every inch of them.

I see your eyes through the millimetres
of a small valve, commonly: the heart.
I could sketch the feeling in acres.

I choose to preserve the parameters
in yards, as expected by civil society,
ensuring nothing but a mileage of dignity.

But we walk away stealthily hiding
the parallel share of our immeasurable,
albeit, in some ways, a pleasurable guilt.

AA, 20.vii.06

Tree Without Roots*

Dhaka frightened you. Dhaka
Where I feel at home. The raw daylight,
The sun beaten faces, the sharp
Corrupt edges to everything, frightened you.

Your schooling had somehow neglected Bangladesh.
The martyrs of 1952, of 1971 and the floods
You could not appreciate the language,
Your soul was empty
Of the rustic Bauls, the rickshaw bells, and the hartals
Made your heart shrivel. Nazrul could not invoke
A blood rush, awake the rebel in you. Zainul
Held out a famine struck lean hand and you took it
Bluntly, indifferent to human feelings.

You did not criticise but you pitied
The endless beggars tapping your window,
You sniffed the history books like a condescending foreigner
Hoping to recognise your roots but somehow recoiled
As your love for the West asphyxiated you,
And your panic clutched back towards your Exeter days.

You came visiting every summer and the odd winter
Assumed yourself as a tourist, armed with mineral water,
Mosquito repellent, beach shorts and funky flip-flops
Watching with bewildered eyes and behaving awkwardly
At the butchered traditions, that somehow still held.
With the occasional stab to impress your pink tongue
You tried your luck, relishing on digestive tablets,
With the street savouries: haleem, futchka, chotpoti
And I saw you vomiting with food poisoning.

Dhaka, the city of mosques and shrines
Had offered you more than the customary rituals
But you did not hesitate to puncture the spiritual mystic
Seeing only religious bigotry and fanaticism
And the sound of Azaan
Was what annoyed you more than five times a day.

You told me this was the land of your dreams:
But the Kaal Boishakhi was one
You dared not wake with, the incandescent spirit
No literature, no creative writing course had glamorised.
Perhaps this land is your nightmare, or perhaps,
Your wet dream, you did not realise
Monsoon had long spoilt your crisp bed.

Dhaka was what you tried to wake up from
And could not. You have been sleeping
Ever since; you knew you could afford
The luxury of distancing yourself from you.
You preferred to break out of your lineage
And have your real self still to be found.

Yours is a hapless soul, not understanding
Thinking it is still your prerogative
To remain in the happy world,
With your whole life waiting,
As a tree without roots.

*inspired by You Hated Spain by Ted Hughes

The Divorcee

Lonely nights, I embrace you.

Those ripples on my bed
were caused by my body,
aged somewhere in the mid-thirties;
These ashes scarring my carpet floor
were born from my Marlboro Lights,
aged nine minutes.

The bathroom doesn't smell of aftershave,
or masculine shower gel
And the toilet seat is always down.

Men, I do not trust you like before.
Love, I seek you. Only more.

If You Wear That Chiffon Dress

If you wear that chiffon dress,
One that is boldly black,
Meshed in fine layers,
Perhaps with a cashmere scarf
Of burnt mahogany colour
Wrapped around your tender neck
Hesitantly covering bits of your shoulder,
Do not forget to chance a glance
At me -- I shall be in a resilient corner...
Quietly sipping a drink, mind fixated on you
My eyes speaking for myself,
Head resisting the heart's immense desire -
An unbridled wish to court you.

If your wear that chiffon dress,
You will look appropriately beautiful
And magnificently gorgeous;
I will love every detail of your expressions:
The subtle gleams, the effortless smiles,
Oh, the smooth swirls,
Ah, the sweet swivels...

Piano notes to please your quiescent shuffles
Of your elegantly pointed black shoes,
Mesmerising a hundred hearts,
While I am entranced, watching you dance,
Dance to a lust for life.

In the cold harrowing silence
That rules this solitary page,
I regret the limitations
Of this would-be poet;
The fallible eloquence of my chosen words,
Ashamedly blunt and bruised,
Do not permit me to be reflective enough
To mirror the sensuality you shall sketch
If you wear that chiffon dress.

For a sobering,
More fulfilling experience,
At this unfulfilling hour of this day,
You can relinquish my manuscript -
Wasted one, one not up to the mark,
Yet whisper intimate words of solace to me:
"Do you know how much I love you?"

Moreover, forgive my calloused attempt
At depicting the luminous aura
You exuded that timeless evening
When I held you in my arms,
And in my arms, I kissed you,
In the courtyard of my draught dreams,
Where you were wearing
That chiffon dress.

My Heart, the Terrorist

Love is terror

Permeated by literature and music;

A murderous endeavour with no repentance.

Like terrorism’s act of hostage-taking,

A thrillingly dangerous recreation.

And my heart is a terrorist

Taking you as my hostage.

I ask for no ransom,

Demand nothing

But your endless love,

My heart tangled-up

in the ultimate crime

Of terror.

Articulating My Youth: A Sestina

[Sestina: One of the most complex of the various French forms, the sestina is a poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. It makes no use of the refrain. This form is usually unrhymed, the effect of rhyme being taken over by a fixed pattern of end-words which demands that these end-words in each stanza be the same, though arranged in a different sequence each time.]

Not long ago, I misspent my youth trying to learn the chords of a guitar.
A minor, B flat, C major, there were too many to confuse my head.
So I often switched off and listened to my radio, fishing for tunes
and I stopped if I could catch a song by Dylan or Dire Straits
and harmonise a white canvas with bold strokes of colour.
(But I'd soon give up, being equally impatient with art as I was with music).

Linseed oil anointed my futile efforts with the canvas and colour.
But I loved my brushes, their crisp strokes with cool music
warbling in the background. Brothers in Arms was the Dire Strait
record I adored. That album had powerful lyrics with great tunes
And the cover was tastefully done with the photo of a steel guitar.
Perhaps youth wasn't that misspent, I still have fond memories in my head.

I remember my first sip of alcohol, which went straight to the head
I remember then watching a television blind to the primaries of colour
I remember buying my first instrument, which did not resemble a guitar;
I remember it being a clever little keyboard with built-in tunes.
I remember my record collection growing with different genres of music:
I remember separating the genres and eras with little gaps, like tiny straits.

Though it could’ve been a daring youth, and I could’ve ventured in search of music,
I didn’t travel. Only in my imagination, I saw places, heard unknown tunes.
I had many friends, who hung around me, and uselessly strummed a guitar.
When I’d get bored with them, I read books and stored facts in my head.
Those books trekked me through African villages, crossed the Magellan Straits,
And I discovered a Manhattan jazz joint, by when I was stoned on a high colour.

Women: I dated all types, for they could narrow those chasms and straits
That otherwise widened without any rhyme or reason in my head.
The last girl I dated, I shared my passion with her; she was artistic and loved music.
Thought we “clicked”, but she said my personality was dull, it lacked colour.
So my heart lost faith in monogamy. It married the six strings of guitar.
But I could never stop quarrelling with any of them. They sang melancholic tunes.

I thought I would paint forever or create my own repertoire of tunes.
I was merely nineteen; I had my tubes of paint and strings for my guitar.
But the subtle rustle of my paintbrushes, and my jingle-jangled music
had me unprepared to face real challenges; I neither had the heart nor the head.
And before I knew, my vision had a fracture, and my life was in complete dire straits.
The alchemy of my artistic ambitions had lost the lust for colour.

Today, I lie on my back and watch my cuticles grow.
My guitar stands by my head, not looking for tunes, but Dire Straits music
still makes me dive deep in nostalgia, to atone a magnificently misspent youth.

© Ahsan Akbar MMIV

Long Distance Love

Please don't ask why I'm not washing these t-shirts of mine

- they still breathe her and smell of her hauntingly sweet presence

around the selvedges and all over the garment.

Please don't ask me to put oinment on these kneecap scars

- I made love to her resting on them, with a thousand different

blue, green, purple, red and white sensations.

Please don't ask me why a grown-up man should shed tears

- I last saw her in Dulles airport, with one last hug and a million emotional

rhythms falling to pieces, ending my trance and tune.

Please don't ask if this was some blissful union of two lovers

- I'll have no answer for that, but dear reader, I can express the movement

I feel in my shivering heart, if you choose to empathise with long distance love.

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

Press your supple lips
Against my swaying ones;

We can do a little tango
Or waltz along with violins & cello,
And even with the gentlest of kisses
You shall not suppress
But inflict love's passive violence
And a moment of silence.

For the brave love that we share
Is one that none would dare.

So...

Press your swaying lips
Against my supple ones;

And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

Last Words

Inevitable is what my life one day, on spanning half or a full circle
Will come to an end; my body becoming morbidly sepulchral.
On that ordinary day, you will know my babble will not resume;
While my thoughts pausing to an everlasting boredom, gloom.

When I retire from my poetic apprenticeship
To finally rest my restless head to an eternal sleep,
Do not forget to dim the lights, otherwise burning;
Who knows, I might need an ambient surrounding.

In this silent new world where myriad have gone solo,
To pass before me and myriad others will follow,
Please play few of our favourite songs without cue,
Ones of wonderful lyrics and tunes, ones I shared with you.

You probably will miss my cacophonous voice of a jester,
You may also, rather oddly, long to hear my incongruent laughter:
Ones that disregard all known chords and scales!
But most of all – you will miss my endless emails.

Please do not shed tears - not one, not one too many
Or wipe mine, if my eyes by chance spill any
At my own carnival's final hour of bidding farewell;
Think of me instead as more flamboyant than humble,
For the smirk on my face, even when I die, will probably hold sway
And gently whisper cliché in your ears – 'its time for me to go away'.

Forget the societal rituals, and tell everyone:
That there will be no need for a media obituary to be spun
Essays, poems or a remembrance note to my dedication,
As well as there will be no need for a 'milad' congregation.

When I die, if you choose to take on the onerous task
Of opting for only black & white, like a colourless masque,
For publishing my works, magnanimously
Thus honouring my useless rants immensely -
Whatever penned in the form of poems and prose,
I shall keep smiling even under the sleepy dose!

You deserve a lot more than just gratitude
Or my attempts at appreciating your pulchritude,
For you inspired the poet inside, despite life's vicissitudes
In every impossible, unimaginable latitudes and longitudes!

On this day, I'm not dying, moribund or being a sleepyhead –
I am, in all melancholic reality, pronounced 'Dead'
My legacy will nonetheless live, because, undeterred
I do not deserve but I am destined to be heard.

© Ahsanul Akbar, November 2002