My Poetry Book

Ashoke Bhattacherjee
 Table of Contents
Celluloid Dreams
Madness ......................................................................................... 2
Dusk ................................................................................................ 3
Dance of the Fairies ........................................................................ 4
Seeing you ...................................................................................... 5
i ....................................................................................................... 6
Together .......................................................................................... 7
Your Heart to Keep ......................................................................... 8
TGIF ................................................................................................ 9
words ............................................................................................ 10
she ................................................................................................ 11
soulless ......................................................................................... 12
beggar ........................................................................................... 13
Lunar Autopsy ............................................................................... 14
The Thin Red Line ......................................................................... 15
The Ordeal Of Albert Camus ........................................................ 16
Suicide .......................................................................................... 17
Solitude ......................................................................................... 18
Flying In A Blue Dream (with due regards to Satch) ..................... 19
Black ............................................................................................. 20
Celluloid Dreams

1
 Madness

Let us be madmen,
Because sanity sells its flesh on the streets.

Let us be mad,
Because reason usurps even the last morsel
From the orphans' mouth,
To drape its gilded palaces
With the glitter of inanimate metals.

Let us be mad,
And talk to the walls at night,
Because the ears of sanity
Hear only the jingle of coins
And the applause of the herd.

Let us be mad,
And ravage through the sands of time
To discover a forgotten tune,
Because reason will only throw the sand
Into the eyes of those
Who dare to peep into its soul.

Let us be mad,
But let us not forget to pin our hopes
Onto the walls of tomorrow,
As reason will only use the pins
To puncture those hearts
That still beat,
That still bleed.
2
 Dusk

Flakes of evening grey

Float into my dusty room
And, for a shallow while
Make it their home.
Till the emaciated sun
Breathes its last,
Having found peace,
At last.

And for this lonely while

Nothing suffices,
Not words,
Nor music,
Nor images.
Only me
And, this surreal dusk
Sit lonely,
For a while.

3
 Dance of the Fairies
we all do what we do
and in the end there is the madness
the streets are hungry as ever
the crowds burn the effigies of venerated axioms
streams of spit and malice make the air humid
the walruses choke their cries
as the palaces burn with the stench of sad cucumbers
you came here for this?
to swim in rivulets spilling over with tadpoles
once there were the voices
but now they scratch against the empty innards
of a philistines pride
while she waits in the octopuses' lair
and in the rows of boxes with an universe inside each
where the gypsies live
the birds cry out to you tonight
maybe their last cries before their beaks are smashed
against the rueful morning clocks
the pollen in their eyes carry the blame
distilled from persecuted truths
fairies dance on the edges of teacups
what boredom
even the hour hides its excruciating nakedness
the mad bull rips all the fat skirts
and pays a scatological tribute
to the lord of deceit
and the smell of a drugged jasmine stings the skin
lofty serenades of the fiddle that broke probably ruined
your head
and your arboreal soul
4
i peel off eyelids of molasses
and wake sleeping hyenas
their pinhead laughter
pierce termite infested hearts
icicles of rain peel off violent skin
treachery of the night and its endangered name
pigeons hold on to their skeletons with moons in their
beaks
ninjas fall off dead in the gloominess of murky shadows
bald temples with their gilded idols
endure time by drinking tea
searing, buzzing screaming night
only the sad song sitting on your shoulder
can soothe the frayed ends of its madness
the edges of rooftops quiver in that song
and the colour of a dark whisper splashing in your ear
cries wash up against the sky
and rain down on the cemetery
that the child carries in his eye
and the weight of the sky on his shoulders
he doesn't shrug
the seasons and their toxic promises
a spoonful of honey
and the rest is fasting
only the cannibals survive
on the apples of a million eyes
and ants that eat into the moon
fairies dance on the edges of teacups
 Seeing you, I see,
What Adam beheld,
In Eve.
Seeing you The placidity of a lake,
The turmoil of seven seas.
Now I wait,
On the shores of eternity,
As waves from you,
Wash over me.

5
 i

Psycho-somatic analysis of meta-stable equilibrium

Forces intersecting with disproportionate delirium
The curve of 2 dimensional thoughts
Extrapolates to infinite oblivion.
Lost in a labyrinth, a maze without doors
Walking along with ionsomniac shadows
Everything equals square-root of minus one.

6
 Together

our adjectives are different

you like the shore
edges meet there, singularity
i like the forest
it captures the wilderness
that escapes from you

you build your bonfire on the shore

and every once in a while
the wind scatters burnt embers from your fire
and sets ablaze the forest

under the languid clouds and effervescent sky

each time the sea douses the fire
each time the forest grows again

7
 nobody bleeds
cause the rivers have run dry
the fishes swim aimlessly in the night
sleep has one eye on the television
Your Heart to Keep only your heart catapults into my soul
someday i will not look into the mirror
someday i will burn my the pages of my reason
someday the moon will echo only the only the songs
of dust
till then i will preserve your heart.

8
 TGIF

friday night and you're waiting to be saved

end of your line end of all the games you played
the tides of men that wash all the towns
leave just crabs and bottles crawling on the ground
you don't even hear but you can't drown all the
sounds

all the roads that used to take you home

are slippery now moss on stones
you couldn't care you were just a nigger on the
lose
you weren't a beggar and you couldn't choose
you lost your nerve when there was nothing else to
lose

living in two worlds feigning all your sins

you hold on to the cord that binds you to your
dreams
too wounded to pray there's nothing here to take
you try to stay awake but what difference does it
make
the perilous edge of town is the only place that's
safe

9
 sulphur breath of gray automobiles
words petrified dogs n clocks
the ice that falls from her eyes
can it be broken
by the mere dereliction of words ?

10
 she

sweet smell of a wasted tomorrow lingered in her

air
as if phosphor was her only element
only fields of the here and now were her abode in a
wooden earth
fields where the women told tales of burning irises
the mistress of blood
she weeps off all her vulnerability

smokey back alleys

slither under her skin
and make promises of a painless birth
she drinks the blindness and all the fallacies
the bleeding hours slip through her fingers
and fall like drops of green
the lampshades of her eyebrows
crowns the pages of every postmodern tale
hibiscus of her hips echo paradoxes
of subverted greek philosophies

now that you wrap your songs with tears

and paint pictures all afternoon
to hang upside down
you always have the boatman waiting for you
to ferry you across the petals of the stars
you pick one to pay him
but he will accept only the burning embers of your
hair
and slay ten thousand firestorms
to lull you to sleep

11
 its futile
the way wounded archers shoot their arrows
at the drunken moon
the night devours those who devour themselves
and the rest turn and toss
in their pillows of green desire

these days roses shout their names

these days faces are made of newspapers
and everyone wears a necklace of tongues
soulless only tongues are blind
blind as the chrome of dessicated desires

those who climb the rainbow

eat red and the shiver of vertigos
out of the same plate of sky
as wounded urchins

all the dawns curl up inside themselves

when snakes melt away from bodies
everything false
everything falls

12
 beggar

give me a hand
that stretched out in earnest,
has not become a razor's edge.
give me a word,
that says more
than the annals of red history.
give me a laugh
that surges unbridled like the tide,
pregnant with joy.
running parallel we cannot yet meet,
theres miles to go for the sake of our creed.
someday there won't be be a train to board,
till then our little failings, our little needs.

13
 Lunar Autopsy

Under a pagan moon

Vivisection,
The scalpel's cold incision
Into my rotting wounds.

Symphony of cursed souls

Slice the womb of night
And, the bronze God sits,
Cold and alone.

Lizard on the cross,

Christ on the wall.
In the ashes
Lepper messiahs crawl.

Obey the curse,

Burn the cross.

14
 The Thin Red Line

Bounded by the thin red line

Shadows weep and steal my mind,
A million eyes pour into my soul
Fragmented, I try to grasp the whole
Obscure days and the nights swallow me.

15
 Everyday
I repudiate the claim
Of what I am supposed to be.
Everyday
I negate all the reasons
That you can throw at me.

Endlessly,
I try to seek who I am;
But all the hows and whys
Remain elusive,
Cannot define my form.

On existentialism and nihilism

The Ordeal Of Albert Camus While the drunken masses feed,
There's no respite from my grief.
But in the end it's only nothingness
That gives me relief.

So nights I prowl the empty streets,

Trudge sidewalks paved with blood.
Empty thoughts, empty deeds,
Too many shadows on the wall...
Too many empty promises to keep.

The pen it loathes my obscure verse,

Meaningless scratches on scrolls.
Seasons change,
Pages turn,
And it all boils down to nothing at all.

16
 Suicide

In the eerie silence of the night

The poem commits suicide.
Only fatal thoughts remain
And dreams, soaking in the rain...
Darkness blinding your eye.

17
 Solitude

Lurking along the night's periphery

I came across unwanted truths.
Under the doleful sky weeping
The narcissist moon smirking
Dreams burning
The earth's machinery turning
Empty streets reek of decomposed solitude.

18
Flying In A Blue Dream
(with due regards to Satch)

Between the earth and the stars

Hallucinates the sky,
As lover's gaze
Turns every stranger's eyes.
And vanishes silently
The mind's I.

Between the moon and its reflection

Creeps in the night
As the languid water
Unfurls its echoes.

Between the object and the gaze

Wallows the lazy hours,
As clay hands try
To pick a grain of sand.

Between the cloak and the dagger

The killer's frozen arms do not move;
Now it matters little
What he is supposed to do.

Between the hammer and the anvil

The metal turns cold,
Only the skull cracks
After the blow.

Blue pills,
Smoke rings,
cheap thrills,
Still not getting the glimpse.

19
 Black

So many times, drifting in and out of loneliness

I have woken up in your dreams.
I have stared at the walls so long
That they have collapsed on my thoughts.
And trying to salvage them
From underneath the debris,
I have stumbled upon
Remnants of your discarded whispers
And collected them,
To adorn the passages of my mind.

Everyday
I have consumed black.
Injected it, inhaled it, exalted it.
With the shadows i have embraced it.
The rain trickled with the sadness
Of your parting smile,
And the dampness wet my dreams.
In that infantile hour, time revealed its agony
Healing every sorrow, its own wounds wide open.

20