everyone seems normal (until i get to know them)

nervous breakdowns are an intrinsic
part of the art of growing old,
gracefully. the consequence of an
inborn and utterly irrational need
to rationalise the savagely
random threads of destiny
woven into our time-lifelines,
and hubristically try to
“make sense” of this
experimental hell which the all
mighty, perhaps in a fit of pique,
created solely for the amusement of
dissimulating disciples of blessed saint sigmund
and more or less equally blessed fans of saint carl à brunì.

minos - june 2008

 

then they toodled off for a bowl of sushi at the noddel house

hope glimmered like the tempered steel of
a kodachi blade in the nightlight, full
two and a half watts of ether-like reality,
and meandered along a timeline of unwarranted
darkness and despair and dismal misery,
much like that other silvery lining, the
glow worm that you used to want to play with,
but in the end just sliced in two

with a glimmering blade.

minos - may 2008

 

of an ulterior nature?

and for years i acted
like i did not know
what you meant when you told
mother hen how you weren’t really sure
if my dropdead posterior
was worthy of attention or not

minos - may 2008

 

Every day is (not) sun-day

The greatest show on earth unfolds
each morning, just before dawning,
to the lilting tune of
a million and one stone cold
engines revving,
under starter’s orders,
in meager anticipation of a
most glorious three-hour jaunt
from suburbia to town,
resignated drivers nursing backsides
bleeding from hasty ablutionary asswipes
they’ve given themselves
in order to gain pole position.
Bleeding, too, in anticipation
of ass-swipes they’ll surely be
subjected to by smug, superfly honchos
who actually live inside the greatest town
in the whole wide world.

This upside down town
built straight up
on reverse colonialism
for the beau monde to enjoy
la belle époque while prancing
around the bling-bling, soft-headed
but diamond-hard heart of the metrop,
ignoring the despondent cris de cœur
of a peasantry ensconced
in permafrost Untermenschenland,
forsaken by every god in the consolidated
pantheon, clinging like bloodsucked leeches
to risible notions of also
living the high life

tomorrow,

the day after,

or more likely the day after dying
ignominiously of coronary thrombosis
brought on by a surfeit of wage slavery.
And clarified butter.
And gridlock.
And the heartbreak of almost,
but not quite, being able to afford
that ultra-sexy, sixty-nine inch plasma tv.
Leaving behind wives and children
whose best option, the natives all agree,
is to bugger off back home, or else
allow themselves to be sold into servitude.

minos - april 2008

 

The hills were alive

a short walk thru the kaddu-kash by me…

Stoning for survival wasn’t
the only option available in those days.
Angles were wider. Focuses deeper
(or better apertured)
(or easier, anyway).
Targets were cheaper, in
a tactical sort of way.
Freedoms were brighter.
Skylines less hurried.
Sunsets more exotic.
And sun-up the time to
call out to her, call it a day
and turn in for the night.

minos - 16 april 2008

cross-posted over at pak tea house

 

His metabolic processes are now history

this cage in which i let myself
be locked in gelded stupor hangs
off the ceiling off the circular
path-of-fan
swaying gently
in the circulated breeze
in summer months
otherwise calm
not a peep out of me
motionless upon my perch for
nigh on twenty years
like some half-dead parrot
pining for the fjords in
a dated sketch by the blue-blooded artist
formally known as highness

content to be wed
fed
ministered to
told what to do
what to say
what to wear
what to weigh

the saddest thing
in all of this is
i see now wot i might’ve been
yet remain without
the faintest sense of any destiny and

the baddest thing
in all of this is
i hold you whole and solely
responsible
for my own abject capitulationings

(minos - march 2008)

 

My inter alia cloister phobia

And there we were both one again
unwilling to unwind in merry circles
patronised by one and all the beastly clan
including me and Ardent Fifi

who never let me rue the day
we spoke three stoical vows
in curtained quarters
behind sequestered cloisters

unruffled since that day
unlooked upon
unseen beyond until
Defence of Pakistan Day last year

when seven historiography students
from Quaid-e-Azam University
came by to view the stunning
aerial recon photographs

lined up in battle formation
which me and Ardent Fifi’s enthusiastic
short-order cook had displayed
for all to see and dance a jig about

distracting them for long enough
that Only-You and Lonely-Me could finally
be one for just a second or two
or maybe even three

(minos - April 2008)

 

my absurd name (an ancient geek)

your name’s absurd too terribly asinine dactyls
crashing in on each other like dyspeptic waves
engaged in slapsticky bitchfighting
over matters of earth-shattering import
like what constitutes a fair price for
unlovingly crafted prada knockoffs
in sunny dooby’s increasingly dubious
and depressingly overcrowded backstreets

i forgive you your insistence
on taking a mulligan and claiming as justification
the rough and tumble of life in cities where
hardship allowances are under threat
and forgive myself my lusting after
someone as wholesomely vacuous as you
for lust (he said) is brief and briefer still
my dextrous exposition of it all

if i changed my name to afzal jah
or mehmet abdul quddus
would you still be willing to introduce
me to your superficially tractive friends?

(minos - march 2008)

originally posted up at pak tea house on 26.03.08

 

my search continues

a pome of stunning sophist(r)ication by this “damaged head”

 

i tried and tried but
could not find the peace of mind
i sought through you
without a few of the choicer cuts
caressing my brow
both furrowed and ploughed
by my inability to feel
the slightest twinge of gloom at
an utter lack of joy in this
the once deserted now converted paradice
whose poets laureate
do often wonder why is
insufficiently supported by
row upon row of
gilded postmodern columns
of most unromantic despair

(minos - march 2008)

originally posted up at pak tea house on 22.03.08

 

Mr Bates, please come along (alone)

fillet of soul
dover and over
andoveragainwitha
pint full of bitter after
          tastes
lapped up like a cat
on a hot tin roof
ignoring the cold-wave warnings
quite proud of the damage been wrought
by [his] selfish effacing

i rather inclined to belief
in self-employed forms of
seminal relief
slowing down my pace
in the face of increasingly patent
and widely applickable aphrodisiacs
ba-latently sold under
counterproductive pretensions
and the paranoid fear of receiving an
std phone call in the dead of night

(minos - march 2008)

 

while on the subject of style and execution

the full comment i mentioned earlier went thus:

—

Rant away, please. I think the documentary was quite interesting. Mullah FM* looked surprisingly benign and tender-hearted for a terrorist. I read somewhere that they “zibah” their victims because it allows the “rooh” to escape. Considerate.

—

* maulana fuzz lullah

 

Soul, Man

in response to a post by raza up at pak tea hoss on a documentary on pakistan and its perceived state of emergency, qandeel had ended a comment to the post on the subject of some of the more funded-mental segments of the ummah allegedly zibahing their human victims, with the words “…because it allows the ‘rooh’ to escape. Considerate” (qandeel’s words, not maulana fuzz lullah’s)

so, herewith, having considerated:

Escape to Where?
(aka I’m a Soulless Man)

perhaps beyond the rants of krazy k(art)oons
casting aspersions on the loons who
fly into the sky
to see the crescent of a moon
which hasn’t changed
in 1400 years
yet kept cocooned in centrifugal
intuitionary service
of some madman’s army
ever missionary in its zeal
explaining to converted
inner workings of a debt that
to a one above is owed to
be allowed to live and breathe
upon this earthly “paradise”
that all this while without a
deal of quiet shame
is called upon to paint a picture
of us all as typifying
someone else’s notions of
a set of wheels in motion

—–
And now a word from our sponsor:

Ji hanh, sirf mayari Rooh Qabza pee-jiay, kyun ke sirf mayari Rooh Qabza aap ke zibah shuda rooh ko tiskeen pohancha sakta hai. (inna lillahe wa inna ilaihi rajeoon, aur gilaas bhi zara bara wala le kar ana!)

[End of sponsor massage] [sic, wasn’t it?]

 

yaar, it was almost as good as jerking off under the desk!

yesterday’s dreams
of tomorrow’s nightmares
ended at eleven
minutes past twelve
noon
when i picked up
the ornamental glass onion
that stunk up my workspace
with distorted patterns
of other people’s idle thoughts
and shattered it against
my throbbing forehead

(minos - march 2008)

 

to know i’m not

i can’t say why
i can’t say how
i can’t say who’s
behind me now
i can’t be held
responsible
for things i’m not
accountable
to who or why or where or what
it’s who i am i know
not who i’m not

(minos - 24 feb 2008)

 

dimetrically opposed

don’t drink of me twice
cos this once i just might

forget who was you
right before i was me

and you never knew
what it was to be you

with me in the dark
casting doubt on your tears

cos i’ve never known
how to shed even one

(minos - 24 feb 2008)