Manchu poetry
In the silence of the firs, I gather what remains,
The fragments of a memory, the loosening of chains.
I look at the reflection, but the eyes are not my own,
A shadow in the mirror of a self I've outgrown.
The autumn air is cooling, the summer's green has fled,
A transition in the seasons for the words I haven't said.
The "female asterisk" is a weight I cannot bear,
A heavy skirt I carry, but no longer want to wear.
I am an unstoppable storm, a force of grace and fury,
Escaping from the prying eyes and the world's quiet jury.
I am not a project to fix, nor a role to be played,
But a traveler in the mist, where the old versions fade.
In the vast open sky, I find a different light,
Walking through the shadows to the dawn after night.
I am "both me and mystery," a truth I finally see,
Lost to the world I knew, but found in being me.
cinnamon drifter i am
i observe from afar
the world goes slower when time sours the stomach of life
i wish i had some white frosting as an odd sort of invisibility shield
cinnamon drifter i am
i check out her legs
i check out the booty on the next one
i check out the natural beauty on my favorite one
cinnamon drifter i am
i pet damona, the lonely manchu chow
her tears have the same blank stares as mine
yet and still we choose to work together to uplift another
cinnamon drifter i am
sandy mocha drifter is damona, my unexpectedly loyal companion
together we experience new stories that we will never live to tell
we continue to walk for the purpose of our daily living
The Chinese tend to take the long-term view.
They do things differently in Old Cathay.
A thousand decades, almost to the day,
have come and gone. There’s really nothing new.
While foreigners fixate on Fu Manchu,
The Eastern mind sees things another way.
While we pervert, prevaricate, parlay,
the “chink” prefers to chew, review, construe.
“Since Revolution’s what you like to do,”
some western wag asked Mao in sixty-two,
what of the French?” (Vendée, Charlotte Corday,
the sans-culottes, et cetera.) “Your view?
A triumph, or disaster?” Like Sun-Tzu,
Tse Tung replied, “It’s far too soon to say.”
Collaboration with Space Cadet (Wesley C.)
In him, I dance, my back strong, my feet steady.
I'm a tiptoe heart, whispered here in our laughter affair
with an anchor in plankton, when
my numb calves fumble in a kitchen sink bath.
I'm held in his hands, captured
in splinters and colorful shards of coral to hold in his heart.
Moriarty and Manchu, I flee and we fly;
I always come back, if not one of me, than the other you.
His heart does know and does care:
To him I am one; to me, he is love.
Flashes turn into nights,
And demons swim awake to turn torment,
Haunt hunger through me,
But through immeasurable distance.
a warm light, a hand whispers, "Dance,
dance, you can dance!"
***
January 13, 2017
Corrected on January 17, 2017
Scrawny Tony gaunt and bony scraggy bag of beastly bones
He was pony de la Manchu chum of Mister Marty Jones
He had an intense perception
And skills of great execution
In a sense of perfect destructiveness he chomped my hipbones
© Rajat Kanti Chakrabarty 2014
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