I gathered the pores of my being
And came to perfume them with your own fragrance
Only to discover that you are an oleander -- a rosebay
While in the memory of unease and apprehension
I trace some features that resemble no one but you
An image has its own dimensions
And, when hopelessness assails me, I have roads
That never cease to pull and lead me toward you
And while in the nook of anxiety
I fancy a preordained timing
For events that never materialize
The image draws near
And I talk to it
About the tons of heavy separation
That oppress the seasons of my life
I have recited you as rain
Yet your lightning never came near me
Alienation gathered thick
Translated by Mahmoud Abbas Masoud

We walk the smoke-thick winter street of sweet 'n' sour aromas
amongst a throng of oriental shaded faces (such gentle souls)
who crowd  little pushcarts selling scallion pancakes.
Overhead, red talismanic paper lanterns bob, enticing us
to the tap of percussive chopsticks.

We sit in awe; snack on duck-tongue; roast pigs hang
glistening; fat-fresh, ready to fry.
Waiters wheel trolleys piled high with steaming shrimp noodles
past tables of golden oranges and watermelon seeds.
Our Chinese chef prepares shredded pork in garlic sauce.

He smiles and says:
"More guests means more happiness."

555

Trust in the Unexpected—
By this—was William Kidd
Persuaded of the Buried Gold—
As One had testified—

Through this—the old Philosopher—
His Talismanic Stone
Discernéd—still withholden
To effort undivine—

’Twas this—allured Columbus—
When Genoa—withdrew
Before an Apparition
Baptized America—

The Same—afflicted Thomas—
When Deity assured
’Twas better—the perceiving not—
Provided it believed—

~~~~~~~~~~~~~1~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The valiant king rode across
A perilous mountain pass, which
Led to a mystic who could
Dispel the chance of death at war.

He roved along the rough terrain
Through rows of shuddering pine
His journey had no sojourn till
He'd drink the elixir wine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~2~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sage lived in a far flung place
Amidst mountains old as time
In that ancient talismanic cave
He reached his spiritual prime.

No man had ever seen the sage
Yet stories had been told, of those
Who sipped that miracle wine
And rose above their woes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~3~~~~~~~~~~~~
The king kneeled down before the sage
To narrate his woes through prayer
Then said, pour thy mercy, my Lord,
For my nation's in despair.

The gory war's killed umpteen men
My army faces defeat
Bless and save my people, O Lord!
For the enemy won't retreat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~4~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sage looked at the distressed king
Whose heartbeats had sunken low
For only the saint's miracle
Could help him fight the foe.

The sage did cast a magic spell
Pressed the ruler's armour of steel
Then said go back and fight my king
Triumph, and help your nation heal.

Prashant Shaurya ©
All Rights Reserved
17-04-2019

perched
poised
placed upon pillows
and cushions
pushing
probing
penetrating places
internal and eternal

raised
raising
raving so ravenous
and feverish
rendezvous
recollected
remembering rapes
communal and consensual

telegraphic
telepathic
tell-tale tortures
and trials
tender
talismanic
treasured in totality
bitter and beloved

The pin wobbled in a manner which would tantalize another man,
But he knew, surely as he knew his own name,
Knew in the very maw of his soul,
That it would remain implacably upright.
He was right, of course, the seven-pin standing ***** as a toy soldier
In complete defiance of tenets of physics and divine mercy.
He’d been down this road before,
More times than he’d care to remember:
Some occasions of his own making, short-arming the last ball,
Having it hit the head pin too flush,
Or going Brooklyn and leaving the ten unscathed,
But equally often seemingly the victim of random fate or its like,
Where he’d the pocket just so,
With all the action you’d need or could muster,
Yet somehow the pins would bounce off the wall in patterns
Inexplicable via Newton's laws, the work of gremlins or voodoo,
Perhaps the vexatious ghost of some manual pin-setter of long ago.
He’d put together eleven straight strikes
On every lane in the house a half-dozen times,
Some nights when the boards were as giving
As a rich and doting grandmother,
Other times in sport conditions
Where no one else even sniffed two hundred
(On one such evening, he’d scored a perfect game
On the ancient shuffle-alley game tucked into a corner of the bar, Celebrating, in a manner of speaking,
By taking chunky, sad-faced Penny Marie
From the payroll office at the mill
Up against a wall in the dimly-lit alley behind the building.)

After enduring the usual consolation and confabulation,
He left the alley, walking up the hill to the old two-story on Fifth St.
Which he shared with his mother and other memories,
Though the house bore little trace of his existence, present or otherwise
(His mother had, just once, put a few of his trophies and plaques
Out on display on the mantelpiece in the parlor;
He’d insisted that she take them down forthwith.
Buncha ******* plastic and stamped tin, he’d snapped,
Don’t mean a ******* thing to no ******* body.)
He’d nodded to her on his way through to his room
(She still, out of force of habit, still waited up for him,
Part simple inertia, part hopeful belief
In the talismanic nature of the maternal)
Grunting Y’know, one of those nights in reply to her inquiry
As to how well or otherwise the evening went.
He’d undergone the usual bedtime ministrations
(An indifferent ****, the near-frenzied tooth brushing
Which failed to remove the effluvium which accompanied him home
Courtesy of bad bar pizza and Rolling Rock)
Before another evening of fitful dreams
Consisting of hazy yet glorious episodes
Which never seemed to reach fruition before the advent
Of an unwelcome and vaguely malevolent sunrise.

To shake the powdered atoms
from the flaking cavern walls

That fossil horn
has summoned tribes
from different walks
alive tonight
Loose trousered hounds of pedal drums
are swilling bass for rocket fuel
All spastick in the rinks of treble,
  animating vertebrae
  draw talismanic creatures
rolling planets from
their shoulder blades.
Into the gathered sound

The ritual breaks a rip- tide sweat
A chance to wake the daemon
through those coronets of frequency
for stussy armoured Sufi
whirling
pneuma to humidity
A circled dharma rhythm-grasp
a knowledge passed from
Astronaut cartographers.

Acoustics of the standing stones
the hunting party hill-top chants
a triumph in the sacred groves
two hundred thousand years
of dance,

Have brought us here.

Across the realm of gray matter
slowly percolating within tissue
composed of neuronal, glial
and endothelial cells, and although
there must be biological rules
that determine the numbers
of cells of each subtype
and the volumes (or masses)
occupied by them,
little is known about such rules,
if they indeed exist

nevertheless, ah haint goot
no trade secret, boot verily
attest adventitious, bounteous, and
capacious divine intervention
(analogous to invisible
Charge of the Light Brigade)
timely saving amazing grace
engorges, engirdles, and engenders mine
body, mind and spirit,
which psychic triage
accruing, germinating,

and manifesting coming
forth, and appearing
at the most opportune
pluperfect tinder kindling
jawboning indeed, and
instagramming optimal instant –
sparing irreparable cerebral damage,
yet inflicting temporary
temporal lobe trauma
not surprising giving
brain big bang, sans

tickly totally tubular raise
zing trumpeting – analogous
to Portuguese man-of-war
sea render tyranny
(Sic semper tyrannis)
over fifty plus shades sways
undulating cerebral cortex
doth lightly secretly
with naturally secreted
unguent liberal mindedly braise,
which explanation might meet

with skepticism, but crazy as such
"FAKE" holy transcendent
heavenly extra corporeal
modus operandi may seem,
an inexplicable force
powerfully Herculean sensation
grips me noggin leavening
mental scratch pad in a daze
of blinding poetic inspiration doth    
like quaffing goblet
of gin n tonic faze

this phenomena plays
a particularly puzzling role
on account difficult to phrase
in light of my being an atheist,
which non deistic, theistic,
nor Vedic precept stays
metaphorically locked, linkedin, and
leveraged in place,
despite non religious confession
augmentation, attribution,
and association showers inspiration,

where eyes fixedly glaze
as literary creativity attaining
high psychological grades
dramatically engages fantastically
with cosmic force appearing
as nebulous haze
seems antithetical to premise
couched, fixated, and interleaved
anchor rightly, viz
secular humanism inlays
votary visa versa entrees

shutterfly, snapchat twitter
comport comfortably situated
in  the catbird seat
as upon royal chaise
lounge steeped within
monastic hermetically ascetic ways
akin to daffodils got to puff the
magic dragon GoDaddy seed achieve
visibly absent pride and
prejudice where aggrieve
ving unseen, as careening

human bits believe
where forebears of Adam, and
the ants sandy dunes cleave
species pollination, yet devoid of
neither sense nor
sensibility that deceive
themselves philanthropic buttressed
by religious ethos, dogmas
credo, et cetera since Eve
to and fro, hither and yon
across the globe heave

infusing self importance
viz zit heady species
**** sapiens sans belief bold
lee granting superiority
to hundreds of generations
lapsed goo gilled descendants
of contemporary Primates cold,
and calculating dictatorial demagogues
(no matter dishabille disheveled) doled
out self importance
gussied up as kingpins,

whose braggadocio extolled
blood lust, depravity and egregious
on flip side of Manichaeism origami fold
touting faux grandeur measly
humans inherent self supremacy,
which mettle valuably wrought
more precious than gold
whereby might versus right
fostered iron gripped hold
trumping supreme cosmic
deity (if such exists,

per those, who ascribe existence
to divine creator),
where mankind didst
get special mold
where fictitious codified battlements
evinced luminary salient traits
if millennial forbears hypothetically polled
vis a vis virtue vindicates
vice viz lyrical tomes
such legendary mythological narratives as:
Aeneid, Don Juan,

Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy,
Mahabharata, Beowulf,
Metamorphoses, The Odyssey,
Epic of Gilgamesh,
and The Iliad
displayed thunderous outrages
rectified violently rocked and rolled
where assignment throughout galaxy -
studded with malevolent
mailer daemons all told
informed terrestrial behavior,

decrees and formalities amidst wold
wide webbed skein tenuous
as gossamer wings
shutterfly at the speed of sound
albeit ergot size
solemn spores bumping,
commingling and jostling beings
whose demotic, erratic,
and frenetic vernacular
bumped uglies against
sacred talismanic wild things

while secular notions cursed
as intractably intolerable swings
per paradigms that disallowed rubric,
where autocratic stings
lashed out at pagan rites, which
when viewed from
surface where Earthlings
dwelt appeared as unpredictable
skittering dots with nary flings
perceived, but simply

near microscopic simians
crowning themselves as Kings
of Leon admonishing those
madding crowd source rings
of bright waters -
offering entertainment
to the invisible forces
within galactic realm
as mere antics of goslings.