{"id":4810,"date":"2014-05-18T02:21:56","date_gmt":"2014-05-18T02:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/?p=4810"},"modified":"2014-05-18T02:21:56","modified_gmt":"2014-05-18T02:21:56","slug":"ravi-shankar-3-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2014\/05\/18\/ravi-shankar-3-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Ravi Shankar || 3 Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sounds like Traxx<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can no longer shop happily.<\/p>\n

(The Clash<\/em>)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before I was all lost in the S*PeRM**K*T,<\/p>\n

dubbing the fugitive recyclopedia, or agog<\/p>\n

among the penumbras and hungry fatigues,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

there was that club with mad pinwheel lights<\/p>\n

by the highway off-ramp in DC, an outdoor<\/p>\n

strip of beach with towering potted palms<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and a volleyball pit\/dance floor where rubber<\/p>\n

parachute pants morphed in groove to Jesus<\/p>\n

Jones and Candy Flip covering the Beatles.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All tuned in, peering over the hedge back then,<\/p>\n

those perilous and surreptitious departures<\/p>\n

from TamBram family law to gyrating free<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

time late night with old friends and new punk<\/p>\n

rock girls near as the shimmy lasso of hip<\/p>\n

would allow, dancing into someone\u2019s orbit<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

then penetrating the periphery, near enough<\/p>\n

to touch, to make eye contact, then teasingly<\/p>\n

withdraw in bouncing backstep, bass massive<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

in the ears, the oldest human ritual imagined<\/p>\n

fresh as cherry blossom scent at the Navy Yard<\/p>\n

in the early nineties. No guaranteed personality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____________________\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

How Far from the Rust Belt is it to Silicon Alley? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In the gleaming corridors of the 51st floor<\/p>\n

\u2014The Clash from \u201cKoka Kola\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, the other day I heard about these $5000 houses<\/p>\n

they are offering artists in Cleveland & how the real<\/p>\n

estate in, say, the Bay Area resembles tribal print blouses<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

that were once in vogue, then mocked because of the zeal<\/p>\n

for a fabric modeled on some ethnographer\u2019s sketch book,<\/p>\n

then worshipped once again for possessing sex appeal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Meaning that somehow, more perhaps by crook than hook,<\/p>\n

the bubble of the 90\u2019s has started being blown once more.<\/p>\n

Struggling writers and artists might have the right look<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

but they can\u2019t even afford to live in the Mission anymore.<\/p>\n

I recalled then when I lived in a shoebox in the Marina<\/p>\n

atop a loft in a closet-sized living room that lacked a door.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I worked in publishing & hung out with a cackle of hyena,<\/p>\n

film school dropouts who cooked crystal meth in a broken<\/p>\n

light-bulb years before Breaking Bad<\/em> or Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One of them was this drop dead gorgeous, outspoken<\/p>\n

ad exec with toffee skin & wild Jeanne Moreau eyes<\/p>\n

who took a shine to me perhaps because I was the token<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Asian in the bunch. More smitten with her than blowflies<\/p>\n

to a gas leak. She signed me up for a smattering of focus<\/p>\n

groups, on things like video games or the allure of oversize<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

women\u2019s fashions for the normal sized guy. I was a locus<\/p>\n

for bubbling in questionnaires to help with concept testing,<\/p>\n

faking enthusiasm for the slim chance to know her crocus<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to corm. Then one drippy afternoon, done with ingesting<\/p>\n

& grading watercress menthol flavored energy drinks,<\/p>\n

I tried the closed door of her office to find her resting<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

her head on her desk, her face the riddle of the sphinx.<\/p>\n

Then I saw the mound, a mini-Scarface anthill of white<\/p>\n

powder rising between a stapler and the flushing pinks<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

of her cheeks. She had spectacular cheekbones, a tight<\/p>\n

black pencil skirt & wafted of some exotic flower.<\/p>\n

A cross between an orchid and a spider. I felt light-<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

headed then & headed home to reconsider in a shower.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, many years later, I still replay that scene<\/p>\n

of her pause being refreshed in the corridors of power.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I never saw so many toys\u2014water guns, polypropylene<\/p>\n

signs & foam fingers\u2014as in her sleek, modular offices,<\/p>\n

yet still I\u2019d rather move to Cleveland or Bowling Green.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

The Perils of Homecoming <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

with Priya Sarukkai Chabria<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The castle looms blue upon the porcelain plate,<\/p>\n

the shepherdess rests within the coffee cup\u2019s gilt,<\/p>\n

palm-sized Pierrot sits Pierrette on his knee for a kiss<\/p>\n

her ceramic tutu ruffled by his haste while inches<\/p>\n

away The Pied Piper leads his rats of silvery clay:<\/p>\n

this menagerie once within memory\u2019s chamfered glass<\/p>\n

bolts, for pain\u2019s insoluble grains gargle up the throat<\/p>\n

in an inverse pantomime of tongue and tract. Such flow<\/p>\n

of grief cannot be digested or broken down by bile<\/p>\n

but persists moment after lifetime after era,<\/p>\n

an inheritance of malady the mask of which a pale<\/p>\n

face wears as persuasively as the ochre, the dead<\/p>\n

as inexorably as the unborn alas!\u00a0 The Cumaean sibyl<\/p>\n

peers (more granules than limbs) from her bell<\/p>\n

jar on the shelf and whispers I want to die!<\/p>\n

weighted by knowledge\u2019s intractable metamorphoses<\/p>\n

into light as the body shrinks. Around<\/p>\n

her ampulla glitter shards of promises, illusions<\/p>\n

lost, broken rings of love , the salver of desire<\/p>\n

beyond salvaged. Yet all\u2019s not lost, perhaps. Aren\u2019t<\/p>\n

all dichotomies birthed from a whole?\u00a0 Squint.<\/p>\n

Unpeel eyes. Flurry the dust. What\u2019s<\/p>\n

that burning, burning, burning, burning sensation<\/p>\n

like the smashed up bits of asteroids and comets<\/p>\n

orbiting a planet to retrace a path hewn from prophecy<\/p>\n

in a self-reflexive knot or biofeedback loop. Circulatory<\/p>\n

ouroboros of eternal return where a serpent eats its own<\/p>\n

tail. Just so, each of us a gravitational body around<\/p>\n

which our past rotates–faces of lovers, shards of toys<\/p>\n

we once imagined alive, the cave of a hundred<\/p>\n

openings where songs take the shape of oak leaves,<\/p>\n

where we may have played in this or that lifetime,<\/p>\n

and where we may yet play again.<\/p>\n

Yet the cool smoothness of porcelain,<\/p>\n

the grains of gold gilt beneath blind finger tips, the dust<\/p>\n

on Pierrette\u2019s net tutu of glass that shadows touch \u2013what\u2019s<\/p>\n

this lust that burns into bones, what\u2019s this we cannot<\/p>\n

turn back on, tail in our mouths, we who are toys<\/p>\n

of eternal return? What\u2019s this grief, this wonder, this<\/p>\n

mesh of clay, colour, fire that constructs our glass, this<\/p>\n

brokenness that bleeds prayer?<\/p>\n

____________________<\/p>\n