What have I got to write about
when experience falls short of the metaphor
and those sailors of the sea use and
abuse the nausea and sickness
for all the poetry in the world
and those soldiers, friends of the
soldiers,
friends of friends of the soldiers
have their grim realities to themselves-
struggle, life, strife, achieve and
lose- all in the same moment
which sounds more hysterical than grim
--so you know how they package their
syllabus,
those English departments of the world,
defining Sassoon’s poetry
as a moment via the experience of
shell shock
and you know that we’ll never get rid
of categories, but you also know
that engagement with categories is
essential--
all too familiar to me when, with no
sense of realization,
I have to shit and piss and bleed in
the same moment
to get rid of the undesirable category
of pretension
some name-dropping guy puts me in,
but you have all too many selves to
keep track of which one
is thrown inside the court to fill the
numbers because
man, you’re too scared of the ball
hitting your head
all that you can do is run around and
prevent coming in anyone’s way
--but the point is that the ‘I’
remembers a time when
I wore that guy like a pair of jeans
and you know how they package pairs of
jeans
with all your ‘Curve’ and ‘Diva’
collections
but that doesn’t prevent you from
buying them either
it just makes you feel like living in
exile,
the scale of which is set by
comparisons between
a Malyali and a Kashmiri living in
Delhi,
an Assamese and a Mumbaikar
studying in Ghalib's city
--because when I say that you know how
everything is packaged
I’m talking about staring into the sun
teary-eyed and seeing a personal rainbow
but don’t believe ‘em saying that to
add colour in your life
is the best way to live--
yet even this is'nt something that I
have got to write about.
