Barsana* by Ashok Niyogi

in the anemia of broken roads
the parrot call
is still as sweet as the red insides
of guavas in the afternoon
when she surely sleeps
beggars on steps that tumble
upon steps are not aggressive
and ripened corn through the view-finder
is parochial
so many widows whose begging
is like selling sex
so many hunch-backed cows
so much bramble
that black camels eat

her doors are beaten silver
and she is small
with big black eyes
that she will not blink
at this wind-swept light
merciless on the cornices
the monkeys travel long distances

to his conjecture
where beggars more aggressive
beg
and therefore get
food and money
excess flowers
and even monkeys know
it is forbidden to climb
on cell phone towers

to your house or fort
or castle where you played
exuberant pre-menstrual games
to your wind-swept heights
I give you your small black idol
I give you
your incredible eyes

• Barsana is a village about a hundred kilometers south east of Delhi where Sri Radha (Lord Krishna’s consort and prime devotee) is said to have been born and spent her childhood.

Ashok Niyogi, California, USA

Walking About in Ajmer* by Ashok Niyogi

this lathe grinds fine
circles
within balls of fire
head tonsured
patchwork
on foot walks
watery in afternoon sun
this season’s mangoes
outside the vodka shop

once
emperors walked barefoot
to ask the sun for a son
boon granted
the corn is dull yellow
heavy
bent

dynasties outgrew
this gate
that once led
to crossroads
of the moonlight
a huge red fort
and a hospital for the birds

let me buy you
a mirror-work skirt
in atonement for puppets
heavy on string
dew zoomed in
by the muezzin
while you grow roses
in your basil garden
and my money plant runs amok


*Ajmer, in Rajasthan, near Delhi has the shrine of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti (1138-1225 AD), the famous Sufi saint.


Ashok Niyogi, California, USA

I Took Pictures by Ashok Niyogi

so it has come to this
hungry bulls with their balls cut off
cows who cry because their udders are dry
this is a perishing garbage hunt
without brasseries
automatons with nose rings
perky like my granddaughters are
towards grass flowers

they say the next avatar
will be a horse out of the east
not as east as we are
where horses carry grooms
calculate dowry
and then chew their emaciated food
until death does us part

your river has walked away
pitiably waterless
melons grow now
in those nooks and crannies
where you stole clothes
which melons are sweeter
the dust bears witness
to sweetness
vagabonds gambol with monkeys
and boats laugh

the immediate question is
do monkeys have enough to eat
or widows or the blind pilgrims
beggars from districts who thought
that monkeys are god



Ashok Niyogi, California, USA

By Elizabeth Lake by Ashok Niyogi

I weep profusely
into the cockeyed sofa

this blue sky
is a roof without relief
lilies
dance on raw red mince

this is strip-tease on the trapeze
these grapes I have forbidden myself
for liberty’s sake
for meditation on very young
suburban third-world love
so arranged
that comets
herald the rising sun
in eccentric orbits around a setting earth

for this loss
I shamelessly weep
for these bloodstains
on my snow covered chimney sweep
for crows that are not jackdaws
for cardboard jousting-spears
and tiny electric cars
for bedraggled eagles
at last shorn
of my eagle’s pride

of wing sweep shifts
that geese make
to fly into afternoon wind
before they land
for this relearning of alphabets
abandoned on arthritic sand


Ashok Niyogi, California, USA

Dam by Ashok Niyogi

after they built the hugest dam

they’ve given us Korean TV sets
in lieu of disconsolate unlivable homes
and decimated steep goat track
for acceptable protected gradients
of organized plastic-meshed marigold

now many wild fish dutifully worship
at drowned temples that inconsolably weep
even while young empowered waters roar
and we make modern desperate love
in the sanctioned pitiable aftermath
of a popular elongated family serial
on sponsored and fair and lovely cable TV


Ashok Niyogi, California, USA

Every Day by Ashok Niyogi

in an oasis of white light
a mantelpiece ticks seconds
the living room is a black cavern
with comatose Matryushka dolls
the calling bell tolls
I shall not respond


a kitchen tap drips
horses trot on my unmade bed
my demons rise
and are methodically cut in half
by rotating blades
of the ceiling fan
that circulates fetid air
will do so until its motor overheats

I have two pillows
between which I hide my head
grotesque with uncut hair
that bites into my scalp
and Medusa is a teddy bear
crowned with thorns that live
until they die


Ashok Niyogi, USA

Long Gone by Ashok Niyogi

roaches scurry frantic
bodies on fire
upturn or plummet
legs frenzied
dance at a cobwebbed
ceiling heavy on horizontals
crisscrossing the sky
roaches spawned in pesticide
stiffen and die

incessant mindless sing song
of your name behind darkened eyes
panicked wrestling with doubt
festering in want of
some amputation a little gangrene
to spice up a cloistered day
torture with red hot tongs
of frail widows in submerged white
cymbals clash taut on string

while breaking out
into spontaneous praise
of the sweating sun
at midnight

on smelly bed sheets
at midnight
one more trough
between pinnacles of faith
hysteria is a terrible weight
on a crushed chest
the grinding
of rib cage into spine.


Ashok Niyogi, California. USA

Blue – Oil on Canvas by Ashok Niyogi

a molten yellow moon
throws jagged crescent light
on eyelids stretched thin blue
over infinite observed sadness
snakes writhe in total delight

with my third incandescent eye
I contemplate a blue ocean
of immortal nectar
in which is submerged
this beautiful blue world

coiled white underbelly
of the final serpent
is a bed for the ultimate
blue god whose navel sprouts
blue lotus with a thousand petals

on which I squat
four headed and beget
the will to populate
all directions of the blue wind

our world has risen from the deep
on the tusks of the infinite blue boar
in an eternal blue sky
time germinates in blue flame
the god into whom I was to devolve

even after
I go about collecting accumulated sin
I covet
and get

poison distilled from blue ocean
and this is my offering to his divine throat
that turns blue
what remains is nectar
to nourish blue lotus
on which his blue feet will rest

this truth
is best……………………


Ashok Niyogi, California, USA