Graffiti-kolkata

Graffiti Kolkata # Volume - 1 # Jan 2012

2012-01-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

My guest editing stint with Prathamoto ends. So all the writings selected for this magazine along with the cover painting now will be included in our new print zine Graffiti Kolkata which comes to you from the pavements of Kolkata and it will be out of press within a weeks time. The volume - 1 features poetry by heart-hugging, experimental writers of the world....Adam Henry Carriere,Craig Scott, Catfish Mc Daris, Gary Cummiskey, Doug Mathewson, Henry Denander, Kyle Allan, Barbara Sue Mink Spalding, Yannis Livadas, Sayak Ghosh, Kevin M Hibsman, Jim Wittenberg, Rajarshi Chattopadhyay, Misti Rainwater Lites, Arunabh Banerjee, Subhankar Das, Falguni Roy, Michael Mc Aloran,John Swain, Lynn Alexander, Sharmy Pandey...Spread the word....

A new poetry chap book

2011-12-27T05:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/by-the-banks-of-the-ajoy-jaideb-vanishes-into-the-blue/18769743?showPreview

After School Special

2011-10-30T22:16:00.000-07:00

Even at nineteen, Bavie knew “broken hearts” were just for kids.
Softly humming as she burns her cloths from last night,
flicking her light blade hand-to-hand.
Then, with a harsh sudden snicker, she whispers too loud,
“Who cares where it all splatters!”

by-Doug Mathewson

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 19 # October 2011

2011-10-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 18 # September 2011

2011-09-06T23:56:00.001-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 17 # August 2011

2011-08-27T02:48:00.000-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 16 # July 2011

2011-07-04T01:51:00.001-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 15 # June2011

2011-06-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 14 # April'11

2011-04-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 13 # March'11

2011-03-22T06:54:00.000-07:00

Review--"Sky Dreaming" by Gary Cummiskey

2011-03-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

It isn’t often that I am taken by surprise with a chap in the small press…especially one that I didn’t seek out myself. Subhankar Das, editor of Graffiti Kolkata, recently sent me Gary Cummiskey’s “Sky Dreaming”. I had never heard of Gary prior to this and I set to reading it short bursts rather than put it on the pile to read which is ever growing.

“Sky Dreaming” is a healthy mix of touching observations scattered between prose poem pieces that leaving you wonder exactly where you have been, or maybe better, where the author has been. They aren’t so bizarre you cannot relate, yet they make you feel like an uncomfortable watcher. The poems that grab the most are sparse of word, but heaving on feeling and meaning.

The opening poem “Immortal” sets you up for the entire collection, as an opening poem should, by gripping you with a sense of infinity and finality at the same time:

“Last night, feeling suicidal,
I leapt over the balcony
and landed flat on my back
in the garden below.
Lying there, I looked up
at the sky and saw how empty
it was, apart from a few
insignificant stars.
Now I know I am immortal.”

Gary touches on other subjects like the juxtaposition of science and religion in poems “Animals” and “I telephoned God”. He explores a visceral strangeness in “Alien” and the ragged endings to an old nurse in “Moon woman”:

“She has thin, pointed breasts and a rose in her hair, as the crescent
moon slides into her mouth like a hard cock.”

Cummiskey dabbles in his own brand of love and sexuality in poems like “Afterwards”, “Intimate Lives”, and “You Lead Me”. This last poem feels like an enticement to a lover….a calling to bring them back by telling them all that they have given or shown him:

“You lead me
Through letters smeared with caresses and sperm
Through the music of lonely politicians’ pipes
Through a landscape where you and I are alone

I want you to touch me
I want you to feel me.”

If bizarre and surreal are your cups of tea, then be sure to check out the poems “Alien”, “Summoned”, “A day at the races”, “Meat” and “In chains”. Gary Cummiskey also makes comment on the life of African-American Beat Poet Bob Kaufman in the poems “Between floors” and “Sinclair and the Great Dane”.

The poem that touched me the most and really drew me in was a prose poem entitled “Takeover” and it was one of those works that makes you sad and frightened and angry at the same time…the emotions swirled together in a subversive way that leaves you unsure of how we survive the disparity of our humanity. “Takeover”:

“Five years old. The parents take him to the hospital. He doesn’t
know what hospital is. The parents leave. He watches a child in
another ward get an injection in the head. Both scream simultaneously.
A nurse calms the new arrival and gives him ice cream
and comics. The next morning they take him to the operating
theatre. He wakes up sick, without tonsils. There’s blue vomit in
the basin. The parents are not around. Something else has taken over.”

This collection of poems, “Sky Dreaming” by Gary Cummiskey”, has a little bit of everything for whatever your tastes. You can purchase this from Graffiti Kolkata which is based out of India. Check out this title and others at: www.graffiti-kolkata-chaps.blogspot.com

Take a leap on this one. You won’t be sorry.

Review by Aleathia Drehmer

A Graffiti Publication, 17 years back.....

2010-10-31T01:22:00.000-07:00

recogedor d corazones By Titi Buendia

2010-10-28T19:57:00.000-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 12 # October'10

2010-10-23T19:39:00.000-07:00

Rough Travel by Jeffrey S. Callico

2010-10-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

Beyond the mundane lies the secret prompts of an eternity. They allures us as little agent provocateurs in soft, almost silent voices to tear us away from what is every day, routine and filled with murky humdrums.

Call of an eternity or the gloom of the daily life, to say which of this is more obscure, is undoubtedly the enigma that mankind desired to solve forever in human history. Poetry is one of those forms that run foremost in attempting to solve this puzzle.

But there is a catch here. Infinity is often found in a battling position with the daily. Moments fight against non-moments, what is eternal goes up in arms against the immediate. Love is palpably an obscure emotion we normally associate with eternity. In love we long to associate. Hatred is recognizably momentous. In hatred we strive to dissociate.

What better place can there be to experience this inherent violence of this two way journey that fumes, blasts, disintegrates in a fury but then again echoes with the sweetest sounds of longings, than what we call ‘home’.

Jeffrey S. Calico, in his recent collection of poems, Rough Travel, touched upon this theme of domestic alienation and pathos in all its subtle nuances but with a certain disenchantment that only a bio-lab’s scalpel has for a corpse on the table.

In one of the most beautiful short piece in this collection, he says,

Inferred

The talk we had

The other day was

Not worth our breath

You keep to yourself

I keep myself to you

Jeffrey, I believe, has that rare talent of speaking a sea even when he is only talking about a dew drop.

And to slightly add on to that I would say the poet in Jeff can truly work miracles with the most ordinary objects and behavior found in any household as such. In his poems they break away from their known relations and fondles into other unknown ones.

Gravity

The sound I make
Rising wakes the

Kid then the house
Is in its fullness

There is no escape
From the television

The cathode nipple
Still needs sucking.

Use of cathode next to nipple opens up a port that spills drudgery, boredom and something violently erotic at the same time.

Thanks to Graffiti-Kolkata for bringing in such a beautiful collection to us.

Review article : Sarbajit Sarkar

RIP Sweetheart..... We Love You

2010-09-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 11 # September'10

2010-09-06T02:39:00.000-07:00

bones29 By Scott Helmes

2010-08-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 10 # August'10

2010-07-22T11:23:00.001-07:00

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 09 # July'10

2010-06-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

Now retained by the US customs since 18 June '10, the 10 printed copies which I sent to her......

before light enters upon your solitude

2010-06-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

slowly breathe
repeat the words of your prayers in the darkness
before light enters upon your solitude
hold your thoughts close
to your heart

only you understand the trauma
only you understand the terror

the hours belonging to the night belong to you
you are lost in the daylight
fear has blue eyes the same shade as the sky
& you are tired of running, tired of running
tired
of
running

slowly breathe
repeat the words of your prayers in the darkness
before light enters upon your solitude

kiss sleep fully on the lips
and welcome her into your deathbed
growing old is the most satisfying of your dreams
where will you be
when you next awaken?

By Jim Wittenberg
5/26/2010

Yet there's no pain

2010-06-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

Federica Nightingale

Yet there’s no pain in your eyes,
dim is the strange breath I breathe,
coaching tears to fall,
tantalizing crooks of bread
instead of sharing.
Go ahead,
far away from my brow,
keep me safe from your narrow lips
The cherry-tree becomes so tender
beneath that low sky
Give me back my hopes
Give me back my proposals
I’m red and mature to be haunted,
you’re my tragedy and my forgiveness
to be accepted instead of mercy.
Yet there’s no pain in your eyes

Federica Nightingale was born in Turin (Italy).She is a poet and translator.

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Issue 08 # June'10

2010-05-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

Hey we are back with the new Issue !!!!!!!

A few pages from an old Issue (1995) Of Graffiti

2010-05-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

Incantation

2010-05-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

An emaciated mother-horse was telling the lore’s of Mongolia to her feeble young one while feeding him on the grassy patch opposite Academy.
The last golden rays of the rain-drenched day emanated the fairy of the Victoria Memorial. The remaining greens of the Esplanade and Lady Ranu’s* pigeon-blue aristocratic detachment.

Discussing about the eminent war between terrorism and imperialism I, with my friend, were moving towards liquid fire crossing over poetry sessions and art exhibitions.

In Calcutta’s ambiance of nihilism and depression, hedonism, lust and hypocrisy blossom like flowers—
The homes had been broken. All the promises and holy rituals had been swept away.
In the polluted Ganga hilsa and beauty does not exist anymore.
Cursed embryos, burnt wood and stifled time flow by in low tides,

The unheard incantation of the mother-horse brought into my memory the tribal flute player of Singhbhum, the moonlit night that smelled of my mother.

*Lady Ranu Mukherjee established the first art exhibition hall of Calcutta –The Academy Of Fine Arts.

By Sreedhar Mukhopadhayay

The Orange Spotlight | WHAT TO WEAR DURING AN ORANGE ALERT?

2010-05-12T00:05:00.000-07:00

The Orange Spotlight | WHAT TO WEAR DURING AN ORANGE ALERT?

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # 07 # May 10

2010-05-06T02:05:00.000-07:00

Two Poems of Gary Cummiskey

2010-04-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

Intimate lives

It is an evening in September.
You are typing
in the next room.
The cat slips out of the window as
the horse slips in.
Soon the details of our intimate lives
will be pasted on
major billboards
throughout the city.

Animals

They led the animals
Two by two
Into the ark
Not to save them
But to slaughter
Them to
Physical
Extinction
Until they time
When they would
Reappear
Centuries later
In various
Colours, shapes
And densities
In our
dreams

Gary Cummiskey is the author of several collections of poems and the founder of Dye Hard Press. He has published literary and cultural commentaries in South African media. He lives in Johannesburg.

GRAFFITI KOLKATA BROADSIDE # 06 # April 2010

2010-03-30T00:26:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the sixth issue of GKB. Submissions are on for the next issue.

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # 05 # March 2010

2010-03-16T05:14:00.000-07:00

Cheers....it's back ....the new Issue of GRAFFITI KOLKATA BROADSIDE.
Edited and designed by Sharmy Pandey.

Virgogray Press Online: The Stark Electric Space (Graffiti Kolkata)

2010-02-23T20:11:00.000-08:00

Virgogray Press Online: The Stark Electric Space (Graffiti Kolkata)
virgograypress.blogspot.com
The Stark Electric Space: An International Anthology of Indie Writers (Graffiti Kolkata, 2010). Virgogray Press is proud to distribute Graffiti Kolkata's first international anthhology, The stark Electric Space! ...

Myebook - CRISSCROSSES

2010-02-23T05:26:00.000-08:00

Myebook - CRISSCROSSES

CHEERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-02-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

Finally the fast relief from blocked nose of the sniffer dogs the books are released from NY customs.. that is what the tracking shows but yet to be delivered !!!! Cheers !!!!Thanks for raising your voice in protest which acted almost like Xylometazoline Hydrochloride Nasal Solution!!!!! :))

India-Based Poetry Book Sparks U.S. Customs Interest

2010-02-19T00:13:00.000-08:00

India-Based Poetry Book Sparks U.S. Customs Interest

An Open Letter By Jim Wittenberg

2010-02-17T05:09:00.000-08:00

2/15/2010

The Stark Electric Space, an international anthology of indie writers, was recently collected, published and printed by Subhankar Das of Kolkata, India.

It features work by Malay Roychoudhury, Aleathia Drehmar, Parnab Mukherjee, Bob Rosenthal, Sharmy Pandey, Samir Roychoudhury, Shankarnath Chakraborty, Yannis Livadas, Boel Schenlaer, Sreedhar Mukhopadhyay, Paula Dawn, Arunabh Banerjee, Joseph Goosey, Ateendriya Pathak, Erik Vatne, Yasmeen Najmi, Pradip Choudhury, Sara Moss, Aloke Biswas, Jeff Callico, Federica Nightingle, Michael Aaron Casares, Subhankar Das, Heather Fowler, Subhash Ghosh, Tim Hall, Jim Wittenberg, Maria Grazia Galata, Henry Avignon, Elli Griva, Swadesh Misra and Selim Morshed.

It can be purchased by contacting Subhankar Das.

A more serious issue is that copies of the anthology have been confiscated coming into the United States. My two copies arrived the other day in the mail, but the package did look as if it had been opened by someone along the way. As a contributer to the anthology I can’t see anything in its pages that would make this necessary. It includes poetry, stories, pictures and art. Is it because it’s coming from southern Asia? The last I heard the United States was not at war with India. Has something happened in the news that has slipped by me?

What should be done about this? What can we expect to happen next if US Customs agents are confiscating literature at the airport? Is this no longer a free society?

Does anyone has any suggestions how this should be dealt with? Or is it better for us to bury our heads in the dirt? Email me at: offbeatjim@sbcglobal.net

10.02.15.searching

2010-02-15T08:20:00.000-08:00

night
my dark-eyed lover

jealous & demanding

I have abandoned my former love
the daylight
for you

& I wander the black
streets
searching

but you have kissed others

and they search everywhere
for you
too

night
our dark-eyed lover

can anyone ever be certain
of your affection?
can anyone
be
sure?

-- offbeatjim
2/15/2010

RIP David Joseph Christy Jan 28 1953 - Feb 1 2010

2010-02-11T02:18:00.000-08:00

Shutter St. Vouge

In rooming houses all over the city.
She can always remember the past with you,
Laying on kitchen tables with the Daily Mail.
Amongst the bottles, butts and forgotten dreams.
Always with that grin of assurance that
bares your heart and soul.

~ Dave Christy

Dave Christy October 7, 2009 at 2:10am

dearest subhankar, i sent you a broadside via post today, please let me know you receive it ok - and when you see Pradip, tell him "hi" for me - we have been friends for years. i am checking out your blog, it is great, i will be in touch.
cheers,
dave

Dave Christy October 17, 2009 at 2:17am

hello Subhankar--so happy you received the broadside. i love your blog, i wish i had more time on internet so i can contribute. i would like to write a short history of my Alpha Beat Press for a blog. can you send me a poem or two for my broadside? did you search for Kell Robertson? he had a stroke a couple months ago and not doing so well--he is a wonderful poet/songwriter and musician.
stay well,
dave

GRAFFITI KOLKATA BROADSIDE # Issue 4 # FEB 2010

2010-01-19T00:39:00.000-08:00

The new Issue is here friends a little early perhaps but who cares as long it is not late.So rush in your new poems for the next issue.

GRAFFITI KOLKATA BROADSIDE # 03 # JAN 2010

2009-12-24T09:45:00.000-08:00

We are back again with the new issue of GKB. We thank Yannis Livadas for editing and designing this issue.

A Very Happy New Year Friends !!! Celebrate with the new issue of GKB 03.

The giant’s hat

2009-12-09T22:19:00.000-08:00

Jim Wittenberg

The giant’s hat fell on my house. I’m not sure if it accidentally dropped off his head or if he intentionally threw it away, but it covered my house entirely. I didn’t know what happened. Suddenly it was dark inside the house, and when I looked it was dark outside also. I had no idea what to do, and since none of my favorite tv shows was on I went to bed. Twelve hours later I woke up, looked out the window, and it was still dark.

I called the police and asked if they knew why the sky had gone black. They didn’t know what I was talking about since the sky above the police station was clear and blue. They thought I was crazy and hung up on me. I called them again but they had my number blocked. Then I called the mayor but she was in a meeting, and since I wasn’t anyone important her receptionist wouldn’t forward the message. Next I called the fire department, and since I lied to them and told them my cat was stuck in the tree they came to my house and discovered it was hidden beneath the giant’s hat. They were angry because I had phoned in a false alarm, and they decided to leave the hat where it was.

It’s been three days since the giant’s hat fell on my house. I’ve called the television and radio news people, but they think it’s a hoax. My eyes are getting accustomed to the darkness, and I’ve discovered that I can talk like Donald Duck. There still aren’t any good tv programs, and I’ve decided that I’m stupid because my only pleasure is scratching myself.

I hope the giant begins looking for his hat.

Born in 1956 in Placetas, Cuba, Jim Wittenberg was raised in Sacramento, California, USA, where he currently lives with his teenage daughter. He also has one son, one daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. Jim began writing stories and poetry as a teenager.

"The giant's hat"was first posted on The New Absurdist website hosted by polycarp kusch.

GKB # 02 # DEC'09

2009-11-27T19:42:00.000-08:00

2 Paintings Of Sharmy Pandey

2009-11-07T06:58:00.000-08:00

Sharmy Pandey is a young writer, artist and a film maker from Kolkata now working in Bombay.

Graffiti Kolkata Broadside # Celebration # The Flux Of Creative Light

2009-11-04T19:20:00.000-08:00

A lone candle and Buddhist chant works as a backdrop for this GRAFFITI HAPPENING. Where poems chants colour drops like blood and paint and brushes and the scream of the silence and the warmth of the red light gets intermingled to create the magic of this evening of words dipped in wine. The atmosphere was electric as the poets Swadesh Misra, Somnath Ghosal, Sharmy Pandey and Subhankar Das read from their works in the Other Celebration of the release of GRAFFITI KOLKATA BROADSIDE Issue 01 NOV 09 on NOV 01,2009. Camera incantations by Arunabh Banerjee.

Please scroll down to see the slide show.

Works Of Elli Griva

2009-10-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

Elli Griva is a major young artist who lives and works in Athens.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2009:’’Yes. The Bound Home.’’
Art gallery: Astrolavos, Athens.

2008: ’’I want you’’
Art gallery: ART-SPACE, Santorin

2007: ’’I want you’’
Art gallery: Nees Morfes, Athens.

2007:’’I want you’’
Art gallery: National gallery of Napoli, Napoli.

2007: ’’I want you’’
Art gallery: IONOS, Karditsa.

2006: Why don’t you play with me?
Bar Hoxton, Gazi,Athens.

2004: Oh!!!What a wonderful world!!!
Art gallery: Tricky trick Art, Athens.

2003: It flies…It flies…
Art gallery: Statement, Athens.

2001: Oh!!!What a wonderful world!!!
Art gallery: Paratiritis, Thessalonica.

2000: Why don’t you play with me?
Art gallery: Ios, Athens.

1998: Paintings
Art gallery: In the Fine Art + Art café Grotesque,Thessalonica.

ISSUE # 01 GRAFFITI KOLKATA BROADSIDE

2009-10-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

APTERAL NIKE (Part 1.)

2009-10-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

By Yannis Livadas

Night from within night
We change hands like a coin
Modern elements
Our sprouted laughter
The movement of the gulls away
From the sea
Some waves reach perfection
The eye of the orphic raft
Is glancing eyeless and unsuited to the sinkage
I’m in a state of alert
I’m aware of my interest
Same as the night
I waste no minute
A cogwheel falls in the sink
I’m breaking down in front of the mirror with a
Creative annulment:
The oncoming man.
Sky threads sew me
Into the cavities of time
I’m the tree of the remedies
With roots in the western and the eastern poles
I’m the weather in the most fearful cities
A radio transistor in the shantytown a luster
Of bronze to the childless palace
A command forgotten
A map folded
The first apple of history
Ever learning from the venerable propaganda's of the souls
In the buildings of intellection
I make fun
Stagger
Otherwise
I’m extending
I open.

Under certain circumstances
Beauty continues
The light the bombshells the balloons
But nothing from all these does not thrill as much as
The sun disks between the shopping
The statue of a liberty at the feet of some eros
I’m loaded with scandals that take form
Like mandalas
Upper and lower levels
Messages of life like tidewater

Iridescence that give you fear for seconds
Meanings with not even a poem
Thumps when you are absent on the door
Death in the roses under the cold
Lights in the flower shops of the night
The coal fire of a carefree visionary.
And lately
Something is heard of
Openhearted mouths,
Bonus,
To look out.

I cover the poem like
Grass covers the grave
Like devil covers the milk
The apathy of a gargoyle
That reveals
Lonesome internal crowds.
I find my place via words
Buried pillars that delay
The wave to the fire
We have big mouths ideas
Who dislodge from icebergs
And become headlines
The earth that echoes our shatter
Continents devastated by dreadful
Alphabets
In the bar I get drunk with a bottle of tears
It’s because of the mucus of some enclosing phalanx
Variety of dimensions
An orchestration of ceased windmills
New fortunes of planets
The climax of the worship of modern verse
Leads to an attic of rats
The mob’s shocking feeling of tedium
Since be spared of madness
My existence becomes a religion
From the unction of some tender injustice
Lust like diamonds plod.

I’m typing under the heaviest burden
The solidification of emptiness
One iromancy
As if there are no other elements
Like the lions race
Before enter our thought
Under the shadow of this
Bust of time.
Someone from the rudeness
Is spinning golden courses of words in the air
The evil
Spearmint
Whirling
Vulva of universes
Discord of characters
A page of expansion written
By the fashion of death
Spread wide open –

Pedagogic, the restructures
Of the libraries and the real heroes
With bad outcome –
I surmount the evil counting with whispers a
Greater magnitude
I grasp life with my hands and is warm
The future is manning in the papers of the poet
With the tangible and the unreal
With the ivy and the wall
With the mouth of the nightingale in the blast of the storm
The temporary gives birth to
The everlasting.

Death is
Ripe bananas
The worst
I could think
Doves at midnight driving a police car
And I for no reason
No reason I kiss you
Put my signature
I cut a loaf of emptiness
And I lie esteemingly on
Nothing solid in the marvelous
We bind the sun with a wire
For half an hour
We trumpet it around
Printed letters
Letters big letters small
We drink them
We laugh at them
We grind them for dust
Darn it!
Even if the sun is made of cashmere
And comes out from the attic window of our belly
When night birds guard our oblivion
In inflammable forests.

A wooden statue with cheap offerings
Is inexplicable raised outside the house
And inside yes all the forms of the crushing chronology;
To connect you must be connected
Think on the basis of anatomy
Think of the brothers who lay in absolute indolence
Think nothing
Except the fact that a poem may someday
Be absent
May be everywhere written
Its natural origin means something
It’s an invitation
For Parthenon to find a place
On Himalayas
With the gold of the American bank to
Make shoes or sweet nothings
To bury everything into a dwarfish earth.
Albatross emerge from the earth.

At dawn the star of my prayer
Got shored up
All that happens in the world is minor
Pompously washed up obscurities
Inside the thought of an inconceivable reflection
Dusts
Flaming of the voices
Pulleys and counterweights
Secrets of the movement of life
Wholeness powerless fairly worn
Use
Of the lexicons
The wild nature
The whirls of declination
The walled glare –
Pain is a rock
That crumbles into my blood creating
Chasms.

Signal before the eclipse
Of the tones and the sequence of the routes
Wishes on postcards that don’t represent
Anything
Ancestral skulls debase and roll
To philanthropy –
From under you do not understand much.
More unrefined points
Tissues clapping and be clapped
Into continuities of posterior darkness
For denigration and evident estimation.
What carpe diem restrains you away.
Pose in the gallery of meat.
You have such tremors, while you see me drinking
The fuel of the immaculate camellia like water.
We are of the plurals.
We curse the destination
We are also immobile
Presences less and less recognizable
Like remnants with a slant look.
There is no meaning anymore.
Say their names –
Classicism, oligarchies to the dissimilar.

We are the grand-grandchildren of some strangers
We don’t surrender the soul
We leave a message a riddle of explicity
Two three steps away
You are alone:
The incident of birth
The signs of the times,
The trails of life the meditation of activity
The lights are out at dawn
Someone unseen
Has passed.

In darkness the so many ways of light,
Force is the female of life
The temptations of Saint Anthony
The gallop of the Remington
The tail of the whale
At the beach umbrellas striped
War and profit
You pay you get paid
The communication of the masks –
Conceptions of the many simultaneously
We suffer
The extra large do not fit to us
It’s a shame –
In the third decade of life
I revive from the preservation
Of an obscure rock-painting
Where everybody reads
His half-extinct
Line with difficulty.

The joy and sorrow of the idols,
But yet the thought that some day
Man will make it through –
We say over and over
Not that some day… but now
The whole being at the spectacles
Pencil-beatings
Ball-pen bruising
In the name of some wretched ontology
But I prefer a drink from golden hands
And outside the sleet to look like ribbons.
Dressed in the whole atmosphere
In every breath.

That’s how they call them: circumstances of the currents.
They know us all over the universe by
Our proper name
So you are aware of the perception why
I exploit harshly my existence
With gentleness,
That depends on you.

Together we put
Fire in the storehouse –
Moistened grains of salt and moon-twigs:
The way a decoy
With the decency of a suit
Becomes a sport a hobby of tomorrow.
Unregistered junctions of individualism's:
An enormous value misconceived
Like a mystical religion –
I am one of the Symbols.

Inaccessible then
The fields of the blossoms the turnings of times
The sword of the signature of poet
My page however
Is a beauty solid
Organic
Spot
Dangerous to read –
The pictures are no longer count
Veramente
Wild instincts
This is the new poem
Contrapunto
A prologue
Apteral Nike
Of one.

Yannis Livadas was born in Kalamata, Greece, in September 26, 1969. Done dozens of different works. He traveled around (India, Tunisia, Algeria, Italy, France, Morocco...) and today he lives temporarily in Athens, Greece. He is also a scholar and translator.
In 2003 he proclaimed “the Greek jazz poet”. He is considered as a Beat offspring but his poetry is oriented toward more dexterous and unsafe forms.

My Heart Belongs To The Soldiers

2009-10-15T01:14:00.000-07:00

Five Poems By Boel Schenlær

I
The man speaks English

they want me
to get on board
the white airplane

they don´t believe
I understand

they don´t believe
I know what to do

the man speaks English
I watch his hands
while he imagines
what he could do with them

the rage
like a scar
that puts his face in order

The dark-dressed men

much taller than me
push me in front

I take care of my clothes
white skirt, white shirt

the dark-dressed men
keep reminding me
the clothes don´t
belong to me

I know their names now
Jim and George
they call me Laurie
that´s not my name

a little ends up
in the seat
I wipe it off
with an orange
some woman peels
for me

All there is

nothing

I try to push everything
through the ventilator

the sounds from a fan
makes me sleepy

there is a light
strong lamps
there is darkness
and my pain goes everywhere

I am four meters long
and my belly is too small
there is no one
capable of this
can I please go home soon

II
From the dark and cold room

On the third floor
suddenly
men from shadows
not around my bed
but around hers
four, maybe five of them
holding her
pulling the sheets
holding her head
her belly
scrunching
they are
already gone
when the fire
covers her

III Back home

Mom

I know
she is weeping
there are no tears
on her pillow

What if?

if they knew
I am not capable
of this
but still
they can´t possibly find me
it will cost too much
to go this far

Dad

next time he starts his car
his foot will blow up
then he gets angry
furious

because he doesn´t get it:
who wishes him
bad luck

IV
Carried down

shadows made of nothing
but steel
in the cold and dark room

it all shrunk
or got destroyed

I am put in a unit
planning to run away

a needle
with a blue head of glass
in a black pajamas

my memory of sunshine
becomes a lucid vision
I get no air

the darkness
pushes me up
like if my body
is cut in half
pieces by the limbs
there is no pain at all
for a moment
but then it comes around
whole
as the air returns
then they carry me down
it is over

V
My heart belongs to the soldiers

In my ears

they cry out to me
telling me to die
shouting they fear to die
that they want to go back home
that it´s all my fault
that they don´t want
their intestines torn out
that they have a girlfriend at home
that I am a thin rug.
Children sleep in their beds at night
why am I here
why did I not see to
stay at home
so they wouldn´t
need to be here
stuck with me.

Soldier

Be glad you´re still with us
many are even worse off.
I saw one.
She was suddenly
dead.
Just like that, just gave up.
She didn´t want to be around anymore,
I guess.
No wonder.
Really, I didn´t know what to do.
“But”, they said to me,
“not your fault”. She was
going, anyway.
So, left me with nothing
else to do but pack my bag
or, to leave, I mean.
I hope I don´t scare you, puppy.
You´re so cute,
white and small and all.
Not like her with
those twisted eyes.

Soldier

You can keep it
if you want it.
It´s from my jacket.
What did they
do to you.
I won´t hurt you.
I will tuck you in
and then you´ll sleep.
God bless you
from this filthy space.

Soldier

I´ve had it.
I won´t go back.
I´ve got this ticket
so I know what I´m saying.
I will get you out of here.
You´ll come with me.
I know what I´m saying.
Just wait here
and I ´ll
be back soon.

Soldier

Do you believe you´re the only one here
Do you believe you can force me
to love you.
You must be a joke.
A bad joke.
As bad as me.

Soldier

I got it from the store
as a gift for somebody
but you can have it
for free.
What are you doing here
living here, anyway?
You are not somebodys daughter,
are you?

Soldier

Stand up!
Don´t just lie there.
Don´t you have no legs.
What is this? I paid for
her standing.
I want another one. A new one.
I didn´t pay for the strap.

For a second

the sun
was brought to me
it was warm
and damp
someone was kind
for a while
then drove me
back inside

Boel Schenlær : Poet & playwright.Hometown:
Södermalm, Åtvidaberg, Sweden.

Photos By Henry Avignon

2009-10-14T04:34:00.000-07:00

Advice: LCD TVs

2009-10-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

by Tim Hall

Q: What size LCD TV do I need?

A: First, the good news: prices for liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions have dropped dramatically. That means that the huge wall-sized screen your neighbor spent several thousand dollars on a few years ago can be had for half or even one-third the price, and might well boast a better picture quality and have more features (and won't he be jealous!). If you don't need a large screen, or your budget is more modest, you can easily pick up an excellent quality 22" or 26" set for a few hundred dollars, which was unthinkable until recently.

The bad news is that there are now so many different sizes and options, at so many price points, that consumers can easily become confused. If you're the kind of consumer who feels overwhelmed by the many different types of LCD televisions currently on the market, don't be discouraged; knowing a little bit about the features in advance can help you narrow down your choices and make the best decision for your needs and your budget.

Size Matters: While there are some rough rules of thumb for what size works best in a particular room, the size of the screen is ultimately a personal decision. For example, 32" will be plenty for most average-sized American living rooms. If you're planning on putting your TV in a large family room, great room, or over a mantle, then you might consider moving up to 40" or larger. In smaller rooms and bedrooms a 22" or 26" screen should suffice. One easy way to tell what size screen you need is to go to a showroom where you can stand approximately the same distance away from the sets that you will be viewing them at home.

If you're planning on mounting your LCD TV on the wall then you might want to take into consideration the weight of the set and the amount of hardware you will need, and make sure your wall can accommodate the mounting brackets. Most larger chains offer installation options; speak to your sales representative for details.

HD or not HD? Virtually all modern LCD televisions are ready for HD (high definition) viewing; confusion generally occurs over which kind of HD your TV supports. While they will all offer superior image quality, if you're concerned about having enough features so your set will not be obsolete in a couple of years then you will want a set that features true 1080p or 1080i resolution (purists will argue that only 1080p is worth getting, but never listen to purists. They are an unhappy lot as a general rule). Some televisions still feature 720 HD resolution, which also looks fantastic, whether you're watching the news, DVD, or a HD broadcast of your favorite team. If you have a Blu-Ray player, however, or plan on getting one in the near future, then you will probably want to listen to the purists and get a 1080p set.

Inputs: Modern LCD screens are capable of much more than just movies or broadcasts; they are increasingly becoming the center of a "digital hub" for your home, good for viewing home videos, digital photos, or hooking up PCs, laptops, game consoles, iPods and the like. Some televisions even feature built-in digital card readers, or USB ports for flash drives. At the very least you'll want a set that comes with at least two HDMI inputs, as well as separate component and composite video inputs. A VGA monitor connector for hooking up a laptop or PC can come in handy too.

This is by no means a comprehensive guide to what LCD TVs can do, or everything you should consider, but it should provide you with a solid basis on which to make your purchasing decision. Whichever LCD TV you decide is right for you, by using this guide then you're more likely to enjoy many years of high-quality entertainment. Happy viewing.

Tim Hall : Author of screwball tragedies, mem-noir, true fiction and non-fiction novels. Micro publisher, freelance writer. Hometown : Gramercy Park, New York, USA. This piece is part of a series of experimental pieces Tim Hall is doing called "Q&A," based on "literal writing." It follows the "Advice: iPods (2007)" piece he did for Salit Magazine

2 Poems Of Aloke Biswas

2009-10-11T00:03:00.000-07:00

The Heliotrope / The Photogem

They are not words, just jingling hemoglobin – turbulent in veins at the end of a different day. I saw a sounds cape in my travellogrammer at the edge of words. They have been roaming for ages on the music-misted peaks. The ancient periods of words were pouring slew of fogs close to the cardiac atrium as sound vocabs. Why I opened the pages of chirping dawn, why the great rhythm transformed into a drug-store rather than bursting into a symphony? Why I interpreted that the liquid Bohemian was sniffing a yes-walled mountain path camouflaged within the minus sign? The edge of the season that developed art of watching was getting widened gradually while the steely school syllabus narrower. The creeper of light thriving around the love-ladder held tight the ion-domed gene. The picnic of pico-inches, intoxicated tantrums filled up the lovelorn lover. The gun powdered erection, green hullabaloos at the windows….. the silent chorus of colour forced the idiot to come out in the mobbed exterior following retrospection. Who cares about the whistling champagne-penis? The decibel trees dance within thousands of crimson syllabi. The meritorious sun slaved hard to rid off wintry chill. Deconstructing the sunrays I would kiss the untouchable girl on my fantasy bed, I would kiss the tinkling of light in a disheveled farmer’s dress.

The Study

The door of sunrays expanded –
The storm and lashing rain entered haphazardly through
the gaping thirst!
There the wounded sunshine lies with requests and footnotes
and the autumn comfortable in the diction of ascent….
they are all very familiar, yet perpetually strange!
How the christening of the Dawn is yet unknown?
How the silvery scale of sun spurts open the sight?
Whose notes of Re Gaa Re! decoded in the symphony of dawn?
The whooshing love screeches to dead stop on my command to start
The vitamins stay unchanged even when the monitors crumble down!
Who said the wafting aroma of sandalwood-sound died
and the knickknacks got rusted?
Who predicted that the embittered gamebroidery of the sun
would be abandoned?
Who said that the vacuum cleaner swished down
the cascade of intellect with static fiery droplets?
And then who prompted that some areas got blessed with sunshine, but not all!

Aloke Biswas : These poems are translated from Bangla by the poet. Aloke writes in Bangla . Editor of Poetry Campus, a Bangla Lit Zine since 1991. He has 10 published books of poems.

Poem And Photo By Maria Grazia Galata'

2009-10-02T03:26:00.000-07:00

Maria's Home Town is Palermo in Italy.She believes in Experimental Poems.In her words 'Experimental Linguistic Research'.When I asked her to translate the poem in English she said it will not have any meaning if it is translated.

CENSORED--Apple/I-Phone Takes on Flash Fiction Writer in Online Journal? Apple? Come on!

2009-09-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

After the initial shock we asked permission from Heather Fowler the writer to repost the whole story with her comments from FB.

Sun at 10:12pm

When the Net Gets Freaky and Flash Fiction Grows too Bold For Even the Liberal Ex-Hippies: Apple Requires My Flash Removed From KeyHole To Allow I-phone App Approval--Move Over Big Brother; The Perps Now Wear Birkenstocks or Other Mysterious Apparel

First things first, I deeply feel that Peter Cole, Editor and Publisher at Keyhole Magazine/Press, is awesome and anti-censorship. I met him last year at the AWP conference and was delighted to speak with him about a a new book just out by the illustrious William Walsh, finding his conversation interesting and that he came across as a lovely human being. The above personal anecdote is expressed only to underline that the events that have recently transpired are no reflection on him and that he did every honorable thing he could do in the situation--but this doesn't change the fact that I got an email from him in my inbox earlier this week, one that said something to the effect of: I've spent money on this app for Keyhole. I hate to ask you this, Heather--but would you mind if I take your story off my site-- or I-phone won't let me use my app to distribute media?

Apparently, to widen their visibility, the fun people at KeyHole have been working to get an I-phone app programmed. After scanning his site, they sent him the following message, which Peter was kind enough to share with me:

"Dear Keyhole Press,

Thank you for submitting Keyhole Magazine to the App Store. We've reviewed Keyhole Magazine and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains inappropriate sexual content and is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states:

'Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.'

A screenshot of this issue has been attached for your reference. [they attached a photo of your story in the app]

If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that Keyhole Magazine does not violate the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.

Regards,
iPhone Developer Program"
****************************

The story was a piece called "Catholic Girl Smile," thus the title was not enough to draw the censorship, but to call the piece "obscene," or to intimate that, is fascinating to me. It is a literary flash fiction piece, of about six hundred words, about a boy who attempts to masturbate for the first time and is interrupted in this pursuit by his sister.

Is it redundant to say: No one even gets off? Of the work I have available online already, I feel this piece, its content, is rather G-rated--okay, PG-13--but apparently APPLE disagrees. It could also be the Catholicism I referenced. Because, no one ever says anything about Catholicism out loud, right? Sarcasm can be implied and is encouraged.

Of course, in response to Peter's note, I gave him my full permission to remove the piece from the web, knowing he always does fine work in terms of putting out edgy work-- and my little story is just an incidental casualty, a swatted fly, that I would not want to impair his greater publishing agenda or audience, but what I fear about this event is that it will not just affect me, but all online writers with edge and all online publishers of stories, should this be a growing trend.

I'm sure everyone tagged in this note is fully aware that--*oh gasp*--the pen is mighty, mighty. But I feel like the mouse whose tail has been stepped on by the titan. A little overkill, don't you think? Had this censorship been enacted by PayPal or other such conglomerates that are notoriously prudish and anti-eroticism in content, I would not have been surprised. But the fact is, I have other stories online that use the word "cunt"--multiple times, in multiple ways, in multiple ideological considerations--and none of these has ever been censored by a bigwig entity.

In sum, to any who read my work or might click through my bio to access my work online, of which there is a growing mass that will only expand in the next year or two, watch me flash my flash, here is your notice that one story in particular will no longer be a hyperlink, a story that is an innocent foray into questions about Catholicism, masculine sexuality, and guilt-- though it used to be available for all, for nearly a year now, at KeyHole Mag. Implicit message: They are scanning the archives, folks, not just the main pages.

But for the amusement or edification of those tagged, I now paste the piece below so that you can see if you feel it rivals other "obscene" literary content already on the web--enough so to merit being struck by the record so that a kind and harassed editor can enjoy the privilege of kissing the big, monied ring of Apple/I-Phone-- in order to pursue an admirable goal of getting more readers (which I am gung-ho about, make no mistake).

As for me, I'm proud to be censored, actually. I sigh. I moan. I throw up my hands. But then I smile, widely--thinking: I must be saying something interesting if someone wants me to shut the hell up. Thus, I feel the above series of events is a badge of honor, of sorts, a new milestone at the beginning of my literary career before my three-hundred some stories and counting, four hundred some poems, have even found homes, before I have a single book contract to my name (though the list of published stories gets longer and longer, making me wish someone would wake up to this need sometime soon)--and placing me in the ranks of other historically censored authors such as: Miller, Plath, Sartre, Twain, Lewis, etc. For a long list of illustrious folks I can now join leagues with, feel free to consult this site or others for the walk-of-shame list/s that makes this a sullied pleasure and a dubious honor in my view: http://www.banned-books.com/bbauth.html

And, the story is below. Let's see if my Facebook Page gets deleted now. Literary community, beware. Big Brother wears interesting petticoats and footwear these days. He or she could be the very one saying to you, via bots or people or lawyers even from the most "liberal" of companies: "Say, be you! Express yourself! Be experimental! Be edgy! But, oh, [in a whisper as a gripping hand yanks you to a corner invisible to most of the reading public] just don't do it in public--and also avoid doing this on any affiliated sites or feeds used by our company. Let me help you: The duct-tape is kept on hand two doors down from our lawyers' suite. Feel free to partake of it before we have to discipline you into applying it ourselves. Self-govern, people! As long as you can. This message is Courtesy of Apple/I-phone. We also provide complimentary, confidential dommes with no names, or strange names like 'iPhone Developer Program,' and have a nice day, always, courtesy of I-phone and our reps!"

So here, subversively, I unveil the content edgy enough to be eliminated.

Should I suddenly disappear from Facebook, as I mentioned above, you'll know they've deleted my account. It's been great to be your friend.

See you on the page or at other writerly events.

As always, love, love, love,
h

_____________________

Catholic Girl Smile

Grant took the things he'd been told he needed and closed the door, staring at the knob for a moment as if he feared it would turn by itself. The lock was broken, but his parents wouldn't be home for several hours. He looked down, prepared, and then began. This was the first time he had tried, having just turned eleven, so each step felt new or forbidden. He opened the lid to the porcelain basin and stared into the water, and then glanced upwards towards the crucifix his mother had hung on the wall above the extra toilet paper holder bin. He pictured Helen's face, smiling at him-- as she often did. In his imagining, like at school, she wore the uniform of St. Mary Magdelene's, a white button up blouse and a blue and grey plaid skirt--and though it was the same uniform the other girls wore, there had always been, for him, something different about the way she filled it out. Hourglass.

She was a year older and he liked her. She was taller than him, too. As he stood at the toilet, he didn't try to picture her naked, but instead how she looked jumping rope and singing verses of their chants as she did with her friends during lunchtime, the skinny ones, Molly and Lisa Mae, turning the rope as she jumped her turn, plaid skirt bouncing up to reveal dark, muscular thighs, her arms swinging slightly, the red and teal beads in her weave glinting in the sun.

He applied the lotion, closing his eyes. With each passing moment, it was as though her skirt flew higher, like she jumped so far above the rope that the draft created by impact and the movement of her legs were compelled to float it more and more each she time landed, whether on one foot or two, until it just kept hovering above her white cotton panties like a ballerina's skirt. Too, he could see her looking at him as she jumped, winking, smiling a new, sly smile he had never seen. Mentally, he smiled back at her, too, as he soloed closer to his goal, escalating the movement of his hand until he came so very close to something he had never had before that he was certain it would have been fantastic if his eight year old sister hadn't opened the door, without even knocking, and shouted, "I have to use the bathroom!"

In response, he shouted back, red as a beet, "Get out, Sally! I'm taking a piss! Leave me alone, will ya?" but the damage was done; he could not bring himself back to Helen. He flushed a nothing load and fled the scene bewildered. It would be many months before he would find another such a chance, for his parents watched him closely and were hardly ever gone.

Still, it was a long lunch period in school the next day, watching Helen jump. He felt he had, in one way or another, been robbed of her. He was angry. His pants felt tighter. And she didn't smile at him then. She frowned. She frowned so much that, later, when he thought about it privately, ashamed and dismayed, he realized the sly smile he had attributed to her was likely a product only of his head-- and that she was the innocent whom he, by devising it, had maligned. Too, he would think, for many moons, from all that day's frowning, that she knew what he had done.

***

Heather Fowler received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University in May of 1997. She has taught composition, literature, and writing-related courses at UCSD, California State University at Stanislaus, and Modesto Junior College.

Among other venues, she has published short stories in the following journals and anthologies: Feminist Studies (forthcoming); Surreal South 09 (forthcoming Fall 2009); Etchings (forthcoming Summer 2009, AUS); filling Station (forthcoming 2009, CAN); PANK (June 2009); Night Train (April 2009, Issue 9.1); The Abacot Journal (Spring 2009); Underground Voices (November 2008); A Cappella Zoo (October 2008, Volume I). KeyHole (August 2008); Trespass (August/September 2008, UK); SubLit (August 2008); Coming Together: With Pride (Phaze, 2008, e-book and print); Word Riot (May 2008); Storyglossia #28 (May 2008); Cityworks 2008 (May 2008); DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION (2008, online and print); Temenos (Fall 2007); Mississippi Review online (October 2007); See You Next Tuesday (2006); Frigg: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry (Winter 2006); the muse apprentice guild (October 2002); artisan, a journal of craft (September 2002); Literary PotPourri (May 2002); Exquisite Corpse (Summer 2001); The Barcelona Review (May, 2001); Quercus Review (May, 2001); Penumbra (May 2001); B & A New Fiction (Jan. 2001); Barbaric Yawp (Dec. 2000); and Zoetrope All-Story Extra (June 2001, October and December 1999). She worked as a Guest Editor for Zoetrope All-Story Extra in March and April of 2000. Her story "Slut" won third prize at the 2000 California Writer's Conference in Monterey.

Her poetry has recently appeared at the CrisisChronicles Online Library (October 2008), INTHEFRAY (February 2008), Empowerment4Women.com (November 2007), and been selected for a joint first place in the 2007 Faringdon Online Poetry Competition (October 2007) , as well as published in various venues.

Current City: San Diego, CA, USA.

Talk Poetry ## Yannis Livadas Answers Back

2009-09-14T01:52:00.000-07:00

1. What sets your poems apart from other contemporary Greek poets?

: Poetry.

2. What are your main concerns as a poet?

: My life. My state of action. Poet is the organon of poetry therefore I must always be on the Wheel. Enjoying ever.

3. My FB friend Tim Hall an underground writer from US, whose piece from 1000th Monkey 'How To Be An Underground Lit Legend' I am translating now in Bangla, asked me a question which I want to repeat here to you...
Is there as much apathy towards outsider, unconventional or otherwise underground literature in Athens as there is here in Kolkata or USA? Is there a corporate-owned literary industry over there that controls access to serious writing and completely denies the existence of serious writers? Is there a movement against it?

: Yes, apathy there is, though I see no underground poetry here. I am also not quite a fan of it; I believe poetry must only be authentic, nothing else – it is well known that I am not interested in movements. And yes there is a “control” system in Athens, as anywhere. The only Greek literary movement I know is Mediocrity…

Three Poems Of Yannis Livadas

She's Out To Lunch

Who knows what
my dear prigs and ex-lovers
that you loved and censored
who knows what

dear families of this earth
i am standing but cannot stand anything
i study monotony

sodomize your prayers
for i love you so much

my sins are more innocent
than my good deeds

i had told you once:
Truth knows not

she's out to lunch.

Under The Hokusai Wave

God remains more powerful
Than man.
Beauty is a hidden sun
Over the clouds
Of this heavy shower that turns sour.

Perhaps we don’t need
Poems?

We quarreled for the umbrella
Under the Hokusai
Wave.

Poets Mourn For The Immortal Poem

Poets mourn for the immortal poem
And is very relative with this
Dew drop at the edge of the sparrow’s bill.

The look your breasts give me
Is pure immortality
Just like the grasp of the sparrow’s
Little feet.

The sea is words
That comes out from the mouth of the coast
And we naked liquefy future
For one more candle.

Yannis Livadas was born in Kalamata, Greece, in September 26, 1969. Done dozens of different works. He traveled around (India, Tunisia, Algeria, Italy, France, Morocco...) and today he lives temporarily in Athens, Greece. He is also a scholar and translator.
In 2003 he proclaimed “the Greek jazz poet”. He is considered as a Beat offspring but his poetry is oriented toward more dexterous and unsafe forms.

At Pashupatinath

2009-09-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

By Nahshon Cook

The wind was breezy and full of light this morning,
when I was reminded by my heart
of how old ones are replaced by new ones
in order for Life to be on her way,
as I sat on the edge of one of the dove grey,
moon colored steps of the temple,
directly across from the red hot flames
on the other side of the holy river Bagmati,
and listened to howling, dog like cries
sound off from the homesick souls of dead people
watching their bodies be reduced to dust
by the golden, straw fed fires of funeral pyres
spewing out clouds of fog grey smoke
into the wide, blue-if-it’s-a-boy blue sky
like prayers for the courage to reach for heaven
as the sad, private, burnt pork roast smell
of burning, human flesh filled the air
like the caaw, caaw, caaw of the crow who, just now,
began preaching from the branch of a very tall tree,
right next to my hotel room window,
about how the magic of Reality is really a thing
with no birthplace, and nowhere to die.

-Kathmandu Nepal Oct, 23 2008

Nahshon Cook's poetry has appeared in two Cleo Parker Robinson Dance productions and a tribute to Dr. Maya Angelou in 2008. He has read his poetry at peace and interfaith conferences in Colorado which have included "Mysticism and Social Change", "A Celebration of Religious Freedom", and "Race, Gender and Class in the Building of the Beloved Community. His first collection of poetry A New Beginning will be published in January 2010 by "please” press.

Voice Over and Dialogues From The Short Film Ebang Falguni /The Lost Lines Of A Beauty Monster

2009-09-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

Text – Falguni Roy
Script – Sharmy Pandey

I, a human being walk from the womb to the funeral pyre
And reap my very own soul from the refrigerator of wilderness
I, a human being can both love and pee
To wash-off my nightmares and in thirst I can use water
in two different ways
By the side of your reality this is my celebration of suicide
This song of my self-desired death
Here with words free from speech all must be done
And I stare in the light of the urban neon
By my solitary shadow not your outline
but in my body a tail

I am without relief just a man wrapped in his fate
Just a man with no destiny wrapped in his violence
Without a party flag I live
Without a woman’s love, I live
In the burning sun to listen to Tagore, I live

Paki soldiers from Bangladesh, Yankee mines from the Tong-King
shores and from behind the sand bag barricades of Calcutta the army
has moved out…. China-Nixon treaty has happened
Jeeps to the moon, wheat to India, soldiers to Vietnam and competitors
to the Olympic have been sent by black and white America

Once upon a time our hearts brimmed with love
Now my cashless-ness has eaten into all feelings
Even rebels can’t make ends meet

Dialogue1 – Perhaps the belly pre-empts a bellyache
Life pre-empts hunger
Dialogue2 – Well said buddy, so life pre-empts hunger, eh!
I have seen the moon as a pyre on flames
on an empty stomach….

Why on earth did you seek nirvana Goutama Buddha you fool
In the land of the muse and darling damsels, India
Who the hell seeks nirvana?

Lord Buddha in place of non-violence we want peace
to flow out of the barrel of a gun

Dialogue3 – Where the fuck have you been so long?

In truth I need to lapse into a magical death
In the muddy movement of viscous amoeba of my life
I hurl carbon dioxide to the cunts of damsels
The burning pyre evokes in me not death but lust

Lazy rascal am I from time to time I seek a life
of a whore’s pet
Standing here with a charminar between my lips
I hear from the chill and warm vapor of blood
the mysterious footsteps of poetry
I listen besides the poetry the shout and abuse of the soul
Right here
The hazy moon of evil hope flows down the
menstrual blood of whores

I am a beauty monster
If god was at hand I would have buried
his live flesh and fed it to the devil

In the locality where the prophet was burnt
I was born, a debauch by birth
Sleeping with other men’s wives
according to me is Tantrik bindusadhana
How terrible this existence
On my left lung lives love on the right perversion
From my phallic arousal I have come to know
telepathic communication
I have come to see there is nothing apart in between
the rich and the poor the bourgeois and the communist
Yet some die lighter than feather
Yet some die heavier than hills

Who winds up my cardiac clock

Who would pay the price of the heart?
Who would provide paper and ink for poetry?
In sickness who would provide care and health?
In hunger who would provide succor?
In love who would give me the beloved?

Can the state give all???
Can communism transform the failed to the succeeded?
Can socialism make a good poet of a bad?

Food clothe shelter we demand
Women and poetry we demand
Intoxication we demand pure and unadulterated
Art is our intoxication
Writing is our intoxication
Intoxication is our sense of hunger

We don’t want to be killed
nor the killer
Instead of being martyred making martyrs of
class-enemies is what we want

Like the mute lonely divine
A wondrous silence exists at the depth of our creation

Without the colour of money the pimp of the whore and the father of the bride
never relent their charge to us.
With the ash of this whorish civilization on us should we then fold our phallus beneath our folds and become hermits?

No, I have no contention with men
To arrive you have to be born with an air-bottle in your heart.
Day after day my heart and my intestines I munch as I chew
I mock the imperishable soul to the stars for the taste of eternity
For the sake of love I am aware of retribution

Poet Jibananda
Of all he saw of the celebration of labour of those swine
Of all he heard of the moaning of those swine
Their descendents
The descendents of the descendents
Still scream around me

I do not know if my poetry can stop that scream

Let me live beyond death
Not in the inescapable sexuality of a woman in the child
But let my being throb in the flesh of my words

I cannot write
I cannot write a word
The existence of books, wisdom
And the Brahma of the alphabet the Brahma of all meaning
Surrounds me

Despite my defiance of obedience
I remain till the end
A slave of my inner being

Translated from Bangla by Graffiti Team’

Falguni Ray was born on June 7, 1945 and died young on May 31, 1981. He wrote only forty-two poems and six prose pieces in a span of five years. His oeuvre was included only in one sleek volume titled Nashto Atmar Television (The Television Of A Lost Soul), the publication of which on 15th August (Indian Independence Day) 1973 had been hailed by the famous postmodern poet and critic Utpalkumar Basu as 'signifying the end of modernity in Bangla poetry, on the same scale as the destruction of Machine For Living Building in USA in 1972.

Sharmy Pandey a young contemporary poet, a self taught artist and now a filmmaker.

Two Poems By Shankarnath Chakraborty

2009-08-25T07:22:00.001-07:00

Groom Companion’s Song

Listen to discourses of suffering listen
listen hey discourses of suffering

Thereafter hang with tramcar wire
blow your nose at the marriage of goblin’s dad
climb on shoulders of widow witches and beat your drum
disrupt
rotten tent of the sphynx
carrying along the lime
place it beneath the knife of postmortem room
breaking jaws with three blows
direct him walk on walk you son of a fool
break the old neck of Sindbad

Here at I could listen to whistle of the storm
earth mound of shore dismantles
pierced by harpoon of sub sea mountains
the ruffians of Dinabandhu Mitra stand waiting
boot-marks on back

Knowing everything Maxmuler shame on you

Ateesh Depankar Shrigyan

He found three puppies on his way
tied them at the end of his loincloth
started his journey, again

Completeness of knowledge was possible

Once More For Lucy And For All Radio Stations

2009-08-15T00:12:00.000-07:00

By Subhankar Das

Not only licking lips you know Lucy we had
all these nerve disgorging dawns
lips in search of mystery lips
water in search of water your face and lots of clouds
It would be wrong to call it just water
There was ice made of smoke and row houses
how shadows arrive strolling and get prepared
on our electric-skin all our search all the water of dawn
Colour will cover all the burn blemishes of rain
even then we can talk of arson those life long anger
For the power of burning blood streams on guitar-chord
will have to be licked clean
Now the cloud-pulps have fled after lifting the curtains
Living is such a pleasure to live
that means those mile-long nerve-nets
have not learned to fly
are tied to the ears of a guitar
That tree emerges from the abdomen
roots and stems emerge
branches spread out of the mouth and peep
glory of the leaves starts falling from eyes
It would be wrong to call it just water
These are probably words not flesh-lumps
These are probably births
Which can never be aired to you from any radio station

Who The Nightingale Bites The Eye

2009-08-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

By Subhankar Das

Sea foam was inside the room taming it
I have known conditions push over feelings of this life
where shall I catch hold of him
isn’t it killing itself talking in encirclement
face crooked even then so bitter the old man is stooping
revolution is complete
Revolution came and has gone without informing us
Signal calls while looking at this body he wants to know
how you are meanwhile wears the brain stable
our indecision covers perusal of the clouds
have not learned to roam around
that is why immaterial bohemian such family-world
then are awake crossed whereto which place
shadows spread on clouds one day there will be dawn
after enhancement in glow
wouldn’t care for purity time startled such a
restless life system
raw eyes where are the root bases
when is the exile knows that wound
takes hold of while talking who the nightingale bites the eye

Hungryalist Poems

2009-08-09T22:19:00.000-07:00

For Mala

by Debi Ray
(Malar Jonya translated by Howard McCord)

Let me fall into your moving, delicate breasts.

Each one is a goblet of poison and pain

and only a handful---

a little lump of flesh my palm can swallow.

A cheek. Look here!

This heart-lance, meek with 26 years---no anger, please.

Sit a while on the pillow of my lap.

Youth is that it should linger for ten summers.

The days are short that we are in the world.

Don't climb on the bridge.

Don't let your eyes follow the train

driven by electricity

Take me in your breasts and keep me from fear.

Let your hand touch my testicles.

I don't want to be hurt

and I am afraid of the knives and forks

on the tables of cafes.

I am much afraid of the bloodlessness

caught in te years' youth.

Relieve me, if you wish I will

buy you a bull-terrier

for the taste of your body.

We have only a few days

on this earth.

Only a few days.

Swimming With Henry Miller

by Pradip Choudhuri
(Henry Millerer Sangey Santar translated by Jyotirmoy Datta)

Not much traffic here, I can easily remove my head from the trunk and lay it aside, move the bottoms from their place, can get entrapped without looking at my body, merely by lifting up my face from this cold sand in this cold sun, or else I run down the avenue, Hotel Du Mauriere, trash, trash, after that strange cold I feel out of sorts for days, nothing seems to jell, a coffee less week, as I return to the Bengali language from my exile, or as I read Corso's poetry sitting at home, or swim in the bathtub with Henry Miller (nowadays I don't), naked, naturally, O God, I have to be at least about that even when turning non-human, or else my unspeakable chin has moved 1/5", constipation in 1965, someone tears my mustache and munches on them, rots in my skin bag the juice of wasted youth---crossing the sky, I walk alone deep in the heart of the sky---

A Poem

by Subo Acharya
(Ekti Kobita translated by Jyotirmoy Datta)

Men do live and men do die

good men live and bad men too

bad men die and good men live

good men die and bad men live

how men come to harm and what is harm

the secret fever rises in my heart

my empty skull is crooked and tired

bones in my cracked skin also crack

men do live and men do die.

I And

by Tridib Mitra
(Aami Ebang translated by poet)

Autumn's phantasmagorical tempest

I at the door of 1964

wooden knocks--who are you wood pecker?

What is this?

Shocked vision

chances dreams haha reality's become more dense

Pooooooooooeeeeeet

still boozed in love?

Gibbet

another revolt squanders like 1857 thrashes

Fire in Shantiniketan, fire here at Calcutta

In Midnapore Shyambazar Khalasitola

Fire in eyes face heart cock

This fireball gnarling

in happiness hatred pain intellect dream reality

All---junk--ho ho smoke net---

tinsel like groundnut

all around chirping

afar angry shadows roar, flounder on earth...

Confessions of a Male darkness

2009-08-09T06:19:00.000-07:00

By Parnab Mukherjee

Tribal Myth: The Elkela tribe is a nomadic collective of southern Orissa, India. I caught up with them in Ganjam in 2005. They give their wives to the highest bidder. Elkela women usually switch to the highest bidder without any qualms. Occasionally, the wives also sell themselves, both for reasons of economics and better sex. They speak in a strange dialect of Oriya laced with Telegu. For a living, the family collects honey and traps mice and snakes.

A dwindling community, they are now only 5,000 in number. They don’t belong to voter lists nor do they receive any grant under the bonded labour scheme. The fascinating part of their lives is that most husbands of the tribe practice and earn from being a Mundopota. Mundopota is a practice where men dig the ground and put their heads inside. With their heads buried in the ground and almost no chance of breathing, the Mundopotas can survive for as long as even 10 hours. Women and children draw photographs of gods/goddesses with coloured chalk around the dug-in heads. It is a dying art. This is a text on the Mundopotas.

My head inside the ground
looking at the morass
as you get more arse
from the next bidder
At the end of the day my bed is empty
but then I am used to darkness and
you are used to light
My head inside the ground
looking at the endlessness of a dungeon
My head inside the ground
searching for components of darkness
amongst mortar
brick
shit
smell
and earth
Some flung coins
some rupees
and a meal
There is another darkness that is mine
the hunger of not eating
and the hunger of knowing that you are in the bed of
somebody who paid more for you
hunger all the way

Two Poems Of Samir Roychowdhury

2009-08-09T01:29:00.000-07:00

Open ended

You said to women
come my way but don’t follow,
there starts deconstruction…
she said, there
is a safety pin left behind
by the Sannyasin in washroom…
But you said the Sannyasin left behind
an open safety pin
then unending mystery starts—
deconstruction follow.

-----------------
Sannyasin – Sage

Human armour

Manushyakabacham
Each word
Hring Hring look sun rises
a mantra.
Within seeds of words a sound
which carries meaning…
Utter Hri only then a deer visits
sun disappears—

The deer afraid of tiger
but creates the domain of escape
An escapade beyond the clutch;
Yes, Shiva with snakes around its neck,
wisdom flows from
his tousled matted hair, the
Counter text.

Samir Roychowdhury : b.1933. Editor: Haowa 49, author of 5 collections of poems, 4 books of essays and a short story collection. Associated with Hungry Generation Literary Movement.

For Bird

2009-08-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

By Subhankar Das

Stretched elongated chewing-gum for a day for a winter night
hanging haggardish better take care while talking about these
again the day returns. Love prompter of the shop
encircling the fountains one by one. Grass today
I wouldn’t be able to look at. Let this alphabet be ready
this sunlight and dust. On the sleeve
there were trace of flesh of previous life and thereafter
the cloud slept aslant oozing birds
hanging elongated whiteness even now within and outside

The City And Me

2009-08-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Think of the toy as a boy as a ploy who wanted the sea to tear him to see inside the sea, he that boy a ploy of a toy thought he.

Subhankar Das

MY HYPNOTISM (Hanseder Prati )

2009-07-11T23:22:00.000-07:00

By Subhash Ghosh

Exactly what it is -- already it was dark when I left my room – I cannot guess. A few steps only and suddenly my legs stop: Geese -- geese behind me, geese before me, geese all around, millions of geese; what a scene of geese! I cannot move; I see their wings, feathers: the whiteness of their feathers covers footpaths, streets, garages, tram lines; every corner they cover. The geese move their heavy reddish legs: everywhere I can hear their rhythmic footsteps. They flock together, they make a gathering; what a lot. These geese eat red lotus, pluck them: pluck and eat and throw the petals to each other. They brush their bodies with the lotus; they brush and take a rest. A white fire like mercury slips over the footpaths, houses, cars, garages, and squares. These unclaimed, white feathered, resting geese over the red lotus make my thought process stop; it becomes barricaded, my eyes tied by a kinkless wire to the Nadir and Zenith points. Even the unmindful lamp post guards in fear. Geese pluck lotus and eat, eat and pluck. I cannot understand why they are so despotic, these unclaimed geese!
Suddenly I whistle; only the geese hear; their bodies shiver, necks straighten, ears become alert; they open their red lips slightly; then and there a gigantic turbine begins to roar within my head.
Even the hairs of my body get excited: hairs become burning flame on my head. I hang my handkerchief over by breast and I begin to tremble, tremble in my hands and legs. Only they, only the geese, see my handkerchief (specially designed and coloured), straighten their necks, shake their wings and feathers. A faint call emanates from their throats. They are with the SOUND, with the CALL – the one I heard 12, 13 years back, back in the days of my puberty when I got a sickness in the blood – this call of the past, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13-years, awakes the whole sphere of my limbs, penis, penis-ends, the physio-libido system, silver fire, houses, roads, rows, and squares. My limbs, head throb; my blood pressure rises. I see these innumerable geese, wings and feathers. I begin to wave my handkerchief around my head; the mad handkerchief waves like a pointsman’s signalling flag, moves from east to west, from west to north, from north to south, on all sides and in all direction. The unmindful, frightened lamp posts begin to turn; they break into a thousand parts when dashed against the hidden waterhill. I see all around me by my search light. My hands continually signal. The geese straighten their white necks; each has turned its head from the red lotus, and I become restless in this sudden discovery. Looking at the handkerchief, they stir their lips and necks; they swell their wings and feathers. The turbine which has stopped earlier begins again its turmoil within my head.
I take the blue bottle from my pocket and spray the fluid over each and every geese; at once their bodies become limp. They begin to approach my shadow, as if hypnotized; they assemble around my shadow. My hands attempt to lengthen and try to catch them, one by one. But I control myself and begin to advance like a flute-piper; the hypnotized geese follow me. The flying handkerchief signal spreads. From time to time I see my trodden path by the searchlight. Each geese follows my footprints, follows my; they advance, and in my hand the restless fling of a pointsman.
We do not know when we come under the great sky. I see nothing but the white flames. The green grasses are burning. The geese quack in chocked voices. In the white fire they burn their past, stir their wings, and take off their clothes. And the turbine in the head roars higher. Now and then I see the geese at my back, the handkerchief flying overhead. Suddenly my eyes are captured by a pond of lotus: like a lodestone it attracts me. Gradually I approach it; the geese follow me, dumb and blind. On the four sides of the pond of lotus monument size “Shibalingas” grows. Within moments they become dense. And once again I see the geese behind me. They too become restless, seeing the pond of lotus. I take quick steps to the other side of the pond; I move the handkerchief; following the rhythmic signal of it the geese steps into water of the pond. They eat lotus, they pluck lotus, they plunder lotus. They make as much turmoil in the water as they like. I see their drunken wings to the farthest corner of the pond. They worship the blind god. They throw all their ornaments in the red fire of the lotus, unhesitatingly. The turbine in my head roars ten times louder. Then, seeing their undisciplined manners, I am taken by the idea that in how many way, in how many maximum ways, how many and how many maximum eggs I may have from them and getting these eggs I shall make them featherless, sickly, pale and when shall I drag them by their necks out of the lotus pond? Only determination begins to grow gradually with a waterfall-sound, in the turbine blades.

Subhash Ghosh :A prose writer and a founder member of Hungry Generation Movement in Bengali Literature. Has several books.29 April 1999 was his last day of his life.

subhankar45 sent you a video: "Graffiti Research Lab L.A.S.E.R Tag"

2009-07-08T12:17:00.001-07:00

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subhankar45 has shared a video with you on YouTube: Graffiti Research Lab L.A.S.E.R Tag http://GraffitiResearchLab.com Awesome video from the boys at graffiti research labs. Projecting graffiti with a laser pointer on the side of a building... CRAZY The song is Don Carlos - Pass Me The Laser Beam and heres how it works "In its simplest form the Laser Tag system is a camera and laptop setup, tracking a green laser point across the face of a building and generating graphics based on the laser's position which then get projected back onto the building with a high power projector."
© 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066

The Sorceress 2

2009-07-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

By Sreedhar Mukhopadhyay

At the dead of the night, just when I
rouse from my shaken sleep;
with a sleeping baby in your arms,
in a highway motel at Malda.
Yours trying to be struck with sensitivity
over a cup of mildly raw tea.

Your golden-bordered maroon saree
which used to float in my dream
catches the colour play
--dark black slowly merges into the lemon-yellow.

The fire-drops of my too passionate desire
in my dark room melts the silver hands
of the ancestral clock;
and right then, your bus starts.

The more Kolkata is left behind with its
aromatic flavor, the more you are up to the snowy touch.

Oh! My dear Sorceress,
before cursing me, think at least for once,
how many times the combined stupor of you two
wrecked my broken ship.
Think how many times my grandpa returned
though hay way down, only to buy
a diamond rose pin for my beloved.

And me too, how many times have arrived
at the heart of black fire, in the venture of
collecting the seminal fluid of your fresh flower
in a trance.

I have been transfigured into the symbol of the
silence of those many lamps that floated down
the stream by people wishing long life for their loved ones.
In your journey you grow gradually distant
and fix me in the complex geometry of the galaxy
with a cerebral bonfire in me.
I know nothing right, but I’m sure to
trespass within you in the next morrow surely
and be as inseparable as the
feathers on the body of a duck.

Two Poems Of Sreedhar Mukhopadhyay

2009-07-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

The Vegetable Lady

Vegetable Lady, you are all-enduring
It’s breakfast time now.

Your brimming sunlit body is now opening it’s eyes
secret diseases of the stale night will be healed soon.

You are not the damsel who copulates
with the donkey in a wine bottle.
In your expanding protoplasm I sleep, I dream, I wake up.

I do not collect souvenir for you in the Polynesian islands
I do not wait for you in front of the morgue.

You are the first virgin on earth without a tinge of sex and love.
To observe your quantum love-making with the sky
I lie awake for many a night.

“That moves. That does not move.
That is far off. That is very near.
That is inside all.
And that is outside all.”

Vegetable Lady
You will soak in rain all through the night.

The Night

Night, please do not leave us.

The yellow eggs will be hatched in sunlight
producing millions of immortal scorpions.
The young warrior who went to collect sacred weapon
from the Fire-River in the nether-world has not yet returned, yet.

Scientists are killing themselves.
There’s no energy left inside the womb of the earth for defense.
The magic power of incantations is vanishing fast.

The sick danger is vomiting, touching her face to the basin.
Soon she will be back on stage
covering up the tropical wounds on her breasts
under heavy cosmetics
she will dance to prolong the night.
Lascivious sixteen hundred girls are engaged to mislead the sun.

In the yellow egg the scorpions wake up from sleep.
We realize how fast the time is withering away.
Atom bombs are collapsing like flat balloons.
In no time our genitals are being transformed into incomplete flowers.

Blood is oozing out of the moon.

Oh Night! Become a mighty dictator, now.

Sreedhar Mukhopadhyay : Poet, Short story writer.Has seven books of poems and two books of short stories.

subhankar45 sent you a video: "Neda Agha Soltan, killed 20.06.2009, Presidential Election Protest, Tehran, IRAN"

2009-07-03T06:25:00.001-07:00

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subhankar45 has shared a video with you on YouTube: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Neda Agha Soltan, killed 20.06.2009, Presidential Election Protest, Tehran, IRAN Neda Agha Soltan (ندا آقا سلطان) was shot to death on 20.06.2009 by security forces during a protest (against Iranian Presidential Election 2009) in IRAN. Her name quickly became a rallying cry for the opposition who protested against Islamic Dictatorship Roohash Shaad (peace be upon her)
© 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066

subhankar45 sent you a video: "Birth of A Pillow - In the Shadow of a Holy Book"

2009-06-29T09:52:00.001-07:00

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subhankar45 has shared a video with you on YouTube: Birth of A Pillow - In the Shadow of a Holy Book An excerpt from the new film "Birth of A Pillow" by director Sharmy Pandey, Kolk An excerpt from the new film "Birth of A Pillow" by director Sharmy Pandey, Kolkata, India. The scene traces the guilt and self-destruction of a priest as he is distracted by a woman across the courtyard. film site: http://graffitiexpressions.blogspot.com/ music site: http://www.norumba.com more details: http://imdb.com/title/tt0963747/
© 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066

The Visual Words By Subhankar Das

2009-06-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

The search for her is written on my skin

The Visual Words By Subhankar Das

2009-06-22T20:42:00.000-07:00

The Sun, the sea and the unreal me.

Calcutta City Blues – Spring Sonata

2009-06-15T09:05:00.000-07:00

By Pradip Choudhuri

A hurricane penetrated her body
and died in a flash
her eyes quivered
she was petrified
she knew the trick

A real love story defies authenticity
it falls a little short of pornography

Most people cannot handle love properly

The story must unfold like never before

An illegitimate child eschews his mother’s love-life

A poet is the eternal husband

Most fathers are cannibals

She took her first flight
just after her wings were clipped

An electrified cord in hand
she did not reply
If I would telephone tomorrow

Such huge breasts without a soul,
my god

The society that never existed is garbage

The woman rode away at dusk

Ignorance sometimes defeats the great will

She’s destined to set history glow
follow her, fool!

Sensitivity makes and unmakes poets

She’ll be a living legend 7 days after my death

While burning,
charcoal darkens the area with smoke

Wagner met Basho at Sanjo-Shi

After the consummation of a long screw
she said she never meant it
and demanded a little peck

I have no idea
if the wooden bridge still links
route #5 with eternity
is there a hyacinth that still blooms?

They say my friend who was in love
died from cirrhosis of the liver

An open rice field in autumn
at the northern edge of town
she told me later

she knew she loved me as
I vanished to the horizon
making a 7-km stretch

When I last met her
I did not see her canine teeth and pink gums
she must have eaten plenty of animal flesh
including porcupine

I had written the de’nouement
long before the drama was conceived

Sheer chance that she should
play this bloody role at the altar of the muse

She’ll know how she’s been devastated
long after the completion of the trauma

The doctor maintained
it was infectious
but not malignant till now
he gave me two xray-slides
to have them rechecked with Duncan& Apollo

If she comes
I’m not sure to say “no”
definitely

I still love Stravinsky’s “Le sacre’ du printemps”
--this bloody spring

I heard people say
she was beautiful
so I wrote beautiful poems

I never felt like reviewing her form
nor question what beauty was

Love framed with words is called poetry
poetry begins by breaking the frame

My dear, don’t disturb your mother
when she is seated beside me
dispelling the darkness, else
it will spell disaster for the planet

Pradip Choudhuri : The Hungry Generation Movement included among its membership the young Pradip Choudhuri.He is a poet and has several poetry books and has edited several poetry journals since 1975 -- most recently, the long-running ppHOO.

Two Poems Of Subhankar Das

2009-06-05T05:58:00.000-07:00

DISTANCE

Doesnot matter whether it is Subhankar or no Subhankar.
Carrying my own corpse like this. No strength in the whole body.
The crumbling structure cage gradually bends and then becomes
smaller getting rounded. Rain water imprisoned in the
eye balls of my hand. The wind sucks-in sun salts. The way
I die would tell about that courage. This is enough. The
light of the sky and wind are sullen. It seems it is raining
but not actually. My knowledge may not be perfect. Oh my
wings. My wings.Wings. My wings. Because there is fire
in the wings--the bones of the featherless wings are
flying in the wind. Just now, they would lie on this paper.
Side by side. My wings, my bones, my hair.

The Colourful Cockroach

Instead of this piece, I wish to paint a big cockroach --
Small thorns in its long legs create shiverings.
Assume that this piece of writing is a colourful cockroach
just after a while it would fly away with a flapping sound.
Are you afraid of cockroaches?
When cockroach flies in your room helty-skelty--
You call your maid with a loud cry
and ask her to kill the cockroach
but if the cockroach too gets coloured!
If while getting coloured, it becomes a butterfly,
then you would have loved it.
You would not have thought of the drain,
the hole in the basin,
of the commod's backside,
or of the pan of the urinal,
the cockroach which has fallen into any of them
and trying to rise with outmost effort
even while seeing this, you are pissing upon it
with devilish pleasure and a little bit fearfully,
you would not have remembered, that
if a little bit more colourful it would have become,
with its wings getting shaped like a plant,
then you would not have jumped up if it sat upon your body
rather you would have looked coyly
or thought about that girl
around whose head, not butterflies rather cockroaches
circle in hundreds.

These two poems were translated from bangla by Bishwajit Sen and was published in Postmodern Bangla Poetry 2003. Editors Samir Roychowdhury, Tushar Gayen and Kamrul Hassan.

Subhankar Das :Writer,Producer,Publisher of Bangla experimental stuff.Produced 6 short films with more than 16 international film festival fame and appreciation.Has 16 published books of Bangla poetry.Translator Of Allen Ginsberg's poems in Bangla

2 Poems Of Ateendriya Pathak

2009-06-04T02:59:00.000-07:00

Come Some Day

Come to our home someday
I’ll show you the portrait of Tapati, Anal’s too
Faded yet you will know them
Change Tapati’s name if you will,
Tear Anal to pieces
May you raise a wall before me

It is you provided me with this home
Lest my feet touch them
With caution I’ve thrown the flowers
And the sacred leaves into the waste
Come someday they will tell you all
Even if a wall stands in front

The pictures are hung on the walls
They gather dust, spiders weave
And the pictures get a wrap
Knots tangle up my words
I am helpless inside the mesh
I cannot come out of the wrappings

Come someday and see all
Tapati and Anal and me
Our room, arranged table, wrapping on the table
And dust on the wrapping

I Grow Old

I look on
The boys go, the girls
The green fades on my person
Pale dry branches stretch
Motionless I stand
I grow old

They set me aside
Their gaiety goes on day and night
Who are they, who fathered them
Desperate they cross the bounds of birth
And march on
In full swing the fete unbearable
In the light in the darkness in the light in the darkness
In a circle within a circle
They have the glow of fire
Charred with fire their everything
They know how to burst into flames
But know not what it is to be burnt
Helpless I grow old

Leaving them to themselves
All the nights and days
Here I have the grey evenings
Colours shed on the way
Deep darkness lies ahead
As I fathom the depths of darkness
I grow old

Translated from Bangla : Satyendu Gupta

KOLKATA-KOLKATA

2009-06-03T22:17:00.000-07:00

0 to 4 : Sharmy Pandey’s Anti-poems

2009-05-17T05:29:00.000-07:00

In English Transcreation : Parnab Mukherjee

Translator’s Note : It has been a decade of reading Sharmy. The transcreation fermented deep within me all these years. Till one night – I took paper to pen. Sharmy brings a unique phenomenon in Bangla underground poetry – it is the use of body as a metaphor.

Sharmy’s poems are graphically sexual and in that sense a weapon. I think she is amongst the very few living Bangla poets who have taken sexuality into realms of realism.

Yes, that is good literature
ask Falguni Roy
ask Ginsberg
ask Amiyabhusan
ask Piyush Dhar

In her poem “Falguni” Sharmy (English Transcreation by the author of this note) writes : “A blue light washes the golden 60s as the taxi driver leaves College street junction – 11 in the night and I lean my body against the seat and I watch the droplets of Magh in the window – Falguni nods his head – and there I can see his beard, white kurta, folded hands – my entire forehead filled with evening glow – my eyes filled with book fair at College Square dust – and I am moving as I am sitting with splintered hands – legs – teeth and my love for carbon…and the roadside tyre burns – and I return home – Falguni’s forehead filled with sweat – and I can still see – somewhere his attacked lips – his frame – stops at Harkata – for two cigarettes – ignition – coconut rope – silence – the fire – black door closes firmly – Subhashda were you there? The burning cigarette – black packet – disintegrating foil – paper – plastic – my body burns with heat – and Falguni after 3 decades has come to further grapple with my consciousness – bulb moves – there you are Falguni…”

Now
Sharmy
I don’t care what you prefer and what you don’t
I still think Ritwik lacked Satyajit’s finesse and that was a lacking
and I still read mainstream poetry
and I think Ferlingetti is better than Ginsberg
and Kalidas is better than Ibsen
and Lautrec is better than Dali
and Badal Sircar is a bigger genius than Shambhubabu
and I still feel Kanchenjunga is the best Bangla film ever made
and I do think
you are the only successor of Falguni Roy
in Bangla poetry
with all my biases
keep it up Sharmy
Bravo!

1. Till my death in Jerusalem

My drops and drop of tears
Wrongly executed strokes while swimming
And the abject tiredness thereafter
Every death is agglomeration of
Gathered wood and
The bluish tinge that colours the night darkness
If my finger melts
O girl! Put the trinklets on – look good
Or you’ll have to
Absorb my sorrow
Tear apart the sympathy
Drape it all with white cloud
Night break yet nothing stops
The nobility

2. 19/4/93

And the light which gave fire
forest stories and crime
songs deposit
liking for the invisible eye
stomach deposits coal
we love old chained darkness
bubble broth mixed in darkness
scissors that turn into hands
darkness that resides in the lungs
nylon melted city drops
you squeeze the neck and the breath
take out the strings of existence
open up your breasts
look for those eyes
emerging
enveloping
phosphorus
igniting the bones marrow

3. Collage

Draw
open up
Distort
Change, Change, Changing
on the earth
stains of reality
After 10 years
the rotten smell from the shake-up of the first book
somewhat less blood
sometime the mass of bones placed incorrectly
dreaming on, dying easily, sky coloured days,
yes, meanings keep changing
and then the gut is dissolved into vapor
let’s talk
let’s cough up all that we thought last year
first cover
first etching
or first love
existential crisscross
crisscross game
transparent colours
canvas can’t take the etching
skin peels off
so I think transparent mask
words will perforate
this mask
sky on my head and we will cross over the forest of fire
guava tree, bougainvillea smell
rain we creep out
where new born
will look at joy
we will keep crying
like a lizard that creeps up
yet no road in forest
no roof
no mind
no transformations
only a blueness where rainbows will change

4. Two Lines I Wanted To Write

Plane, Plane, Plane, Pilot Plane
From Plane came down Suchitra Sen

Fragments

2009-05-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

By Sharmy Pandey

1

Sleep is an intoxicating reality
Dreams are left behind difficult sums in a notebook
Unsolved due to lack of help-book (made-easy)
Scattered emptiness is flying on the roll numbers
Submitting the paper of dreams only with a signature
Rules and regulation of a lifetime
and then one step to another
new revised dreambunch fill with chunk of questions
Black board is hanging on the eyeball
Merging sunlight to gradual deduction
Siribhanga khetrofal
Dust are falling in the eyes
Few drops of dead tears
Drawing the skyline like a chalk

2
Pictures on the wall
are moving to their own will
I'm reshuffling them with my gaze
My room has no door
A city is standing between us
A road map is hanging on the wall

3

Alone for a while
No words no nights no darkness
Sailing in a submarine for the frequencies of sound
Sinking silently for a long long time
Grasping for water light and wind
As if rooms of colourful memoirs
movement of a black dial
songs of a broken radio
Now the city will disappear by wiping away everything

4

Lying inside the vagina oh mother
to get smeared with juice and blood
I come back from the overwhelming influence of the computer mouse
I get up from the coolness of the mind
Living all the colours clean
My fingers are only to grow bigger
I hang from the strings of a guitar
In a dream water unties from a knot
And ultimately hangs in broken gravitation
As if in those few droplets lies
The fear for rain
I float like a diesel ash who craved to be a cloud
Thinking of giving birth to a jungle
I am painting a few fangs of grass on the sky

Transcreated from Bangla : SharmyPandey

Writings of Sharmy Pandey

2009-05-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

Moments

That day
storm
rising
or
the impending
pregnant
goat
convulsing
in our
soil
or
that day
when
like rain
sky
gave out
sunlight
that
streamed
endlessly

And the night littered the road with the consumer moonlight
The tar-cheeked city still is ready for dreams in melting tungsten light
Music bows to the rusty nails from a vendor’s tool

Words bloom as moments
From the edge of voice
And memory flows
Viscous down the ears
Eyes that look back from habit, not seeing

And the entire city is filled with the smell of rotten flowers
low of New Jersey cow
flow of bitter winds

that means then-only from my city
a slice of star fell off
As it revolved and kept revolving – it ran
as one long breath
grew and
it’s splintered splinter of atoms
shadows
spell
tottering around
What I at last wrapped in a strong polythene and carbon
And kept it alive in the warmth of dead cold burner

Many days have past like those many many days
Lots of unsaid – or less said – some what
sound less words – claps – glory and gap
lines and folds – city is not moving – when
sweat trickles down from Coca-Cola tin
not a single bus moves to destination less
destination – in absolute casualness
In an empty time crawling in the lap of the sky
moving the cloak – removing in a whiff – the clouds and
complexities – water and the drenched breath

At this moment unarmed – unarsed
Without coldness – without teeth – obsessive
Groping for a diseased search
Are now enmeshed the gothic structure of words

Pore a large dose of black on the paper
Dip your fat or thin finger
from the bottom end of the paper till the middle
mark nine close strokes
Give few drops of water and few drops
of tears of the hard brush

That’s colour
That’s sky
That’s emptiness
Or you

To be taken over by emotions returning home
with part and particles of neon
life along the ground and the plastic sound
of the mineral water – 40 ounces of local hooch
and ten twelve spurts of vomit creep and crawl across the
symbolic tramline – where lies
some dried condom-love and where the green
carpeted spread seeks for shadows everyday
the lost time trickles down with the afternoon sun
straight in the middle of the road
the back – in front or below
and seeks for the dust of vision in myopic glass
Actually that day is the day when – from the feathers
of bird flew husks and the smell of the lime of the wall
were everywhere – few drops of longing were merging in the sky
The temptation of colours – as colours – or colour – or colour-debt

Translated from Bangla By Sharmy Pandey and Parnab Mukherjee

More Pics of the happening

2009-04-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

GRAFFITI HAPPENING, A Photo Collage

2009-04-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

It was 2004 after Bill Morgan and Bob Rosenthal left for New York we were invited to do a happening in the Alternative Theatre Festival in Kolkata. The whole happening was directed by Sharmy Pandey. It was an interactive performance session lasting for 6 hours with poetry readings, paintings, painters reacting with audio sessions of alternative Bengali writer’s sound track, reading their own stuff and one act plays and viewers writing on Graffiti’s paper wall. It all started in a dark room with burning incense sticks-Buddhist chants streaming in from a tape recorder and every body was invited to lie down inside the room. Slowly the aroma changed into an ammonia stench and the show begun lighting up candles and every one introducing them one by one. These are few pics of that event.

SHILALIPI the GRAFFITI Book Store

2009-04-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

RED ROAD From AAMAR CHAABI (My Key)

2009-04-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

By Subhash Ghose

The black police van starts. It moves on and on. It stops suddenly. I get a great jerk so that I fall on an iron rod & receive an injury in my mouth. Two or three of them open the gate and drag me out of the van. Even then my eyes are kept covered with a black bandage. They shut the gate. The van starts again. I try to uncover my eyes. So I begin to tear at the bandage with great effort at last it slips down and hangs over my neck like a black ring. I open my eyes and see everything dim. I rub my eyes again and again with both palms, at first nothing comes into sight. No man no traveler no traffic. I take two or three steps south, then I find a man at a distance. I see his body made half by the waste he searches for something with his bent body around him, staying on the same spot. He searches with deep attention in the semi-darkness. I wish to talk to him so I start. Suddenly I hear something is going on behind me, making sound. I look back and find two or three lanes & bylanes which fly like chased bird and deer. I see a running train of row lane bylane, I see them moving towards Red Road, Rashmoni Road.

Sometimes two or three lanes join while flying, and after joining they run again. Thus comes Fears, Fardice Lane, Rajani Gupta, Decars Lane – some lines are identified, the name plates of others cannot be read. Some of the lanes come carrying broken lightposts, I find on a lane torn bodies and contraceptives, on a lane black curled hair and a haircomb, a lane comes packed with dustbins, broken cups, plates and flowers are seen somewhere, somewhere, bloody lungs are left, lanes carry blue cover and envelope, torn pieces of letters, heaps of race-books; I find the Uttariya (clothes used in the Hindu rituals) of Utpal on Royd Row; chair, benches, drums and glasses of Barduari (a country liquor shop) pass by, there goes the lane Chapatala of Maha (a famous whore), lane carries also broken shed, pen, the Gita, stones from Kamrup, embraced young man & woman, on a lane a naked one-legged man suddenly shouts; College Row, carrying heaps of obsolete and classic books goes, there go the dead to the crematorium, the magic card of Sandipan goes, I find the cutneck of friend Shaileswar, I shout , I cry, a footpath carrying a sleeping man runs away, a thief goes with his loot, there goes the bloody knife, a priest while peeing goes, thus I absorb a continuous moving procession of lane bylane; a garlanded mad I see, I see a night guard, a helpless barking dog; suddenly there runs the Shyamacharan Street which leads me home, I cry, I call it, run towards it, wave my hands, I begin to whisper…’how to go back….how to go home….’

‘please wait and see’…suddenly I hear the voice of that man who searches around him for some lost thing, after a pause the voice again goes…’hereafter roads avenues will begin to run, there will be some limited roads made by all the lanes bylanes rows and streets; and there will be a single road made by those limlted roads; and there will be no other road beside that; hereafter house, small and big, slum building, multistoried building, will begin to move, all those houses and buildings will make some limited number of skyscrapers, and this limited number of skyscrapers will make a single skyscraper; and again there will be no other skyscraper beside this one.’

The dimensions of my eyes begin to spread, eyes become very big and at last they burst, blood comes out. I want to learn from him whether men who are lean and thin, short and tall, who are of under calory and under strength, who are black red and white, will make some limited number of men, and whether this limited number of men will make a single man and whether there will be none but him.

When I finish, the eyeball of that man rolls, rolls like the mad needle of the clock. His eye pupil moves with tremendous speed. His back begins to twist. At last his back takes the shape of a bow. When his spinal chord is made just half, he falls on this ground, throws hands and feet. When he falls on the ground no sound comes to my ear.

Translated by Malay Roychoudhury

POEMS BY BOB ROSENTHAL

2009-04-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

Shadow Loss

there is no honey in my veins
there is your bed
over there
here is your meal
from the shining pot
there is no rest on an airplane
a huge mechanized fire
your hand outs are so vital

sometimes the light in the distance
is not your train
sometimes she’s waiting
wide door’s ready
your seat grins

her name is your sponsor
her pledge lifts your eyes

your sorrow grows old
extra tired stiff
smooth as shoe sole

pathetic that way
out of shape burns that way

love stains don’t wash away
we do

Ode to Cynicism

I alone know what is what
my virtue is unparalleled
trust me
I know where I am going
you will come with me
for you have no say
what you say has no meaning
deconstruct the path
there was no path anyway
deconstruct death
it’s not there
to lack life
is to lack sneers
crime is down
nobody is worth killing
there is not a president nor civil rights leader
worthy of a bullet
I’ll save the rainforest
by eating a chocolate bar
or is it ice cream?
corporations do know what’s best
I will launch my name in dotcom-dom
millions will buy my shares
I am richer than you
I am better looking than you
I go among you wearing my brands
my name is an Orifice
surrounded by B’s
I like children
on TV
I really like dogs
having animals complete me
animals talk to each other
“Hi Siggy you’re cute”.
“Nice seeing you, Venus”.
think how good I am
stooping to scrape up poop!
I’ve branded these Chinese characters on my limbs
one means awesome
the other means something like fat
I broke up with my lover
because he wouldn’t break up with me
Yyears later I took liters of G
I e-mailed him exactly what I thought
the nervy bastard did the same
I refused my food
the waiter didn’t speak English
I screamed in my sleep
it didn’t bother me
I didn’t hear myself
I feel closer now to Fluxus
I really feel good about
my faster connection
I an in my Northface
laughing at you
why should I organize my building
they all speak Japanese
I think the worst thing about me is
that my jeans are Levis-Strauss
why did I say that?
I walk among you in my black Columbia hat
I bypass Starbucks because I am good
now that I am just like you
without liking you
I just had the illest thought
when I die
you do too
sofFollow me
to the end
which was
after all
a long time ago

Drive All Blame Into Oneself

I know something must be wrong with me
I don’t like George Bush
Normally I really like liars!
I am mostly to blame
For the highly non-competitive profits
Enjoyed by Bechtel and Halliburton
Personally I am sorry that I allowed
Israel China Palestine India Tibet Pakistan Ireland Turkey England Greece…
To embrace the forever death dance
I was wrong to adapt a “Wizard of Oz” attitude
About Iraq after the wicked witch was gone
“Gee Dorothy, take her broom too”.
I’ve been meaning to take the “American Lifestyle”
Upon myself – I’ve been a poor
Consumer – I admit it
I have a little problem when given
A lot of authority over naïve investors’ money
I screwed up at Enron and Solomon Smith Barney
Now with one hand tied behind my back
I am cooking the books with international currency
To help my Ivy Texas League friends
One of my worst faults was
Voting away a woman’s right to choose
After all not a one of them would choose me
Naturally you’re right to suspect
That I’ve been harvesting gorillas
For food while mining scarce
Cell phone metal in the African wildlife preserves
I’ve been waiting for the right moment to explain
How I merged Barnes & Noble and Starbucks
I’ll have a Grande poetry latte in my initialed cup
I knew almost at once about my mistake
When I let the President’s
Grandfather launder money for Hitler
Even after 1938
I definitely wavered in my mind
When we broke up the only monopoly
That worked – the Telephone Company – I just thought
The babies were so cute
There is a part of me so insecure
In my own marriage
That I would deny this shot at legal commitment
To same sex folk – it just don’t play into my fantasy
Forgive me for wanting to tap
Into your credit card purchases, video rentals and internet
Visits – I can’t help it
If I am curious
I really fucked up on that
Irradiated food thing
But there were blackouts
To think about
I shouldn’t have overloaded those power lines either
My shrink can’t help me figure out
Why I put a leaky nuclear power plant
Just up river from my hometown and sanctioned
A non-viable evacuation plan
It was a bad day
The day I boosted the urban canine slave population
A wimpy pooper-scooper law
Barely assuaged my guilt
Although I do feel bad about
All that I did
Still I shoulder blocked Pandora
To get her outta the way
It’s my little key that opens the future
Sorry
Let’s talk!

Sharmy Pandey's ganu

2009-04-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

Looking Back

2009-04-14T00:40:00.000-07:00

Castrating Falguni Roy with cohesion

A play transcreated from Falguni Roy's writings by Parnab Mukherjee

This entire writing was conceptualized to be developed into a project that shall culminate on the 60th birth anniversary celebrations for Falguni Roy slated for June 7, 2005. In some sense this is a finished work and in some sense this is a work-in-progress.
This play was first performed as a dramatized reading by Out of Context-a theatre project of St Joseph's College, Bangalore, directed by Parnab Mukherjee on June 7, 2003 at Shilalipi bookstore. On February-March 2004-as a part of their new production-Out of Context extended the concept of reading into an "A T-Shirt play for Falguni Roy." The poem in the T-shirt was penned by Parnab Mukherjee-who also conceived the idea. This act of T-shirt performance took place in Bangalore.
Following is the T-shirt tribute to Falguni Roy

CURTAINS UP
LIT CLIT DALIT
I Chant I Rant I Cant
I Untie I Unending I Unzip
I Surrogate I Levitate I Prostrate
INTERVAL
Acoustic Plastic Sarcastic
Soot Grime Sublime
Rhetoric Generic Harpic
Theatre 1 Theatre 2 Theatre 3
Postcards from 9/11 Snapshots from 9/11
POST-INTERVAL
I Asymptote I Quixote I Gloat
I Davos Circus I Mumbai Circus I Apollo Circus
I Ridiculous I Stupendous I Sensuous
Your Performance, of Reading This, is finally over
CURTAIN

Subsequently, an interactive performance of Castrating Falguni took place in Shilalipi* on June 6, 2004 directed by Parnab Mukherjee with musical reactions by Pradip Chatterjee and Dibya Mukhopadhyay of Mohiner Ghoraguli*. A montage of shots on Falguni's ancestral house was documented by Anwita Thapliyal, Charu Maithani and Namita Singh of Indraprashtha College for Women-Delhi as a part of their summer project under Parnab Mukherjee.
All this and more keeps Falguni alive.

Here’s the play. But you must read the preface.
Oh! You have read it already.

THE PLAY

Before the space is opened up you can hear sounds of wood being split. And a chorus of voices-disjointed, disembodied. A roundtable with skulls. Inside the eyes of the skull-there’s this glowing candle. And two persons-one with his back to the audience absolutely naked and the other one with a flowing robe and dark glasses. The space has only two principal properties- a wax coated television and a televiosn without any hardware inside. Both have a white banner stuck to it. Written on this banner-using dripping read-is a phrase that says Television for lost souls.
A third person walks up and starts speaking:

Private Bed (1968)
Not Radha, Not only radha
Even the prostitute menstruates
Father of 3 children-the idol for
Family planning
Masturbates from childhood
Doesn’t he
I don’t want to be Rabindranath Tagore
Not even Raghu –the dacoit
I just want to be Falguni Roy-
Falguni Roy
I stay in a road
Where the fertility centre and
The crematorium
Face the opposing ends
You don’t believe
Try
bus route 4,32,34,43
I have noticed that the word
Magazine is more relevant
While applied in the context
Of Rifle
And
Poetry

Naked Man: How did you leave the job of the police. Tell me how? Searching for which neon. Now don't argue listen to me carefully. Whenever, I smoke grass I think a number of eyes creep inside my skin and there's this strange tumor that envelopes my consciousness. Maybe grass is greener when smoked. It gives you a vision. See if you have stomach-you will have stomach problem and if you have the willingness to survive then of course there will be hunger.

Naked Man (continues): I don’t have a problem with humankind (1970)
No, I don’t have a problem with humankind
No problems whatsoever
If my moneylender falls sick
I can take him to the hospital
From my former lover’s husband I can easily
Ask for Charminar
My life’s easy like beard creeping on my face

Watching Ramakrishna’s love for Kali
My sexual unrest subsides
Babli’s love for her husband fills
Me up with my kind of meditative wetness
If my chappal gets lost I buy a new pair
No I don’t have a problem with
The humankind

My gaze shifts from my sister’s breast
The day of ‘bhaiphonta’ I walk on the
Streets of nearest brothels
I visualize that when I die I’ll be
Able to see this corridor down
The horizon

I don't know moments before I
Was born that: I’ll be born
I’m a-without-consequence man
I’m a-without-death semi-terrorist being
I’ve noticed a dog inside me weeping in
The dog in me has
This want for mating like the
Saint who’s forbidden apple
Is a craving to screw around with a female saint
Finally, I seek the happiness of life
Through my poetry
Through my rhyme scheme
I don’t have any problem with life
I don’t have any problem
Whatsoever with the humankind

Dark glasses Man: But I do have a problem with mankind. I was this policeman. Once I had a duty in front of Rajbhawan. There was this procession-long, meandering and never-ending almost near the Gandhi statue. The crowd near the statue was getting restless. for peace-I fired tear gas and then fired some rounds and then fired some more (drinks preferably liquor) and then from one of my bullets there was this 23-year old girl who's breasts were filled with blood. From then onwards I started selling life insurance. I left the police job. You can call me a person afflicted by mental disorder. Yes, I did enter a movie hall once to see a Gina Lollobrigida movie and the witch in this seductive thriller laughed and I noticed a little bit of blood on her teeth. My mother's blood. I probably nibbled too much in the womb as did countless other children, husbands and wives.
I came out of the hall and fired at the banner. And the Gina Lollobrgida face in the banner mocked me. No it’s not about a guilt complex. You know till you don’t murder, you won't know a murderer's mindset.
You know sometimes my rifle becomes my bible.
Infact, all the time.
My rifle My Bible(1972)
My rifle; My Bible; I take poems
Of this name and insert them
In my pocket
and start walking towards a prosperity terrain- in this path there is a road and a bazaar named after a revolutionary and a memorial tablet>
named after a slain activist of the 70’s .
College square water reflects the
dangling shadow
replica of a new
library belonging to an older university situated not so far
Away Medical College morgue and bang opposite the place of worship and
from the library a furlong away there's this road meanders into a prostitute Quarter area. I walk this road towards a
Prose poetry terrain- in my pocket
Instead of currency I have 2 poems
There is a vast underneath and
Underneath the white skin- underneath
the skies there is a national conjunction
that pierces my heart but I’m yet
to go to the skinny alley-harkata galli
with a few writing clutched, clasped . I still
walk on a prosperity terrain- with the<
desire to learn. I headed towards a she lover- the book declined my thirst-the woman did not- so I drank her-then I sat near Red blue aquarium and consumed fried fish and gazed at the large protruding
breasts of a prostitute- infact the mound looked less sensual but more
a godown of flesh- my old lover's current husband’s smile recently
reflected less of triumph almost
like a toothpaste ad- infact even the ad reflected a botched triumph I didn’t notice any- pity me

At the Ramakrishna crematorium
Nemai sadhu consumes burnt corpse with the
Same sense of relish as roasted mutton
Occasionally he consumes even his own shit, grass, mud and then
nonchalantly chants the name of Hari- many believe he’s a liberated man also wanted to be liberated but
Not by consuming the same bullshit-<
Even the desires for such a bullshit freedom

is something which I categorically reject
A poet of the colonized India
Once wrote God lies in those hands that tend the land not in the temples- now here I am
A poor poet from free India
Shackled by poverty and by the
Hopeless wish that we shall-we shall
and will unshackle these children who
Still smile wistfully, smiles out

Of innocence, smiles helplessly

Instead of napalms carry two poems in my palm and walk Towards a prosperity terrain
Where there is a road and a bazaar named
after a revolutionary and a memorial after a 70’s activist
who consumed bullets.

Naked Man: I love a girl called Anuradha. We shall get married soon in this place near the Jhajha Mountain. Both of us will sit on the slope and look at the star spangled sky. As the silence will pierce through the cosmic blueness and the green slopes will merge into a blue horizon almost like the endless darkness of the vagina mixing with the breasts. Tomorrow is the independence day. I'd like to smooch somebody that day. But after the smooch, I am fairly sure if the woman is interested in having sex with me and I am game too-before the act-all that I will see is mutilated vagina of Anuradha. I am a murder. I shoot bullets of poetry across fractured vaginas.
Poetry bullet(1984)
Somewhere the memorial tablet
Was broken to give rise to a
Shani temple
Come come let’s break the mandir
And let’s once again
Construct a military base for
An army of marginal voices
Who lost everything
To all comrades who
Died for the overt need of their last sexual
spurt
Let us pay respect
As a mark of my respect I
Stopped masturbating
increasing number of TV sets in the prostitute
quarters
There is even meat for their
Dogs
As God dangles in their wall
with a sardonic look
How many genuine girls
For reasons of revolution
Have had their private parts
made Aglow
with marks of police atrocities
How many more women
Will be looked down because
Their lovers are not careerists
And all those intelligent fucked up
Poets crowd coffee house
After the culture pandals get dismantled
In the maidan all
these screwballs who walk in maidan and graze sheep
Let poet’s finesse be known through his craft
Let well earning assholes go to
Marriage parties or brothels
My body will ebb away
But my consciousness will be alive in the body of my words
Future readers are not bothered
How much salary a poet received
Infact they aren’t bothered at all

Third person: We need food-house-clothes
We need wife-poetry
We need liquor-hard liquor
Art is our liquor
Literature is our liquor
Our liquor is the sensation of hunger

Naked Man: There's this twosome standing in the middle of the road
The he revolves with the she
She asks he
he asks she
they reply
in signs and unsaid impulses
only the eyes talk
take our love away
take our love away

Dark glasses man: I want a theatre where one of the drunk person-say me goes to this skull, takes the candle from the retina, inserts his finger inside the blank spot and then the explosion of the skull and then spurting of blood near a cock and then the cock explodes in a pattern of flesh-like ribbon-and then these ribbons take shape of man, woman, dog, goat, pig, piglet, vagina, clitoris, blood-stained pancreas and of course innumerable nerves ripped open. Then in this newly created orb every pattern that was hovering around as images so far turn into a burning candle
And we see the naked man(gestures-naked man comes)turning into Christ (in a crucified posture) and the cock turn into a black serpent and the serpent engulfs the body spewing venom and the Black Christ stands their unapologetic.

Chorus: Can your theatre take this?
Can you show me the tram in which Jibanananda died?
Can you show me an authentic pair of glasses which
Manik Bandopadhayay wore, Roy Gilchrist, Frank Worrell,
Tagore-men-machine gun-Shantiniketan beggars
Pros quarters-one foot below Khidderpore bridge
Why not hungry? Psychotronic poems,
Maternity home, burning ghat, aircooler, refrigerator,
16mm projector, tape recorder, Mark II
and
my obsession for Benoy Mazumdar
and remember
my death day: 31-5-1981
and my birth day: June 7th, 1945
It is cricket dear
It is cricket
They all raise a placard and leave the space. The placard
says: "Art is Subjectivity-Jean Paul Sartre”.

*Shilalipi a bookstore of alternative Bengali literary books in Kolkata sponsored by GRAFFITI.
*Mohiner Ghoraguli the first alternative Bengali band.

Parnab Mukherjee :A media analyst by profession and is considered as one of the foremost directors of alternative theatre movement in the country.

Impact of the Hungry Generation (Hungryalist)

2009-04-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

Impact of the Hungry Generation (Hungryalist)
Literary Movement on Allen Ginsberg

Malay Roychoudhury

Allen Ginsberg, the American Beat poet, was influenced by the Indian worldview in general and the Hungryalist movement in Bangla literature in particular in more ways than one. This was the main refrain of my discourse which I presented to Bill Morgan, the Beat researcher and Bob Rosenthal, Secretary, Allen Ginsberg Trust who along with Sharmy Pandey and Subhankar Das, poets and Ginsberg’s Bengali translators, visited me at my Kolkata residence during the last week of January 2004.

The Hungry Generation literary movement was launched by me in November 1961 with the publication of a manifesto on poetry in English. I had to resort to English as I was residing at Patna at that time. Several manifestoes had been published before Ginsberg reached Kolkata in July 1962. Since they were in English, the Hungryalist bulletins were distributed for free throughout the country and Ginsberg had started collecting them right from the first one when he visited New Delhi on arrival to meet Pupul Jayakar who had requested Beat poets and writers to visit India and popularize use of Khadi wear among hippies. He mailed these bulletins regularly to his friends at California and New York, as well as to his personal archive at New Jersey, later sold to Stanford University.

Allen Ginsberg, the poet of Howl and Kaddish, after his interaction with the painters and poets of the Hungryalist movement, could never remain the same person who had departed for the orient to get rid of negative image he had himself cultivated in the USA after the success of Howl. Ginsberg’s biographers and critics, most of whom are American, are almost ignorant of Indian complexities, have never taken into account the contributory factors that impacted the poet to such an extent that his post India poems changed structurally, semantically and semiotically, though his Indian Journals reveal that he had been making vain efforts to regain rhymes, meters and breath-spans in Howl-Kaddish refrain. Poems written by Ginsberg after his India visit are composed in the breath-span of mantras, pranayamas as well as Bangla poetry of 1960s, all of which remained beyond Euro-American academic comprehension. Unlike T.S.Eliot, whose usage of mantra was a modernist technical intervention outside the Indian world view. Ginsberg’s chanting and singing of mantras were pregnant with values inculcated in a historical faith-penumbra of the people he lived with in India.

Whether be it Benaras, Kolkata, Tarapith, Chaibasa or Patna, Ginsberg invariably visited the burning ghats (where the dead are consigned to flames), accompanied by one or several members of the Hungryalist movement. The experience was so earthshaking for him (quite a normal one for any Hindu) that he could, for the first time in his life, understand the difference between the occidental quest for immortality and the oriental quest for eternity. From the collection of letters of another Beat poet Gregory Corso, An Accidental Autobiography, edited by Bill Morgan, it is evident that Ginsberg had been conveying his state of mind on the subject to his friends in America. His biographers and critics, who are either Jew or Christian, have never taken into epistemic consideration the dedication page of Ginsberg’s Indian Journals. Why were the Hindu sadhus and sannyasies been crelentlessly sought after by Ginsberg consequent upon his association with the poets and painters of the Hungry Generation movement needs to be examined by researchers.

Prior to Allen Ginsberg, another Beat poet Gary Snyder had visited India but instead of directly trying to contact the Hungryalists he sought the help of US consulate. Unfortunately the consulate receives feedback from their Bengali agents who are driven by their personal interests. Snyder was sent by the consulate to the Krittibas group of poets, a pro Establishment commercial renegade coterie whose machinations had led to the arrest and trial of the Hungryalists between September 1964 and July 1967. When Dick Bakken, editor of Salted Feathers wanted to bring out a special issue on the Hungryalist movement, this is what a vocal member of Krittibas group wrote to him on December 12, 1966:

My Dear Mr. Bakken,

I am still bewildered why any one in Portland, Oregon, should be interested in publishing a special issue on the Hungry Generation. Is there not enough local talent in Oregon to fill up the pages of ‘Salted Feathers’, which you describe as a small magazine? Or is it due to an interest in the out of the way, the quaint, and the fantastic? It is like someone in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, bringing out a special number on the Trotskyite poets, revolutionary American poetry by bringing out the ‘Penny Paper of Iowa City’. Hurrah for the public relations work and promotion by Allen Ginsberg, Time magazine and the silly magistrate who convicted Malay.

Very sincerely yours
Jyotirmoy Datta

What Jyotirmoy and critics like him failed to comprehend was that it was we Hungryalists who had created a great impact on Allen Ginsberg and that special issues or supplements US, Latin American and European periodicals such as City Lights Journal(Lawrence Ferlinghetti), El Corno Emplumado(Margaret Randall), Kulchur(Lita Hornick), Evergreen Review(Barney Rosset), Tribal Press(Howard McCord) and Burning Water, San Francisco Earthquake, Intergalactic, Ezra, Damn You, My Own Mag, Vincent, Panic, Ramparts, The Los Angeles Free Press, Eco, Iconolatre, Imago, Where, Work etc on the Hungryalist movement were not for nothing.

Another Krittibas writer Sandipan Chattopadhyay had volunteered to become police witness against the Hungryalists after he dissociated from the movement and submitted the under noted statement to the Police Station on March 15, 1965:

I am a graduate of Calcutta University and employed as an Assistant Inspector, Calcutta Corporation. I am also a writer and used to visit the College Coffee House where young writers of Calcutta generally assembled in the evening. Samir Roychowdhury is a personal friend of mine. I came to know the sponsors of Hungry Generation, Namely Shakti Chatterjee, Malay Roychoudhury and others. Although I am not directly connected with the Hungry Generation but I was interested in the literary movement. Some of the manifesto of the Hungry Generation contains advertisements of my literary works. In one of the publications my name was cited as publisher. This was probably done with a motive to exploit my reputation as writer but since my prior consent was not taken I took exception. The publication in question also came to my notice. As a poet myself I do not approve either the theme or the language of the poem of Malay Roychoudhury captioned Prachanda Boidyutik Chhutar(Stark Electric Jesus). I have severed all connection with Hungry Generation. I had correspondence with Malay Roychoudhury who often sought my advice on literary matters.

Though in court Sandipan had testified against the Hungryalist movement, in 1974 while writing his own introduction in Adil Jussawala edited New Writing in India published by Penguin Books he had claimed, ‘He was also responsible for starting the Hungryalist movement in Bengal, along with Shakti Chatterjee the poet and Utpal Basu, a writer now living in London’. The leader of Krittibas group, Sunil Gangopadhyay, in his letter to me dated June 10,1964 had threatened the Hungryalist movement in these words, ‘I had not destroyed your Hungry Generation in the very beginning quite affectionately as some of my friends are there in that team. Remember, I still have those powers’. Obviously, police swooped down on six of us in September 1964 on charges of conspiracy against the state and obscenity in literature.

As against the cultural politics such as above resorted to by Bengali intelligentia, the impact the Hungryalist movement had created on Allen Ginsberg is evident from the under noted letter dated September 28, 1964 he had written to me from New York.

Dear Malay

I saw clippings from Blitz, Sept 19, 1964 p.6 and also I think Calcutta Statesman 17.9.64 that you were arrested as well as Samir and two boys named Ghosh whom I don’t know, for your Hungry Generation Manifestoes. Are these the same as were printed in the issue of Kulchur 15? As soon as I read about it, I racked my brains what I could do to help and so today wrote a whole bunch of letters to the following; A.S.Raman, Editor Illustrated Weekly, Dr. Dadabhai Naoroji Road, Bombay. Sharad Deora, Editor, Gyanodaya, 18 Brabourne Road, Calcutta. Abu Sayeed Ayyub, Editor, Quest (sent message to him indirectly) and member of Indian congress for Cultural Freedom.Shyam Lall, editor, Times of India, New Delhi. Khushwant Singh, novelist and member of Congress for Cultural Freedom, 49 East Sujan Singh Road, New Delhi.

I also wrote to Jyoti Datta and phoned Lita Hornick of Kulchur. I asked, the Indians above all, what they could do to help you, suggested they activate the Congress for Cultural Freedom as this sort of thing is the proper activity of the Congress and Quest magazine and told them that the manifestoes were printed here in City Lights Journal and Kulchur and were not obscene. So the whole mess was scandalous bureaucratic illiteracy. Please, if you need literary help or advice do try to contact these people for support. And in addition perhaps ask for advice/help from Mrs. Pupul Jayakar, 130 Sundar Nagar, New Delhi – she was our protectress in India, we stayed with her, she’s friend of Indira Gandhi and others. I also notified Bonnie Crown here in New York, the Asia Society, 112 E 64 Street, NYC – she commissioned poetry to be translated by Sunil and others and that pack of poems plus your Rhythms etc will be printed together by City Lights. She can send you a letter on her official stationery saying your manifestoes are known, published and respected in US and not considered obscene. I will also enquire of Mr. S.K.Roy, the Indian Consul General here in New York who I do not know what he can do at this distance.

If there’s anything you want me to do, let me know. Write me and let me know the situation is and what the cause of the trouble is. Judging from Blitz I suspected jealous ideological Marxists or something. Are you ruined at the bank? I hope not. Regard to your family. Get the Congress for Cultural Freedom to supply you with a good lawyer who’ll take no fee. If the Indian Congress doesn’t cooperate, let me know, we’ll complain to the European Office. Who are the Ghose brothers? The manifestoes on prose and politics are pretty funny. I thought they were a little literary-flowery, but they must have hit some mental nail on the head. Good luck.

Jai Ram
Allen Ginsberg

The Congress for Cultural Freedom did nothing; rather Abu Sayeed Ayyub had written a dirty letter about the movement to Ginsberg himself. Bengali literati such as Shankha Ghosh, Pabitra Sarkar, Debesh Roy, Ashok Mitra, Amiya Deb, Amitabha Dasgupta, Arun Sen etc who get alarmed if a Latin American or African writer suffers from a sore in his arse, were conspicuous by their stony silence all though the ordeal of the Hungryalists. However non-Bengali intellectuals such as Nissim Ezekil, S.H.Vatsayana Ajneya, P.Lal, Dharmaveer Bharati, Phanishwar Nath Renu, Srikant Verma, Mudra Rakshas, Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre etc supported us. It is these particular brands of Bengali authors who, in order to conceal their guilt, are found to denigrate the Hungryalist movement.

One thing which annoyed me at that time was that Ginsberg was unable to differentiate between the members of avant garde Hungryalist movement and the MNC-funded commercially inclined pro-Establishment Krittibas group.

Ginsberg, however, could comprehend that the Hungryalists had dispensed with the colonial compartmentalization such as Good/Evil, God/Devil etc binary opposites. We had explained to him that each of the triumvirate Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara embody traits which exist in nature itself and nature was never monocentric. This idea has been articulated by Ginsberg to several of his interviewers. The human body is consigned to flames, he was told by Hungryalist artists Anil Karanjai and Karuna Nidhan at Benaras, as it is part of nature, and erecting a graveyard stone on a dead corpse would be against the cosmic spirit. Bob Rosenthal informed us that on death Ginsberg was consigned to flames and his ashes handed over to two different Tibetan Buddhist sects, immersed as per Red Indian ritual and sowed in Jewish cemetery flanked by his parent’s graves.

Ginsberg was overwhelmed with ordinary Indian human being’s tolerance, tenderness, resilience, pluralism, hetero glossia, synereticity and eclectic capabilities. While talking about the moment on the Kyoto-Tokyo Express on his way back from India to USA he had expressed: ‘My energies of the last, oh, 1948 to 1964, all completely washed up’, and that ‘to attain the depth of consciousness that I was seeking, I had to cut myself off from the Blake vision and renounce it’, he was actually revealing the impact of the Hungry Generation on him, a newness beyond Howl and Kaddish which sought ‘cosmic consciousness’ not in visions but in ‘contact with what was going on around me’. It was the Hungryalists who weaned him away from Hollywood world of Judeo-Christian visionary flashes.

The three fishes with one head which became Ginsberg’s logo after his India visit was brought to the notice of Allen and Peter (Orlovsky) by the Hungryalists when they had gone to Emperor Akbar’s tomb. Akbar wanted to combine the basic tenets of Indian religions of Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism into one which the Emperor called Deen-E-Ilahi, Ginsberg’s biographers and critics have never bothered to unravel Allen’s Deen-E-Ilahi fascination and the correlation thereof to his post-Planet News poetry. Ginsberg came across a Persian book at Patna Khudabaksh Library, the leather-bound cover of which depicted the three-fish and one-head design in silver colours.

In April 1963 Ginsberg had stayed for sometime with my parents at Patna. My father was quite angry with him for Allen’s addiction of taking photographs of beggars, paupers, crippled men, lepers etc. We had two vacant rooms at our Patna house which used to be the halting station for hippies on their way from Benaras to Nepal. A tanned Ginsberg in Khadi pyjama-kurta, oiled long hair, a red ethnic towel on right shoulder and vermillion dot on his forehead looked completely Indian and treated as one by my parents. Ginsberg had narrated to me an incident which explains as to why, although his book Indian Journals is full of references to Hindu deities, pilgrim places, saints and sannyasies, he ultimately became a Buddhist.

Allen Ginsberg had come to Patna after a trip to Bodhgaya which had not been developed as a tourist centre at that time and he had no place to stay. There were no toilets. Allen had to sit on two bricks beside a bush for morning chores when he was stunned to find that one of the bricks was actually a broken stone from a temple wherein small replicas of Buddha were curved. He got up, collected the stone, washed and cleaned it with his tooth brush at the nearby pond. The incident had an indelible impact on him.

Ginsberg had carried the stone with him to Patna and used to meditate in front of it. Prior to this incident he used to meditate in front of a wooden Chaitanyadev collected by him at Nabadwip, the paints on which had flaked off due to overuse. The Bodhgaya incident was recorded in his April 1963 notebook which was stolen from Ginsberg’s sling bag at Patna. Allen thought that the theft was the handiwork of some fellow from the Detective Police Department who had been keeping a watch on him from Benaras. His premonition may be correct since his visa was not extended thereafter. Since it was illegal, Ginsberg did not carry the Buddha stone to USA. Bob Rosenthal informed us that Ginsberg had kept an ordinary brick-like stone on his windowsill at New York home.

Allen had accompanied me to my elder cousin sister’s house where my nieces were playing on the harmonium. My sister showed him how playing the instrument was easiest. He had seen ordinary people at Benaras and Patna play the instrument with ease while reciting the classical Hindi poet Tulsidasa. On his way back to USA he had purchased a harmonium at Benaras and used to play it at poetry recitals, of his own or of William Blake’s. Who can deny that Ginsberg’s poetry reading methods had not been indianised? With harmonium hung from his shoulders he started composing extempore poems on the lines of Bhola Moyra, Jaga Kaivarta, Nitai Boiragi etc, pre-modern poets of Bengal who were called Kaviyal. Having come in touch with the Hungryalist writers and painters, Ginsberg’s understanding of relation between language and reality encountered a sea-change due to Indianisation of his being. However, in case of other Beat poets, including Gary Snyder who visited India, they remained at the same metropolitan cultural level.

How and to what extent the Hungryalist movement had been able to invade micro level American poetry circle may be felt from the under noted two letters written to me at that time by poets Carol Berge and Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

My dear friend Malay New York, November 26, 1966.

The Poetry Reading Benefit (St. Mark’s Church) was one of the evenings of great beauty in our lives. As the evening approached, I found that many of the New York poets wished to be included, so that by Wednesday evening we had a fine group and a fine, eager audience. But the feeling of the evening, the emotion, the waves of wishes are what I can only try to describe to you.

The time began by my reading of a selection of excerpts from your letters to me; so that these people (poets and audience) could have an image of you as a man and poet and of your life as you live it. I introduced the poet Allen Hoffman, who then read aloud your poems.

I will tell you the names of the poets who read their work for you that night, with my comments, so that you may know the names of your friends here who have had a part in gesturing on your behalf. Paul Blackburn read and he made a tape recording of the entire night’s events, so that anyone who wishes may know of the evening’s occurrences. Others who read were: Armand Schwerner, Gary Youree, Carol Rubenstein, Allen Planz, Ted Berrigan, Jerome Rothenberg, Bob Nichols, Clayton Eshleman, David Antin, Jackson Maclow. It was unbelievable. When the day comes for you to be with us, we shall share further. Tell us, if you can, how you are faring. We care about you.

Your friend always
Carol Berge

Dear Malay City Lights, SF, California.
March 26, 1966.

I have received the legal decision on your case and thank you very much for sending it .I find it laughable. I want to publish it together with your poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ in the next City Lights Journal which will be out this coming summer and I enclose a small payment immediately, since I know you must need it desperately. I am sending a copy of this letter to Howard McCord .Perhaps he knows the answers to the following questions and will send them to me right away, time is of the essence and it may take some time to get a reply from you. I think it is a wonderful poem and I will certainly credit McCord for having first published it. Bravo.

Allen is in New York and his new address is 408 East, 10 street (Apt 4c), New York, NY.

I need to know the answers to the following questions:
1. Was the poem first written in Bengali and was it the Bengali or the English version which was seized and prosecuted?
2. Is this your own translation or whose is it?
3. Do you wish me to use the type written copy of the poem which you sent me last year or the version printed by McCord? (I find some differences).

Let me hear as soon as you can. Holding the press. And good luck. I hope you are still able to survive.
With love.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

American academicians and researches working on Allen Ginsberg will have to rethink the issue and examine the work of the poet in the light of his India visit.

Malay Roychoudhury:Founder of Hungry Generation Movement in Bengali Literature.Has written more than 60 books by now. Poetry, Novel, Essay, Drama, Criticisms; translated some works as well: Neruda, Ginsberg, Lorca, Tzara,Artaud, Rimbaud, Cendrars, Dali, Gaugin, Blake in Bengali (a language spoken by 250 million people)