Nabina Das
Three Poems of Irreverence
...It’s Showtime Now
You mustn’t worry whether the weather
Is fine or muggy in our cities these days
We’ll be inside the box, special seats
The Stateroom all to ourselves, we can
Sing in abandon in Jacques Brel‘s voice
No wonder I hear people discuss Le Gaz
And this all when we can all have fun in a
Bunch, say yay to Hercule Yakko while
Crowding above our pothole of jibes and
Cramming into neighbors’ shoes spilling
Ammonia with love, only love, but wait!
Will someone say we wanted to spoil the
Fun? No, not when we sing and chant: Take
Me Out To The Ballgame! The rest will
Follow your imagination, call it chaos or
Disdain, it’s never too crowded to catch a sham.
...Writing Vaudeville
Because the days of
dreaming and imagi-
nation are so much a part
of the way we construct
our existence, the way we pay
taxes, sign certificates to say
we haven’t cheated or
maybe have, our lives
in a way, became one of
revelation, Vaudeville, polite!
“After you folks finish
shopping in the box-stores,
gulping Dr. Peppers and
belching out your frozen-at-birth-warmed
bacon-filled tacos…”
I asked recently all that I
passed by as a last try
(I have a trained dog
fetching my acidity pills
miracle elixir bottles
big-time billowing bills).
So, emboldened, I asked.
“Can you lead me to
the eyes of the beast?”
“The eyes!” Retorted the portly
man who sits daily by
Lost Tribe Café, a café.
“Asking a blind man about
Finding the beast’s eyes takes
some nerve!” He muttered.
I stepped out gloom-wrapped
in low autumn’s vagaries.
“When you don’t see with eyes, you
start living with stuff around,
the things around you, not
in front of them, did you know?”
A woman from the café
emerged mournful yet mellow.
“Forgive my old man, he’s a
Paul Cox fan, watched
his flicks when he
had eyes, good ones.”
Motionless she stood, hands
on her old man’s shoulders –
a faded Pieta on a renovated
worship house shelf.
...A Few Things of Consideration
If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion
Noam Chomsky
This a far off place where I am lodged
Between news-nights, a foggy web, shores
Of dawning illusion after the day’s rowing
Is done. Am a chalice half-full, half-seen
This face is me, although another continent
Brown and mysterious earth, I tell all friends
While they are nodding to the lullabies of global-
ization, reading and debating Stiglitz ad nauseum
Desiccated words that drink churned hopes
Therefore, this has to be a mind that swims
I have concurred, where waking lies under
A Delhi sun or a New York cloud ever so
Languid from gaping at gregarious billboards:
Pepsi, Nike and maximum mantras after a
Game of duck and hide daily on our wobbly
Sides as I can see: it is her neck, his body that
Winces quite like mine cries from battles and
For beans, in sincere scare and loathing, searches
A reason to love and call everything by imper-
manent names; for example: I am, or, we are.