Ghosts of the Ganga

Ghosts of the Ganga

-I-

The Ganga is your feline ghost lover

slicing through the heart of the city

caressing and culminating existence.

The Ganga is your blood-mother,

dressed in her widowed veil.

Translucent,

transgressing,

fleeting,

transforming lives.

Ferrying tidings of the sleepy sun

dissolving his orange petals in death,

as the dots in the city murmur on her banks;

halogen evenings on clay

and the vibration of rails,

a city conjured up in the white mist,

as she protects her banks with her flapping shroud

and the lights in the city twinkle;

the mercury lamps of a ghost city,

the stadium towers, the floating noise,

the soft halo of the marble dust palace the breeze

refracting life; unreal in the movement

of the swaying bridge in the winds.

Those moments of light, life, unity,

staring at the cityscape like a speechless assassin

and watching the buildings rise and melt

like Illion’s flute,

conjugating the matter and spirit.

The river is your flowing Goddess,

stopping at the land of death,

and carrying the ashes beyond life.

The river is the metropolitan blood of the city,

purifying the crystal ghosts

and ghosts of time,

ghosts of the blood wedding,

ghosts of the violet princess,

ghosts of the orange cat,

ghosts of the sleepy sun.

Ghosts of you and me.

Driving insane through the haunted streets,

the Bypass swerves like a ghost tongue

vanishing beyond headlights;

or the little violet figure,

transparent in the wind on Dhakuria Bridge;

the little ghost-seller blowing out his oil lamp

at Gariahat Market as he walks towards Golpark,

sleep-walking almost, beyond an earthly destination;

they all feel this strange presence,

all a part of this strange dance of ghosts

that flow within a river through the city.

Strangeness her mask,

strangeness her face and flow;

the Ganga is your ghost lover

raging in her sacred tumult

through the nerves of the city.

-II-

Jelly nerves of the city

throbbing at her synapse

with nitrate grins,

post-modern, post-colonial, post-structuralist

problems of existence,

post-temporal blues,

political ghosts of killing,

wherever you look

there’s no left, right or centre;

just a ghost-land of struggle

for the crystal noose.

Red is no longer green,

Green is no longer red,

(what happened to crystal blue?)

just the elegy of crystals

with their viole(n)t descendant

to violate beauty.

Yet the metro gushes in the underworld

carrying semi-dead walkers

like a blood demon.

I can’t care less, sitting with you

in this tiny café

and staring into the ghosts,

form and un-form

in the hollow of your eyes.

-III-

The secret of Time

is to travel like crystal impulses,

transmitting the sky-ghost,

the night-car, the radio and cold pendulum ash;

the secret of time is the happiness of the walrus,

the violet smile, the orange cat, the blood wedding

and the little yellow cab at Landsdowne

beneath the dissolving sun

and the love-making of crystals

beside the Ganges;

the post-colonial ghosts of the nitrate grin

with the metro rushing in her night-dress

when you fiddle with the safety-pin in bed.

Everything then dissolves like the sun

when you dissolve into me;

arm in arm,

lips on lips,

breath in breath,

a single static reality

sans time, sans crystals, sans ghosts.

Transmission of truth,

telepathy of the ghost city.

In the name of Time, Crystals

and the Holy Ghost,

the trilogy of truth,

triangle of existence

and transcendence,

oblique madness.

To be mad is to see the truth,

when the green walls of the asylum

and the fluorescent lights

and crystal vapours dissolve

in isolation and depression,

the syringe fiddles with the blood veins of the city,

and you dream up the trinity of harmony;

the ghosts, the river, the crystals, the love-making

are then mere spectral dots of existence

like the murmuring ghost-lights over the Ganges,

twinkling, throbbing with life

in synchrony with the swaying bridge.

Even the moon sways then

and shines on the violet crystal,

the clock-desert records super-truth



The city drenched in her quinine grin

is then a secret flux of fading light,

floating in and out of your consciousness.

The Wedding of the Crystals

-I-

Jazz of blue crystals,
jazz of blood,


cymbals, movement, colours
in the naked principle of light.


We invite you now
to the wedding of crystals.
Crystal Blue weds Crystal Red,
Crystal Red weds Crystal Blue,
(it’s the same you might think,
but it never it is, in the world of crystals)


There will be dancing among the atoms,
all the ladies dressed in jewels,
there will be food and merry-making,
all the fairies decked with clouds,
there will be music and mystery wine
all who have come will enjoy the night,
for Dream himself has come tonight
to bless the couple in their sleep.


It is the wedding of Crystal Blue,
it is our pleasure to have you here,
It is the wedding of Crystal Red,
your company with us our pleasure share.

We have a lovely bride in blue,
and a handsome bridegroom in red,
may your blessings be with them
and light up their bridal bed.


we thank you once again
for your presence here,
at the Wedding of Crystals.


-II-

Eli, Eli
kiss me more


softly with your crystal paws.


Eli,
the world turns square
in your arms


the sky turns pink
between your thighs,


in our world of crystals.


blue is red,
and red is blue,
when I’m in you.


Spring is round the corner
and the mist has cleared from Mirror Street,
the city drops her layers
like the crystals drop their garments in bed
and light echoes from glass
while the glasses shatter and merge,
blue and red with a violet tint
and a violet smile.


(virgin on the violin
with a violet smile,
violate the silence
with a violent scream)


violin screams
wool and water ,
violent silence
violet dreams,
frenzied creation
let there be life,
blue dissolves
violet wakes.


-III-

-Is there anyone there?


-Is there anyone coming
at the birth of the crystal?

my little violet princess
with eyes like weed.


You’ll find some cold veal and porridge
on the table,
if you are hungry,
and gifts to buy at crystal station:
faces, masks and dolls for a dime
if you have time to ponder and choose,
you all will choose well;
you better choose well
like you’re choosing between life and death.


To choose wrong is to die,
to choose wisely is to die,
(not much of a difference, I’m afraid)
but you must choose all the same
and better choose well.


Choose a face,
choose a smile,
choose a grimace
and choose her words,
(for you don’t have much of a choice)
and you’re condemned to choose her fate
before you choose death.


you must go on choosing
when you have a choice,
and you must go on choosing
when you don’t have a choice.


So choose a life
for our crystal princess.


-IV-


There is the silence
beneath the door,


here is the dice in the wind
spinning on the floor.



Spinning blood…spinning with the scent of atoms. Poets of fate and fall.
She travels in the wind, smoking Martian cigarettes. Your violet smile…
your violent fall, my Nazi princess … a funeral of kisses…the violin
hallucinating in opium orbit.

You think more, you mean less.
World turns into onion scales.
And all that remains,
is the naked desire of cats.

The radio in the cloud knows your secrets. The world laughs at you
like a madman. Demons of memory stir in her breast…and slice
her skin like the ghost train travelling through the woods.
The moon sheds off her ghost skin…hides her soul
in her purse and smiles. Every skin she
sheds is the skin of orange time,
skin of the radio sky,
skin of crystals,
skin of
silence.

I am the silence, she tells me.


-I am the transcendence.


I am the violet monster, she tells me.


- Myself am hell.


-V-

Now you need a guitar,


now you need the sorcerer of beauty
to create super-time,


and a madhouse for Dria .


As the crystals wither in the radio sky,
and their colours decay
into black and white.


Hearts throb colourless;
colourless in language,
colourless in love,
colourless in time.


Colour dangles like strained time
around their necks,
and strangulates in love .


What you cannot love must end,
what you love must never end,
yet it seldom happens.


We solemnly request your presence
at the funeral of the crystals.


We will all be dressed in black,
the mourning will last nine days
and after the burial
with tears in our eyes,
we shall once again remember
the happy life of the crystals.



('Madhouse for Dria' is a tribute to Inam Hussain Mullick. The Wedding of the Crystals is the second part of my poem Ghost Triangle. The other two parts are Baptism by Time and Ghosts of the Ganga. If you want to read my entire poem, then you can contact me at deepteshinflames@gmail.com or even leave your email address here.)

Leaves in the mirror: My poetry book

Just published my poetry book in paperback. Click on the preview for details. I have also kept a free etext version which you can download anytime you want. Chk the link
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/leaves-in-the-mirror/8780369

Hope you will enjoy reading.

Thanks,
Deeptesh.

Baul Song for Helen

Baul Song for Helen

When the evening’s dreams turned into blood

and revealed the wounds on Nero’s flute,

she undressed her soul to the winds

and set the sky ablaze with her anklets.

Night crept in through the sleeve of war

the tower of skies burnt in blue,

a thousand blades scarred the moon

and drenched the song with her purple tears.

I have smelt the glass sweat in her navel

surging with phantom prophecies;

singing Cohen in summer twilight,

awaiting a salt apocalypse.

The joker points at the ship in the painting,

drowning beneath the burning skies;

The Goddess of War in her nuclear cockpit,

flying a fighter plane above the red Ganges.

Then they saw Helen,

softly perched in her chariot of songs,

as she flew past the Kolkata sky

smoking Nazi cigarettes.