I: Hypocritical Accusations of a Jealous Knave
I could have sworn the Queen winked at me as
I laid my Royal Flush on the table
Clubs
She was always the prettiest
Hers is my suit:
I imagine myself as the Jack
Who turns her from Monarchess to
Adulteress in the Royal Garden
Maybe slip her a stolen tart or two
To spite the King for he always
Outranked me
The chances of being dealt it are
Sixty four thousand, nine hundred and seventy (ish) to
One,
If my luck is running out,
Why must it be wasted
In the gaining of ethereal money?
Why not conserved for the selling of my soul to
A queen who is not ink on laminate
Card?
Or at least not here in an
Imagined Vegas or Montecarlo where
Neon, though colourless in nature,
Forms a blinding parody of a hell, hooded
In green and pink and orange and yellow or more
To pass as a heaven for
The wannabe vagrants of brat nations
Who may weep pennies for a disaster,
Remove the split onion, retake the shining knife
And bleed brass, nickel, copper and
Slaughtered tree (more ink) into
An impossible lottery
Hoping for a transfusion with
Monetary hepatitis and all from
The blind benefactors
Apply a plaster and
Reabsorb oneself into the mirror
I too am guilty of all this

II: Inside the Dreams of a Madman to Be
Checkmate.
Oh how the intellectuals do duel
Yet spill not one drop of blood;
Like the bishops of old before they were
Confined to diagonals
Who would carry clubs instead
Of blades to preserve their
Sanctity:
Keep it white, not stain it red
Or brown, dotted with congealed black;
It is a wonder to paint
But not to see or to feel
This was before the days when
Bleach could hide one’s
Breaking of the LORD’s commandments
And before the harnessed
Lightning strike
Killed the LORD himself in his creation’s (<Eyes
And so the bleach was not needed
Yet still it sold because
Grass stained trousers:
The fruits of a hard summer afternoon’s
Labour in the sun
An atom of wasted
Childhood well spent
Could not be called a sin

III: Nonsensical Ramblings of the Recently Awakened
The eyes of an ivory cubic
Snake in two parts leer up at me
Does this mean defeat at the hands of fate?
Nonsense! I am the hand of fate
The left, disused one to be exact;
It is not chivalrous to use me
Yet I am the hand of many things
I know nothing of hands or of dice
I tell lies instead

"a canvas, which reflects
sunlight in rays unseen
before submitting itself to a life of color"

Razelle McCarrick
--------------------------------------------------
From memory she painted me,
Tho we had never met.
She painted my biography
On an easel of paper, brushes of pencil,
Exposed, bereft, inexorably delighted
At being dissolved in words that were not mine.

My annotated notes herein ascribed
To her revelations of my secreted stories,
Were written as I gazed upon the multi-blues of
California's beaches, neckline decorated with
Strands of white pearled beaches
Opposite contusions, bruises of
Orange terra cotta roofs, a burnt coral,
Colors that demanded attention, preservation,
Salutations, all hail the penetrating gaze of
Razelle, betrayer and savior.

His moniker was a borrowed line,
Still crazy after all these years,
How could this unknown girl of twenty two
Clear capture, undress me in the poetry of her canvas,
The instant and constant self-examination,
The rapture when transcending the fears
Instilled from birth of how I ought to be,
Which sixty two years on, the wrestling never ends.

Color me flesh nude,
Color me blue bottled,
Red ripped asunder,
The sweetness ascribed to my love poetry,
A subtraction of the bitterness of a failed life.
Colorist of my seams, my woven words,
I am white now, my canvas completed,
Waiting another poet to write over it,
And chaining new words to what was writ.

N.M.L.

-------------------------------------------------------

Razelle McCarrick · Sep 21, 2010
Biography of a Man
Someone wrote a biography of a man. Said he liked to write poetry and spend time in nature. But there are many things its readers will never know about. The streams of thought, the analysis, confusion, the Sadness, sprinkles of joy, the Transcension. A strange man he was..sweetly strange, but strangely bitter. At odds with the halves of himself..or perhaps thirds. But who will know? Someone wrote a biography of a man, but didn't say he was crazy. Or that he had a sharp mathematical mind and tried to add up the components of life to find it wasn't an equation in the first place. It was omitted that he was not merely a man, but of some other kind, often missing his home and his people, though he didn't know who they were. They didn't say when he became deaf, that he still played his favorite songs because he could feel them all the same and see them in colors. And no one knew that he refused to write in pen, but pencil only because one day his work would be rubbed away by the sands of time, just like his body. Someone wrote a biography of a man, but there was no account of what he did on a beautiful day, like the time he sat by a stream pondering his life and rewrote the biography of a man.

what should i wear today?
should i be dressed in white?
or should i mirror the passing night?

should i be in green?
but of life or of envy?
or should i be in purple?
but of royalty or of poison?

should i choose red?
for red is the color of love
but also the color of rage

or should i go blue?
of calmness or of sadness?

what should i wear today?
who should i be?

Like me, evening lingers,
In uneasy balance;
The day is almost over,
And dark night waits.
The dusk trembles, shimmers,
This order cannot last:
One push, one unkind word,
And the red sun will set.
At the threshold, I wait too,
For your final impetus:
I cannot come back to you,
And I cannot move on.

Diptesh Ghosh

When I am old (I mean older) I will
Not accept what the young will let me have:
My booming laugh will scare my pretensions
Of wisdom away. I’ll be fun, talk light
And smile at will; when working men pass by,
All brown and stretched by the long working hours
I’ll talk of lazy summer noons and soft
Evenings; I will wash away my kindness.

I’ll spend my fortunes (if someday I’m rich)
On flippant things: maybe I’ll learn to fly,
Or spend my weekends seeking sunken gold
In Bahamas all alone; I will try
New things: I’ll wear red when I please and paint
My house the deepest purple shade; I’ll eat
What I desire, drink rum on afternoons,
And pretend to chase all the prettiest girls.

When I am old (I mean older) I will
Grow eccentric. But still on winter nights
When I’m alone (which will be every night)
I’ll write (till weary eyes permit) the poems
I write to you: that will not change with age.
Like an old fruit, wrinkled and ripe, I’ll slide
Into blank nothingness carrying just your thoughts:
I’ll persist, still unfulfilled, still yearning.

Diptesh Ghosh

Early morning
After a sleepless night
Of thunderstorms and shrieking winds;
Now this clear dawn, the empty roads,
This sleeping world:
The orange ball rises, shyly,
Turning the snow-white peaks red,
Lighting the green valley
That lies ripe with yellow mustard.

Utterly beautiful,
Quite impossible
That such loveliness exists.

I am greedy.
I have this strange yearning
For an off-season mango,
And your presence;
The mango months
Are half a year away,
And you and I
Are forever split by the bounds
Of customs and propriety.

But this is a make believe world.
I find you by my side,
Laughing at my mango fondness;
You ask me, sleepy eyed,
If I too find such dawns lovely:
I answer, tongue-in cheek,
With a warm smile,
“Impossibly so”.

Diptesh Ghosh

Posted on my castle temple walls
Signs you should of took the time to read
"Warning"
Monster untamed and vicious
"Danger"
Toxic tears will erode your soul
"Keep Out"
You will die slow and painfully
These walls hold secrets
Victims to my monstrous demented ways
Have become the white picket fence
Barbed-wire running through temples
Oozing out the toxicity of my love
You should of read the signs
They were warnings
Before you walked the yellow brick road
That is now painted red
With those who have tried
To make me something I was never meant to be
I'm no angel
I'm no saint kneeling at an altar
I'm the demonic statue
Crucified upon golden crosses
I'm the symbolic monster
Tormented by the whipping voices in my head
You should of read the signs
They were warnings
To the same fate that fell upon others

Miss Percival's famous jell-o molds were
the talk of every summer block party.
No one was sure where she had come up with
exotic shapes that adorned red benches
robins, and faces of famous people
they really were a thing to be envied.

One Memorial Day, though, there came a shriek from Miss Percival's kitchen
and the flowery curtains shuffled as they did so

The first ones in (the couple that brought the waldorf salad every year. It was good, but it was nothing next to Miss P's jell-o molds)
were Mr. and Mrs. Carroway
Mrs. Carroway almost fainted when she saw what was on the counter

You see, Miss Percival was fond of one site for her molds
and they shipped them in every month in big brown crates
there was a big brown crate, to be sure
but no mold inside

It isn't proper to gossip, but I heard that it was a bowl full of eyeballs;
A medical school had put the wrong address on their order.
I bet that there was a confused batch of medical students
being stared at by a jell-o model of Walter Cronkite.

I have this ache, Doctor. And so far, no amount of drugs or drink have been able to cure it. Where does it hurt, you ask? Why right here, Doctor. Right here in my chest.  It started feeling odd when I saw HER for the first time. It was a Thursday; August eighteenth of two thousand eleven I believe. I remember her perfectly, for I had not, and have not, seen anybody more beautiful in my life. Her auburn hair was  streaked with red and waterfalled  perfectly over her delicate shoulders, that were on that day cloaked in a blue jacket. Her long graceful fingers bloomed from slender palms and were crowned with an elegant black nail polish with a cracked silver finish. To this day, I have never so much as imagined anybody more perfect than her. So what's my problem? Well Doctor, she hates me. I can see it glint in her dark eyes every time she looks at me. Why is this? Why I have not the slightest idea. All I have ever been was polite to her. All I have ever been was kind. When she shivers I give her my jacket, regardless of how cold I am at the time. When she is hungry, I use my last dime to feed her. I do everything in my power to make her happy, make her laugh when pain adds weight to her shoulders. But I guess it just wasn't enough in the end. What do you prescribe, did you say? An entire bottle of pain pills and a slash down each wrist? That sounds about right. Thank you, my dear Doctor.