Hanging turtles and
Netted birds of amenity
Dangle from her
Left hip like jewels ‘neath a,
“Ming,” ear as she traverses
Mountains beholden kitchens
And one more rise come setting splendor.
Supper may be atop the right, pelvis,
But opposite and left,
Rests the flask, bitter in chase of sanity.

I’m sure the scant pebble
Rattling in between
Her stomach and sorrow
Was nothing more than
A desperate thirst opposed the
Blister born benevolence,
Thirst opposed execution
And a coin converted spirit opposed,
“Xie xie,” (thank you), a platitude,
As heads clip pavement,
Blood pales a gutter,
Or soon-to-be feast’s final throes,
A bleeding and breeding for other,
Leading jitter-beholden mice to flee,
For they may be next
So future’s victuals arrive
Unhindered.

All and assumptive, assistance and rendered,
She walks away with only this –
Everyone’s emaciated
And the butcher on the street is still a butcher,
A peddler, a savior, and butcher again;
A source, be it left, right or wrong,
In need of a drink, as we all are,
With only the means, “take me to the sip,”
And by dollar come pocket born you.

Mao’s on the wall.
Mao’s on the cat,
Mao’s the cat,
And Mao’s on the truck.
Mao’s tucked text.
Mao’s still the cat
Mao’s on the hat;
And Mao’s rendered stencil.
Mao draped in red,
Mao embalmed vacuum,
Mao smiling dirt
And Mao in slaughter;
The good, the bad,
The, “godly,” great
The ’89 slaughtered, ugly,
And as putrid as the scholars
Being spat upon.
So Mao’s tempered glass
And Mao’s tempered solemn,
Surrounded a spectacle,
When I, Mao and I,
Author and other, other and
Away, gaze eye-to-eye with,
“Before.”
His are closed,
Mine, unblinking.
I think of heroes,
I, “tinker,” butchers,
And ponder,
“Just,” and to the right of,
Right,” what is, “right?”
Would he have been?
Would she have been?
Would I have been?
“Right?”
Just what the hell is,” right?”

I. Letter 1

You write of sitting in the cold
of anxiety about your grant
not coming & how you lonely
you are & how you'll send the money

for those jeans of yours she paid for
not wanting to come between
her & her mother
& of the growing

distance between you
such a poor, proud country boy
unwilling, still to give up
on what all see as a crazy dream

& talking of emigration
& how you couldn't find
the book she wanted
in the shops, for it was sold out

A letter to your English girlfriend never sent
& poignant all the more for it

I.I Letter 2

You write of your concern
for us, my mother & me,
praying we have enough to eat
saying you wish you were there

to stand in hopeless Russian food queues
for us and how hard it is to be so helpless
You talk of shouting on the phone
& how you didn't mean to do it

& of how love and pain are two sides
of the same coin & how when
you & my mother talk you never
say anything much, just talk about the Museum

& dinosaur bones & how mad this is, how wrong
my mother would say those bones
were your reason for your so-called love
that she should have seen the naked ambition in your eyes

that of a man used to poverty, reaching for more
aiming for notoriety, whilst lying of love

I.I.I Letter 3

You call my mother ' Princess'
(my mother doesn't know this is cliche)
& talk of British superstitions
such as black cats being unlucky

& ask why Russians think
asking for photographs
of people is unlucky
a superstition my mother doesn't recall

when I ask her about it now
Black cats, is that why I ended
up in hospital in Britain
in a land of the free robbed of my freedom

because we had a black cat?
I always thought them lucky,
adhering to the Russian superstition
I guess I might have been wrong

back then you talked of emigration
of wanting to move to Russia to be with us


I.V Letter 4

I can mostly only imagine it
from my mother's words
your letter to her who was 23
named ' Lily' after the flower of death

bringing the death of our family
She calls you ' Day-Day'
like your youth's English girlfriend
in your mid-life crisis

you've turned into a poet
& are talking of your secret
love & nursing memories of love-bites
all else is dust & forgotten

you'd later cry on the Chinese hotel
bed in front of your wife, my mother
' how can I refuse these offerings'
& eleven years go by

occasionally we talk on the phone
it's something you don't deserve

Mei Mei wears the same,
“Signature,” every week,
Silk atop a smell soiled – Mao,
Burnt wood boiling frogs,
And a mother crying alongside
Ditch;
Ancient and ever’ed, leather
Peddling vegetables,
Not so many sold,
And atop something slight,
Thinner than rice whittled wrists,
Her red-printed tender
Intended daughter, “away,”
Under pink bow tie
And dreams wrought a village’s
Wheat and desires ancient –
All they’d offer progeny.

Mei Mei’d been born
And Mei Mei’d be gone;
All a grin, all a stage,
Come left, those who’d know last,
Stone tiers tethered past,
And right,
Others that’d someday follow;
She’d only be the first to leave.
And sure, she’d been frightened,
And sure, she’d been homesick,
With phone, “home,” ‘ever palmed,
And dreams ‘ever determined.
She’d shiver leg, wax poetry
Big cities, and boys so that
Dreamt be dealt,
Demise, be ******, and
“Mei Mei’d,” take on the world!

*Note - Inspired by a wonderful student of mine who graduated but days ago; grab the world by the horns, girl! You've inspired me, that's for sure!

My pen flies to a realm
never spied by my eyes.
He flutters through the air
like a dolphin through a tide,
whisking up until gravity takes.
He cares not where he flows or
even where I am.
Perhaps he will be seen in New York,
possibly Istanbul.
He was once sighted in Moscow
before fluttering to China
to walk the Great Wall.
Currently, he is having the traditional
Earl Grey with Queen Elizabeth.
At the rate he moves,
I fear he'll run out of ink.

I’m a china doll…
With rounded hips,
And fluorescent lips,
I am still never “good enough”
. . .
But it's okay!
I won’t grow today!
I’ll lose another layer
. . .
People start to see,
What’s not enough to set me free
But, to only me,
I have to be,
What I saw years ago…
. . .
But I’m okay,
Cause that’s what I say
I’ll just lose another layer…
. . .
All I own
Are baggy clothes,
From all those
Who still can get “too big”
. . .
Thinning layers,
I’m running out
I’ve reached my final road.
Cause tags and walls
Can say so much,
But numbers say it all…

Fluff and puff,
water plugs,
power plants,
paper over eyesores,
paint it matte,
pink as salmon,
pack the homeless
into the Bird's Nest,
ghettoise Moses,
bleed the Amazon
down to size,
moor the battleships
to Yamuna Bank,
let white elephants
run riot on warm Black ice
over those who won't
play ball in our
electric garden
free your head
from the rails
for what?
roti kapda makaan
or BSP ki maya?
be buried or a sport
let laal battis through
ab bus, stop
blaming it on Rio
don't you know
how India shone
in October 2010,
or that Russians love
their children too?
So what if they don't
believe in modern love?
Potemkin villages are
built brick by brick
by BRICS,
Red, Yellow, Orange
kilned to Black.