Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Foundlin Poetry

>Another modern form of poetry is Found Poetry. It is composed of text found by the poet in signs, grocery store aisles, overheard conversations, or advertising. If you are in an environment where there is little textual material you may be severely limited in producing found poetry. Our environments are generally so rich in such material that it is fairly easy to write.<
My attempt right away is as follows:

Document wordpad
the best of bob dylan
JVC the new touch keyboard
interact in english malaysia
calendar 1996
panasonic Dax Eminem
Casio Senorita's Supreme
Polyester Saree Falls
Baby wax matches
B E Happy V Vallabhan
Srinivasamoorthy avenue
moment mal! Lehrwerk fur
Deutsch als Fremdsprache


(Well all this is all that I can 'find' in this 10*10 room at 11.53 in the night)

TAMBULINA WAN

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.


- BOB DYLAN
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, he legally changed his name to "Bob Dylan" on August 2, 1962. It's generally accepted that "Dylan" is derived from "Dillon" after Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke fame. He has denied throughout his career any link to the controversial brilliant poet Dylan Thomas.


The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.


-DYLAN THOMAS

Dylan Thomas was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own; he read all of D. H. Lawrence's poetry, impressed by Lawrence's descriptions of a vivid natural world.
Thomas did not sympathize with T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden's thematic concerns with social and intellectual issues.

Interestingly, this brilliant poet has actually plagiariased from an unknown poet. In some school publication early in his career, he had submitted a poem which was actually already published by another kid. This was discovered only long after his (Dylan's) death at 39 from alcholism.

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih


-T S Eliot
This guy is just tooo much. I love him to death, to distraction, to distress, to damnation!

BUT THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST::::

"`I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.` What does that mean, Mr. Marlowe?"

"Not a bloody thing. It just sounds good."

He smiled. "That is from the `Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.` Here's another one. `In the room women come and go/Talking of Michael Angelo.' Does that suggest anything to you, sir?"

Yeah -- it suggests to me that the guy didn't know very much about women."

"My sentiments exactly, sir. Nonetheless I admire T. S. Eliot very much."

"Did you say, 'nonetheless'?"


- The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

Monday, June 28, 2004

BIKINI WAX

WOW! This article is very enlightening and very entertaining!
why woudn't it be? The subject is bikini wax!!
http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/09/03/bikini/

I remember in Manipal, the friendly neighbourhood beauty parlour akka telling me once in hushed horrified tones how this one girl walked into her shop and asked if she would wax her.... there....!!!
I suggested that she hire studs for the job and said that they wouldnt even demand to be paid.., even suggested a couple of guys i knew for the job. ofcourse, she thought i was kidding.

Also, my friend prabha mohan (who was soon to be getting married) and I searched the whole of banglore onve to find a parlour that ll do the deed. but no, neint, non, zilch, nay. nothing. so we settle on ready made cold wax strips, that i tried (lucky mohan didnt) and regretted immensely. shall not go into gory details keeping in mind reader discernment (yeah right!).

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

WALKING THE BLOCK

When i sit to write, i instantly feel a heavy sort of weight descend quietly on my shoulders. I've been suffering (read really suffering) from a writer's block the last 2 years. long time. a promising ass-kicking career crushed, even before it began.

Now Im faced with the great difficulty of finding a subject thats easy to write about. Coz I usually have deep and varied thoughts about everything, thoughts that are so fantastic and flighty and flitty that they are impossible to pen down, what with this stupid block thats almost like a physical handicap.

Like for example, as Im writing whatever im writing now, my mind identifies each half-second, atleast 2-3 better ways of saying the same thing im saying (metaphors, similies, allusions, choice of words etc), but i actively disregard all but the easiest, most mundane, most simple, most untaxing way to express myself. Coz the pressure on the part of my brain that nourishes the writer becomes almost a physical pain if I tax it too much.

So now Im kind of coming to a decision on how to break this curse. I'll start writing whatever happens everyday, since the time i wake up. that should be easy, cant put too much pressure on the creative part of the brain. Then slowly, Ill get more comfortable with writing and words and the flow of ideas and their conversion into words, then I can get a grip on myself and start to really write.

Whew, even writing all this has taken a lot of wind from me. Im exhausted! So in the next post, Im going describe my daily activities starting today.

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Aching Poetry

About my other constant interest (other than myself that is) poetry, here are a few provoking lines...

SHAKESPEARE SONNET XLIX

To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
Since why to love I can allege no cause.

-This u have to read the whole sonnet. Its all there on the net for ur perusal. Just do a google search. My lawyer friends wud like these lines!

VIKRAM SETH: UNCLAIMED

To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test.

To lie and love, not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.

To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.

To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.

To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.

-This is how I lead my lovelife right now, but 'Preferring neither to prolong nor part'should be in my case, 'Preferring not to prolong and to definitely part' and 'To rest within the unknown arms and know' should read in my case, 'To ache to rest within unknown arms but know'

lernen deutsch bitte?

I started learnen-Deutsch last monday. Went with moderate expectations as regards classmates, but even the moderate expectations were dashed!! class is filled with rural folks from all sorts of rural places in Tamil Nadu. Don't wanna sound like some urban snob, BUT THIS IS THE CITY FOR BAGVAAN-SAKE!!!!

Not one city bred (read dressed in jeans, t-shirt and reasonably friendly kind) person. About 20 men and 4 women including yours truly. girls sit together and boys sit together. Girls talk mostly to girls and viceversa. Girls dress in salwaar kameez and have their hair oiled and tied up. Boys avoid catching girls' eyes and look away while blushing furiously if they do so accidentally.

One boy acted hip and tried conversing with yours truly. What happened is as follows: First day after class, I was standing in the bus stop for a ride home, when this dude Balasubramanium walks to same stop and stands next to me. He is from this town in interior Tamil Nadu called Madurai. He starts a conversation with me, and after one or two banal exchanges ('Does 24C come here?', 'Yes', 'Where you working?', 'Nowhere'), he asks, "Can you understand Hindi"? to which I reply "Yes, sort of." Then he says, "Yagan bike negi ai tho boguuth muchkil ai." This is a horrible south-indian accented hindi "Yahan bike nahin hai to bahut mushkil hai."

Why do tamilians have to impress fellow tamilians by trying at all cost to speak in any language expect their mutual mothertongue? This used to happen in Bangalore too, where in the area i lived in, every single ayya, anna and akka were tamilians. But each one, from shopkeeper to neighbourmaama to milkman, would insist on speaking to me only in English even if I only talked to them in Tamil!

Coming back to German class, I cut quite a sorry figure everytime I crack a joke and the only response I get is a blank stare of incomprehension from each of my classmates! eeeuuuugggghhh!!

Time to kick off

Enough stalling. Im sputtering like the choked engine of a Feat 86 model. Time to start building the blog.
first, i've to clear my mind. What do I want to write about? What are my interests? My top interest is myself. Surprise! Apart from that and poetry, my other top interests keep changing every month.
Right now, my top interests are myself, poetry and german. I'll start with learning Deutsch coz thats what i do with most of my time these days. So in the next post, I'm gonna give a complete description of my course, and more importantly, my class.

Saturday, June 12, 2004

stuck in my throat

trying to writing a poem after long
is like trying to feel a new person's touch
decades after your lover died

the words seem like sandpaper on my tongue
nervous grating rubbing of unfamiliar love
clashing with a new body on a hard bed

like speaking an unfamiliar langauge
after just three four beginner's classes
to the director of the foreign language school

how do you whisper sweet nothings
in the brink of rush of love
holding close in breathing distance
a total stranger

when a multitude of words rush from the stomach
traffic jamming your crushed throat
the mouth gapes slackly.
no exit.

Friday, June 11, 2004

RedPOLKAChaddi

er... what can i say? Now that I set up the blog... Im tongue tied. And sleepy... And not to mention... or to mention... wanna go to the bathroom...