Here's summer solstice, the longest day of the year,
and this my two hundredth poem form. Perhaps
by the shortest day, winter solstice, I'll have done
all -- about four hundred -- forms found in English
#201 SKELTONICS
6-22-98
Death is quite
certain so pull the curtain. Rein in your lust as we
discussed. "Tie on a halo around your silo. Put grain in the
bag and consider a shag rug for sleeping on when I've
gone," said Mumtaz Mahal who gave more than all
for Jahan's Taj Mahal
at the fourteenth bawl.
#202 PREGUNTA
6-23-98
Are you afraid of death? Only of too deep a breath.
Are you
afraid of life? Only man's eternal strife.
Are you afraid of
travel? Only the need for arrival.
Are you afraid of
hurt? Only that I will lose my shirt.
Are you afraid of
love? Just cupid's damnable shove.
Are you afraid of
wealth? I'd rather have my health.
Are you afraid of fame? It
will claim whom it will claim.
Are you afraid of God? Spoil the
child, spare the rod.
What do you fear?
Questions near, queer, sheer, my dear.
#203 TANKA COUPLET
6-24-98
The glittering silk falls in waves from her shoulder, a great froth
of red.
The gold sunset grows later.
Roses uncloth their stamen.
#204 SHORT COUPLET II
6-24-98
Jaipur glows as India's pink town
built upon the desert like a gown,
glittering red and orange, rose, white,
gold walls painted for the Brits with light
mocking, gentle laughter -- magic
lantern of colonial, tragic
misconceptions. Here stood Machivell,
Ram Singh, outwitting British hell.
#205 MONODY
6-25-98
One year ago today my father died. I see him still, thin as a reed,
mouth open his blue eyes closed. Betty hands me his ring.
The
Blietz people arrive, gently they lift him into a sack. The last thing
I notice are his strong hands. "Goodbye Papa. I did wear
your
emerald for a while. I speak of you now and again. My hands are
strong, my eyes wide open and I make poems for you -- at
times
green as emeralds, thin as reeds -- and bow to you under
your cherry tree flourishing near where
mother stays among the peach azaleas.
#206 CAPITOLO
6-25/26-98
The British admired the fine crafts of India and its architecture, but
commandeered
its land to build an empire, displacing Lord Shiva
who, dancing,
damaru tapping, reigned, Shakti's hand
upon his unforgiving heart.
Fiercely
poised, the Lord of Death, the creator was banned.
For
centuries he outwaited triumphantly plumed merchants piling up Greek
and old Roman bastions here and there. Conquerors! But
feebly
unable to perceive the cause of dome, qibla, sun,
they
sweated in a land which did not wish to explain the gopura or
vajroli
which stun
in their sensuality. The British blushing,
disciplined, stayed in their tower. Wounded by need, characterized as
"cold fish,"
they found the entanglements of life too
sour. Scoffing at grace and its exuberant creators, stiffen by
greed, they refused to flower.
They strove for mastery in the
corridors
of power, this race of blind carnivores.
#207 SANSKRIT DIDATIC
6-26-98
RASA
"the gustatory implication is
etymologically correct."
"Gandhi is fasting again," said
the radio -- that little bent man with the cane and the white
wrapped around him. That little man was
in prison and wasn't
eating, said the headlines, the Movietone News. His bald head and
toothless mouth touched my pre-teen heart. But I could
not
quite understand why any
one cared if he ate or not. When I wasn't
hungry and didn't eat, it caused mild celebration.
Yet, the
diet of this funny little man who walked almost nude with tailed,
top hatted diplomats into #10 Downing Street,
was heralded,
whispered. Even my family, sweet, hardworking, remote from the
world, mentioned it. "Fasting," radio and movies
called it.
Somehow, he was awfully important. And later in life, after he
was shot, and millions of Indian's slaughtered during
partition
of that exotic land into pieces -- more murdered even than the
six million Jews by the Germans in World War II --
television,
ubiquitous
in my world where, by accident,
I became a celebrant of
of India, Gandhi, and at last
understood ahimsa, the Salt
March, satyagraha, spinning and
taxes, weaving and walking. with
bare feet upon the earth -- did not...
televison did not... not one
station in my town, mentioned one
word about India's fifty
years of Independence. Indeed,
'til she and her sibling set off
big bombs, my world construed the world,
including India, only
as markets for trade, like the East
India Company setting
out, unknowingly, to conquer
India, and the whole world, in
1772. Yet,
I remember, day
after day, reports on whether the little man clothed in the white
dhotiate
or didn't eat. Or would he eat
tomorrow?
Would the
foreigners ever get out of his land? Then,
finally (but this
knowlege came
later) -- the British absconded
as fast as they could to avoid
responsibility for the
millions they knew would be slaughter
in violence fostered by their
presence during three-hundred years
of hubris and exploitation,
inhumanity toward fellow
humans -- until Gandhi, the bent
man with the staff, didn't eat -- said
the radio -- and the world cared.
#208 MANDAKRANTA METER
6-27-98
Kalakalah, the ferry in the sound,
now lets great boats lie. Beneath
bold, broad, stone forts in which
stiff Brits fix pride, lie little boats aground. Wet,
wild, welcome, warm they hint at bitter storms. Bold,
bitten barricades fall.
Whose to say "fly," if nits pick petty
fights and the work wanders
widely?
Sanskirt
Glossary:
Kala = Arts and Crafts Kalakalah = disturbance,
noise Kalah = time, right time, occasion
Also, Kalakala, meaning "flying bird" (from the sound they make in flight)
is
the American Indian, Chinook language, name of a Puget Sound ferry
recently rescued from oblivion by sculptor, Peter Bevis.
#209 VAKH
6-28-98
Opulence,
grandeur, sunset red fusing horizon, smoke, earth, the palms,
endless pale sand -- walk on the earth and weep. There
I rinsed
my feet, walked without shoes. Silk was the earth, satin my heart,
welcomed at last. Chant through full moon nights. Consider
Krishna's river running through temples, through froth white
current,
misty vision, wet gown, see! --
Mahabharata at Wai.
#210 RIONNAIRD TRI-NARD
6-29-98
My love is ringing loud Lord, oh Lord, do reply with thy rhyme and
reason. Soon, re-season the lie.
My heart is heaving
blue with brassy love so bold, but old enough to brew luscious
stews, love untold.
Hail, hail, O Spring sprite the rites are
rightly done fair fun is quickly due
dance anew, quite lithesome.
#211 GAYATRI
6-30-98
Bullock carts mountained with sugar cane
crept along the road's golden grass, drivers asleep in the
heat.
They slept and I walked through the dirt.
They lived in conical cane huts
too fragile to withstand monsoon
rains.
Though the British demanded India build vast palaces,
cane huts, dirt roads, and carts remain.
#212 ANUSTUBH
7-1-98
We were sitting in a restaurant. It was raining in the angel's town.
He was struggling to invent the name for a world court. "The
Court
of Man," he suggested. She said: "That leaves women out."
He smiled, shrugged, implying the concept was more important than
gender balance.
"Will there be women on the court and people
from every country?" "So few are well educated enough to judge in
such a court."
"But that's the point, isn't it? To represent the
world -- different view points, different people?" "The point is
justice." "Our justice? Western
justice? Play by our rules or
you're wrong?" He turned to watch the angel's wings,
rain- drenched, he stopped arguing with a
mind which "high justice" eluded.
#213 TRISTUBH
7-1/2-98
KHAJURAHO II
Well, Devayani, do you believe it?
You found the
answer in your own book, read once and forgotten. "Tantric" it says,
"Tantric yoga."
So self evident the meaning escaped
you:
Maithunain extraordinary embrace
express the ida, pingala,
sushumna,
the semen -- concentrated life energy --
flowing to
the
head, vajroli, the supreme
enlightenment the gentle Chandella's knew.
#214 JAGATI
7-3-98
Comment on "ORNAMENT AND CRIME" by Adolf Loos, 1908
"...the shoe will be so covered in scallops and
holes as only an elegant shoe can be." You can sink your teeth into
Loos. He has got opinions --
wild, rabid, definitive opinions,
climbing undreamt heights of prophecy and altruism. defining his
fellow man's progress aloft from
the purple slime. He eats cooked
cow, smooth gingerbread, blissfully unaware that twentieth
century man will find that his needs must not be
satisfied.
He
must spend, spend, consume, consume in wide, wider circles to satisfy
greed on a scale so vast -- behind blank-faced walls -- that even the
opulence-
obsessed Calcutta British could not envision. Would
that Loos were Vienna bound from skyscraper lined, utilitarian U.S.A.
today,
having shopped in ornament-free K-Mart, picked up some
bargains of factory-made simplicity, quite affordable, known to be
loved by the natives.
According to Loos' egregious lights we've
attained perfection. The craftsman has become a joyless
worker,
and crime has fully replaced
ornament.
#215 USNIK
7-3/4-98
COMMENTARY
My experience in the
West has been that only recently to we speak of Judeo-Christians,
and never speak
of Judeo-Christian-Muslims. We speak of
Buddhist and Hindus But only someone as strange as I would speak
of
Hindu-Buddhus. Most others don't know that Buddha was a
Hindu. Nor have I ever heard a Muslim claim lineage
with a
Christian. Undoubtedly it is the truth, but a truth not uttered. For
remember, until after World War II,
Christians just barely
acknowledged Jesus was a Jew. Suffering Buddhists are embraced
more easily than Muslims.
Hinduism's Gods are dismissed as
mythology even as Kali Yuga manifests, yields chaos,
closure.
Seattle's Public Library classifies Christianity as
Religion; other faiths as Literature.
Subtlely, intentionally,
Prakash changes the West's perceptions of the world by simply
mentioning some facts,
by simply assuming, in our scientific
world, that most know
history, indeed, care about veracity.
#216 KAKUBH
7-4-98
Published in 1834, Ram Raz's Essays on
Hindu architecture was read by some, but ignored
by moralizing
esthetes. He gave rules, analysed ornaments, pre-empted the ruler's
game. Still Ruskin's
mellifluous babble flowed barbed with blind
judgements, rising in '57 to rant -- unaware it would seem
that
it might have been "cruel," "sinful," aye, "bestial," to deprive of
their freedom
one's "gentle," "unoffending" hosts.
#217 PURA USNIK
7-5-98
Across the
brilliant red, vermillion, bright red sea hued with blood, scorched
with blazing fire, conflagration of the nations
resting on
beauty, the evangelical sword, righteousness -- forward it strode
to the outer limits of the earth
hacking, handicapping those it
professed to love. "I come in the name of the truth! I will kill
you for your own good
so committed am I to the exalted tenets
of morality, beauty, good! --
genuine civilization."
#218 GAYATRI II
7-6-98
ELLORA
When I was a lad,
one hundred years ago, I came with my father to Ellora -- just
mountains
then, high hills, no carving. The rock was black.
Father said it was very hard, but in it he could
see
beautiful Kailasa, a temple for Shiva. He said, under the
moon at the very top if you
sat very still, looked in the
stone, you would see his home; that, with the others, he would carve
until I
could see it, too. Under the moonlight, when he
slept I took a tiny spike, with which you carve the lips
and
eyelids of the gods. Nearby I found a rock, and I climbed and
climbed in the clear sky, the light, like
day. The moon was
huge, full. The rock was smooth and black. For long distances
I crawled on my stomach, hands
wet, clinging to the rock. As
the moon touched the trees I was on top. I stood listening, still as
stone.
I could hear the Ganges through Shiva's hair. I
prayed as I sat on the rock. I put my chisel to
its pure
heart, exposed there beneath the stars, and I touched it with the
small stone. I made an opening
so small only Shiva could see
through. I started Kailasa when I was a boy. The next
morning
all the carvers gathered with their tools and walked a
path, around the mountain to the top and began.
To reveal
the temple they carved for years. At last, I, too, grew old
enough
to work. Shiva's drum. There!
#219 PIPILIKAMADHYA
7-7-98
If man is
the connecting link to God, then -- slim, and like an ant, in the
middle -- does the life-line get choked like the throats of hungry
ghosts? Starving, unable to eat, moaning with love of chappatis
and green mangoes, where then is the love of Shiva, Kali,
Durga?
How long do you sit beneath the banyan tree, play with
its root ropes and shade? Ganesh trumpets, calls his father, his
mother, sees the tree,
asks to be remembered while you build the
great world. Unheeded, forts of empire
crumble, rolled away by the ant and the beetle.
#220 BRHATI
7-8-98
When did chastity begin? Why? Where?
When man first dominated
woman. He needed to know
his property was his property, his progeny
his progeny. It
mattered to him. His greed mattered to him more than his passion.
How could he love all people, help support all beings, include
love
among his pleasures? Fighting was more fun, hatred easier,
and power intoxicating. He must stamp earth's nature down with the
imprint of his
claim that he was better than any. Throughout
millenniums he has proved only that he is worse than most --
trees,
flowers, animals, even the stones.
#221 PURASTAD BRHATI
7-9-98
The British,
falling in love with India, could
not restrain -- though they
criticized to maintain face -- their love of sun, desert, far
vistas, adventure
exuberance, flourishes, rococo, heat,
dust, ornaments. They were tired of their mist and rain, their
little island, the beggary, efficiency
with which they
industrialized their few acres. They were tired of piling up
cold stone and mullioned windows. They fell in love with the land
where they could
build with jalousies and zenanasin pink, white and
rose, dream the dreams of zamindars,
nawabs,hold durbars,spend as if
they were maharajas, all with
their host's great wealth and *atithi devo bhava generosity. Ah,
a great dream for a
little
people from a little island, unable
to comprehend the
sensuality of form, Shiva's preference for the charnal ground, the
modesty of human
life, maya,Kali's bone-white
grin.
*Atithi Devo Bhava, which means "the guest is God," is taught
to all
Indians from time immemorial
#222 PATHYA
7-10-98
Every pore of my body creams all over with bliss as I see slender
Shakti
rippling like a river along the endless corridor of
light
shimmers,
wearing high platform shoes, dark skirt, each side slit to the
knees, each stride causing the fluid material to wave in movements
like water's current
lapping her legs against the thrust of her
thigh; ankle deep swirling instability supporting a slim column,
shoulders behind cut sleeves, head
jeweled, her neck arched
beneath hair piled high, like Nefertiti's crown, snakes wrought of
silver around her upper arms, so young she must be no more
than
a sophomore walking from Allen to Suzzallo's Gothic exit.
Goddess, it seems, on an unhurried mission. Just for a
moment I dare not turn.
What if she's not there to be seen?
Ecstatic, almost blind, I find enlightenment in the brilliant fluid of
the
unexpected vision, passing.
#223 SKANDHODGRIVI
7-11-98
Comment on "COLONIAL
DESIRE" by Robert J. C. Young
How dare you make sex so
boring? When all you want to point out is Europe's attraction to the
beautiful, often willing, native women (and men),
that must be
hypocritizedso that the whites (mainly) could go
on "teaching,"
raping and pillaging, gleaning the wealth of others' lands, killing
fathers
and mothers of their chosen mates, disowning their
hybrid children -- like our own Tom Jefferson having his black
kids serve his white kids. All that high toned
talk to
camouflage the love they had of the sensuality, sexuality that they
had bred out of their moralizing bones, out of their
(they
hoped) women's moralized bones. Of course they wanted to make love
to the exquisite apsarases of India, China, Burma,
Indonesia,
also bred to compliance, but compliance of a
different sort. Women of the East were taught to worship their
men as Gods. And if Europeans
weren't Gods, who were? If the
natives weren't racially inferior how justify stealing their land
and mandating opium addiction, killing
millions? Say it, R.
Young. Don't mask yourself behind bastardized,
linguistically-hybridizing utterances, anticipating a defense
lest a colleague might accuse you of interest in the sexual
charms of nautchgirls, whispers from your body's desire,
wishes for time's disappearance.
#224 SATO BRHATI
7-12-98
In Kuala Lampur, God knows why,
they've built the tallest buildings, on earth, reaching almost beyond
the stars, higher, often, than the moon's light streaming
across
rivers in their narrow country like a column. Perhaps they wanted
it, their country of beauty and good food, to be as tall as it
is
long, reaching out to celestial heights along the axis of
God(s). Mayalsian and Chinese, they mine
tin, my encylopedia
says, and grow rubber, transport goods
for our competitive commercialized spinnning globe and, no doubt, they
needed
a beacon. They certainly stopped cold
in its tracks, the
American urge toward colossalization. Now the World Trade Towers
nod, from their shrimp-like height toward their betters of the East
in
humble recognition, jostling the sky, scraping sattelites,
adjusting their cloaks, wondering why they sit so high
beyond the golden calf's cry.
#225 NYANKUSARINI (with one Bhurik stanza)
7-13-98
Reading
the alphabet's history: Akkadian, Egyptian, Semitic, Phoenician,
Greek, Latin, English -- its lineage sings across the history of
time.
How could it have ever not been? How could it ever not be?
Words on clay, words in ink, the transmission of mummies' thoughts,
mummies, people wrapped in their own writing,
an Etruscan corpse
preserving contact with a vanished language, bits of business and
clay contracts, monumental stone inscriptions,
papyrus
abecedaries, tri-linguals of Rosetta, of Behistun cliff carved over
the high edge for God to study, Xerxes' pride to judge.
Six
thousand years ago, maybe a bit more, stones were silent, even
quipuslay
unknotted. Then one day a marked
token: history's record began.
#226 UPARISTAD BRHATI
7-14-98
In the tradition of Islam writing is the
tradition of God. Scripts of exquisite beauty illuminate the temple
walls, arches and vaults.
Illumined patterns of color simulating
the face of God cover the floors and the ceilings. Fountains stand
in the middle of gardens to refresh
the heart. Water flows from the
pure heart of grace, flowers from wisdom, trees for contemplation's
cool shade. The Persians enhanced the land of their hosts with
domes.
I have stood in the Bijapur dome. I have heard my voice
echoed round, whispering in my ear of love provoked by God's love
of the river-washed land,
of the deserts the jungles, hills, the
Deccan plateau and the high Himalayas where sound is heard,
water flows, and all can be absorbed by the land.
#227 JYOTISMATI
7-15-98
Don't train your taste too fast.
Looking into your heart, you find the wedding cake of Albert Hall
appeals
to you as much as Naila House and hybrid dorms farmed out at Mayo
College. But
you do frequently favor "what is is." And
you begin to see that the whole world can be defined as a "colonial"
structure, impositions, conquests, borrowings, loans,
filtered
and reclaimed. There is nothing but what happens at the
center of things. Shiva's dance. Let the dancer gyrate. Sit among the
ruins of the temple, contemplate time. You were once shocked
by
bright pink military barracks in China. But the Singh's sang the
buildings of Jaipur pink, kept them that way. You may prefer Ellora, or
Mahabalipuram, or find ecstatic rapture in
Bilbao. Let the world
build and amalgamate.
Even the cave man was not content with
unmarked walls. There's no greater paean to architecture's chaos
than
University
of Washington's campus. But trees grow
tall, taller
willingly hide the sins of all willful, would be's.
And India,
better than most, knows that what's built
will one day crumble back to
dust.
Absorb the consequences of action, enjoy the fruits of
desire. What is here today will not be here tomorrow. The world is
but one part
museum, ninety-nine parts change.
#228 HOKKU with COUPLET
7-16-98
Ah, I am of one mind as I watch the coming storm. Two birds
singing.
The sun re-emerges first.
Wind gusts chase the slower clouds.
#229 ENCLOSED TRIPLET
7-17-98
Sunshine gleams on water lilies. Tight buds nestle white, quite
hidden -- while the night's wild riding fillies,
frequenting the
park and lawn's green ghostly hue, await the sunrise, warmth and
weather, duck's green bright sheen,
-- to fan their lotus heads and
pure
modest souls of symbolism's
pink and pretty white/blood mixture.
#230 SICILIAN TRIPLET
7-18-98
In growing up I have learned the magical lives of others are not so
different from my own. I used to look with longing toward the
biblical
lives of others until I understood their bios contained
only their attainments
and not the other three hundred days of would.
#231 BALLAD STANZA
7-18-98
She wanted to save her life or death for a special occasion like
love. She walked in the wind away from the heart watching the sun
above,
watching the birds coast and dart. Along came a dove with
a twig who said she was too much of a pig and would rather eat and
fart.
"Where, where shall I begin to dig?" she cried in agony,
remorse. "Given a body that likes its food I would indeed
divorce
it for love. But bodiless sex," she cooed, "would make
me a virgin still urging lost in the wild wind of desiring
and leave me yet unwooed."
#232 BALLADE (with Envoy)
7-19-98
Julie went to the well to see far down in its depths the
darkness. On the high grey stones on her knee she could see the
flashing sky bless the mirror of the water below. The sun appeared
in the cloudless blue-mullioned quite dazzling glow.
In her
closed hand she held the key and the knowledge of great
kindness given her by way of a fee. She was sent to fetch the
largess of run-off from the winter's snow but she stood still in the
hapless blue-mullioned quite dazzling glow.
She reached toward
the dark sky to be sure that what she had to confess to the heavenly
referee would be accounted in congress a most excruciating
foe concealed behind her shyness, blue-mullioned quite dazzling
glow.
Julie's death was really needless. Call her an unfortunate
crow. She died while sharing a groundless
blue-mullioned quite dazzling glow.
#233 DOUBLE BALLADE
7-19-98
Where in the creation of God on what earth have you so far
seen built on a magnificent quad things other than ultimate
green with sun's irridescent sheen lighting the world and
memory, uncanny desolation's keen while all time flows down to the
sea
Under howling winds the trees nod, pink blossoms shower the
ravine, leaves whirl and fall and the great pod bursts with its
seeds, while the birds preen and the ravishing racoons clean edibles
and ogle a plea like an intelligible dean, while all time flows down
to the sea.
Along comes man, so roughly shod he cannot feel
earth's benign lean heart, but must strip the ocean's cod, denude
land's trees and overglean, overgrow plants and fruits, then
ween himself on pills he sees as key to eternity, grows quite
mean, while all time flows down to the sea.
Even the elephant's
great trod -- which rumbles the earth while Selene, bright Goddess
who shrinks to a rod, waning to darkness, count fourteen, and
reasserts herself as queen -- does not offend like the great
spree that God's glory might have forseen while all time flows down
to the sea.
If only divinity's prod worked still to make nature
convene from the sky and the land in a hod, by the sea's edge where
the marine creatures live and quietly screen, what is to be left for
the lee before man expends all his spleen while all time flows down
to the sea
Life is so uncommonly odd, Precambrian to
Holocene, bits of rock to man form a wad bound, chewed, spewed by
the mutant gene. Watch it climb, fly, shout, sail, careen until it
reached right up to me and remains quite green as a bean, while all
time flows down to the sea
Today starts with Paleocene, silent
cliffs of eternity soundless, echoless, man will keen
when all time has flown to the sea.