Special Collection during the Pandemic - Page 2

Frank G. Karioris (he/they/him/them) is a writer and educator based in Pittsburgh whose writing addresses issues of friendship, masculinity, and gender. They are Visiting Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh. Their academic work has appeared, amongst others, in the Journal of Gender Studies, Journal of Men’s Studies, and Culture Unbound. Their poetic work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Collective Unrest, Maudlin House, Sooth Swarm Journal, and Crêpe & Penn amongst others. They are a regular contributor to Headline Poetry & Press.

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Finding joy during the pandemic

Bacon in the oven,
& biscuits by a sister & friend
& gravy made on the stove.

If I told you this
as a way of shining light
on the sharing of love,

think more of those
actions you have done
to be together as

couples, as family,
as kin born outside of blood
but made in life.

Day 6: A woman across the alley

Standing on the small back balcony,
            overlooking in the distance the Sears,
a woman across the alley & up her back patio
            is wearing a face mask & blue plastic gloves.

She stands in her white bathroom, putting
            a bag of something into a bin
before              heading
            back inside briefly,
leaving the door fully             open.

Walking down, to take out the boxes
to the recycling can, in blue,
            the deck for the apartment below
is littered with
            cut chunks of hazel hair.

This, they must think, is the way to find
a cure, a moment outside of the times
                                                we were together.

Aubade for my students in a pandemic

Each morning I wake up
& each morning I have another
email from students with their
stories of difficulty & pain.

Each morning I send them
my positive thoughts & tell
them that they are right &
valid in the disquiet & grief.

Each morning I tell them
to try & take time to relax,
whatever that might look
like for them in these days.

Each morning I see it, getting
worse with more dead & ill,
& fear taking over greater parts
of each of our consciousness.

Each morning I wake next
to someone I care about & worry
what will happen to them, us,
in the coming days, weeks, months.

Each morning I try to put these
worries to the back of my head,
to let them float away quietly
so that I may send my students words
of kindness, gentleness, & support.

Each morning I know they are
worse off than before & I have less ability
to sooth or help them through what will
pock their lives, today & tomorrow.

Pieces elegiac, pt 3

Compress those
            touches

into yourself.

            *
Touch sky’s
            lightning

to keep yourself.

            *
Oh bodies,
            they are more difficult

than we know.

            *
Sand fallen
                                    & fallow
the shore is further afield

            *
Excitement over joy
                        to be spilled

on tables & over coffee,

            *
A pinhole eye,

            spiral phonograph

plays on.

 
Watching her paint // joy

Hold it in your hands,
   those blues & whites that
overshadow the
  midnight sky out the window.

Touch it with your
            fingers where rain
kisses ground
     & bricks meet mortar.

Those black & white
photos of Picasso
            which seemed so
out of place
     hold my mind now with
depth & wonder
          & I wonder what worlds
you are opening.

A old ceramic white
water jug
            now streaked
with a small crack
    holds all the brushes face down
waiting to return to canvas.

Published on April 18, 2020. © Author.

Born in 1973 in the Paris suburbs, Jean-Frédéric Chevallier is a good example of what globalisation, or, better said, mondialisation can do when it works happily, that is on the left side: philosopher, theatre director and video artist, owner of three Bachelors degrees, two M. Phil and one double PhD, Chevallier was briefly lecturer at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in France and, at a longer length, professor at National University of Mexico. He is living in India since 2008, where he co-heads the tribal organisation Trimukhi Platform (dedicated to produce contemporary art forms and original thought) and the Franco-Indian magazine Fabrique de l’art. With more than 40 dance-theatre-video performances to his credit so far, he has published the essays Approche et de définition d’un tragique du 20ème siècle (ANRT, 2002), El Teatro hoy: una tipologia posible (Paso de Gato, 2011) and Deleuze et le théâtre: rompre avec la représentation (Les Solitaires Intempestifs, 2015) as well as the movie Drowning Princess (DVD L’Harmattan, 2009). More information: http://trimukhiplatform.org. Contact: jfc@trimukhiplatform.org

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

At the Beginning of Spring War Was Over

1.
Weather was good.
We no longer knew why.
Maybe we never knew it.
The stars were twinkling without being seen.
Rarely it was raining.
We were dying of nothing.
We were no longer thinking.

2.
You were frightened.
You waited.
Then you would have chosen to no longer be afraid in order to no longer wait.
You would have chosen to no longer be sad and frightened.
You would have chosen…
You left.
You all left.
Beyond the mountains of your fathers, beyond the desert, beyond the oceans…
You would have chosen to measure your difference, you would have chosen to no longer be responsible for the death of others, you no longer wanted to abandon others to their death…
You would have chosen to leave, not with the idea of not coming back, but with the necessity of escaping death through joy.
YOU WOULD HAVE FELT SUDDENLY AND SWEETLY THAT YOU NEED AND YOU HAVE, DEEP WITHIN YOU, TO LIVE IN LOVE, FOREVER.

Translation from the French into the Bengali: Sukla Bar Chevallier

The audio records of At the Beginning of Spring War Was Over were released on April 14, 2020 on https://soundcloud.com/trimukhiplatform/sets/poetry-tracks as part of #HomemadeJoy, an initiative by Trimukhi Platform to weave relationships through distance, from one home to another.

Deserted

See the film on Youtube: https://youtu.be/pJeVX236FDk

About DESERTED
Shot with Trimukhi Platform performers in a red stone quarry and amidst Mohua trees on the outskirts of Borotalpada village, West Bengal, India, DESERTED is the new video art film by Jean-Frédéric Chevallier. Originally planed as a video installation, the film is to be watched in loop. It has been released on Trimukhi Platform’s Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/trimukhiplatform on March 22, 2020 as part of #HomemadeJoy

Credits
direction, text, cinematography, sound design and editing Jean-Frédéric Chevallier
performers Dhanajoy Hansda, Joba Hansda, Ramjit Hansda, Salkhan Hansda, Sukul Hansda, Surojmoni Hansda
production Sukla Bar Chevallier for Trimukhi Platform
recorded voice Ruchama Noorda
art advices Joseph Danan, Ruchama Noorda
video assistant and script Dhananjoy Hansda
sound assistant and electric set-up Sukul Hansda

Jan Gresil Kahambing is an Instructor of Philosophy and Museum Curator of Leyte Normal University, Philippines. He holds the following degrees: Master of Arts in Philosophy (summa cum laude) in 2019 at Holy Name University, Philippines, Bachelor in Sacred Theology (magna cum laude) in 2016, Licentiate in Philosophy and Bachelor in Classical Studies (Rector’s Award, magna cum laude) in 2013, and Bachelor in Philosophy (magna cum laude) in 2011 all at the University of Santo Tomas, Philippines. He was awarded Best in Poetry last 2012 at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Santo Tomas. Some of his poems in print are as follows:

• The Faces of an End (The Owl, 2016)
• One Vanguard as Two (The Owl, 2015)
• The Dangers of Falling in Love (The Owl, 2015)
• These Emblems of Love (Benavides, 2014; republished, 2015)
• Thy Arced Evangel (Inter Nos Magazine, 2014)
• When in a Manger (Inter Nos Bulletin, 2014)

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Ode to a Thought

I thought about you today. As I did yesterday.
I guess I’m still going to think about you again tomorrow.
A day in the life of an abandoned over-thinker
Do I tell you? Nah, you don’t even care
My free trial was over anyway.
Tightrope-walking on Elm Street, you know.
Because you never sleep, quite the night Adarna,
luring men over your charms
but cannot lure your broken past.

You like it.
“I am an unreachable star in the dead of night,” you say
Men marvel over your brightness,
daunted while you remain secretly flattered,
flustered, feeding on their vibes of servitude and bewilderment.
And every night you keep on
haunting, coming and going

But no you’re no ghost, nor a trophy, nor a star.
It takes a little distance to realize that disappointment.

You’re just like anybody else.
Mediocre, average, and a mimic of all your favorite TV shows and books.

Memories gather in this background
No mountains, skies, and hues of majesty
only sheer abyss and vacuum
As if I am writing from Uranus and you from Pluto
Stars somehow spread our dust of words
brought them all together.
Interstellar with little and no interaction.
All I have are the specks before you left.

What is even the point
of talking to someone from a former planet?
You’d only tell me random things,
patronizing, casual, like all others.
Some are lies. Some are half-truths.
Some even recycled things from your recycled world,
photos of your bewitched image
– but an image nonetheless.

You’re dying, of course, from a virus of your own making
a void of nevermore, inciting nothing out of nothing
Your only recourse is to seek accolades
from those you trust and thrust.
You lie in the comfort of your own prison,
which is slowly growing and expanding
as you suck everyone around you in it.
All the while as you keep on
haunting, coming and going.
But no you’re no illusion, nor a prisoner, nor impassive with life.
It takes a closer look to realize that disappointment.

With the hopes and dreams of your favorite TV shows and books,
you have them too.
Like a true politician on TV,
you also rub shoulders and appear concerned to some,
representing the insignificant.
“I am with you in this”
“We have the same taste”
“You are more beautiful”
– seem like the mediocre
and average mimicry of human affairs.

There is brilliance in your synthesis,
modifications of evidential truths,
regurgitations of folk wisdom.
Seems like what an embodiment
of what an after-thought would be

You’re just like anybody else.
A fraud, a commoner, and a part of the bandwagon of indecisive fools.

The hypocrisy of your leadership reeks
of havoc in your bewitched image
You want to be ideal, or was it a “pure orb of consciousness”?
You fight for your kind, of course
You lead a battle with no assurance of winning
so you keep on
haunting, coming and going.

All roads lead to one,
but you roam in labyrinthine expansions,
as you maintain your prison,
schizophrenic, bipolar, solipsist
You look into other ways,
the roads that lead to paradise,
the land of the free, or a Victorian land
with free teas and ubiquitous watchmen
You struggle to detach from your place
a place where the sun also rises
Yes, the path to salvation, you yearn
But your indecisions only bring forth the best intensions
that lead to hell, of no eternal return

I keep overthinking about
what had happened to us
I thought about
how I could also blame myself
I was haunted
as you came and went on
I thought you were with me in this
I thought we had the same taste
I thought I was special to you
Turns out, I put myself in zugzwang

I didn’t realize what a waste of time it was,
investing in a wrong gamble
amidst the shortness of this life
this tightrope existence in a pandemic
It was a perfect game and jest,
played only by the most committed
of players and jesters

They say romance only lasts for 5 years
4 years for me was enough
A perfect quartet for four holy weeks
You had words I hadn’t known,
a Scrabble match set for me to fail.
Turns out I couldn’t play schadenfreude in one turn,
but you could.

But no you’re no player, nor regret, nor a wizard of immortal words.
It takes a closer look to realize that disappointment.

So I thank you for being kind
You had the pleasant niceties of an acquaintance.
You were always nice, unperturbed
until one disturbs your fragile “orb of consciousness”
or was it your messianic ego?

You are the duality of water.
The essence of a woman was it?
– saint and slut, smart and senseless?
You had the honesty of a dead person.
The double-edged sword to arty meta-narratives.
You had the humanity of a bored Lady Pegasus.
That was it.

You had the audacity
to call your men names and assign them characters
from your favorite TV shows and books.
I thought I could be N but I am not
I couldn’t even be J
But you were the alphabet
You were E, L, M, and B
Boorish on Elm Street

You were all these
Until you left
Until you were petrified into something else
Until you vanished
This is beyond disappointment

Fortune, of course, is a woman
Machiavelli was right
Fortunately, you couldn’t turn it around
This opportune time
When you couldn’t handle my naivety
So I’m sorry for not turning in
If you hadn’t shown me the fortune
I wouldn’t also turn myself in

Aside from the mediocre moments
of our sparse and veiled conversations
From a distant universe
Where I couldn’t sing “If these sheets were states”
And the barrel of tears I had already shed
which were not enough to say love in a time of corona
not enough to push my giddy heart
not enough to say some logical sense
These are my thoughts since the day you left

The same thoughts I had yesterday. The same thoughts I have today.
I hope I am not going to think about you again tomorrow.

Published on April 15, 2020. © Author. 

Paul Majkut, Ph.D., C. Phil is Professor in the College of Letters and Sciences. Department, Arts and Humanities, Torrey Pines South Campus, National University, San Diego. Born in East St. Louis, Illinois, he now lives in San Diego, California. He has also lived for long periods in Canada, Mexico, the People’s Republic of China, and the Middle East. He is widely recognized around the world as a respected media theorist. He founded the International Society for Phenomenology and Media in 1999, and he spent a decade as a journalist, winning numerous awards from the Los Angeles Press Club, the Southern California Press Club, San Diego Press Club, the Society for Professional Journalists, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and other professional organizations prior to teaching at National University.

• Fulbright Scholar (Argentina);
• Fulbright Senior Specialist (Finland, Germany, Mexico, Estonia), 2003-present;
• National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, Oxford, 2010, Cambridge, 2003.

Contact: pmajkut@nu.edu

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

From Verse and Adverse

Dirge of the Dead Letters

What does it profit a man
or a woman,
her fingers five kinds of literate madness
moving in a slow handful of purposeful sorrow
shaking out the facts of decease
like rheumatoid snakes
or
her hand cutting with blue-ink ballpoint
as indelible for me
as a chisel on a gravestone:
“Karl died last April.”
What does it profit, huh?

—her hands that in an ancient passion once
were lithe snakes full of touch.

Here I am in a non-profit outfit,
disemboweling with a brass-plated letter opener
return envelopes
containing cards
with check-off boxes
we sent out to members:
$10 $20 $50 donation
or
Remove My Name from the Mailing List
and piling the checks
on a fake-woodgrain, pressed-wood desk.
I’ll pour their little souls’ good intentions
into a data-processing spreadsheet.

And sometimes there’s a hand-written message.
“Take Louis off your mailing list.
He died in June.”
Is Louis less a member now?
What does it profit a man
or a woman
to live?
“Mary passed away. You do good work.”

All the curves of the letters are gone,
replaced by the acute edges of palsied calligraphy.
The hand has disremembered
its grade-school exercises of
rows of circles on lined paper
to practice curves.
Only the up-and-down cuneiform jaggies
are now inherent in the blue-ink ballpoint.
I suppose the memory of gracious curves
was left that Wednesday evening
in the Episcopalian oak pew when
Karl Mary Louis
was remembered
by the race of pallbearers who
survive temporarily.

The hand on this card has
taken up with Druid runic scribes!
Occult masters who
teach her snakes to be cryptic.
I suppose
that’s what I most appreciate, the
cryptic intelligence and
blue-ink ballpoint memories
of the aged survivors who
take on that oldest profession,
mourning and pallbearing.
What does it profit a man
or a woman
to live
except to remember?

Either this surviving hand is very old or
the pen is lopsided or erratic.
“Deceased. Please delete from mailing list,”
Norma writes in blue-ink ballpoint
on the solicitation return card our
non-profit mailed out.
I’m thinking about what it
does or doesn’t
profit a man
or a woman.

Here’s a tear for Mary who
mourns Honey
deceased at 87.
“He died last April. He was 87. Please
remove his name from your mailing list.”
What does it profit a man
or a woman
to live
except to remember
and share that memory
with the race of good pallbearers?

I place the card with grim sententia by
shaky hand written, the sure, sad hand,
in a separate place,
a little graveyard on my desk
with neat rows of the rank-and-file dead
with white-paper solicitation return tombstones
with blue-ink chiseled epitaphs:
“Please remove
Bill’s name from your mailing list. My beloved died
last spring. I am Ruth, his wife.”

And who will write Ruth’s sorrow except Ruth?
Who other than Ruth can write that particular sorrow?
Perception: sensation accompanied by memory.
“I am moving to a rest home
near my daughter in Ohio. Mr. Bartleby died
last year.
Please remove his name from your list.
Remove my name, too.”

Published on April 15, 2020. © Author. 

Dr. Manisha Mishra teaches at the Department of English, Rama Devi Women’s University, Bhubaneswar as Assistant Professor. Prior to this, she was an Assistant Professor of English at National Law University, Odisha (from 2009 to June 2018) where she taught Language, Literature and Films. Dr. Mishra is an alumnus of Hyderabad Central University, Manorama School of Communication, Kerala. She has published two books namely “The Red Stilettos and other poems” (2018) and “Reflections on Literary Trends and Films in India” (2018). International houses have published her monographs “Love in the Art of D.H Lawrence”(2010) and “The Miraculous, the Occult and the Phantasmal”(2010). She has published about 50 articles in The Times of India and The Indian Express on culture, health, lifestyle, society and youth. She is also a language trainer and writes travelogues, poems and short stories in English and Odia. Currently, she also writes features and movie reviews for Odishabytes.com as a guest columnist. Contact: itsmissmani@gmail.com

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

NOT ME

Death beckons
I say it’s not me
It is his turn, her turn
The old man in the hospital
The woman in the Burkha
Unknown faces, distant places
Not me.

Cases rise ceaselessly
A bird on my window sill
Rain drops pit-pit patter
A knock on my door
I say it’s not me
Go find someone
Whose time has come.
Are you really looking for me?

Days pass, hoarding stuff
I wander aimlessly
Reminiscing my lived life
Is that all?
Unfulfilled dreams
Constipated hopes
Nauseous aspirations
Just go away!
It cannot be me.

SILENCE

The eerie silence
Interrupted often
By the chirping of birds
Sitting in isolation
A fruit bat visits me
When no one does
To taste the custard apple
In my garden.

Television sets honking
Have overtaken
The urgent blaring of vehicles
Zooming past the road
Across my balcony.

I can finally hear
The kajal-stained cuckoo
My niece imitates its song
Where were these melodies earlier?

Silence and contemplation
Reflection and perspective
Have come back
Into our lives.

TOUCH

Hugs disappeared
People embrace in trepidation
No longer a consolation touch
A shoulder to weep
You are now wary
To caress my hair.

You touch your mobile screen
Your fingers shivering
To feel my presence
Next to you.
I pensively wonder
Where were you
All these years!

You see me often
With a curious quest
About my well-being
From the Facebook window
I quietly wipe my eyes
Staring at your profile picture.

Will things ever be the same
If I am relieved
From this struggle of loneliness
Of my isolation ward.

Published on April 14, 2020. © Author. 

John Thieme is a Senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia (UK). He previously held Chairs at the University of Hull and London South Bank University and has also taught at the Universities of Guyana and North London and been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Turin, Hong Kong and Lecce. His books include Postcolonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the Canon, Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place, studies of Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul and R.K. Narayan, and The Arnold Anthology of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. He is a former editor of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. His creative writing has been published in Argentina, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Malaysia, Mauritius, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. His collection Paco’s Atlas and Other Poems was published by Setu Press (Pittsburgh) in 2018.

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Five Poems

April 2020

All houses are Gothic,
when those we love
no longer climb their stairs.

All corridors are haunted,
when the breeze blows unattended
between half-open doors.

All dogs are orphans,
when no owners
take them for their walks.

But the varicoloured tulips,
still stretch upward to the sky
and the cherry blossom casts
its fleeting beauty to the wind.

B.C.E.

I remember B.C.E.
as if it were yesterday,
though it ended several weeks ago.

I revisit it each day on television,
shouting at the ghosts of people,
gathered close in careless groups,
exhorting them to keep apart.
So many apparitions
from an unenlightened time of love.

I have lived two life-times:
one in the now-departed years of B.C.E.;
the other in the present, yawning days of C.E.

Articles accumulated in my house
close ranks against their former friend, the postman,
who brings new debris from the walking world
that breeds distrust in these suspended days.

Racoon

May I tell you about the racoon.
an uninvited guest who gate-crashed several parties –
an anagram, unseen, yet ever-present in the room?

Shall I tell you of the rumours
that surround his litany of loss?
They say that he spiked drinks
and those who drank them
never went to work again.

They say he multiplied in thousands
and travelled here from there and everywhere,
from east to west, or was it west to east?

No one knows …
Best not to tell these stories, couched in gossip?
But we need the information,
to trap him any way we can.

Screens

He was never a very tactile person,
but in these days of virtual contact,
he wants to reach into his devices,
to hold the people that he meets online.

He was never quick to show emotion,
but filled with unrequited love,
he craves the holograms of strangers,
airbrushed icons from the past.

In the Future

I shall remain unbroken
on this headland by the sea.
I’ll stay strong until this trauma
Is the stuff of history.

And when the tempest passes
and the world is born anew,
I’ll build a small log cabin,
from the jetsam on the beach.
In the future we’ll embrace there,
when your arms aren’t out of reach.

Published on April 14, 2020. © Author. 

Dr. Veena Mani is a storyteller and works as an Assistant Professor of English at Stella Maris College (Autonomous), Chennai. She has published journal articles and book chapters in the area of gender and cultural studies. She completed her PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Madras and masters degree in English from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. She was awarded Fulbright Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship in 2016 and spent her fellowship period of nine months with South Asia Institute, University of Texas at Austin. She writes in both English and Malayalam and her works are published in several online platforms . Contact: veenavimalamani@gmail.com

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

A Late Freedom

Are you alright child?
Thanks much for calling,
not everyone checks on me, you know,
after your uncle is sadly gone.

Two months passed good only
I slept well over the clean sheets.
I cooked vattipulusu
after twenty two bleak years.

They closed the liquor outlets you know?
Bars too, I saw in the television.
Hare Ram! How uncle would have stayed
home with me and no drinking?

You young girls have hotline
numbers that listen to you if beaten.
Golden times, avvuna?
May his soul rest in peace.

A street scene

On top of a four storied,
forty year old building,
under the clear blue skies
and wrapped in crisp thin air,

I saw a sight of a lungi-clad man,
a worker, walking down my street.
A cane basket in hand
and a cigarette on his wearied lips.

He carefully picked the plastics
deposited by the on-duty maids
in the dumpsters across
the French-windowed apartments.

I sipped my Ceylon tea,
looking at the watch,
readying my steel plates
for the call of the nation.

Ordinary Mornings

A spoonful of tea leaves
into the boiling milk,
A tiny piece of cinnamon,
makes my ordinary morning.

Sipping the tea, I read
the unedited poems,
handed down to me,
from a generation bygone.

My body, not consulting
with me, let a long,
calming, deep sigh.
I am getting used to

this kind of morning
that is ordinary, retrieved,
and is unburdened by nights
so perilous at an alien home.

Published on April 14, 2020. © Author. 

Robert Maddox-Harle (aka Rob Harle) is a writer, artist, and reviewer. Writing work includes poetry, short fiction stories, academic essays and reviews of scholarly books and papers. His work is published in journals, anthologies, online reviews, books and he has three volumes of his own poetry published – Scratches & Deeper Wounds (1996) and Mechanisms of Desire (2012), Winds of Infinity (2016). Recent poetry has been published in Rupkatha Journal (Kolkata), Nimbin Good Times (Nimbin), Beyond The Rainbow (Nimbin), numerous specific anthologies, Indo-Australian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (2013) and World Poetry Year Book (2014), Setu Journal (monthly), Asian Signature (2013). His digital artwork is concerned with the technoMetamorphosis of humanity.
He is currently a member of : the Leonardo Review Panel, Manuscript Reviewer for Journal of Virtual World Research; Member of Editorial Board of numerous international literature journals, including Setu Journal. Artwork, Publications, Reviews, selected writings and artwork are available from his website: www.maddoxharle.com

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Poems

The Pram

he pushes a pram slowly,
deliberately, thoughtfully
along the river’s edge path.

salt air, divine nectar kisses his face.

deftly he plucks up rubbish
plastic bottles
plastic bags
plastic “stuff”,
stuffing them in the pram,
a desperate effort to turn the tide
to clean the filth of human thoughtlessness.

False Narratives

Running the road towards deep midnight
speeding, grinding down
society’s mind insidiously programmed
consumes seductively false narratives;
the new way of the pure Cyborg
(a contradiction)
transhuman, posthuman becoming.
A human to be rejoined with, The Other
(plastic, metal, silicone).
The mythology of the brain-horizon
crashes yet survives,
crashes and survives again,
and powers-down unified systems.
A sleeping binary matrix calculates
seven main points of original sin,
within a human existence
by the same self
explained by moral judgements
drawn from a false God
bruised-blue false narratives,
[DECEIVE AGAIN!]

Tortured minds calculate,
ways, means, possibilities, mathematically
to, [DELETE] our bodies.
The reality, insidious attachments
of the new social control,
the brain-horizon within society
looms menacingly,
mirage like,
and just as deadly.
That which she brings with the body
humming, clunking, never urinating,
a reinterpreted sense
to fully migrate,
[DARE, YOU?]
Who represent the dissenters,
the mutes within the dominant order?
one created from the great false text
(absurd discourse),
science at the debate of the interpreters
insists, forcefully
evolution was – the time of the body;
no more.
Hideous manifestations emerge
oozing from milky white laboratories,
a new concept for contemplation,
(without a hideous God).
Immortality
flies in the cold steel fractured face of humanity.

The Dark Night of the Troll

Hiding in seedy back-street alleys
intractable vagrants
loitering in the dark corners of car parks,
multiplying like warm yeast cells
these trolls are dangerous to humans.
Evolved from underworld trolls of the past
they have morphed into clone-like entities
with bodies of chrome-steel and plastic,
their wheels hideous genetic mutations.
They have infiltrated our cities
like corporate viruses,
lurking patiently
deceiving us with their apparent servility,
do not be fooled
these four-wheeled monsters,
like their Gopher cousins,
are enigmatically evil.
Trolls damage goods,
trolls damage bodies,
teasing us to overfill their bellies.
Oozing out from The Palaces of Hell,
with bloody Achilles’ heels
blood-smeared knuckles
torn shoulder ligaments,
we shudder along behind.
Self-determined the trolls charge forward
ripping the paint from the sides of cars,
smashing the corners off concrete columns.
Like all shrewd parasites
trolls do not mean to kill
but bring turmoil and torment.
Join your nearest Anti-Troll Society soon,
demand implantation of human-friendly control chips
demand modification of their DNA.
We must have happy subservient trolls
we must help these tormented wretches,
help them emerge from their Dark Night.

Twitter – Twatter

Surveillance, paranoia, cameras, Google Earth
spy force in disguise.
data base explosion, exploitation
profile
stop, buy, consume, be silent
add-your-profile to the (ME)dia.
Face Book
My Space
In-Your-Face
Twitter
Off-Your-Face
(Acid, hashish, ecki, ayahuasca, ice)
Violation: Synapse overload
give me more NOW!
Flood MY (YOU)niverse
Twitter twatter what’s it matter,
tweeter on the brink of overload
no addiction here (oh yeah?)
Need more wonder, wonder
wonder what happened.
Sousveillance, nonsense
no sense
I don’t care
I don’t care
I am a solipsistic nightmare
I buy more, consume more
all on credit.
Whats it matter?
What’s the matter?
Twitter twatter.
Someone else will fix the mess
I’m not someone,
just a statistic in a data base
of corporate megalomania.
Surveillance, surveillance
why should I care.
Trash the earth,
shit in your nest
catch the first space shuttle out of here,
when we’ve finished with the trashing
the trashing
the trashing.

Sound and Fury

Squaring the measure of silence,
silence prevails,
creating quantum computers in our own image
we fail to fathom the master’s mutated words.
We strut and fret our hour upon the stage
And then are heard no more,
our desires are a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The sound and fury is reaching its pinnacle,
the summit of desire is in view.
Reprogram your desire DNA with solitonic futures,
holographic computers networked to the Galactic Centre,
transmute endogenous laser radiation
using social-media interfaces
brand names of domination,
brand names of damnation,
the summit of desire is in view.
Our rose coloured denial-spectacles are turning blue,
the blurred myopic shades fading,
the paradox of stupidity and brilliance peaking,
reaching its crowning.
The Titanic is sinking again,
stressfully unconcerned – we order a new iphone,
stressfully in denial – we eat mangoes in July,
stressfully unaware – we breed like Drosophila.
The obtuse granularity of our denial
is overshadowed by our desire for desire,
the dark black-hole of our bio-quantum computer
is a mysterious worm-hole for neuroscientists
which reveals emptiness.
Squaring the measure of emptiness
emptiness prevails,
Squaring the sound of blackness
blackness prevails,
and so it will when we crash into the summit.

Artworks

Published on April 12, 2020. © Author. 

Murali Sivaramakrishnan— poet, painter, professor and literary critic, is the author of The Mantra of Vision (1997), Learning to Think Like Myself (2010), Communication, and Clarification: Essays on English in the Indian Classroom (2014), and a number of critical essays and six volumes of poetry. As artist and poet he is a committed environmentalist. His paintings have gone on display at several major exhibitions. He is a member of the scientific committee of English Studies, University of Valladolid, Spain. He was also a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi, and an Associate of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is member and coordinator of research of the Herman Hesse Society of India. Dr S Murali is the founder President of ASLE India. Murali’s Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, Meaning (2009) is a pioneering work on Indian ecocriticism. Its sequel, Ecological Criticism for Our Times: Literature, Nature and Critical Inquiry (2011)–ASLE India’s second book—has also received high accolades. He was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Travel Grant to teach and do research in the University of Nevada at Reno(2006), and was invited to read his poems as part of the inauguration of the International Conference on Poetic Ecologies, held in the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, in May 2008. Murali’s sculpture (cast in fibre) of Prof CD Narasimhaiah, now adorns the conference hall of Dhvanyaloka, Mysore. Murali was featured as Poet-Artist in Indian Literature, Jan-Feb 2010, 255, pp. 127-132. The books he has authored include: South Indian Studies (Ed) (1998); Figuring the Female: Women’s Discourse, Art and Literature (2005)’ Tradition and Terrain: Aesthetic Continuities. (both co-authored with Dr. Usha V.T.); Ecological Criticism for Our Times: Literature, Nature and the Critical Inquiry (2011); Under the Greenwood Tree: Reading for Pleasure and Comprehension (Ed) Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2011; Image and Culture: The Dynamics of Literary, Aesthetic and Cultural Representation (2011); Inter-Readings: Text, Context, Significance. Ed. (2012); Communication, and Clarification: Essays on English in the Indian Classroom, 2014; Sri Aurobindo’s Aesthetics and Poetics: New Directions, 2014; Strategies and Methods: Relocating Textual Meaning, 2018; Losing Nature, 2018 and Roads to Nowhere, 2019. Awards include the Life-Time Achievement Award for Poetry by GIEWEC, Guild of Indian English Writers, Editors and Critics, 2014. And IMRF Excellence Award, 2015. His poetry volumes include Night Heron (1998); Conversations with Children (2005); Earth Signs (2006); The East-Facing Shop (2010); Selected Poems (2014) and Silverfish (2016). Contact: smurals@gmail.com

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Wooden Puppet
Stooping below the wrinkled branches
My shadow entangles in corner-less turns.
Breathless curvature of a missing moon under purple clouds–
Do I know how to stand and breathe beside the dead?

Clothed in sheathes of white, the body is laid heavy under flowers.
Flies dance at will on nose and finger tips, turning up eyelids
That refuse to break even with light.

Smoothing down the stony palms. No more sweat, nor tears.
Like the tree uprooted in the night rains, shivering
In the dark, no star to blink and whisper to the shapeless earth.

Many men and women have gathered down the streets and children
Run about at will still less caring.
A man is like the tree at night when the soul is flown
Whisked away by the sharp slither of a chain saw, split and spewed
Into the casual fire by hands that knew his touch, his caress.

The tree bears the landscape of silence like the mind
That closes the will and whispers—will I see it all again?
Will the lightning part my skies at will and split the rainbow
Into a thousand colours? Will the children run round and round
Playing hide and seek in the day’s sweetness and delight?

What will can touch my annual rings, saturated in sunlight ?
Anyway, how long can this night last?
The dead do not walk again, neither does the tree
That lies stripped of its bark naked to the skies.
I feel fear gather up my legs and reach into the heart
I touch the dead tree bark, sink and shiver in another night.
As the chain saw slides on the bark the living light is split.
Tell me: I still do not know how to stand and breathe before the dead.

The Slant of the Sunlight

The day picks its way
on soft toes, sparing the dried leaves
floating around the yard.
The sun too does not stray
too far from this end of the sky.
My eye can travel only this far
like the faint summer slip of moon–
a delicate trace on that western sky.
Under each grain of sand
Under each sliver of grass
Last night’s rain has hid fragments of opulence.
Can I invert this light beam
And reach the farthest star?
Little said, the rain whispers
There is so much distance between me and you

The Gladiator

Many things are left unsaid
Like the pausing crest of the wave, the closing flower
Sea and sand in one corner of the left eye
And huge mountains dancing on tiptoe
On the far corner of the right eye.
A red ant turns savage as its mouth parts
Open and close twice before I know on my leg
I feel the pangs of the centuries, the great war-crimes,
Many a hero’s passion.
A child’s fancy balloon
On the beach bursts with the suddenness of a loud thunder
And my insides lunge downwind blown to smithereens
By the blasts planned and unplanned on innocent streets
What is it that I see flapping its huge wings in the distance
Its shades closing the sun and sky? How many dragon flies
Have flitted across the deserts after the first monsoons?
Do I recall the spell and charm when as a child I caught them
And tied a tiny thread to their tender tails; were the skies bluer then than now?
Masked shadows and blood-winged, fire-breathing monsters
Now pattern the tapered vault. Nothing is simple anymore.
A child’s cry spells disaster, a woman’s yell a scream of distress
A howl the dull end of the world.
Laughter and tears have spread wings of fear and fantasy.
I too am a naked gladiator shuffling under the glare of a thousand eyes
In horrendous battle with invisible creatures of the dark
Armed in fear and dread. Only a dim distant bird song—
Like the haunting melody of my desire and hope.
Yes. Like many things let me leave some things unsaid.
After all, we walk on the borderlands of hope.

Published on April 12, 2020. © Author.