JAKHAM, A Postmodern Poem

This is a long poem written originally in Bengali during Hungryalist movement in Kolkata, India. Jakham means Wound.

awning ablaze with toxic fire above me
    I lie watching the winged blue of this crawling sky
putting down the crushing anger of my suffering
           I crossexam my nocturn doubts
pushing a gramophone needle through the lines of my  
             palm I scan the Prophecy

armature on thye left turned slag long ago
now eyeflesh twitching in the smoke of malay's burning
                                  skeleton
dismantled tempests sweep by at 99mph
uniform queues of wristwatched zombies tattle
                                                           tradecyclic seinea swinging bat threatened me in this black dungeon
800000 doorless jambs stare for eternity over
                                                             the liquid medow
16 dvn ravens whirling around my torso for 25 yrs
my bones reeling embracing my raw wounds
              my peeled fleshblood
flaying my skin I uncover arrogant frescoes of my trap
ageless sabotage inside the body
patrolling darknessw in the hemoglobin
I'm deciding what to do with me now
I've inherited emergent vengeance
                 polished for 6000 yrs
tugging at man's insensibility
                               scraping the old plaster of my skin
fingernails look magnanimous after the meal
people returning home on tortoise back
                      failing to search out my heart in my body
man training man the fairspoken codes of war &
                                 hospitality

gathering fallen limbs from the torso we've to retreat
       
I lie lazily closing both eyelids wrapped in sunflakes
coked reeks conspiring in my veins turned loose
ohh
from the vapour of my brain's angryn kernel
                       technicoloured nitrocellulose oozes over
                 dreamlined retina
letters of sympathy heaped against halfclosed
                            futureless door
my black muscles rusting
equally true corpses of geniuses & fools
                                     sliming simultaneously into earth
each woman waiting with a conversion chart in her
                              desolate womb
Gandhi & Attila's chemical blood
   streams through my same veins
nothing happens to me
                         nothing will happen to this earth either
neither could I practice usury like the reast of mankind
                                nor shoot dice made of human bones

floating seeds in air trying to slouch roots
   into my unfertile sweatbeads
i dreamt of my failur in Bumghang's apple orchard
I couldn't choose the luxurious comfort of an insect
    sleeping in the cushioned kitchen of a corn's kernel

I've been spitting inside my body for the last 25 yrs
scraping off from mirror's knave mercury
                          self-saviour imprints of my violent face
each & all having a certificate from the burning-ghat
     doctor for their performance of duty
                                                         until the last breath
2000 hounds released from out of my skull haunting me
                                                                           for 25 yrs
sniffing the alleys and trod by women I advance
                                             toward their amateur abode 
my heartlump split open in terror when I looked at
       the footprints on the dark pavement
sounds of dripping sand have evoked my skinpores
my spineburnt smoke peeling out through the chimneys
                                                                        of skin
ants dragging fleshcorpses through mothmade clayveins
damn barefoot thriugh the seagulf I proceed
                                   to the sullen den of the vultures
I have experienced magic simultaneously of food
           concealing envious tints o0f blood and pus
perverse sugar-cane brain sucs liquid philanthropic
                                                                dirt out of earth
my Dirt my Love my Blood
clouds drift by like pieces of discarded bloodstained
                                                                                 cloth
I remember now Neela's sick left b**b....
                              throbbing with heart's feeble flutter
Life's whacklings are to be endured until death
                     with a dumb tongue
a blazing mantle hangs in place of my heartmachine
plus-minus signs and compasses with broken needles
          stream through my arteries

rifle's dazzling nozzle & diesel-roller sleep
               in iron ore of the earth
and stored deep down in zink's brain
                                 Newspapers' YES & Newspapers' NO
my feet do not realize
                             I am controlling their speed
                               and direction
I'm not sure if I'll have to become unworldly
                paying excise with an untransferable woman
I gloomed all through the winter
            forging my own signature
was born not wanting to be born
now without unlacing my shoes
                            I want to plunge into the glowless dark
everybody making arrangements for Tomorrow
shoes having sympathetic polish this evening
                         only for Tomorrow
yet even circular roads get hold of man's legs
                     one day or the other
lusting for limbs 303 greased cartouches stashed
         in new pine boxes rush up to frontiers of countries
2510 yrs after Buddha are sprawled on Gandhi-lawn
       model-1965 leftover shoes & umbrellas
            of cop & non-cop clashes
in the ware house of cocaine & counterfiet money
           indian & chinese citizens mirth together in ecstasy
I had lifted a 5-dime coin from a blind begger's palm
I had looted benevolent money of funeralling corpses
         from out of parched groin
crossed death-panic on a boat not lnowing how to swim
I may be censured I cannot be disregarded
God automated
I descended from a wrong womb and loitered on earth
       for 25 yrs with a wrong name
from wrong desire i earned wrong envy
I felt irritated because of wrong grief earned from
                       wrong happyness
I collated wrong consciousness from wrong struggle
Ah! it's wrong Kolkata these are wrong men-women
I received wrong jealousy from wrong vanity
from wrong toiletry I learned wrong simplicity
wrong temperence has brought me wrong aversion
with wrong ego I enteren into wrong crowd
I spent sleepless nights in search of someone
                     with wrong respect
from wrong dreams I got peepul-leaf in place of
                          madam's vagina
tore off my wrist-veins after receiving
                                    wrong built-up from wrong fame
I placed my immaculate love at the feet of
                              wrong woman
I ventured into wrong fragrance from wrong love
I constructed my wrong flesh & blood
         from wrong wine & bread
I am waiving my wrongly tanned tattered skin
   driven by wrong artifice at the junction
                             of wrong roads
I am no0w peeling off the skin of my old sores
             in search of its pink cover
waiving my hand I am talking to one & all
      with rotten sores concealed beneath my sleeve
my skull always keep on laughing
         beneath the skin of my face
Ah
for 25yrs I had stitched & sealed my fingers with my heart
I drowned in incompetent river-water but came back
                                below the tap
roamed through the streets in search of the dead man
          whose clothes I am wearing
In search of holding fast onto something in darkness
                   I retreated for 25 yrs
embraced me after colliding with myself in the dark
I was taken aback to discover me in the darkness
spent entire jobless winter near the warmth of
                              goat-dung fire
auction-records of feudal lands exploited me @ Rs 287.75
                                    per month
with empty hungry stomach I attended an interview
            and answered the name of finance minister's aunt
when I pee on a slope the urine stram flows to my feet
In full force I utilised AC & DC currents in my veins
in my dreams I drive my Fahien heels
                                    from blue America to grey Jordon
compassionate boric cotton travel 1500 miles
        in search of blood of injuries
now Malay's heirless ambition is returning to the crevice
                     of my vagabond lungs
humanbeings are going back to their slums after getting
                            educated in international brotherhood
I am unsheathing carbon rods from the lungs of
                              successful men
seated at the feet of a rose plant I observe how 34 uvula
                explodes out of the bud
I find layers of green glass shards on the skin of dusty
                                               autumn custard-apple tree
gunpowder from foreign mines arrive here to explode in
                                                                  Jhikabari fields
99000 used tongue-cleaners have come
             from neighbouring states to cultivate Kolkata sky
Japanese handfans & live human palms open up
                                                                  on cobras' hood
I am secretly keeping watch on my activities
everyone has learned their first unattained saumersalt
                                                        right inside the womb
tattered time-table pages keep emanating for 25 yrs
                                   out of my mouth ears and arsehole
Darwin's Man is slouching in shame for contempt of Court
people are worried about casual eave/ordinary leave/            sick leave before they die
hand with a morsel correctly come upto mouth
sprays of spit are coming out of superwise radio
I waer my reverse shirt to  expose oily dirt on             stichline armpit and collar
angry hornets rebound on my spectacles
sounds & echos venture out for people's ears
the house in which I was born has been converted to
                                                 population-control office
one has to die without not knowing not learning
  not understanding lot of things
Oh
I learned forefinger-directed human behaviour from
    beasts
for 25 yrs I have begged for redemption from my father's
                            religiousity and mom's non-reliogiousity
I am now readying myself to sleep after putting
                  artificial dentures in a glass near my head
here people loose at lower courts but come back
       after winning at higher court


       


                   



                   

Author's Note

Feel free. You may see a review by young poet June Nandy at:
http://wheelwithinawheel.blogspot.com/2010/04/jakham-review.html

Reviews

[Glen Yumang Manese]

Lots of interest going on in the lines of this long write of a verse...many outrageous numbers of calculation...and events throughout the entire...a bit confused with the translation in some area...but this is an effort to read and understand...