Love After Babel & Other Poems by Chandramohan Sathyanathan

Author:Chandramohan Sathyanathan [Sathyanathan, Chandramohan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Daraja Press
Published: 2020-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

Make in India

(Labour under attack)

The lumpen proletariat.

The sweat of his brow evaporates

To condense in the bottles

Of the beverage corporation.

The frail frame of his wife

Is his daily punching bag.

Does he have a title to defend?

History

1.

In my rear-view mirror

History is on my tail.

Wait.

It isn’t even history.

It’s my own alter ego following me.

Objects in a convex mirror are

Closer than they seem.

While navigating sharp curves.

Some planets travel slower

Than their average speeds

Near their apogees.

It’s called retrograde motion;

Do not sign contracts—

Our intellect takes a well-deserved break.

Ganja in my brain!

2.

We ride a wave

Talk in double-entendre.

Can I use the same convex

Mirror to focus all my rage

On the religious mark on your forehead?

Is the surplus value of

The sweat dripping down your

Brow for ages

The secret of your glowing skin?

Insert a “Gospel of the slave tribe”

Post-scripted mythology.

Scarecrows suffuse the

Apartments of the neo-rich.

Can I mount an insurrection

By cascading myths

In my verses?

Build a missile defence shield

Along points of inflexion

To intercept patronization.

Can a series of cascading myths

Surmount an insurrection

Against his self-anointed lineage

Longer than the longest freshwater

Currents of the world?

3.

Does a wound/ childhood scar

Have a disputed ancestry?

Insert a NOTE to the slave tribe

In the tri-junction of mythology

A prosthetic limp for a long

Stroll in the desert.

Should I speak with the proper

Semiotics, as if signing on a bond paper?

An old hidden dialect resurfaces

Like a half-decomposed corpse

Resurfacing on a pond.

4

A clash between “bourgeois sobriety”

And “proletarian frivolities”

At the orthogonal delta of language!

I stammer when I respond to

His abrasive questions.

Horizons hinge on my replies.

A minister used to connive

Amidst his stammer.

Cosmopolitan attire plus sophisticated accent

Tongue rinsed clean of any

Vernacular tinge.

Reptilian circumference of scorpion’s sting

An arm’s distance at school prayer halls.

Is sight an extension of touch? (A reverted glance!)

Is shadow synchronous with the hourglass?

Does shadow travel faster than light?

Can the nodes of a shadow mar your nuptial bed?

5.

Dark circular patches below your eyes,

Chinks in your aristocratic halo!

Shoulders stoop with the

Senile burden of many epochs.

Can I relieve his shoulders

From the yoke of assumed names?

My strides are like

A swimmer’s miniscule scrawls

Against the current.

6.

Educate Agitate Organize!

I have been trained to punch

Above my weight.

Can I strip him off his caste surname?

His name has a tail

Violating the sanctity of my airspace

I chase him down like a fighter pilot.

No gum shield or headgear

It is a long tedious harangue

With insidious intent.

Does my enemy have enemies

Disguised as friends?

Will any of them abstain

From voting during the floor test.

Can I shift from

Active to positive voice

In the midst of a conversation and

Drift to my mother’s surname?

A bloodline refugee!

Castes are like egg-yolk.

Scramble them,

They hatch into sub-castes!

Not even a squirm is gravity free.

No taxation without representation.

No reparation without representation.

A belief system collapses

Like a torpedoed ship

Anchored to an intangible myth.

Some blood groups take

Longer to coagulate

The lower one is on the scale

Of contempt.

If the cobbler and toddy tapper

Outshine the blazing sun

Then stake claim on his seed,

The twice-born conspiracy.

Languages are plastic handles

To manoeuvre molten identities

From hot furnaces.

Clean the dirt from the veins of history

Using toilet cleaning poisons.

What if I am half-caste?

Do sperm deposits in sperm banks

Suffer progressive infertility?

A half-moon is still a moon.

The one-drop rule in reverse!

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