Jan 22, 2012
her spangly new tights
couldn’t ferret away
certain unpleasant traits
i won’t say which
gentlemen such as i
post-colonially proper in
our studied expression of values victorian
do not stoop to wanton expositions
of the embarrassing faults
of members of the fairer sex
no matter how dark they be
or how niggardly
or how asinine
minos – jan 2012
May 23, 2011
if you and i were left marooned
on a sunny desert isle
with nothing between us but
frail modesty and fear of fragile commitment
i would cast you in
the hackneyed role of sultry femme fatale
in the yet to be written play which has
haunted my sleepless nights
for longer than i can remember
minos – may 2011
May 5, 2011
i want to dance with you
in the moonlight
cheek to cheek
on an empty beach
at low tide
the gentle ripple of the briny surf
in counterpoint
to a choir of angels
serenading us in heavily-accented french
minos – april 2011
Jul 21, 2010
the blindness was not new
the smile was old too
the times were modern
but only in a beavis and butthead kind of way
snorted expletives were the order of the day
seeing became a curse
peeing was worse
three sheets to the wind all the time
trying to forget about those ninnies holed up
in sunny tuscaloosa
morals loose
morale was looser
a couple of insane losers from tando allah yar
parked by the side of a four-way street
afraid to proceed along the path
of leased resistance
minos – july 2010
Jul 19, 2010
i’m marking time with inglorious ing-like suffixes
while a tension, of sorts, pervades an atmosphere
perverted by subversive acts of the nose-picker,
absentmindedly picking roses
for her one true lover – the one too busy
speed-reading blood’s a rover from cover to cover
she does know, though, that he’s allergic;
but she’s not to be sneezed at, according to
sheeda’s somewhat twisted logic
minos – july 2010
May 28, 2009
banning the bums was a novel idea,
at the time. bombs were going off
with monotonous regularity, portraits
were being painted, in luscious hues,
in loving memory of dearly departed saviours,
off to fight new wars on the shores of tripoli
and other, lovelier places. cataracts had formed
around our collective viewpoint, so the images
seemed prettier then, more alluring, dreamlike
in their innocence. our own innocence was lost
long ago. it just took us a while to realise.
and then we cried our blurry eyes out,
but to no avail. our own war was over,
we had not won, the battlefield reeked
of calumny, and pious arbiters of secular taste
chanted impotent prayers in a language
not heard since prophets roamed the earth
in search of impressionable fodder.
minos – may 2009
May 5, 2009
i met with an accident
somewhere between 4 am
and six last night.
i was trying to exit my dream
and she barged in,
running into me in the
revolving door which separates
fiction from reality. boy,
was she a stunner! at first
i coudn’t believe my luck,
as we danced around in
equicircular bendy motion,
but soon came to realise that
dreams can’t really be shared
without compromising the
fragile integrity of the chimera
minos – april 2009
Mar 25, 2009
some mournings were better than others
to get out of bed for
and some mornings
you couldn’t find a fella willing to wave
at fighter jets flying in formation
minos – feb 2009
Dec 28, 2008
then what was perpendicular to the ground
underwent underground transfo
mation into sound principles
understood without foundation out f bounds
interspingling into utterly insipid and
fictitiously coerced out of ever imagining
we could be anything other than my uncle joe
and your auntie-ji
minos – december 2008
Nov 25, 2008
serpentine along the wooded path
a groove laid down in time to you
and your inter-cendiary altercations
with ahmetergun and the man from la mancha
and his own man eeyore. legendary
altercations spun into ever
twining tailgating of threadbare impulses
frayed at the centres but not at the seam
and i a dull and muddle-headed curse upon
all and no one in particular
to look on it later in retrovian vanity
you might be excused your bad taste
but not your deplorable vulnerability to charm
me, noss! – nov 2008
Nov 20, 2008
then i wake up in the morning
turn my head while i’m still yawning
whisper words of wisdom
in a language neither you or i
had ever heard before
and you sigh
and roll over
into arms
aching to hold you all this while
minos – nov 2008
Nov 20, 2008
cartwheeling along my merry way
to parts hitherto unknown, i paused
for a moment to collect my thots,
which had been jostling around my
half-fried bheja in all the
upside-down-and-all-arounding, happy
(my thots) to be allowed a chance to
go walkabout, instead of gathering dust
amongst the farther reaches of
my greying matter.
i had lost my bearings, which
in and of itself was not
a worrying thing, for as i told you
up above, i had started out by
putting on my explorer’s hat (lost
somewhere along the way, i have to say).
my thots, though free, stayed jumbled,
but my eyes were captivated by
the sight of mother T and chandragupta
(vikramaditya, not maurya) strolling
arm in arm through a forest of red and white
and blueish-green flags. at eye level.
red flags flying a few inches
below bluegreen or white, blood
dripping from every other
into hand-cut ravines which fed
a raging river, full three inches wide,
running between my legs.
the happy couple looked over and smiled.
i waved. they waved back, and
as they slowly disappeared so did the flags.
one by one. until all that was left
was the crimson river flowing under me
towards a sea of tranquil fear,
which i recognised as being
the one i sail through in my virtuous
and virtual yacht on nights when
hope and faith have left me alone and
buggered off to couple violently in
the uneasy silence left behind
by some uncharitable old fogey’s
gratuitously snarly harley-davidson super glide.
often before leaving they’ll hog-tie me, loosely
speaking, but lately they’ve been less
concerned with my nighttime circumnavigations
around unpierced earlobes sagging
under the weight of anticipation.
minos – november 2008
Oct 24, 2008
“Akbar Badshah ne sasstaatay huay kaha, ‘Birbal
ye kumbakht itni sasti na hoti
isse mein shahi nasha qaraar daita’ ”
Jub ahsaas hua ke i wasn’t alone when i
said these words out loud, a hint of
fowl play entered the proceedings
(only some of which exited through the
window, three-quarters open), followed by
a peal of silence which muted
the appealing sense of occasion
like a bullet unaccounted for
in the chamber of a silenced twenty-two
shot accidentally in the foot
thus hobbling in to work the next morning
and disabling my faculty to proceed with
plans already under way to pluck the
forbidding apple of alluring fruitiness
who otherwise goes by the name
of Miss Marina d’Augmentina, late of
Sunnier Climes Travel and Tourism Agency
minos – octomber 2008
Oct 12, 2008
i once went to see a fight,
welterweight i’m sure, in New York City.
Madison Square Garden, no less.
MSG! The majic aji no-moto?
duhhh… YES-moto!
No ringside seat. Nowhere near, in fact.
In fact, from where i sat i could just about
make out the shapes of two figures
bobbing up and down above the heads of
two lovebirds making out in the seats
in front of me. There’s no telling
what will turn a couple on. Every now and then
the stadium would erupt with a roar
or a boo. Clearly one of the boxers wore
the White Hat and one the Black. On the whole,
it wasn’t much better than online SmackDown.
The fighters themselves were both airbrushed
a wholesome shade of tan in the promo posters,
which advertised Hispanic-sounding names
a little more flamboyant than Tomas O’Cruz
and Pedro Lopez. i remember that one of them,
to wit Señor O’Cruz, looked more Dera Ismaili than
anything you’d expect to crawl in to the Homeland
from south of the border.
Thus it came as no big surprise when i read
one evening in The Times (The New York Times,
of course), that a prizefighter by the name of
Tomaso el Fuentes d’Cruz
aka The Craven Jackal
aka Maulvi Badtameezuddin
aka Kunn-toot-ta Shehzada
aka Sheeda Kharpainch
had been arrested in connection with the spate
of suicide bombings which had rocked
the foundations of the Motherland
back in late ’08. It went on to say that the
Packy regime had initiated extradition proceedings,
to which Homeland Security had not responded
favourably. Yeah, well.
i might have shed a tear or two, in memoriam,
if anyone i know had been blown apart in
that awful killing-field-spree. But what the hell,
i’m a Citizen now. Have the passport and
voter registration card to prove it. My parents
weren’t born Packy, and i won’t die one. Hallelujah
with whipped cream and a cherry on top!
i turned to Joe Kyoto,
the twenty-something Afro-Chinese
trainee bartender at my local,
and asked him to pour me a
double shot of hundred-proof tequila.
This i quaffed sans lemon or salt
or chaser or cheer
to celebrate the triumph
of something or other
over something else.
minos – octomber 2008
Oct 12, 2008
My son, my son,
the only one that God has blessed me with,
the one I nurtured in my womb,
then nursed and fed, and laughed and played with,
stayed up nights when fever scorched his slender frame,
is with me now no more, being taken from my side
by infidels who shame the name of faith
professing to believe in God; the very one
that I myself have worshipped all my life.
How can that be? My God is merciful, benevolent,
believes in peace, and advocates compassion
towards each and every man and woman and child.
Yet these “believers,” these sanctimonious deceivers,
who invoke the name of God, my God,
before committing wanton acts of butchery
are hailed as saviours of our holy creed,
accorded rank of martyr to The Cause.
Whose cause? Yours? Not mine.
My son, my son, my only one,
who slaved away in honesty, without complaint,
both night and day to earn enough to feed himself,
and me, is gone. Forever.
All that’s left behind of him lies here
in front of me, a dismal, lifeless legacy,
dyed in blood; his woolly hat,
the one I mended time and time and time again,
the rest of him disintegrated by
a man who chanted, “God is great!”
before he blew himself and all around
to kingdom come.
You say these demons are not infidel, but truly
men of faith whom God himself does venerate.
If this be true then I myself would rather burn in
fernal flames of hell for all eternity,
than crave eternal refuge in a paradise
that welcomes Godless creatures such as these.
minos – octomber 2008
The Bugle Episodes
kinks would have made it safely out of there if the seventeen elephants he'd stuffed inside his attach-ee case hadn't gone all jazzy in a miles kind of way and started trumpeting last night's impressive achievements on a contrapuntal voyage of self-discovery
