(AA) Canto 75: Bleeding Streets
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I bow in front of the victims of this monstrous crime
Joachim Gauck
Life is Cheap
Star-shine and darkness are blended
as we gather with those we hold dear.
And the Light is present among us
Katy Phillips
As Qasab boards the boat thoughts flutter’d back,
To days when came those well-dress’d men to town,
His father offer them potato snack,
Instead they’d look’d his boy, him, up & down;
“He’s fit & strong,
Please, for a righteous cause,
& money, lot’s of it, relinquish what is yours.”
Eftsoons this boat left Pakistan
To fight the unbelievers,
Hearing the mantra of one man,
‘The world shallgrow to fear us!’
A tap upon his shoulder’s span,
“Paradise is near us,
But first we must kill & keep on killing,
Then Allah will receive us” “God willing!”
The vessel furrow’d steadily,
The sunset left the sky
“For this to be successful see
That all of ye will die,
No spirit faint, no nerveless limbs, let glory amplify!”
Arabian Sea
23rd November
2008
Bollywooder
Each pace precipitates an infinite staircase,
Each gesture the nucleus of a new cosmos.
If the wise sows not, he is but barren reason
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Some say Bollywood is monotonous,
Verdict of thirty thousand King & I’s,
But life is better led monogamous,
Too many fingers & too many pies;
Pluck’d from the street
An extra was I made,
Thro fancy dress & heat & thousand rupees paid.
I met her in a dressing room,
Fair actress of the Deccan,
Both hearts beating a little boom
As though we duell’d at Tekken,
The jewels of romancing bloom
Well, that’s what I reckon,
For from this pretty princess of the Raj
An invitation to dine at the Taj.
My life blended with India,
O diamond in the crown!
The emperor, the hag-beggar,
The pale-face & the brown,
The gutter-dwellers looking up the godheads looking down.
Mumbai
November 26th
2008
Angels of Death
So warm were they, with destinies
Like straining stars that lustrously
Bore Goethes, Newtons not to be
Olive Tilford Dargan
The Kuber grew dense with the stench of death,
Decks sticky with the dead crews’ bloody pool,
Their captain panicking breath-on-sharp-breath
Beneath such bullies barely out of school;
“Tis Allah’s will
&, with Allah willing,
Five thousand we shall kill, kill & keep on killing!”
Each lad was born in poverty
Midst the slums of Pakistan,
Each son was bought for no small fee,
Little pawns in grander plan,
Up in Thatta’s rugged country
Hard train’d the Taliban
& the keen-eyed Lashkar-e-Taiba,
Melding proud, young footsoldiers together.
When them just ten miles from the shore,
They cut the captain’s throat,
With bag & oar ten ‘students’ pour
Into a dinghy boat,
Flinging Islamic retribution ‘cross the Mumbai moat.
The Arabian Sea
November 26th
2008
First Landing
A man may tear a jewel
From a monster’s jaws
Cross a tumultuous sea
Bhartrihari
Night nestled midst the vast financial core
Of our globe’s most massive democracy,
Where twenty seven million or more
Live in a state of guarded apathy;
The terror threat
For Mumbaikers distinct,
But far too fast to fret vast lives in living link’d.
Three wallahs watch the rubber craft
Slip inside their slummy quay,
Ten kempt lads leap ashore & laugh’d,
Shaking off the liquid sea,
An old man thought this rather daft,
Asking who could they be?
”Mind your business,” spoke a lad in blue,
Not in Mharati but fluent Urdu.
They clasp’d each others shoulder-blades,
& there did pray awhile,
Ten young, outrageous renegades
Into five pairs now file,
& flag down five black hackney cabs to fly the final mile.
Colaba
November 26th
2008
Last Supper
Soldiers who spoke
A terrible language
Broke into the mosque
Robert Minhinnick
Full unaware he bore Death’s messengers,
Their shifty ambience so strange & cold,
Mohammed dropp’d off his young passengers
Outside the bustling Café Leopold;
A famous place
Racing with western dress
Whose smiling, happy face would soon be bloody mess.
At first a hand grenade goes off
In momentary stunning
Unpitying the gunmen scoff
At cowering & running
Aiming their train’d kalashnikov
At them all down-gunning –
If you were eating in this place that night
A bullet would have been your only bite!
The gunmen smugly stroll’d outside
Into an empty street
The shutters slide as all folks hide
& fleet are fleeing feet
As two young Muslims move along these murders to repeat.
Colaba
November 26th
2008
Stood Up
Man is his own star: & the soul that can
Render an honest & a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate
John Fletcher
I was an English poet on the road
Destin’d to write an epic for the world,
Had met a pretty Dutch girl far abroad,
With polish’d skin & eyebrows heaven curl’d;
We’d made a date
To dine up at the Taj
Where, early, I would wait, sate dreaming of the Raj.
I was namore that bastard boy
From a two-up, two-down town,
Instead the flash Viscount Mountjoy,
With connections to the crown,
Whose mistress lives at the Savoy,
For whom I’d bought a gown
Of sleeveless saree-silk… my trance distress’d
By ringing phone… “hello’ there’s great unrest
About the city, roads are closed,
I cannot get to you,”
My date disclos’d, our date depos’d,
I might as well just do,
That dinner on my own & gaze upon this gorgeous view.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Victoria Station
Men watched the drama from the foreturret,
Perched on the crosstrees, on the yards & masts
In an exploded pyramid of caste
Douglas Dunn
Still dripping in her British Empire bling,
Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus,
To temple, village, wages & wedding
Carries half of India’s passengers;
Fifty-four lives
Buy their one-way singles,
Amang men, bairns & wives random murder mingles.
As Ajamal sprays cold bullets wide
He feels the floor vibrating,
The sadness of his suicide
This moment satiating,
His friend & team-mate by his side
& them hyped awaiting
The Heaven that a martyr hopes to gain,
Thoughts amplified by infidels in pain.
As policemen leapt into battle,
They instantly leapt out,
Pot-shot pistols, jamming rifles,
Were never in the bout,
Where should be gushing bravery but fluster-headed drought.
CST Sation
November 26th
2008
Familicides
It’s not the pack who were the stronger,
Smaller beasts beat you to tatters –
And who fights now over your carcass
Frigyes Karinthy
She threw herself upon the only child
Of her fourth daughter, as the floor vibrates,
She saw his tiny face & slowly smil’d,
As mothers do to soothe our troubl’d states;
“Hey – hey grandma
Why did we take the train?”
Blood swilling in her bra, grin wincing, now, with pain,
“& why is grandpa bleeding there,
Unmoving where he’s lying?”
“Be quiet, shhh…” piercing the air
Scrape-seers a baby’s crying,
Whose mother smothers her with care,
Bullets started flying,
& blew away that mother’s bloody head,,,
Another thudding body joins the dead.
He look’d upon this busy work,
The scene was slaughter glum,
As with a jerk, from gun bezerk
To thoughtful ‘ergo sum’,
They left that British terminus buzzing on more to come
V.T. Station
November 26th
2008
Antisemitismus
How beautiful it would have been
Living under that roof
The two together always
Manuel Acuna
On mobile phones the leader’s voice arrives,
“Among the distortions & perversions
Of self-seeking priests & pandits, the lives
Of Jews worth fifty non-Jews…” aspersions
Chok’d thick with bile,
As kick’d-down double doors
Reveal’d a handsome pile upstretching sev’ral floors…
As Rabbi Hollzberg & his wife,
The pretty Rivka, chatted,
She chopping garlic with a knife,
Idyllic was shatter’d,
Whose guests that day possess’d a life
More than their lives matted
For they were hosts – & bloodlust to decrave
Shouted, “Shoot me! Shoot me!” both instant brave.
& being symbiotic,
Their deathblood merg’d in pools,
Robotical men shot each skull
Once more, then dragg’d their tools
Of murder on remorselessly, like horses rode by ghouls
Nariman House
November 26th
2008
Mumble Words 