Dead River Body

Across the bridge
Can you see the water
Under the foam
There’s a river flowing
Next to your home
Dead river, dead body
Dead river, dead body

Washing vegetables
In the water
Black water,
White cucumber
Do you remember
They threw coins
In the river
Dead river, dead body
Dead river, dead body

If you’re hanging around
At night you might end
Up face down
Yeah, right
In the water
Dead river, Dead body
Dead river, Dead body

Warm chemicals
In my blood stream
O happy blood
Sounding out
Foam-flecked seashells
Float in the breeze
Another induced dream
Nicotine drenched clouds
Where rain comes down
Enchanting an amused smile
Paints her face with lies.

I made a lampshade

I made me a lampshade
It took all night and day
When I wasn’t working on it
I simply sat and stared
Till bit by bit, it began to grow
Each time I added some more
At last it began to take shape
By then I’d learned to gape
At it for hours on end.

Not Everyone Who Wanders

Go from pain
In a shell
They can’t explain
You must be well

Yesterday’s clouds
With their bloody lining
Are mental shrouds
Intertwining

Coiled together
Breed apart
Running forever
From the start

They like to roam
Not everyone who wanders
Is lost to the unknown

Legacies

So they ripped her flesh in birth
But the fruit were bias
The river ran deep
Deep and red in it’s death

Men were born no more
No more than they lived
But flew back to the system
For reasons only they knew
Power replaced no pain
While the fever ran cold
And tears ran so free

What could be left?
What could be done?
Ever.

Birds hit the wall
So their souls were united
Oppression, they screamed
When last sighted

Men left behind words
In silent hallways of truth
Words of learning ran amok
Anthems to revolution stood
Up words in effect
While outcasts strayed
To the edge, hand-in-hand

Their history in their creation
And their creation in limitation
Stood hollow and empty
Yet tall, by design and definition

Time was swollen
Winds began to shift
Uncovering golden visions
and original symbols of light

Times were wrong
Sanity was suspect
The edge was too close
It had to go wrong

The lights were across
The river in spate
The silent boat drifed
While fingers grew roots

Shedding all vestiges
Some screams to the wind
Same stories every night
Forgive me for I have sinned

Our father who would not exist
Fearing multitudes in need
Long since made to desist
Say naught of my call

Wrought-iron wafers slip
Along their memories of life
Leaving behind mense rust
In alleys of fate seized
Raped was her call
Wild-eyed before her kin
Her back against a familiar wall
Cold steel began to fall

No more should deeds bury
No more should colors dry
No more should outcasts recall
No more should words be small.

The need
To reflect
On life
Is every warriors
Strife

From creature comforts
To the horrid sort of danseuse
From narcotic chanteuse
To sheer verbal abuse
I’ve passed through my mind
Every kind of woman and even
Regretting missing those I could use

S. stood and stared

S. stood and stared
At accusations and fingers
Pointed at him and his sins
Till now in the world

Be gone united
Feel free divided
Stand straight
And get chided

When he was a boy
They never said
No matter what you do
Virtue is no reward

S. stood and smiled
At his confusion again
They knew his mistakes
But couldn’t explain the pain

It came and went
Until every memory
Was marked ‘sensitive’
Till he had a human moment

My Love

My love don’t bring me diamonds in the night
Suck the marrow from the core when my steel’s too tight
Or maybe she’ll bring pearls in her ovaries, lenses
Inferiority complexes and stage fright
By when she would’ve left me to make it all right
My love don’t bring me diamonds in the night

I don’t mind the owls

I don’t mind the owls
I’m just walking my way
I know where the mushrooms grow
And I know this is the end of today

Keep out of my head
Or hear me shout a lot
Camelot had nothing
To do with this

Keep out of my head
Stay out of my mind
Keep out or you should
Prepare to meet your end

Once I held my breath
Nothing to do with this
I had the power
You had the need
And I stayed away
From your greed

Keep out of my head
You don’t belong
An accident, no blame
My visions can be wrong
Still my mission’s strong
I keep my distance
I keep my silence
None can be freed

Cardboard construction
Of courage
Jig your tree
Become free
From liberty
Roads go on
Forever using
Milestones of pain
Along the way
A running whisper
In the middles
Of your life
That the end
Is coming soon.

On The Bike

Riding a light beam straight into darkness
Soundscape following me round the bend
Swinging between what I know and know not
Arc lights tremble like driftwood ensembles
You know, you can’t tell if its heaven or hell.

Don’t want to suggest
Something negative but
I think I understood
What we should and
It don’t seem good
To carry on this way

Don’t want to say
There’s no reason to stay
I must do something
That seems to carry on
From where I left you
Yesterday; yesterday
Come what may

The way we go on
Reason to be strong
Sickened by stresses
Oops! In another mess!
What’s all the fuss?
Today, ever since yesterday
There’s not much to say.

Tears

We ring your eyes with evidence
Washed up from the shallow grave of your sins
We fell when they crowned the prince
We flash when the usurper wins

We climb the mountain trails of history
Making our symbols on this moonlit tree
We broke out when the smoke rolled in
We announce the triumph of the free

Within the electronic tube of image
Or hidden as emotion amongst soft pages
We open the warm brim of your heart
With women fight their many stages

We link expressions in the face of a lifetime
We mark her departure from him
We stood, a small price at the brink
Of isolation, watching the sun

Every circle
Would straighten
Itself out
If only it knew
Where to begin

First there was an opening
Now there’s a concern
Somehow trouble and I
Seem to get along

There’s something screaming
There’s something inside
It’s so strong

Your breath burns my skin
Forever, that’s how long it’s been
Since I killed anything

How do I ask you my reasons
When I know you’ve been
Through the worst and
Why do I open my mouth?
Why don’t I open my eyes?
And see you there

It’s because I am
Makes me this way
Don’t look now,
You’ll catch me
Arm-deep in your head
Searching for your heart
Which if I tell you
You’d hurt me right there

Finally I’d say
Sod the tears
If I had to go
Well, it was anyway

Shell Talk

Mother Venus asked a crab
What it was doing in there
(He) Said, ‘Im securing my shell
There’s an ocean out there
Can’t you see, if you hold me up
You can still hear it roar
Enjoy it but understand
I’ve got to live in it
Until I can get out of here
Leaving behind sounds
That are empty as hell

Milestones

22nd Milestone
Childhood’s end and
They all end up like me
Watching time for
Some meaning to life

32nd Milestone
Sound makes my bed
Hate collides with hate
You’ve just settled
For the year-long rage
By refusing to accept
This single outburst

42nd Milestone
“Bus; stop!!
Let me down”

I Went Out

I went out stupid today
I went out to the marketplace
I lost when I should have sold
Now I can’t go back tomorrow
It’s true: everybody is a waking suicide.

Just Deception

I spend my time
shamanizing everything
Floating conversations like
Breadcrumbs on soup
Nah! I don’t wanna change
I wanna like myself
When I change
Others might like me instead
But have I changed
And what has it got me?
Do you see a new line
Upon my face every year?
My mother refuses to relax
She says she’s preparing for death
And I alone carry stories
Of what might have been
I spend more time
Describing how I spend time
Thinking up more ways of description
Oh, it sure feels good
Even if it’s all just deception

Urban Digression

We all came from a village
Once upon a time, all of us
Executives and MBAs divine
Your fathers dug the earth
But it takes interest rates
For you to measure its worth

Is there no prayer that works

For a restless imagination and lonely heart

Is there no way to reach the end

When you face pain even before you start

>

On a tumbling staircase

My screams made spiral sounds

With a hint of fear

Freedom from Freedom descends

I close in captive relationships

Which abused my morals

For just looking.

I've Been Had

Shrieks?
I burnt your curtains
Broke your telly
And smashed your face


I should’ve known better
The beginning of the hunt
Always comes
To the end of the chase.


I would kill
If I knew what I wanted
So far gone
This is my reward

No more lies, only anger
I’ve been had

Life In Delhi

I came to Delhi last.
From train windows
I grew childhood associations
From Delhi, I went the most
In all four directions
And returned to rest

In Delhi, I grew the most
From boyish wastrel
To the husk of a man In those windows
I kept my signs
From those rooftops I painted designs
(Needless to say, on the sky)
On those staircases
I heard voices
Stopped to pee

I miss those elevators
That never seem to work
In these colleges
I learnt to rock
From these markets
I learnt wholesale talk
On these roads
I learnt to ride
I also broke a tibia and fibula
- period.

Dig-ability Factor

The prophets say the markets push
The agents talk through their pocket linings
The artists create volumes of space
But only time tells tales of success

What Am I Writing

Beginnings, ends, middles; all notes over ten years. Imperfect prose, shorthand prose, easy poetry, involved illustrations, ruled copybooks and a stagnant pool of paper that is going nowhere. Maybe now I can get some fish in it.

More promises to myself to write down some angst and grudging portions of my childhood. Abuses of power that children notice, jading of younger energies in people already dead — social vampires who move unknowing through circles, sapping energy in the twilight.

Statement of Purpose?

ANTI-NOTICE

I don’t have any product to push
I don’t have any dogs to distribute
I don’t have a business to run
And I don’t have any furniture to sell
Therefore, you don’t have a reason to read this
And it’s best we never met

My baby girl

Messiah: The Second Testament to Punk Rock In New Delhi India

Five years back, Messiah supplied The Antidote to the rapidly developing formulae rock all around us. Sick of cover bands and heavy metal’s scared shitless intellectual content, they did their own music, our way!

Not that it was easy, from the manure beds of the Delhi college band scene, the band grew independent of trend. Experimenting with a bizarre range of selective covers and always with an emphasis on making our own songs, everything they played eventually ended up sounding like Messiah music. While they bandied categories like punk, grunge, alternative and new wave, everything was still distinctly Messiah — raw, in-your-face, and markedly different from everyone else. So too, were the regulars who followed the band’s progress simply because they were tired of what was all too easy to be real music.

The band grew from an on-stage trio to add a 3-member road crew, picked up a minor but dedicated following in Mumbai (Thanks Rishu!) and against all apprehension, awkward instances and disapprobation from fellow ‘experienced’ bands when they went into the studio to record The Antidote.

After recording the first album, The Antidote, life finally caught up with the trio. College was over, careers were calling and while attentions were divided amid these, things cooled down for the band. After a 5-year hiatus wherein Mickey (Bass) and Sumit (Drums) became professional sound engineers and Kush (Guitar, Vocals) added degrees to his educational qualifications, it was the intermittent jams that kept the name alive. After all, jamming together had got under the band members’ skin, like blood.

Now with careers, parents, girlfriends and everyone connected assured that the trio were not a dead-loss-to-humanity, the band is together again with new-found maturity, skill, equipment, strength and the same old purity of purpose. All that was needed was a trigger on the event horizon.

It happened and the band is back with a brand new single, Boys Don’t Cry, and pleasantly surprised at their brevity in the face of the same old insanity; a new and improved method to their madness; if you will. Still, at the heart is the same old Messiah, hunkered under new musical muscle, promise!

LYRICS TO "BOYS DON'T CRY":

How long i gonna cry?
As far as i remember boys are not suppose to cry.
My love still got force,
In one leap I can take off to Mexico,
C'est la vie you said,
What a great escape and you changed a little too fast,
But Gogo you should know
All the things I left behind to just be with you
With you

Loving as you were
One day you thought you have had enough
You have to complain
But Gauri listen this is no time to play games
Mired in your caste
You are trying to do your duty at your best
My dreams aren't dead
One is broken and others are obviously dead
Is out of sight is out of mind is out of mind is out of sight....

Children Learn What They Live

been thinking about what fatherhood will mean to me,
found this on the back of an old schoolbook cover:

If a child lives with criticism
He learns to condemn

If a child lives with hostility
He learns to fight

If a child lives with ridicule
He learns to be shy

If a child lives with shame
He learns to feel guilty

If a child lives with tolerance
He learns to be patient

If a child lives with encouragement
He learns confidence

If a child lives with praise
He learns to appreciate

If a child lives with fairness
He learns justice

If a child lives with approval
He learns to like himself

If a child lives with acceptance and friendship
He learns to find love in the world.

My Spell Checker (a popular forward)

Eye have a spelling chequer.
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques four my revue.
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight for it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
It's rare lea ever wrong,
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no.
It's letter perfect awl the weigh.
My chequer told me sew.

Inner Space: The Pen-ultimate Frontier

Where does it all go when there are things left unsaid or unresolved that make you feel incomplete inside? Trust me on this one but everything that has ever been left incomplete just hangs around staying incomplete. In the world of words, things left unsaid remain until they find an opportunity (through you) to get said. I hope you haven’t but here is the best example of incompleteness; if you have a dead loved one whom you wish you could say something to but cannot because they are gone.

I had a sister who passed away, since she was before my time, I grew up wondering what it would have been like if she was still around. There were things I desperately wanted to say to her about how the family felt and changed after her, and how we still thought and spoke of her. Some more whimsical things about how things would have been different if she was around. I lived on so, with these things inside me which had nowhere to go or no one to listen to.

I have also seen people estranged from their families with no intentions of ever getting together again go through life and was always struck by how they seemed unaware of what was missing in them. I believe that people always carry their problems with them, in one way or the other.

Even if they leave their problems behind, they cannot help but carry the part of them which has been shaped by the problem. The pain of dealing with problems contributes to our identity and sense of self.

Now step back and see life as a never-ending conversation you are constantly having with everyone around you and even with yourself, inside of your own head. The part within the mind is also known as ‘internal dialogue.’

The two most pertinent things to internal dialogue in this conversation we are having (You are reading this, aren’t you?) is the fact that we are always the central character in the story of our lives. You won’t mind agreeing to that but you will certainly deny it when I tell you that the central character in the story of our lives is usually or naturally a tragic one.

It’s not anyone’s fault. Just look at our cultures, arts and literature; tragedies are considered seriously while comic material is never taken seriously. Even sad old Hindi film songs are considered more meaningful than a current peppy and happy song. It’s not like you cannot change the plot in the story of your life from a tragic to a happy one. You just have to empathically and positively do so.

Yet everyday we come across people with the same old problems. The impossible diet, the hometown in the hills they miss so terribly, the brother they never got in touch with for the past twenty years, the way the people they stay with are treating them, their salary, their mother-in-law, their city, their planet…all things they are continually grumbling about or smarting under but haven’t done a thing to fix. Ever wonder why they carry on the way they do? Ever wonder why you are happy to live with an obvious problem rather than solve it? You might want to take it slowly at this point and read this bit again just to be sure you are getting what I describe.

Well, they do not change because they are getting something out of it. Sometimes they know what little kickback or reward they get from putting up with a problem but usually they do not. Albert Einstein once remarked that ‘we cannot solve our problems at the same level of thinking at which we found them.’

It takes brutal honesty with yourself to tell yourself that you are not dieting because you have not got the discipline (or maybe the motivation). You never went back to the hometown in the hills because you cannot stand the narrow-minded folks back there and enjoy the lifestyle which a city pay-packet can afford you. You broke contact with your brother in the first place and you dread apologizing. You can always try and fix your salary but that would mean hard work, humility or quitting for a bigger salary…until in the end it is just too convenient to dump toxic waste in the garbage pail, in a drain, in river, in the ocean, you name it. It would be scary to be responsible for the entire planet.

Ever chucked a pair of Duracell batteries away? Well, try and imagine what nickel and cadmium can do to your skin on direct contact. Better we just dump this here and let it be Somebody Else’s Problem* which means no matter what happens, we ignore it. If we try and do something about it we just might have to change. Change our situation, location, our idea of what is right and wrong, our idea of who we are, our relationship with another person, our instinctive reaction to hit back and
‘who-do-they-think-they-are’ ego-based responses.

Too much about your problems, eh? Maybe I need to put my ego aside here and make a confession just to re-assure you. If you must know, my secret is that I do not know how to drive a car. I never learn't, so that is also behind my whole biker stance in life. Anyway, enough about me and internal dialogue, let’s get to the part which is outside our heads; that concerning the rest of the world and the people around us.

Now let’s quickly wrap up a couple of crucial continuums. We need to be aware what is behind our thoughts, words and actions. For example, the salesman who is meeting targets is sure to do worse than the one who is out to convince the client that his product is just what the client needed.

Let me try and convince you a little further. IF what is behind your conversation with another person is a desperate need to make yourself right, then everything that the other person says will be judged by you and used to prove yourself right. IF you are out to prove the other person wrong, you shall filter out all but those bits that give you a better argument. However, you sincerely listen with an open mind; both you and the other person learn something. Sometimes, you can still do the same actions, but if you adjust what is behind you, you can actually change the outcome.

Still not convinced because you tried it and it did not work? That is because you did not give it enough commitment. Yes, that’s right. Before the hard work comes the commitment to hard work.

Sometimes the commitment to hard work is really hard work but seriously, quite a few people we consider great in the history of the world have kept themselves committed over a period of years and sometimes in impossible conditions or situations. That is the power of commitment. Just tell any mother they cannot possibly assure the well being of their children and they will tell you how they jolly well intend to give it their best, if not tell you to go jump in the river or ask their husbands to deal with you.

If you can find an equal degree of commitment, you might loose but you will never be defeated. Before you start to take some of this and use it to win fights or dominate situations by pretending to be sincerely listening, let me tell you that you need to learn a lot about being aware of what is behind you. You see, the idea is to always keep what is bigger than you behind you. Over long-term, it usually the better ones who win: those who are just, those who have stronger principles, more support, are in better alignment with the way things work or just plain better intentions.

Dive

[verse 1.]
With a heart like a nail
She made her point
Then I could not feel
When I could join in

[verse 2.]
In front of a mountain
Can you still feel the breeze
She asked me a question
Said can you repeat that please

[bridge.]
I don't know when I'll hit the end
I can see my shadow as down I went

[chorus.]
Dive, honey, dive, into your eyes
While I hurtle, raindrops fall like sighs (x2)

[interlude.]
In a lonely corner of the sky
Where no one can
Deny the moon
I can still hear her cry
Inside the room

[solo.]

[bridge.]
The stars stand out like question marks
On a broken mirror sky of discontent

[chorus.]
Dive, honey, dive, into your eyes
While I fall, raindrops like sighs (x2)

Dive, dive, dive
Raindrops fall like sighs
While I hurtle
Into your eyes
Dive, dive, dive.

Purpose of Life

Finally I know the purpose of life is to love a crazy woman!