Glory

Glory

It is man's big field trip
Towards Superman, God, Death
Mad rantings of philosophers and fanatics
Self flagellating stripes of austere cold beings
That sniff at everyday life

Completely obscure-

Hovers around the notion of  war
Like a shroud
Suggests death in battle
Is glorious
It is not dying in bed
Like a mouse
But  being cut off from all life in a moment-
Glorious!

Some think it is the purpose of life
To seek glory
Give me Glory or Death
All or Nothing
I will chance my arm
And aspire to the seemingly impossible
I will succeed
Or die in the attempt
Conquest is glorious
Achievement is glorious
Failure in pursuit of incredible odds can also be glorious

It is the stuff of heroism
Heroes earn their glory
Every day-

Sounds tremendous
It is a mystery
Rapturous
Intoxicating
That can take possession of heart and soul

Glory describes God
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Ancient Catholic Hymn to the birth of Christ
Glory to God up above-
Glory be to God on high
Sublime

For man it usually means
An unattainable
Or hard to hold on to woman-
Gloria
Inhumanly beautiful
A love too excruciating to bear
Not for keeping
Cannot hold on to it
Quicksilver that is Mercury
Globules of mercurial  love
Glorious
Brief
Unquestioned
Therefore ideal
Gone
Before scrutiny
Gloria Gloria

An opportunity to test one's courage
Pit one's life against infinity
Or nothingness
To make a difference
Blaze a trail
Die on one's own terms
Jump into the unknown with head held high
Die for one's country
Refuse to flinch in the face of possible probable destruction
Stretch beyond what is considered possible

Glory is a strange thing-
Only God knows what it truly means
As he gathers you back to his bosom
Honour
Renown
Magnificence
Pride
Pleasure
Brilliant
Radiant
Beautiful

Beyond the pursuit
Beyond the catching
Beyond flesh and blood
Beyond human life
Forever beckoning-
As if it is an end in itself.


June 29th, 2020
Gautam Mukherjee

Playing At a Pandemic

Playing At  A Pandemic

What kind of bio-warfare kills mostly the already sick?
Or health workers doctors policemen
All trying to save the afflicted
Notice politicians seem safe enough
Except for a few needy ones-

All the corona viruses have no vaccine
They are like flu and pneumonia
With high temperatures
Sore throats-

You can take Paracetemol
And Aids drugs
Also Malaria drugs
And Leprosy drugs
And Epilepsy drugs
And blood plasma from those who have recovered for its antibodies
And homeopathy

This one is worse
Than the Pig Flu The Bird Flu
Also Sars viruses-

We all start talking like doctors and experts
But what else can you do?

When the WHO is sold out by its Ethiopian Communist non-doctor head man
And spouts misinformation on demand

Because This Covid 19 Wuhan Virus
is man made-

Though the CCP and the PLA won't say so
And Xi Jinping
Threatens anyone who does
Along with his diplomats
And his wolf warrior media

He wants to invade someone
Anyone
So they stop about this virus and how China did it on purpose
Even though it did

Xi thinks India is a patsy
With its Gandhian nonsense
Just right for the kill to a Communist

Ever right as a punching bag
Except this vain little Prime Minister
Who changes clothes by the hour

But who would have thought
Doklam was surely a fluke
But this Modi the Chaiwala
With his comb over and manicured white beard
Most inconvenient!

Why can't that idiot Rahul Gandhi be in-charge
Why why?
He promised that he would be PM
When he took all that money before the elections
From the embassy in Chanakyapuri

You will notice that Chinese ambassador does not have a job anymore
Mainly because he has disappeared

But the money is gone
Rahul Gandhi can't even remember taking it
It's like having sex in your sleep-


The virus
It keeps mutating
It waxes and wanes
Kills more White people and Blacks in America
And all who live on fast food alone
And drink Coca Cola

But it has trouble with the Browns
And Yellows
The Blacks in Africa
Grass eaters
Fish eaters
Women

It kills some
And wrecks the internal health of many
Their lungs
Their hearts
Shatters immune systems-
Cuts 10 years off their lives in addition to the numbers the cigarettes and booze have taken

But
What's new
Marijuana is good against the virus
Probably makes it lazy and absent minded

It is
A lab made thing
Synthesised from bat diseases
Kills

But
After quite a tussle
Eventually
Chokes its victims to death-

Before holding up the funeral
With Covid traffic jams

Not in China though
They have incinerators in China to turn night into day
Wuhan was lighting up the night sky
and strictly locked down otherwise
To take care of any
That dared to survive

The virus is crafty
It sometimes gives people heart attacks a day or two after they recover
Just like that as they reach for their slippers
Or take a bite of lunch

The Red Chinese & Xi Jinping
Have foisted this on the world
After incinerating millions at Wuhan
On the sly
Chinese Dr Mengeles

No Plague, this Covid 19
From a biolab in Wuhan China
With a very difficult DNA to crack

From the place
Where they keep 300 bats
To research their diseases

No it did not come from Wuhan market
Or from bat soup
But from people who were already infected
And gave it
To the Wet Market
And the Soup

Here
Said the Lab Director
It's a new strain
To use
Specifically
On humans

Did it get out on its own
Or was it let out?

Do the Chinese have antidotes
Because no one else does-

Never Have I  seen such a lockdown though
Nobody  got out
Unless he was so ruined
that it did not matter-

Modest kill numbers-
If it was the Plague
Its three nights to perdition
No exceptions

Lots of infections
A paltry 3% kill rate
What a pandemic
To kill the world economy over

But that is spilt milk now
Millions can expect penury pain humiliation
Death, but not from the virus

And we're still not through

13th June, 2020
Gautam Mukherjee

Stay

Stay

The muse is a lovely thing
Like a well spring
Appearing
With water out of the grass and earth
Like a benediction

Just saw a poem about a bus driver -
Actually it is a film on a city bus driver
Who is a poet

And his wife, a real beauty
And their opinionated bulldog Marvin

Who eats up the sole poetry notebook-
-The bus driver does not write all that much
He is thoughtful and careful
And keeps no copies

His poems in that solitary notebook are gone
But not the poetry inside him-

A Japanese visitor from Osaka to Paterson New Jersey
Appears in the final minutes
Of the final reel
 As if digital films still had reels
They don't even use celluloid now

Some of us call them films
Who don't always  remember to call them movies

But they definitely don't have reels anymore.

The Japanese Poet is poetic licence
Comes in just like that
Only to deliver his message

Very charming
Says Excuse Me every time before he says anything


Dressed in a  white shirt blue suit and tie
Like a typical Japanese company man
With large black rimmed glasses and a shock of black side parted hair
They are also extinct-
No lifetime employment now-
But  this one has a leather satchel
Not a briefcase

A poet in Japanese himself
Knowledgeable about American poets too
He knows about all the poets from Paterson New Jersey
Over the years-

Mentions names the bus driver knows
Comments on their work styles

Strange how the place produced so many-

And apparently
And this is from the bar
The bus driver goes to
While Marvin has to wait outside
And make sure he is not dog napped-

The Costello in Abbot and Costello
And both Sam And Dave
The popular music stars
Are all from Paterson

The blue suited Japanese poet gives  the bus driver another blank note book
And off goes Paterson from Paterson
The poet cum bus driver
Started up again
After being very devastated for a night-

He  promptly writes another poem just before the closing credits
Right there
Sitting on the bench opposite the waterfall
Like he does on his bus driver seat
In the moments before starting on his route
Early in the morning

Or when he eats his sandwich lunch his wife packs in his Stanley lunch box
At the same bench
On any weekday

He starts again
After the Japanese man leaves

Paterson the bus driver
Who is named after his town
And carries a pen in his jacket
Even on a Sunday
His day off
But he's wearing his work a day denim bus driver jacket
That he always wears
And which carries his ball pen

Paterson who lives in Paterson
And was sitting on a bench  looking at a  waterfall
Mourning the loss of his poetry book
Thanks to Marvin the dog
Only a few minutes ago

Marvin the bulldog
Whom the pretty wife has exiled to live in the garage
And not on the couch in the living room anymore
The dog needs to mend his attitude-

Paterson  recovers
When
The Japanese poet came and sat beside the bus driver from Paterson
Beside him
Who was born there
The day before he was returning to Osaka

But not before saying Paterson had  produced
Several other famous poets
As if the bus driver who made no copies of his dog eaten notebook
Was already famous

Some
Said the Japanese poet
Who had lived there all their lives
And some who had spent time there
Allen Ginsberg, the beat poet was amongst them
And another grown famous later from the "New York School"-

The lost copy book
Chewed up by Marvin the bulldog

Even though his beautiful wife with premonition
Kept asking him to
Make copies

The dog was angry
For being left behind
When the bus driver and his wife went out for a weekend dinner
And an old black and white horror movie
At the Mall

A celebration-
Because the wife makes cupcakes
With black and white icing-

And sells them all at a  church fair or weekend bazaar
For the first time

But it could well turn into a little business for her
The Cupcake Queen of Paterson
The bus driver husband calls her-
Proudly
For selling $273 worth at her first attempt

She, Laura, likes everything to be Black & White
Her harlequin guitar that she orders
Because she is learning

And wants to be a Country Singer
Black and White, curtains, rugs,
Almost everything in the house
And all her clothes-

Paterson the bus driver loves her so dearly
That he loves anything she says and does
And cooks-

And she loves him and his poetry-
And says he's as good a poet
As any that he reads aloud
And admires.

June 12th, 2020
Gautam Mukherjee

Bits Of Life

Bits Of Life

I'm holding a fountain pen

A very beautiful one

Heavy

Balanced

Wanting me to write on paper

The handwriting similar but different from a few years ago

When I wrote more than reminders to myself or

Signed on cheques

Cheques too are out of date

But then I might forget to write

And see what my handwriting looks like-

Now it leans a little more to the left

And is spiky, more perfunctory

But also more assertive

Running hand means the letters run into each other

More

Bits of Life

Come back as space debris

The inside of the remembered mind is 

Like space

A vast semi-lit place

Its edges lost in the shadows

So bits of things

Parts

Like things in a wrecker's yard

The mess there is professional

Deliberately unpaved

Always peopled by an uncouth dog

That the Wrecker obviously loves 

Things lie around so that they can be found and sold

Even stacks of parts are just there

Leaning radiators

Pipes and pipes

To save space for the many body parts

The glint of faded colours

In the light of day or the dull light of lamplight at night

But in the night a  wrecker's yard 

Keeps secrets 

For afternoon

There are

Blues, blacks, 

Whites with rust spots

Chrome 

Dimpled and sometimes twisted

All with their stories

Some worth telling

Recognizable as parts of a context by those that sold objects to the wrecker

But now just parts to others

Or a restoration target

In your space debris of the mind

You know the flotsam and jetsam 

With unique long forgotten emotional charges

Like current

Mostly if they are recent

There is nothing surprising about it

 But old things

Long forgotten

Come from a long time ago

Like space travellers from years ago

When they were joined to other pieces

And meant something all together-

With bits and thoughs and words that are not here but you find yourself trying to remember

What it was exactly

Groping in the dark

Awake but it came to take you unawares

When you were asleep

It is disturbing to see bits of a dismembered life

What is the purpose of these regurgitated

Fragments?

What is the point of recalling shards

These bits of life

Now floating with little emotional charges

That can shake you up

Are they revisiting with a desire to say something new?

Or are they just travelling in space and you happened to look at them squarely

As they passed.

June 9th, 2020

Gautam Mukherjee

Cliff & Elvis

Cliff & Elvis

One

What else besides Cliff Richard am I hanging on to?

Oh don’t ask!

Symbols

Way-

Past their let go date-

Holding on to

Past parts

Fond fragments-

Now going around saying he’s looking amazingly fit for 75

His Anglo-Indian

Lucknow boy genes you know-

His British father died young

In 1958

just before sonny became famous

Sad-

But his Anglo-Indian mother and all his sisters

carried on.

I know so much Cliff trivia-

His first hit in 1958!

Playing singles in tennis and life since then

Still

Now

Selling new wine in new bottles from his Barcelona playground, his Algarve vineyard

Houses, flats, London, pile in the country (now sold), New York, Portugal, The Bahamas with-

No extradition treaty with the UK…

It must be his Indian side

Makes him anchor his money into real estate

Performing

Filling the Albert Hall for a month every year-

And every small town community centre too

Amazing!

With old fans who won’t let go

Singing songs from years ago

For the Queen

The late Queen Mother loved him-

Knighted!

A Wimbledon buff

Fighting off enquiries into his sexuality

Allegations

Of molestation

Young boys

like Michael Jackson-

Rich,

maybe 300 million pounds sterling,

More

Sold 250 million records over the decades

Even more than The Beatles-

Who had just a 11 year run to become immortal-

 Two

If there is such a thing-

A way, maybe a machine

To turn nostalgia into a product-

Cliff Richard and Elvis Presley

The Beatles and Walt Disney and The Rolling Stones

And many others

Know all about it.

Who says

Nostalgia actually needs props-

That

 It won’t stand up on its own.

Three

There’s Elvis

Cliff’s hero-first and last

The King

Whom Cliff never met.

Elvis didn’t even know who Cliff was-

And Cliff had only two or three number one hits of low duration

Ever-

In America.

He is however

A Britain & former Empire

Phenomenon-

India, Australia, South Africa

And in translation

France, Germany, Spain, Portugal-

Sweden

Incredibly durable.

Four

But Elvis did meet

The Beatles and Tom Jones

At Graceland

Tom got on, jamming, cigar smoking-

Took to Las Vegas later with similar flash

The Beatles and Elvis never did jive

Elvis couldn’t stomach that these foreigners came over and knocked him off his pedestal

Paul and John making snide remarks about it, their meeting, later

About being made to wait and wait

George petrified, Ringo untouched-

No chemistry in person

Just uncomfortable chit chat, jokes, a little marijuana, more beer & bourbon

Though George got on famously with Roy Orbison and Tom Petty and Bob Dylan

Later,

When he was on his own,

Out of the dominance

Of Lennon/McCartney

And making

His own Sgt. Pepper’s theme album(s), calling it The Travelling Wilburys.

But

The Beatles and Elvis couldn’t hack it

Did not play music together-

Not even in the music room at Graceland

Decorated in a fairground blend of C&W and truck stop –

A grand piano

And an absolute dazzle of gold records.

Later still-

Not in Memphis, but at the White House in Washington DC

Elvis warned Nixon against the Beatles

Cadging a narcotics inspector badge during the visit-

Crafty

Useful to carry his OWN drugs from Cadillac to Mercedes

Said Elvis to Nixon in his jingle-jangle jewellery

and black Edwardian top coat-

There

In the Oval Office-

That  

The Beatles,

Were from over there-

He didn’t tell Milhous that he’d been shoved

Off to the LP charts and making sugary  Col. Parker’s Elvis movies

Twice a year!

While rock n roll had turned him into a souvenir

Gift shop.

Singing I just can’t help believin’

 at Las Vegas season after season.

But Beatlemania-

It wouldn’t go away

Ever since it began in 1963

No matter how much Elvis complained.

Elvis, making maybe one Single charts appearance a year by now

Called-

Lennon a dangerous radical anti-Vietnam war pacifist

Right there to Nixon’s face

 So why was he sitting in the Dakota Building in New York with his Japanese wife?

Should be deported, said the King to Pilate.

Nixon agreed, being of a suspicious bent-

And started proceedings.

Funny how

Elvis & Lennon

Both left the building

 At 40-

The dying clock makes a pit stop at 40 for rock stars that don’t die at 27.

Five

For me

It’s

Hard to measure overflows

From

The songs-

Singing in my head.

For: SirfNews on Sunday

(727 words)

May 12^th, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee

Palimpsest

Palimpsest

Fancy people know this word

And detectives –

It means a rewritten page bearing traces

Like

Life itself-breathing in, breathing out!

Always rewriting itself on the same page

You, in yourself, and in the mirror-

On your selfie

Till it’s time to tear it up or go up in smoke

Erase,

Except-

For the impression you leave behind

The older other time, day, words, images, memories, meanings,

Written over

Once, twice, more

Countless times-

Till the history

It shows

Clearly in

Your face, your eyes, your voice-

The slope of your shoulders

Your gait

All those rewrites-

Truth in motion, the thriftiness of survival with a few lines drawn in as evidence-

Always breathing in breathing out

Under perpetual reconstruction

You can put up a shingle,

And so many tiresome people do!

But

Not what you thought it would be at first

Not at all, not really-

Changes, changing, changed

Same edifice, renovated, distressed, maybe missing bricks,

A definitely mutating owner

Everything turning like a carousel

Including the speed & scenery-

What you can see of it

Love, hate, betrayal, trust, success, failure, truth

Lies-

Beauty, endurance,

Age.

This one creeps up and sits on your shoulders

And the realisation that this building is never going to get done and ready

It isn’t meant to be

And what it means is unclear

Except for a palimpsest-

You can have a tracing of the last version for no charge at all

But

The one before it and before that has been subsumed

With maybe a bit missed

By the eraser-

Earlier palimpsest

To remind you yesterday was only the last in line

Of so many-

 And sometimes

So very few

Moments

Erased before you could take it all in

Snatched away, gone to impatience

Snuffed!

Palimpsest-

A tongue word for your tongue and palate

For fancy people-

And detectives.

Detectives who pick up blank sheets from silent tables

And use a pencil to trace

Meaning

From the gone sheet above

Assuming, always assuming-

Competing with magic ink

That can come to life once, just once, with heat

But never be secret again

But all this was before computers.

Detectives look for palimpsests on destroyed hard drives now

Picked out of garbage bins

In bits

Mangled, burnt, but yet capable of yielding secrets

Life, secrets, loot

Is not that easy to erase

Guilt, regret, happiness, inspiration

It’s all grist

To the detective

And fancy people who know words like palimpsest

and

What it means to a scroll, a leaf, papyrus

A pad, a sheet, or even a table napkin

Written upon

For the record.

Palimsests are truly for fancy people

-And detectives.

For: SirfNews on Sunday

(440 words)

April 15^th, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee

Amazement

Amazement at the cycle of life
It is a rotary motion that persists
Like it was an engine
That will stop
Only
When it is switched off.

Dented, scraped, bloodied, broken, and then
Mended-
After a fashion
As in less that expert workmanship
Field stitches-
Big welty things that will produce angry ugly welts for long after everything goes blurry
But not the fixed wound-
 It will sit proud like stone cairns
Marking a wind-swept, deserted, desolate, grave.

Most of the psychic energy goes on the distractions
The agonising
The despair
What's left after this orgy of emotion-
Goes to the mending-semi-dried out, wrung-out, subdued, subordinated-
Cruelly humbled
But
Not completely defeated-
It is difficult to tell  the difference
Except for the sensation of humiliating pain
Because there is no oblivion to it.

Even if the repair does not restore it
Anything or any part
Of it
To what it was
Once or
Even yesterday-
It serves.

One does not even want it back to what it was
The former self is redundant
Amazement at the phenomenon of survival
Survives alright
Aware
Knowing of the measure of pain one can swallow.

Helpless-
The organism in you carries on
As if carrying on is of paramount importance
And there is a mystery to your suffering.

29th August 2015
Gautam Mukherjee