The Wanton Displacement of Intent

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

 

untitted poyum #83

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

 

cadet bilawal at boot camp

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

 

a dog named wu

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

 

untitted poyum #159

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

 

untitted poyum #109

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

 

On the coronation of Good King Obama the First

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

 

From the Annals of History (one en may be superfluous)

“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

 

Death to Infielders, Round 3

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

 

Death to Infielders, Episode Two

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

 

Death to Infielders!

Starting off with the notes that Sikander Shah
left behind in his haste to escape the insatiable
appetite of applied intelligence, Faizan a.k.a.
Abdullah and his accomplice, one “Yoshimida,”
managed to fashion a rudimentary incendiary device,
which resembled nothing so much as an
aluminium dildo sporting ribbed protection.
This was embarrassing. But they had not
the time (nor the inclination, if truth be told)
to go back to the old, rather dilapidated
drawing board. Thus the intrepid
comrades-in-arms, having fortified each other
with shots of bombastic invective, sallied forth,
subatomic doohickey in tow, arriving

at the scene of a crime shortly after
said crime had been committed. An
inconsequential crime, if you must know.
Standing there in the heart of the unpoliced bazaar,
they held aloft their priapic weapon and,
chanting a chorus to what one eyewitness later swore
was the beat of a well-known Allan Faker number
(she couldn’t recall which), flipped
the switch marked “boom,” causing
much damage to themselves and to the
sixty year old newspaper boy. The ’paper boy’s
rusty bicycle, however, survived the blast,
merely tipping over into a foetid puddle standing
idly by the side of the road.

The first words of their chorus, the
only ones they were able to recite before
the ill-fated detonation, had been drowned out
for the half-dozen or so punters at
Feeja Bhatti’s All-night Roadside Pectopah
by another, more lethal blast:
the noxious dhamaal of a sated Jamal Shah breaking wind.

minos – octomber 2008

 

A Portrait of the Arriviste with a Young Dog

Walking along a winding road
which leads to nowhere in particular,
in need of fresh air and a cup of warm tea,
i met a young man in a Dylan tee shirt
with eyes that were bright and a smile that was fake
and a hat with a brim that was flat
on a head way too small for the hat on his head,

Who told me the way to a long happy life
was the choice that i made at the crossroads ahead,
and that if, when i reached it, i turned back around
he’d meet me for coffee at Malabar Joe’s
on the fifty-first floor of Le Crappé Hotel,
but he wouldn’t hang about for too long, for the
java Joe brews don’t wait for swine like meself.

At which point i wound up my arm like a spring and
punched him full force on the tip of the brim
of his hat, then carried on merrily humming a tune, which
Mummy-ji told me, later that day, sounded almost
but not quite like a song from the film on the
life of the fella who fell far from grace right into
the arms of pious and holy Pir Asaf Jah,

Who gave him a kiss and a leash not too long
and took him along for short walks on the lawns
of the palace he built to commemorate
his liberation of citizens he loves more than life.
And the rain that always came pouring down,
as if right on cue, could not wash away
the rank smell of cant.

minos – august 2008

 

waking up to a desert sky the colour of gloom

good morning mister grey sky, and what
have you brought for me today? no doubt a
brand new bag of party tricks for all us
empty-headed wannabes to open up
and play.
with.
without the fear that small things bright
and beautiful might suddenly pop out,
as they often do in late night dreams i have
of crystal skies of deepest blue,

like the ones they have in deepest africa, or
in the campy fantasy i have of you and me
in wonderland, strolling hand in hand past
scarlet rambutans which, eaten, wash away
the acrid taste of urban sprawl.

and something private that you whisper in my ear
reminds me of those escapades unembarked upon
because we’ve never really known
how far to go
in sublimating desire into the utterly divine pursuit
of orgasmic shopping sprees in gargantuan shopping malls
filled to bursting with wave upon wave of unsmiling punters.

minos – july 2008

 

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