Poetry by Satya Dash

      Tasha Lutek CC


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​Arrival at NYC
 
I make my way through countries of bobbling headsat JFK into a whistling November breeze. A cavalcade of doppelgangers. Oh, what a blooming mass of humanity. Bombay’s long lost elder brother.  If the human race ever needed a reason to survive, it should come here to view its dorsal intersections. Backs and buttocks are anyways impossible to view in parliamentary mirrors. But when you’ve heard about a place or a person for long, you’re bound to be bewitched once you’re in them. I’m only two hours old in the city.
 
The skyscrapers spring on your eyes like feral cats. The subway is intimidating – not so much the platforms, but the artists and the lovers, the grandmothers and violinists spawning eggs of an underworld platypus. When you’re used to traveling in air and light and oblivion, this takes some getting used to. A museum of such ceremony. The iris needs time. To meditate. To settle down in a dark room.
 
I scour for directions to Columbia. On walls whose texture is face like.  Grainy and existential. They have seen centuries dribble by and their eyes are now notoriously singling me out. I yearn for something elegiac, yet light – an unexpected kiss from an old friend or a latte with a blueberry muffin. Either will do.




A Mouthful of Debris
 
Secrets of years spluttered to attentive strangers
          Over lattes assembled in sincere machines
The remembering now is different from the remembering before
          Which is different from the happening way before
Time & memory, oil & water
          What’s light, what floats to the top
The details vanish, immiscibility stays
          It’s fascinating how we resolve to remember dates
When we felt a new joy, a new grief
          Soon rusting in the metal of white light rubble
But real memory’s an obdurate cockroach
          It ingests its more illustrious cousin, its own temporal shell
Finding peace on ledges and drawers, corners and sinks
          Lives on seasons as if moving through dirt rings
Parades the wardrobe in times of strife
          Sliding through pockets with the philosophy of a knife
Compressing a life into a story, a month into a moment
          Because all said and done, it knows better than most
Survival is always the first step to any kind of happiness




To Write an Unhappy Poem
 
I wouldn’t have to think beyond
- bones decaying under layers of cement,
  confused with rubble in the muck of
  hoary downtown
- boys leaping from high balconies knowing
  the flight of a soul is the only salvation for
  homes growing to dust
- daughters & mothers trapped inside four walls
  for centuries raided occasionally by sunshine
  for repression & murder
 
These are stories from Syria, Beirut, Kashmir.
Here dead stars have left the sky hollow.
Here skin is inseparable from scar.
Imprints & paw marks are all that remains of
tethered lives. We forget names of places now
because memory is a plebian whim &
God in the throes of craft replaced tooth with canine
& marrow with gun. Back in the day when I felt sad,
I drank rum & swallowed pills.
I wonder if God glugs when he reads the news.
I hope the pills are over when he reads this through.

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Satya Dash has been a cricket commentator, dabbled with short fiction and has a degree in electronics from BITS Goa. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Magnolia Review, Prelude, The Nasiona, Turnpike Magazine, Verse of Silence. He lives in Bangalore and recites his poetry in the city's cafes. 
Twitter Handle - @satya043 
https://twitter.com/satya043 

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