Posted by prasenjit maiti on October 22, 19101 at 03:29:52:
In Reply to: call for poetry submissions posted by Inlet Press on February 18, 19100 at 15:44:42:
Attention: The Poetry Editor
Dear Editor,
Some poems of mine are being enclosed herewith for your kind perusal
as I cannot financially afford to send you hard copy submissions by air mail
due to prohibitive postal charges in India. Please consider my case and oblige,
if convenient. Thank you.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Prasenjit Maiti.
From Dr Prasenjit Maiti
Sr Lecturer in Political Science
Burdwan University, India
Residence P-8 Beleghata Main Road
Calcutta 700 085, West Bengal, India
Telephone 91-33-3501042, 3542517 October How would I really grow old? Grow a beard, wrinkles under my bright blue eyes and a week-long stubble across my sad chin of yonder years How would I really grow old as the skies here in Calcutta ridicule my envy my rage impotent like the clouds here in Calcutta my beloved, that don’t burst and smear a lot of sorrows along the city highways How would I really grow old among my rains and my sunshine and my bleak winter cold? Why do I love you so and regret my winter evenings spent alone in Calcutta as the smog rolls across the river and churns up old sorrows best forgotten and drowned in the cream being whiplashed and the coffee being stirred among the familiarity of snug old ghosts and darkness? Why do I love you so and miss my beats as I strip you naked in my dreams and ravish the wonderment of your soul like grapefruit punch? Why do I always blow my lines when I write to you, my youth galore, my sadness wine, my fairness cream, my winter anew? precinct new york the big mac i'd bitten into all of a sudden turned cold as a jaywalker was run over by one of our new york greyhound services and my arms were locked by a streetwalker with sad eyes . . . what has happened to you, america, my dreams? your french wines sell cheap in plastic bags that grown-up children take along to their parents living derelict in mad houses, condos or god's own country what has happened to you, america, my youth? my chicago streets, your bloody napkins my sodden shirts, your stale hamburgers and rye whisky what has happened to you, america, my love? playing cowboy around the world and sleeping with james bond like soho my new york muggers, your affirmative action plan our derelict asians buying cheap airline tickets to enter you en masse as if group sex is any less free of illusions ... what has happened to you, america, my dreams? in your new york derelict, cold chilli oil china town and prawn champagne I’m crying america, are you? 2001 They say I sodomize my days and works of hands but they cannot even wait and watch my sunsets across your ample breasts dark purple and acrid as the years have gone by . . . They don’t even have a word to say about my return from abroad sweating stammering and afraid and the stormy afternoon when we made one another and you were so violently sick and bloody that I’d to even hand out your white napkin that turned red as the sun turned red in Calcutta my beloved and my desolation . . . they don’t know anything and yet they dare say I sodomize my days and works of hands applying cream across your arm pits applying litany to my sorrows applying vodka to one of my final visits to Bengal’s poetry churches . . . tell me my sonny shall I dare sing hey nonny nonny hey and returneth as I must from dust to smirking dust? Moments I have come to you after a while * * * nothingness lolls about in neck
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after the second coming of nothingness
I keep on dreaming of nothingness
and my fears and inanity
I think of lines that when written could
well have been formidable
but they don’t come back to me
like some women, like
some moments spent with them
that were never mine
ties and prefers gin
to tonic and
whimpers in its
nothingness nothingness
writes, makes love, makes
small talk
is jealous, horny, hungry
and sedate all at the same time
sleeping always with
the same nothingness
nothingness is always like
the same nothingness