and it’s not that
i want to see you bleed
it’s that i want to be the one
who makes the wound
do you see how power
differs from action?
do you believe in addictions
other than your own?
we are all
so fucking desperate
this man who writes
to tell me what
he’s sacrificed for his art
these children
who weren’t even born when
the land mines were planted
their missing limbs and
ruined faces
and small painful deaths
all of the reasons i
hate what i’ve become
or these animals in
their tiny cages
and the way they go insane
the way money
exchanges hands
twenty bucks he says
as his girlfriend walks into the room
and i think i might know her
i think i may have
been here before
was promised nothing but
came back again
again
learned finally that
hatred was
the only drug i needed
to feel alive
by John Sweet
and sometimes
they write to talk about
discipline
and sometimes to lecture
about the need for
hope
sometimes
i send them pictures
of nuns hanging raped and
murdered from the trees
of central america
we all need to
believe in something
I expect we will always argue about
fixed conclusions of a chair —
that image of defeat so raw
it could be hanging, stinking beef
unabated by the wind.
Call it fealty to dreams, to rivers
drying as we speak —
if you guess I’ll yield
to rolling wheels with arioso grace,
you’ve not met my real soul
who thinks that even tortured legs are still
a poem with missions in their syllables.
You will say I have more strength
than monuments of will I know.
You will say that chancre is a cornered bird
in rooms we never knew were there.
And I will say I’m featherless,
a brittle corpse that mourns
the facts of wings erased.
I will see these body parts
as idle, feckless, useless strings.
Health is blind and illness sees
what happens to the fallen leaf.
I won’t be sitting happily
in soft green sarsaparilla grass
salving the going bone —
reading a book clothed
in chamois leather flesh —
liking who I am inside.
Ugly as this honesty may be
to such defensive love,
I will be staring at lightless stars
glued to an onyx sky — reaching
for a .38, if only in a metaphor.
When you alight from the train
look for Ramdhun, the rickshaw-wala
Tell him you want to go to chowk and
pay him two rupees no more
When you come to the stream
take your shoes in your hands
hold the rope on the log bridge
or you will get wet
A small walk along the cowpath
and you will reach the village chowk
Ask for Vaidji. Everyone knows him
as he gives them medicines
The village boys will follow you
as you will be dressed strangely
in city clothes
Let them
If you see me playing with other girls
or doing some chores
dont stare or call me by name
They will be shocked
Just lower your gaze
and walk past briskly
towards the house
I will follow later
When you meet Baba
talk about other things
not about us
Or he will think you are brash
When he talks about
the days of the British Raj
look impressed
And ask him to tell you more
If you do all this
and dont make mistakes
he will give you my hand
in marriage
[b]Author’s Note[/b]
Ashok Gupta
Jakarta, September 2002
as*******@******co.uk
Published in –
Reflections Jan 03, Liberty Grove Review July 03, Poetry Billboard July 03 (Also Editors Pick)
Accepted by Slowtrains, Muse Apprentice Guild
