By Amit Ranjan
North beach whisper
I met her at the bar
She told me I have a nice scar.
I touched the hem of her scarf
And said maybe she could give me another.
‘Lettuce turnip the beet,’ she wrote on a paper napkin,
And whispered loud, ‘Here, be scarred by my story:
I am meant to follow the traveller
Union iron-workers
Building America since 1896.
Mt Pitbull is family
And Emily my favourite poet—
Both are dead.
My cheeks are red
With all the drinking—
It's the maker's mark.
I could get drunk
And say—I'm in Miami, bitch!
Or better than that pun,
It would be more fun
To drown and feed a shark—
That is also maker’s mark.
Do you care to imbibe me on the rocks?’
And she laughed,
And continued in the hubbub
‘I'm stolen
I'm swollen
On alcoholic beverages and loud music
And yet you think I may have something prosaic to whisper.
Before I become a lisper,
Let me tell you
It's not a choice between right or left
It's a choice between right and wrong
Wake me up after that dead man's song.
And we'll go fishing—
If it was easy
It would be called catching.’
The Saki from Kahofka
Drone strikes,
Missiles fly—
Innocent passengers die.
Some cause, some effect,
Something unrelated—
We're all elated.
Amazon burns,
Down-under is on fire—
Yet you call me a liar.
Students protest,
A masked mob goes on rampage—
Behold the stoic fakir, the sage.
The plane was already in flames,
The saki from Kahofka is busy—
The Miami drinkers are dizzy.
The thief of Homestead heisted,
The cops did the salvage—
There was some collateral damage.
We're all angry,
We're all shocked—
The fridge is well stocked.
The saki from Kahofka told Kafka,
You've turned all Red—
You must go to bed.
Everyone's looking at the saki
She isn't looking at anyone—
A lonely man pulls out the gun.
The sea breeze is lovely,
And everything is wrong—
And then the jukebox plays the song
‘We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning—
Since the world was turning.’
NB: ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire,’ is a song by Billy Joel and the lines in italics are attributed to the song.
She wrote poems
She wrote poems
Of resilience in her valley.
One of them was about
a girl embroidering birds on a T shirt.
Six birds. Five of them on front—
Two talking to each other, one gorging on a gorgeous fruit;
One singing, one dreaming—
The bird on the back was diving deep into the blue sky.
I asked—why don’t you publish them?
She said—Atelophobia. My words may be imperfect;
Maybe I don’t know what the words of the birds are.
I said—The birds will complain and chatter
Maybe they’ll shit on your head
They’ll have read you, and them, you’d have read.
That’s right—she said—they’ll chirp and I’ll burp. Fair deal.
So she let her words go—
But the valley got locked down.
Who can lock down flowing river in a valley—I asked.
Oh you live in stone age—they can lock down clouds now,
And the river can endlessly thirst over the future—
When it would break the barrage with its rage.
The silent birds,
anticipating to lodge a complaint over the unknown verse—
Sent a curse high up
And the bird king declared there’d be a lockdown
Of the whole world—
Let everyone witness frozen cloud,
Let there be lightning and thunder loud
But there will be no raindrops—
And also no crops.
She raised her hand in prayer
To the giver
And he said—don’t worry, your frozen words
Will be read by some grave digger.
Amit Ranjan was Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Florida International University (FIU) in 2019, and will be so again in 2021. His doctoral research about John Lang, a 19th century Australian writer, lawyer and journalist throws new light on the mid-19th century British empire vis-à-vis characters of “interlopers” like Lang. His poems, short stories, and essays have been published in various journals like La Zaporogue, Anti Serious, Cold Noon, Muse India, The Equator Line etc. Amit also has written four plays. His poetry collection Find Me Leonard Cohen, I am Almost Thirty (2018) was well received. Upcoming publications include a book on John Lang, a non-fiction work on Dara Shikoh, and another collection of poems. Currently, he teaches literature at RIE, NCERT, Bhubaneswar.
Banner image is by Jakub Dziubak. Downloaded from Unsplash.com