Red Tulip

Before I could tell you
that my mother, yesterday,
had won a golf tournament,
you were on your way to the conference Downtown
on dismantling racism in medicine.

After you left,
I shut the door
and drank coffee in silence.
And spent an hour or more, wiping stains
the sun had left behind during yesterday's sunset.

Outside, clouds were weeping rain,
and winds were hissing at trees
coated with layers of Winter.

I noticed your ocean blue Littman stethoscope
laying down on the living room table,
its metallic ribs exposed to a napkin of darkness.
And I picked it up by its eartips and tapped
at the centers of the tunable diaphragms;
Anatomies,
that have amplified for you, sounds of life and death.  

After a while, when the rain had collapsed into a trickle,
And the sky was a shred of dysmorphic clouds,
I put the stethoscope on the chest of a red tulip
standing, coyly, on my living room table, with crinkled lips
and angina. And all I heard was Silence.
I shifted the chestpiece to the region near the stem 
to hear sounds of tulip roots dining on fractions of atmosphere,
but all I heard again was Silence.
Petals, once asthmatic,
had de-pigmented. Ovaries had miscarried.
The anthers and filaments had lost their pollen
to exoskeletons of air currents. And tears had crusted
along their sepals. What remained now was only a red shell,
with magenta stripes and rigor mortis.

On my notebook, I recorded
Time of death, 9 am, Saturday, March Twelfth.

 

At the Limelight

What used to be
Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion
at the intersection of 20th Street
and Avenue of the Americas,
is now a gym
where men do drugs
and have sex in the showers.

How strange,
the concept of deconsecration.
To say,
God, you may now leave
your ex-home.
After a ball-point, a moment in time -
No more prayers are accepted here,
officially.

Perhaps this
has led my city to atheism.
It is also,
transgender.

Early Morning

Upon waking up this morning
I noticed
Sunlight peeling off my bedroom wall.

So I scraped off the flakes
Took out a paint brush,
And colored the gaps with broad strokes of yellow.

A Bird Song

Lined across my windowsill are
ten Mason jars
filled with chirps of sparrows
and sounds of rain
from last year's Spring.

I have allowed them to pickle
for thirty two weeks,
having sprinkled in each container
a few pinches of sunlight,
vinegar, and sugar cane smells.
And shut their lids tight,
so that politics may not dehydrate them.
 
Let the apparent lack of pigmentation
not lead you to believe
that the jars resemble blouses
of voiceless vacuum. 
On the contrary,
they are symbols of shapeless museums
that exhibit the season's  historic artifacts.
 
When Winter comes,
and my mind boils in depression,
the pickled bird songs
are my only catharsis.

One of them asked me this morning,
Daniel, do you think the word "periodic"
originated from time intervals of the menstrual cycle?

Thai

At lunchtime today,
A red pepper flake -
floating on a pool
of coconut milk and cumin -
waved at me and said,
Harriet, I wish to be a Mother someday.

Table for Three

At dinner last night,
We sat at a table for three.

Drank wine in the candlelight,
And made a toast
To you and Love and me.

Across the table

Earlier this morning,
a ray of sunlight
sat quietly
on a red chair across from me.

Reading a newspaper.
Eating in silence.
Thinking.
 

My Name

At the time of business introductions, I
Almost always feel consumed by
A crippling strain of tension.
I feel on the edge.
My fingers tingle.
Pain shoots down my shoulder blades
With the force of electricity.   
But, I take a few sips of mineral water,
Harmonize breaths with heart beats,
And begin.  

Hi.

My name is Tanmoy.
Tan, as in getting a tan at summertime.
Moy, as in M-O-Y. Tanmoy.
I stop there,
And await eyes to dilate in confusion.
The eyebrows leave the ridges to wander away.
In a few moments, the chatter begins.
Perilous attempts are made
To stitch together phonemes, and alphabets
That have, unknowingly, escaped their sensory memory.
I witness the tongue rolls, jaws
Treading unfamiliar territories.
Tom boy? Tam-way? Oh, you mean Tambourine?
I notice the facial muscles, especially around
Their lip commissures and eyelashes,
Crinkle into parallel lines.

I observe, keenly, the transparent bubbles of mute smirks

Resurfacing onto cliffs of chins, wrapped in skin
And four-day stubbles. And, I see the noticeable discomfort
In grappling with the uncommonness of my name,
Precipitating behind a guise of exoticism,
Inoculating, subsequently, the audience with unease.

That is when I say, emphatically,

But you can call me Tom.
And hear a dozen sighs.

I resurrect a neutral smile.

I maintain a semblance of composure
That I have practiced, almost to perfection,
Since the second day of elementary school.
But my ears divulge secrets.
They turn red.
They resemble lobelia bulbs.
They look like ripe plums.
And they warm up, in shame.

It is easy to blame Mother and Father

For cherry-picking a name
That makes my sex non-apparent
And offers fodder to bullies, yielding
Seven hundred and twenty anagrams.
Permutations, and combinations, that range
From hilarious to offensive to petty.
Antyom, Mantoy, yotman?
But I don’t.
It would be unfair.
My name is out of context in a place
Far away from home,
Where the language is unheard of and the name
foreign.
Home, referring to the geography
of my first cry on Earth.

Someday, my ears will not betray.

Eyes will not rove away.  
Remembering you, Helen,
When you said over breakfast,
If they have learned the names
Of Tchaikovsky and Nefertiti,
They can learn yours too.
Never be ashamed.
Ever.

 

Wedding of My Dreams

If I could have the wedding of my dreams,
I would wear, as my veil,
A piece of sky,
And hold in my hand,
Orange blossoms.
Stand on the shoulders
Of a poppy field,
And stare into your eyes.

Above our heads, would fly
A string of colorful kites
A choir of birds, and stars.
Planets would peer over
Bricks of fog and atmosphere.
And my body,
Perfumed with lavender,
Would erupt in joy.

I would carry in my suit pocket,
One half of the moon,
And in my lapel,
A bulb of Spring.
In my waistcoat,
A grain of sand,
And in my shirt,
A silver dream.
 
And after we exchange words of vows,
Birds will chirp in wooden nests,
Tides will froth on empty shores.
Forests will bend. 
Olives, on trees, will turn to oil. 
Winds will pirouette on the pale horizon
In water tutus and satin shoes.
And the sun will blaze in gold.

Sounds of trumpets will vibrate
Through airless bones of polished brass.
Orchids, wearing silk frocks,
Will unfurl their pink petals.
Oceans will whisper celebratory greetings,
Mazel tov, Mazel tov!
And clouds, with feather headdresses,
will burst into rain,
wash away the color of dusk,
and awaken from Winter’s sleep.

Sun salutation

I stared at the sun yesterday -
Fixated in the direction of a burning circle,
light curling out like tempura flakes.
My pupils dilated,
to allow more than one million waves of ultra-violets 
squeeze into my lenses.

Tears oozed out.

Maps of stars and moth-eaten clouds 
dissolved against my eyelids.

My corneas sizzled 
from third degree burns.

I thought of you, Bella,
and Grandfather's roof;
And the mornings we would gather by the old milkman
eat mint leaves from the garden,
and say prayers to the Sun.
You would say,
Grant him, O Sun God,
The strength of tolerance,
the light of life, and happiness.

Twenty years have passed.
Yet,
I continue to wait
for answers to those prayers.

On the train

I.

 

Facing South, on a North-bound train,

From Trenton Center to New York City,

I notice, from my carriage window,

The world slipping away.

 

Power lines, overhead,

Crisscrossing, zigzagging,

Spindling, quivering,

Twirling effortlessly in black shawls –

On which pigeons

Are lost in love,

And rivers

Are saying prayers.

 

Trees, at a distance, dead

From Winter’s rebuke,

Are merely sketches of cracked branches

On which once

Autumn was asleep

And leaves

Choked on laughter.

 

Grasses, by the mouths of lakes,

Are silent, under clouds

The color of aluminum nuggets –

Packing bags, saying goodbye,

Journeying into the deepest mantle,

To perish and to die.

 

The sun, to my right,

Is a satin haze,

Clipped to the sky

That shares its postal address

With the perimeter of our galaxy.

 

Cars, on the highway,

Zipping, screeching,

Moaning, breaking,

Trundling on wheels

Older than Pearl Harbor,

Some red with blush,

Some white as fear,

Some,

The color of sunrise.

 

You, to my left,

Reading Sappho’s Ode,

Were once a friend,

Who loved

The names of my fingers,

The wrinkles on my tongue,

The wheezes of my breaths,

Till your mother died,

And you,

Addicted to heroin,

Raped my only sister.

Macabre

I.

While you were brewing my café au lait,
At Gregory's, last Saturday evening,
I noticed the veins on your bare forearms -
Thick, like water snakes, yet slender,
like lotus stems,  
Bluer than a morning sky -
Slithering and branching under your skin,
the color of caladium leaves.

Perhaps you stare at them every night,
or trace out their shapes when you bathe,
after a long day at work -
Aromas of coffee beans curling over your eyes,
the sounds of running water filling your house,
sloshing over your belly,
purling down your legs.
Maybe you notice them rise
at the end of irregular heartbeats,
blood gushing out of your fluttering valves,
and speak in foreign accents unknown to you;
tales from Bohemia and Czechoslovakia.

On your veins, you carry
the weight of the world,
and fragments of your mother's blood. 
So strong and masculine,
I turn manic with greed,
dismay, and anger -
and bury into my eyes
bulbs of sunlight, and thorns,
the shape of thunder,
so I may blind myself.

Liberate a libel.

In another world,
I would treat you with a kiss.
But today my tongue is a scepter of flames,
Restless, homeless, and black.

Thought Experiment

In cosmology, we believe
In the existence of a uni-verse –
An all-encompassing ecosystem sustaining life,  
Black holes, planetary motions,
angry bursts of meteors,
Interstellar clouds, hydrogen, and helium.

But what if, beyond our sight,
Exists a panoply of poly-verse?
Where micro- universes mesh together at invisible horizons,
Communicate in verse,
Sing songs, work on compositions together,
Draw circles with protractors
Create rhythms, syncopate? 
 

What if, in the poly-verse,

There are gardens growing flowers,
Butterflies making love,
Rivers gurgling, children playing catch.
What if, instead of shade,
There are trees producing light,
Birds eating stars,
And junipers climbing walls?
What if, instead of curved,
The rainbows are squared,
The atmosphere is teal,
And Wordsworth is awake?
 

Such a poly­-verse would be a creation of magic,

With the privilege of speech,
A collection of tunnels and tubing with which
Practices of tolerance
Can populate our speckle of the uni-verse –
Earth, smaller than a grain of rice,
on which man perpetuates hate,
Separates by sex,
And stands on the brink of derisive quakes.

Perhaps the magnitude of a poly-versal macrocosm,

Its redefined perimeters of infinity’s dimensions,
The intangible geography of vast expanses,
Can provide perspective
And teach us humility,
Ligate our differences, glue together our frays,
And expand limitations bottlenecking our lives.  

So I invite you today to this experiment of thought,

The existence of a poly­-verse
Beyond the hills of Mars,
Over the carnival of moons,
And a marathon of stars,
Where harmonies are mute,
Comets taste sweet,
And clouds shaped like flutes
Walk away in silence.

On Allen Ginsberg's Poetry

It may be the case that my generation
believes

in tumultuous celebration of Ginsberg’s poetry;

Cuing unflinchingly

a curtain-call to action,

an eruptive demise of blind tradition,

and audible roars of self-activism.

Perhaps even the generations

sleeping in graves

under cherry trees and magnolia leaves,

believe the same;

As they rinse through revelations

and pathological formularies

of his anti-militarism, counterculture, and

anti-bifurcation of sexual dichotomies –

Granting him

an unconventional status -

not unlike Hollywood beauties -

That has impregnated cults,

sprouted schools of thought,

and catalyzed mechanics

of the naked body.

I do not,

however,
feel my generation

nor the ones

under this universe.

I was reading the poem

New York to San Fran

featured in the February edition of Poetry magazine

during my train ride to Philadelphia

past Monday evening,

and what I felt

was neither arousal nor incitement.

 

On the contrary,

I was swiveling in confusion,

feeling amply homosexual, and caught

in states of hypnosis and hysteria –

A suspended mind, undulating

between tunnels of absolute vacuum

and an explosive crash of all the five senses.

I felt afloat, as if pinned to an air molecule,

between a marble floor and a marmalade sky,

with clouds breaking into sweat and thunder,

windows crashing into symphonic screams,

wooden tables bleeding at their ankles,

winds gushing in kicks and chortles.

I felt paralyzed

by the power of imagery.

I felt humbled by the sounds of Om.

I experienced simultaneously,

emptiness and totality,

suffused adequately with noxious verbiage -

Moans of hydrangeas,

orgasms of pansies,

bursts of poppies and purple periwinkles.

I felt ignited by allusions

to Strauss and Brahms and Beethoven,

and deaths at Wars across gouging oceans.

I felt hypnotized  –

Frozen and speechless, the way I was

by Magritte’s masterpiece from 1938,

Time Transfixed.

Upon reaching 30th Street Station,

I folded my magazine,

rode up the rows of gray escalators,

tapped on a pillar and sang a song.

Feeling volatile -

Like a pinafore of butterflies

like a crinoline of reveries

like an orchestra of sounds in gyrating orbits.

 

Ginsberg did to me

What Summer does to the water lilies–

Stupefy, mesmerize, and hallucinate.

Not roused to action, not incited to violate,

but pushed to the tip of wonder and awe,

Lidocaine-d, anesthetized, and ultimately

set free.