Guests (Featured Readers' Work)

Home | Contact Us

Guests
(Featured Readers’ Work)

a selection of Yuyutsu RD Sharma’s work,
reading for Sasquatch, April 27, 2008:

Best Poems

The kisses you

refused were the best

like the poems

on the lake I didn't write.

Mules

On the great Tibetan

salt route they meet me again

old forsaken friends ...

On their faces

fatigue of a drunken sleep

their lives worn out,

their legs twisted, shaking

from carrying

illustrious flags of bleeding ascents.

Age long bells clinging

to them like festering wounds

beating notes

of a slavery modernism brings:

cartons of Iceberg, mineral water bottles,

solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans, carom boards

sacks of rice

and iodized salt from the plains of Nepal Terai.

Butterflies of

the terraced fields know their names.

Singing brooks tempests

of their breathless climbs.

Traffic alert

and time-tested, they climb

carrying

dreams of posh peacocks

pamphlets

of a secret religious war

filth

of an ecologist's sterile semen

entire kitchen

for a cocktail party at the base camp

defunct development

agenda of guilty donors

the West's weird visions

lusting for an instant purge.

Stone steps

of the mountains embossed

on their drugged brains,

like lines of aborted love

scratched

on the historic rocks of waterspouts.

Starry skies

of the dozing valleys know

the ache

of their secret sweat.

Sunny days

along the crystal rivers

taste

of their bleeding eyes.

Greatest fiction

of the struggling lives lost,

like real mules

clattering their hooves on the flagstones,

in circling

the cruel grandeur

of blood thirsty

mule paths around the glacial of Annapurnas.

River

Between your marble

shoulders and my hairy chest

the river roaring,

tears, tears, tears...

Between your mellowing

mouth and my scented tongue

a night of flames

and flesh, flesh, flesh ...

Between your hefty thighs

and my throbbing hands

clouds drunk

from the forests of rhododendrons.

Between your almond eyes

and my warm mouth

rain dropping like pearls

on the plump leaves of the jungle.

Between your shimmering skin

and my dark hair grass greener

than the greenest parakeet

growing yellowish from incessant rain.

Between your nights by

the impotent pillow of your husband

and my crazed headpiece

a poem of spring that shall fill my deep wounds,

sprouting flowers, flowers, flowers ...

Between your tulips

and my fragrant pen

a brain-fever bird's

crazed cry, mad, mad, mad...

Between the sparkle

of your teeth and my sleep

a rain coming

like roar of a starving steam

in the starless

summer gloom of the night.

Between your melon breasts

and thirst of my soft lips

the rage of the river

battering its head against the magic mountains.

Between your decisions

and my flickering lamps

the river mad

you, you poet, you bastard, go away !

The Lake Fewa, an Unfinished Poem

From the shoulder of a hill

from a garden restaurant where

exhausted tourists lie, massaging

hysteric limbs of a nightmare,

from dingy tea-shop

of a grandma, crying from

the smoke of her charred dreams,

from the balcony

of a hut where a blonde Buddhist nun

sleeps with a local drug addict,

from Naudada,

from Lumle, from the luminous sheets

of the windows of a racing car

or like a despot

of once a famished principality, Sarangkot,

from an airplane

with nose of snobbery ticking

the gleaming summits of fishtail

from the colorful pages

of a coffee table book,

from the fury of the goddess

who created the lake to avenge

the unkind inhabitants of the valley,

from the sunken sockets

of a porter's eyes where

magnificent draggers of Himal have grown,

from the obscene columns

of a magazine on frozen peaks of Himal,

printed from the evil ink donated

by some treacherous NGO,

from the bedroom of trekking couple,

about to reach an orgasm in unison,

from the bleeding eye of a folksinger

in love with local Sahu's daughter,

from the prow of a ferry

scurrying over surface to measure its secrets,

from the tip of the fishtail

where lamblike sun bounces defunct,

from the unfinished draft

of this poem that I tear off

to look at the blue

of the Eye-lake, Fewa.

A Morning Walk

Leaving behind

the bed of white lotus

and wheezing

partner of my sleep

I rushed out

towards the bridge

freshly built over

a golden stream.

But on finding

a funeral pyre

burning on its

emerald edge

I closed my eyes

and like some Buddha

in the dark interior

raised my shaking,

invisible hands

to salute

the great master

Death.

Sherpa Woman

Toothless Sherpa mother

let me sleep

deepest sleep

of my life

in her warm

doorless barn

lighted by moonlight

filtering through

the fractures

of her wooden walls.

The Buddhist flag flutters

to the call of the barking deer

to the flight of the golden eagle

circling above Tyangboche, in the galaxies

of untouched unborn avatars.

The saffron flag quivers

to the hum of Dolma’s

broom sweeping stone steps strewn

with palm leaves

and Lays plastic packs.

The rainbow flag wavers in the winds

of Bigu, weight of wasted centuries on its spine,

shaman’s hollowed skull full of travelers’ blood,

magical Yak’s history of flying skins.

The flag furls on the way to Namche,

amused to see the growing greed

of Yeti, the fresh global food

it feeds on every morning of the new millennium--

STD, Internet, Cafes, Cakes, camera

and digital color’s click, click…

On the trail to Everest

where Dharma bums walked past eternal springs

with their wayward dog-souls

the flag thrums its blade to see

porters left out freezing out in the cold,

fees charged in euros for entry of moving cameras

in Nirvana’s historic courtyards.

It laughs to see Lama

forget the mantras it parroted all his life

and watch Baywatch and Bond in One

sipping Amstel beer instead of chhyang

from his favorite Yak’s back

while outside all night long dismal snow falls

obstinately melting centuries of salt load

placed on the exhausted zopkioks’ bleeding backs.

Everest Failures

In the mud floored porch

of a misty little shack

by the raging brook’s

soft edge, peeling

the skin

of maize off, aflush

amidst its fluffy pile

sits a hillside mother

with a baby son

wailing in her lap.

She has

nothing but a kiss,

a soily

sloppy stinking kiss

to shut

this wailing kitten up.

Father

My hairs go aflame

as he hiccups and breathes the last of this earth.

A gray wart appears on my forehead.

I clasp your cold palms

to feel blackout of your blood vessels.

On your chest I burst

a silent pitcher of my life's sleep

Darkness,

a savage silence of Sunya's eternal ocean.

I glisten your rubbery body

from honey, curd and milk of seven rivers;

a tear keeps rolling endlessly

on the naked wound of my secret grief.

For the last time I hold

this face of yours in my trembling hands;

blast of a wail

ravages sunlight of my faith.

On your body I place

heavy logs damp from a history of vanquished hearts.

In the crack of your still mouth

I drop grain of a rainbow

and light the last fire

that shall blacken quiet pages of my youth.

I hit the center of your skull

aflame in the spluttering pyre

to ignite a bejeweled passage to eternity.

On the flooded banks of the Ganges

I knead your limbs all over again;

I make your head

heart, hands, life-veins, lines of your fate.

From the mantras of my breaths

I feed hunger of your blood vessels

and see you go alone

along the blazing fields of Garuda Purana

eating crumbs of the blessed food

lost in the memories of my childhood

when you lifted me

up in the fragrant stretch of the blue hillside air

and probably for the first time

in your life, smiled…

Little Paradise Lodge

My pen frozen against

the daggers of Annapurnas…

On an oblong shapeless plank chopped

from a sandal wood tree trunk and used as a table

I place my elbows

and hold my face in my hands.

Blinding snows of the Annapurna Ridge,

Hyunchali, shining in the eye of my mind,

I sit in the spacious courtyard of your paradise lodge,

deciphering the shrill notes of birds in the mossy trees.

One bird initiates a lilting note

like our meeting while

other lets loose a racket of breath-whistles

ending with question tags—

Can I stay longer, at least one more day,

in your little paradise lodge?

Two birds playing in the crimson cherry tree

stir a chord that seems

like opening up of the blossoms

of our bodies—Would you take me away and marry me?

But what about the electric whistle,

this cicada’s constant chirr,

the struggle of our breathless bodies

against dark soot of the night?

The pigeons strutting freely in your courtyard

coo like exhausted porters

climbing the mule paths in the singing gorges.

Their guttural quataquatantankua--

they seem to be using human language,

a kind of hushed speech that robbers might use.

Love, in the courtyard of your little paradise lodge

I see the silence turning flowers into daggers

A herd of cows shuffles past me in a joyous mood

festive like young girls going to a hillside fair

saying -- Don’t go away, Dai, we would be back until dusk with presents…

A cuckoo passes overhead – its distinct ka-ka-ka –

Please do not leave me alone.

I am utterly alone,

stuck on the last mountain of the world

And beyond me just one more mountain

where they say a deity lives

guarding a tiny turquoise lake.

And thereafter nothing but

realm of melting snows

where the souls of the gods live.

Modi Khola

River millenniums

have feared, a shaman’s charm.

River they conquered,

flash of the sweaty limbs,

glaze

of a cutting utensil’s edge.

River they worshipped before

flinging over its roaring frame

a squeaking

suspension bridge.

River that created

turquoise looking glasses for them

to comb every morning

the enigmas of their dark lives.

River agreed to spill over

in their breaths, in their songs,

in the torrents

of their struggling blood.

River spread out

to solve the sums of their children, tendrils of turmoil.

River forecast

omens for them, death, birth, move, remove.

River made

calendars, festivals, magic, mandalas for them.

River that counted time

for them, years, lives, longings.

River that brought them

birds, clouds, fireflies, silence.

River that possessed

in its rumble uranium of rain-soaked thunderclaps.

River whose permanent

paramours were those lush green mountains;

charred and shaved today

mourning over the river that shall die now

strangled by the dusty road

coming like a noose around its neck

a lethal fang of dam-dragons

hissing to put the saga

of green canopies

of rainforests aflame.

Temple, London

For Maggie Hindley

Wind howled

like the trumpet of a fierce Kali

rushed in through

the Temple Tube Station

to slap my face

to smother the flame

of my breath

and blind my vision

as I soared

floaing up the steely slope

of the ecsclators

in spirit of reaching

a hillside shrine

that our goddesses

always prefer to live on.

Once up

out of the Station

in the freezing cold

as I exerted to push

my overcoat up

my shaking frame

I saw her there

on the wet pavement

out alone in the open

with a swollen black eye

and an issue of The Big Issue

held like a trophy,

a sacrificial rooster

against her sagging breast.

-- 2006-12-24, Kentish Town, London

Dublin: Bog man’s Tongue

For Mark Leslie

Lord Mayor’s Spire

of stainless steel rises amidst speechless monuments of stone.

I rush up

and down the Moor Street

looking for someone

who resembles Yeats

O’ Neil or Seamus Heaney

or speaks Gaelic like my own Cathal O’ Searcaigh.

I walk the streets

O’ Connell, Parnell or Henry

thread through

Georgian squares with blind-eyed windows

cross over the Irish bridge

over the dark river Liffy

past Trinity

up the Grafton street

to find some Ulysses

dozing in a Bleeding Horse’s bar.

Or Joyce himself

walking with his stick

towards the Grisham Hotel

to raise souls of the dead

or to chat with gold-toothed ladies..

I look for garrulous men

and chattering women straight from the plays of Synge.

I seek out the stories

of forgotten Gandhi in the alleys of Dublin castle.

Celtic tiger fumes

with a twisted tongue in the blitz of its supermarkets

Its sister Dart

snakes along the parks of pleasure

where once Oscar Wilde lay

shivering and cold and penniless.

Like Shiva’s serpent

it circles round blue Sea’s neck.

The city’s crab legs

thump the waters in joy

as finally a bright Sun comes out

to mock the myth of the incessant Irish downpours.

Only drowned bog man’s

rubbery body bag put on show in the city centre

speaks Gaelic and reads

the book of Kells like Bhagwat Gita.

London Bombings

I didn't desert the Underground

to join the British waterways

or party on the shores of the Northern Sea.

I didn't leave the streets,

Oxford, Piccadilly, Marylebone High Street,

to go into the lonely Room

to read Bronte, Bill or Da Vinci Code.

I didn't desert the West End

to go for meadows dotted with sheep.

I moved like Blake

in the double-decker buses

deciphering terror alphabets

of a script of hidden sleep.

Nottinghill, Tooting, Camden,

Fullham, Wembley, Hammersmith,

I stayed on to join

carnivals of primal ecstasy.

I was there when they brought

their forgotten gods and demons out from their skins.

I fell in love with her

as Elizabeth got drunk and kept swearing,

smearing her purple lipstick

with shaking long fingers all over her mouth

Sitting in her lover's lap,

she kept calling me 'husband'

while her teenage daughter

opposite us lay in waiting.

I was there when they celebrated

the death of Jane's family

and their charade of being

proverbial husband/wife went on

like a morality play

faming the last shame humanity's grandmothers.

It was there that Elizabeth's body

glowed like a hillside hearth in a room where

a statue of the wooden

Krishna broke into a smile.

"Put your Hinduish/Buddhist marks on your forehead

or wear pendants showing your holy gods,

you could be taken as a terrorist and shot five times in the brain…"

But I refused to desert the square

littered with blotches of the dark ink of terror...

I didn't desert the squares of the mighty Pound

to cry secretly in the nearby towns where

under common ground Marx and Freud lay buried....

I moved about fearlessly

under the shadow of Marble Arch

kissed her beneath

the tall column of Trafalgar Square.

and entered immaculate doors

of New Age goddess on the swelling Thames' banks,

daring to risk the Empire's familiar hand,

Prospero's mighty magic wand.

Space Cake, Amsterdam

“Don’t panic,” they said,

remain cool like your Krishna,

meditate maybe like Buddha,

uttering ‘Om Mani Padme,’ jewel in the lotus,

or lie down and relax

like Vishnu on the python-bed

to float on the ocean’s currents,

buoyant on the invisible thread

of your breath in slow motion…

Millions of cats prowled around me.

Smoke from shared sex

and hashish joints stung my eyes.

Unsettling tongue

of an awkward fire fed my stomach.

I skidded queasily towards

towards the formidable edge,

unknown ominous frontiers of human life…

They laughed a secret laugh

behind my back – “Isn’t it crazy that

this man from Kathmandu should get stoned

from a piece of space cake in Amsterdam?”

“Don’t be serious, laugh,

celebrate the flame of life!” a woman’s voice said.

“Hold my hand; I can imagine

you are alone on this trail.

I’v been there once,” she whispered.

Her tongue curled like a dry leaf in my ear

and crackled “How much did you take,

just a piece? I took thirty-eight grams once,

It can be crazy if you don’t know it’s coming.

Just don’t worry too much.

Don’t lose your control over things.

You can kiss me if you like,

You can pat my back,

tickle my belly or stroke my breasts

for a while, if it comforts you.

Sometimes it can be heavenly,

this licking the rim of the forbidden frontiers of human life.

“That’s what he wants, that’s exactly

what he’s looking for,” a voice leered far off.

“But I have to go ultimately,

I’ve a man waiting at home for me.”

“Maybe read a poem of yours,”

someone said. My heart raced wild

and I heard some-girls gossip in the next room—

What if he gets sick in Europe?

Don’t we get sick in Asia?

“Just take it easy,” another voice echoed

“You won’t go psychotic. Remember one thing,

whatever happens, you can always make a comeback.”

Faces of my dear ones veered past my face.

I felt delicate thread of my life

slipping through my fingers

“Hey man, it’s fine. Don’t worry too much.”

My host shouted. “Drink lots of water.”

Drink black tea or coffee,” a guest suggested.

“Or take lots of orange juice.”

“Maybe sing your favorite song,” a woman said.

“Or recite one of your Hindu mantras.”

“Maybe stick your finger into your throat”

another voice came sheepishly, “And throw up.

You probably haven’t digested everything yet.”

Questions came like wind slaps.

“Can you tell me what they call boredom

in your mother tongue? Do you remember

your email account and password?

Discuss your children, if you have any.

Shall I bring my little daughter before you?

Maybe you’d feel better then,

seeing her brilliant eyes.”

I imagined a child’s face and clung to it,

like a penitent would hold onto

a sacred cow’s tail in his afterlife,

and slept on it, all through the river of blood…

Hours passed by

and then I heard someone say—

What if he had freaked out?

What if Death had stalked our house tonight?

Hearing these words, I woke up

knowing I’d come back, stepped on

the familiar shores of life

where Death’s feared, a distant distrustful thing.

My drowse burst like a glacial that cracks

from rumble of a seed of fire

that explodes somewhere in earth’s deep sleep.

De Zwarte Ruiter Cafe

They treated me like

a drunken lorry driver would

a nubile girl

from a remote Himalayan village.

"Can you call the dead,

you man from the Himalayas?" one of them hollered.

Raising her voice above the rocking music

in the cafe, other shouted, "Nonsense! Pure bullshit!"

"Look here, answer!" the former insisted,

"Can you stop my late Grandpa

from visiting my bedroom twice a month."

She held her friend's hand

to stop her from offering me a handshake

and raised her sleeveless plump arm

in the air as if holding a dagger

"Whooooo!" she cried, "I switch off the light

and whoooooo! there it comes-- Whoooooo!

Can you tell me if the dead

can come back to disturb your peace?

Can you explain why I dream of crocodiles

with baby faces chasing me as I run miles and miles

of bleeding river's expanse ?

You man from the land of Yeti,"

she picked up her empty wine glass

and laying it beside an ashtray started naming objects.

"Okay, let's say this is my grandpa, the dead one,

but tell me, can he come back to visit me in my bedroom?

Do they exist,

these silent travellers of our disturbed sleep?"

Two young women of Den Haag kissed like lovers

and asked--"What does your Buddha say about this?"

They giggled and then a silence spread.

And I knew they wished me to wear

a shaman's feathered crown for my head

and dance round and round

for several centuries to avenge the atrocities

of the male Buddhas

in the corridors of history for them.

Eyes of Andreas’ Chorten

Very human, hungry,

feeble, almost,

water like, fish like,

a just born baby’s tear like

a charcoal geometry

on the palpable face of an upright glacier

pure and crystalline

Christ like, before Paul’s murky shadow fell,

bemused eyes

older than horoscope of Siddhartha,

larger than the ocean

a female Yeti would have shed

before she was grabbed

and butchered by the monks

defeated by

the daggers of compassion

yantras of Sunya,

throttled by Boddhisattvas

brutally wounded,

weary eyes of a human

buried beneath

debris of spiritual flagstones

and snow sheets

of savage civilizations

a ruthless tear

in a body, a bullet full of blood,

a rough hewn

creature grabbed first

thing in the morning

like Ganesha’s head

and crucified before

it could have said a word

about history of mystery,