partial housekeeping

http://almostisland.com/winter_2011/poetry/pdfs/in_the_dark.pdf

http://almostisland.com/winter_2011/poetry/pdfs/brahmarakshas.pdf

(the above 2 are translations 2 poems of the hindi poet muktibodh)

http://almostisland.com/winter_2012/special_issue_style/pdfs/the_shape_of_a_scar.pdf

(this is an article on a strand of style in hindi literature)

http://www.biblio-india.org/adsrch.asp?mp=

(this is a review of new hindi poetry)

http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles.php?art=archives-757/2012/february/2

http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles.php?art=archives-795/2012/march/3

(of the above 2 reviews, one is on some issues of marxian historiography, and the other on issues in the anthropology of muslims)

http://www.esocialsciences.org/Articles/ShowArticle.aspx?acat=eSSays&aid=4553

(an article on savarkar)

http://www.esocialsciences.org/Articles/showArticle.aspx?acat=Book+Reviews&aid=4366

http://www.esocialsciences.org/Articles/showArticle.aspx?acat=Book+Reviews&aid=4600

(the above 2 are reviews on issues relating to speaking intimately of gandhi; and the other of a history of the rss)

the dark pulse of incessant rain in granma's forestveined fore-
head, luminous lines of face-script, with-
out-breath, death-earthworm wriggled facebook, the
the the the she hates all the men her brothers husbands in-law cousins
upper & middle communits & congress
men, those fractious, factional ghosts with their idolatorous
unbreathing stonystoned gods,
for her she preferred those skull-gardened tongue-faced ones
but it is the men who end up stories--a dead policemean
by accident betel-or bloodied-mouthed, & on this side
more dead sisters,(too many unknown malnourished writers in the family),
a malayali medium's susurrant kunjikuttan in the village square
a 70s postmaoist suicide in a lockup, here advancing on the black page wrecking
mother's tongues granma a strand of stomach between the palewhite
blouse & petticoat has the head of a toothless monkey but with gums of gold
who caterwauls of the dark pulse of incessant rain in

ghazal

This is the end of love the last star in the final sky’s crushed and scabbed rhythms
The nightingale’s claw tears the rose-lip to a night-stabbing rain’s chanted rhythms.

It will sing through its’ flesh’s surcease till only the spread-eagled voice remains
And song breaks apart free at last of the wilderness of the throats’ coiled rhythms.

No pieties for separation can hope to assuage this shame’s spent and infertile soil
What was fervent once is now only the serrate reverberation of unrequited rhythms.

The nightingale springs out of infinity’s manuscript to decree its calligraphic truth
The rose of beauty slouches petals plucked as if to a dervish’s maddened rhythms.

There they lie arranged at last the nightingale’s beak and claw the rose’s nether-lip
To another world’s eye this patterned ruin is but a dance of hologrammed rhythms.

founder of the lineage a great magic iron bird


you see the bird laid 5 eggs & from each

5 ancients. generations later our master


(& then many other masters a self-distinguishing lineage)


as abbot he studied again-again the oldly forgot native religion


he changed the practice he took a wife. one day


his master said you are equal to my actualization go deeper still

go to nepal, where 1101 yogis still practice in the opened valley

(a fabulism of monkish giggle midst the veil on veil of mist)



all these teachers & their foreheads. after labor

through the ranks he returned ripe


transmitten with the sated karma, mining bodies


within bodies, sibi's dove within the lacquered flesh


root and router bodies- yet-


all this true enlightenment so few students.


he said i am nobody i just do my best make

your mind soft soap nothing sticks a spider in a cake

consider afflictions slowly. him asleep was clear light within.



for nine generations whispered shames

of extinguishement. (failed & dazzled by his failing). but


at the end a refined text-egg & another iron bird


a chanted unrhymed repetition a new order in baked souls

the cargo boat, ceylon, mozambique, the ocean's prisons.time's conch outstares,

involves




once again the featureless filament of the wooden minute


clock hands unheave the lair


(these stranded sailors laugh for the strangest reasons)


at the third floor window he leans on the balcony


hermetic becomes his rage. he only whistles never speaks.






a librarian in a city that does not exist. catalogues doze.




the pruned heart's oppressiveness premonitions no reconstitution only there is the




'mangled bicycle, the lizard's cold & crisscrossed belly'

riviera in the mind

the villas close as it turns warm.

the air is dry but is cool in the evening

and the water, amethyst


a tiny beach covered in seaweed four-feet thick


this is where she wanted to be

but could never return to / even / in memory

soul- flickering, white smoke, fragrance

or tremulous transparent sphere etc


(no, too ethereal, - too blunt an image).


imagine instead a plant within, hardy yet


to grow it needs the sunlight of your laughter


and equally: the water of your tears.