Postmodern Poetry II

Zaqat Went Splat

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

Did you believe the world was this way?
The way the wildness inside of you did not say
That you need a woman like a woman needs a man
To satisfy the hotel room with coffee after an okay plan.

See, the outside world is such an egregious affair
I have my legs wilder than that in the outrageous air
Modelling Hollywood and L A Style as if I have savoir fare.

Three line whips, lots of chains of bondage
Alfonso Bhandari is there with your immature soul cage
Selling the shambles of brambled apples and some granny’s rage.

Voter! You are no daughter – with the hotel quartered
Entrance from a Hollywood master and his debutant blaster
For money and vermillion so that Iraqi can know first ladies
And squillions and zillions and bazillions after Tony Blair’s trillions.
Master Blaster – unable to hold the camera’s gaze
After raunchy Knights have held up erectile Counts
Far from the Paige’s and their confusion about the purple Ronnie
And how about some Blue Peter for yours truly and that fucking Konnie?!

Ropes and whistles and then there is some shouting matches
For the prettiest Oriental to sing me some blues
About Krishna’s curtains after he has been through the hue
Of cry and Laurel and Hardeep for that original truth:
To thine own self be avant-garde so that Spirit is doubled
#WhentheDevilknowsyourlonely and youthful mother is in trouble.

AI Summary

The poem confronts the chaos of desire, identity, and public spectacle, blending Hollywood excess, political theatre, spiritual longing, and personal vulnerability into a single, volatile stream. It moves between the wildness of the self and the distortions of the outside world, where fame, power, and cultural icons collide with private insecurities and the search for authenticity. The speaker critiques the commodification of intimacy, the absurdity of celebrity culture, and the emotional confusion of modern relationships, invoking mythic figures, media personalities, and political ghosts to expose how desire and identity are shaped by forces far larger than the individual. Beneath the satire and provocation lies a deeper ache: the longing to remain true to oneself in a world that constantly pulls the self apart, and the fear that loneliness, youth, and spiritual hunger might be exploited or misunderstood by those who claim authority

Why Do You Like Me?

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Why do you like me?
Unless you want something
Is it that I am handsome
Like your fairy King?

Is it the monstrous invention
In your little head?
That mentions my mother as invention
Before you go to bed.

It can’t be that we’re Partners
Those things are down at the Law Firm
And when things are soft I am lonely
Because all of your dates are so hard.
Could it be we are meant to be?
And you will come back soon to see me?
Is it that you long for the same things?
And not just politically writing out A to Zee.

Come down here literally my man
And spend some time with an English affair
It’s not so bad, you can even fake Red.
But if you’re up there in Americana
Then we have so many Codes for your Karma.
Cosmos boyo and landed Tolkien
How do you know where you bowl?
Where is the China you have been sold?

So trade in your Jackie for some Jackie Chan
Another time if you think this is Bruce Lee.
This days went out when the lights were Covent Garden
So I was hard on myself to get past the snooze at quarter past three.

AI Summary

The poem wrestles with uncertainty about why someone shows interest — whether it’s genuine affection, desire, cultural fascination, or simply convenience. The speaker questions beauty, partnership, politics, and the strange fantasies the other person seems to project onto him, while also acknowledging his own longing for closeness and recognition. The poem moves between humour and vulnerability, invoking Englishness, Americana, Bollywood, Tolkien, and martial‑arts icons to highlight the cultural dissonance between them. Beneath the teasing tone lies a deeper ache: the fear of being wanted only for surface reasons, the hope that the connection might be real, and the frustration of feeling exoticised, misunderstood, or kept at a distance by someone who drifts between worlds.

#WhatNewsHoThereSailor

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(or Reviews, Bailiff, if you please for representing to Tax_)

A fool on your Home Planet
A journalist on the monied one
Don’t you know your next wielding verse
Is your unwritten son?
He hasn’t been so paid
To wander streets to evade
The decorative Devi with sincerity to get laid
While the monstrous beasts lay to your back what is now aid.

Convince your emotions
Complacency is strong
But where is the deviancy that once stood strong
To listen to others of their points of view
And dine with the extras of what was for you?
Have they stolen all they can –
The friends who could feed;
While teaching you tired manners
By the fountain of youth in your hour of need?

The literary Reed is not dining forever
There are other things to progress:
And if we say so dear Fellow,
Your English is leering to impress.
Just click right and turn left at the exit
You’ll find others’ with keyboards
Ready to entertain the Boards
With stories from their lives
And who was white when alive was a live wire.

It’s always the same : –
They came in with a board game
And left with Monopoly on fame.
So what – theirs are not The Vedas
And yours is not the shame,
Of needing to get laid on time
When the complacency tells enough rhyme.

13 o clock
What a cock!
Then it is Bucks Fizz
For watching him drink his son’s Jizz…
Round and round the story will make you proud
Of what he was watching while you were brown
And his father sold him the Church of England as a Pub
#AndIndiaasDharamsala while a Llama ate meat as his grub.

AI Summary

The poem stages a blistering critique of literary vanity, cultural theft, sexual hypocrisy, and the lingering hierarchies of class, race, and colonial memory. The speaker addresses a figure who postures as journalist, poet, critic, and moral authority, exposing how he feeds off others’ stories, bodies, and labour while pretending to be enlightened or progressive. The poem moves through scenes of artistic ambition, sexual frustration, spiritual pretence, and social decay, weaving in satire about Englishness, Indianness, academia, fame, and the absurdity of cultural gatekeeping. Beneath the biting humour and explicit provocation lies a deeper ache: the sense of being exploited, exoticised, or dismissed by people who claim sophistication but hide behind privilege, hypocrisy, and inherited power. The final lines collapse the whole spectacle into a dark, looping joke about identity, shame, and the strange afterlives of empire — leaving the speaker both disgusted and defiant, refusing to be reduced to anyone’s stereotype or story.

Vale of the Dictator

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Left to right he is always telling me something
And it is the same with his sighs all over the place.
Eating when I am eating and guessing what I am guessing at,
This man is also a father and he needs to know the human race.

“What a disgrace!” He says so as I sassily sit on the rocking chair appeasing the graveyard of his soul: #SoOld
“Too old to SexText dear!” He said so from the downstairs kitchen while he was bitchin’ with his #MilesDavis trumpet blaring.
Down the aisles they once betrothed
Told becoming how they were growing old
Too old to listen to the waves by the ocean floor
Alone, like a doorstopper, who knows the bitchin’ kitchen door!

Loves like a dove and fair enough to be wise,
They showed me the album when a car was my prize.
They said my chores were good and the mirrors were clean,
And my brother has cleaned the rooftop like a soldier being mean.

Leaf Blower
Dishwasher
Carrion Pigeon strain: Sing to me, cold embryo of the collagen brain.
Hope floating in a milkshake as fresh as froth from some vacuuming pipe
Cleaning up after my mistakes when my old self is not right.
Richer than i-Tunes
Farther than the Tweets
Faster than WhatsApp with you
I cram before my Resits.

There’s a Temple with my name of good behaviour
And one when I am wrong,
But I am not paying for Grandmother
If… after all this praying and Good Day to you SIR!…#OnandOn
#MountainDew
What’s in it for you …
#DriftingbyHarryConnickJr
“Are you Lightworker Senior?”
…
…
… Aaargh: “What’s that Dad?!”
“What time did your Mum say she’ll be back”
#ArnoldSchwarchenegger brain reaction
// No time for Myocardial Infraction || The West Boys want a heart attack:

Cups
TEA
Rugs
Wooden Sheaths
Something he wooden say
#IPManToday
Wooden it have been Gud?!
Thank you son, I love you very much…

AI Summary

The poem captures the chaotic tenderness of living with an ageing father whose habits, complaints, music, and constant commentary fill the house with both irritation and affection. The speaker watches him mirror his movements, judge his behaviour, reminisce about the past, and bark instructions from the kitchen while Miles Davis blares in the background. Domestic chores, family pride, cultural references, and the absurdity of modern communication — hashtags, apps, resits, temples of good behaviour — all swirl together as the speaker navigates guilt, responsibility, and the lingering weight of childhood. Beneath the humour and frustration lies a deep emotional core: the love between father and son, the fear of illness, the pressure of expectations, and the fleeting sweetness of being told “Thank you son, I love you very much” after all the noise, all the mess, all the years.

Unison

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We don’t want to walk away from angels
It’s just that they operate a certain kind of deceit
Of a world created by one at a time
Where our dresses and bangles are sitting at their feet.

It may be dour for the Dao to exchange our dowry
For the floury scent of chapatis in the air,
Instead of Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday when our cook is having the day off
And our laundryman is not out drying our underwear.

But if we stay with them there will be trouble
The Shiva and Co. will be back from Bombay and charge double
For the spell check and floor decking to be balanced and fair
With the warbles and Christmas baubles still dangling dangerously in the air.

That is the condition of leaving it all too late
For a second chance for my Colonial mate
To get down from Colleges and back to Schools for arguments
About what old fashioned ripped jeans might have meant.

And then there is the Bubble Gum and Justin Bieber
Who knows Michael Buble and the monkey calls Bubbles?
That we have to keep awareness on show about so Bollywood can bill
The fructous support system to fruits for the diabetes support pill.

Down there far below the Pussy Farts
And all that dark art
Where you are aware
Of our heavenly heaving
And displeasure before your Official Receiving…
… on and on,
Like a corporately deconstructed song
Of an Elegy before His Grace
Of what he is well fed on for his disgrace,
In another country

For a flatulent cunt trying to have wonder
At the act that he is adept at
For the motion that he is not employed at,
By the fat cat
The company rat
The Porno tra[p of saying Splat]:

  • Describe it please by December
  • Ad: I will remember
  • You will feel the fire’s ember
  • There will be a tremble
  • ‘ing
    The angels sing to rejoice the New Age choice of speakers

Walking around in the ether for their nuances and splitters
So that the upper regions are more light and less fathomed
By the reaches of the ordinary and banal express streets
Where the message is one of compatibility
And not unison in sex with all that you could possibly meet.

AI Summary

The poem explores the tension between spiritual longing and worldly corruption, weaving together angels, dowries, colonial histories, Bollywood glamour, domestic rituals, and sexual frustration into a swirling critique of how desire, culture, and power intersect. It moves from Sindh to Spain, from Shiva to chapatis, from angels to corporate hierarchies, showing how every sacred symbol becomes entangled with commerce, exploitation, and human frailty. The speaker oscillates between humour and bitterness, invoking gods, lovers, colonial ghosts, and pop‑cultural figures to expose the absurdity of modern spiritual posturing and the commodification of intimacy. Beneath the irreverence lies a deeper ache: the longing for authenticity in a world where everything — sex, faith, art, even the self — risks becoming a transaction. The poem ends in a kind of cosmic shrug, acknowledging that this “Spirit of the Age” repeats itself endlessly, leaving the speaker adrift between myth and modernity, longing and critique, the sacred and the profane.

Unfinished Business

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Things are so conceptual in that little head of yours
I have not got any edges to play with my little paws.
You say this and you say that and by the time you are done –
I find I have been over run!

You take me to here and I go over there
There is no length of your lines that I am so aware of.
What kind of verse is this that you sell the greenery by?
Why should I try to be one with nature after this sort of guy?

You’re an outright strange sort of fellow.
He needs to shown how to plan a poem with Yellow –
That way the correct sort of Sun will be number one
And you can existentially angst on your own, one day.

Leave me alone, you funny little moan
So I can settle down with the Classics and find myself there!
I shall be self aware enough when I am plenty
And you supply and demand your economic zero with the many.

You funny Marxist and tremendously definable tool
How is it there ever let you leave your school!
Where the ladies know their place on the page with some faces
And your goatee is shaven for the craven image of a Sannyasi.

Out on your arse! You’re a thing of the past!
There’s no border here to solve between Tagore and Betjeman.
The real men know what it is to kowtow
To our Bollywood triumphant hold on your soul and blast.

“All” is a word best served Theological
However much you write and survive medicals and biologicals
But when the hour approaches and your time is near
What about the grim nights in between and whom you did afear?

So leave it with us and we shall see about The Christ
And you can tell us all about your tiny amount of mass,
From the books that sell when you are welcome and so unwell
From a diagnostic from computers that leave us first placed last!

Caste boy from Troy and your Trojan wooden man
Facing the Devi from estrangement with your crafty malign plan
To take from my cake your own slice of hefty taste
And leave me some ruined carriage where my liveliness is a waste.

Sell it to me, Old Boy! What have you got over there?
That leaves me a little humble pie and some friends with which to share
A verse, a saying, some discussion, nay I say a broader afternoon –
That is not beholden to me and my tea in a saucer with a blessed little spoon.

Aye, it is so! He is one with us and we are barren
Of the past where there was no camaraderie
And no-one shall know our paths were not the same:
But shall I see this again, you’ll be the first amongst many
To find me drowning in my favourite Sherry
That I was right to have enough when the commotion was such a fame.

AI Summary

The poem stages a tense, mocking dialogue with a figure who criticises, misunderstands, and tries to categorise the speaker, prompting a cascade of retorts about poetry, culture, caste, education, masculinity, theology, and literary lineage. The speaker pushes back against being reduced to stereotypes or intellectual boxes, rejecting the other’s pretensions while asserting his own complexity, heritage, and creative identity. Humour, sarcasm, and cultural references — from Tagore to Betjeman, Marx to Bollywood, Troy to Christ — become weapons in a verbal sparring match that exposes insecurity on both sides. Beneath the bravado lies a deeper ache: the desire to be taken seriously, to belong, to be recognised without being diminished, and to escape the old hierarchies that still haunt relationships, art, and self‑worth. The poem ends with a mixture of resignation and pride, as if the speaker knows the argument will never truly end but still claims the last word with a flourish.

Trypolar

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Erroneously the mountain rumbled
And down it came a worthy disaster.
Seated like a crumpled heap on the floor
Mourning the loss of decency and good daughters.

There where the weather was fine and the market moved
In the open bazaars for the people to shine the shoes,
He moved too, like a gazelle and shopped for twos
On a cigarette that needed a companion every now and then.

Like a Zen man and one with a planned route
To fall on Good Friday after doing a reboot –
Back in a time when nothing was real
And men wanted things more than cells that could heal.

Such was the Djjin in the evenings’ on the earth
Where the muscle man knew carpet capers
And the noise of the dowsing was such as no Sky Scrapers.
City Scape? City Scape, they said to me
As thy will be done through the darkest times,

The holiest hours and somewhat confused in rhyme
About the images protruded from my eyes
And how the movies made miracles from history.
Something for then and something for now
Where the commuter is allowed the raciest thing:
Like a honour story where the audience sing
About the people who win and lose each other
Lining up for some new likeness as if you’re a brother.

  

How much more than Akcatraz you need your State to shimmer
The little trash heap that never could glimmer
Off the lights when America supplied studios ; 
All new reads all about it gone in
This is my Swan son.
You wait to see what happens to you
What have you done to me?
There used to be several bus routes
The Beyondness of Things and the number 63.
Countess and Duchess with the rigmarole of the sensuality
How many erectile dysfunctions can you go to without her beside me?
Sundays and the Church of Christ, settling what is Cult?
Theories on the Daily Show, selling what is to become online assault.

Therefore it is all the same to being and me
A little bit more than a terabyte or three:
When Tera Patrick is Tagatha and his clique
And you are doomed on the TV.

Tomorrow

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Tomorrow is a Sports Day
It is the 5th of July
It is also a Pizza from the delivery guy
Something instead of a Pig Sty.

My son will have cleaned his room
And my father will Aha every moment;
So that Norway lets on about Brexit
While Sundays are still days of rest.

Tomorrow is like a yesterday’s feast
A tobogganing affair all about sorrow!
Something for me and something for her
While the windows are cleaned without borrowing
From parents who do all the housework…

…

…

It’s when the work will take place:
When will you do yours?
Do you still work after COVID?
Can you ride horses on all the courses?

Tomorrow is where all messages and meanings take place
Like a Self Help drop-down list of perfection.
The worker better than Bill Gates
And an open door policy to statements of retraction.

It is the place beyond time if the Yoga is still fine
Where people get left behind if they do not keep the time.
It is where poems come to die if you do not detach the outcome –
How come they do now dream of my outcomes
When the Dear Kali part of the process is dry and sad?

Tomorrow is when the crying will heal me
It is the deliverance that will save the pain from the Healer of today.
Tomorrow is Bhagwan’s advice on the Id for reformation
After the dealer is psychoanalytical about due processes with Louise L Hay.

This is the formation of some power
This is the talent of some nights
When Bipolar left be darker than other hours
And tomorrow was not even in my sight.

AI Summary

The poem reflects on “tomorrow” as a space where duty, family life, spiritual striving, and emotional recovery all converge, blending the ordinary rhythms of sports days, pizza deliveries, housework, and parenting with deeper anxieties about work, self‑help culture, yoga, and the lingering effects of bipolar episodes. It treats tomorrow as both promise and burden — a place where healing might happen, where meaning might return, but also where expectations, comparisons, and spiritual demands accumulate. The speaker moves between humour, fatigue, and vulnerability, invoking gods, gurus, and psychological frameworks to make sense of a life shaped by illness, responsibility, and the desire for transformation. Beneath the references and reflections lies a steady ache: the hope that tomorrow might finally bring clarity, relief, or redemption, even when today feels heavy and the past still echoes.

Tick Tock

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Tick Tock and the me time from you
There is a shallow pool
For me to dip into.
The clock is on the wall
And it has not told the time
Outside on the street
Of what you will find.

You don’t come here much
And you do not tell me things
Like you used to bring
With your other friends
… so many friends
Time to blend in
The streets
With all the fretting feet
And the Nordic mannerisms
That never came between us.

Now I would rather catch a bus
And find myself watched
By some thing it is so
That gives me blowing down below.
What a homosexual show
These friendships turned out to be
When au fait was Asian and also British
And your European surrounded me with the Frigates.

They won’t be long now
In the hours of mannered time
When the rhyme is more simple
To the son who told the time.
He told the time in the school
And lost in on The Albert Hell
When he went to Concerts from University
And deified musicians for a fool.

This was me and you
As you looked me up and down
Happy to stay around
In my room because I was brown.
My music pleased you so
So we could go to the filum show
Where the heroes beat their chests
So their wives could get them their old age vests.
Mr Popularity. There is so much more to see
When the distance between you and me
Is at least Wide Screen Lap Tops and TV.

AI Summary

The poem reflects on a friendship or relationship that has grown distant, where time, silence, and shifting social circles have eroded the closeness once shared. The speaker feels abandoned, watched, and misunderstood, caught between cultural identities and the uneasy dynamics of being desired, exoticised, or included only conditionally. Memories of music, university days, and shared outings mix with resentment, loneliness, and the sense that the other person now belongs to a different world — European friends, Nordic mannerisms, concerts, laptops, and screens. Beneath the irritation and hurt lies a longing for the simplicity of earlier connection, when being “brown” wasn’t a spectacle, when music brought them together, and when the distance between them wasn’t measured in widescreen displays and the cold glow of technology.

There Will Be Wounds

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There is no doubt that the future is the shape of the past
When the worry of the money is the jape of those who finish last
In the hands of the empty who do not write the cheques everyday
As journalists and typists who get paid when they say…

Something is here for me in the Rishi Files of yesteryear
Which told Om and Shanti as if the ThIrD WoRlD WaR was very near
To be scared off from print media who cleared the cellar to wine like Arjuna
And go home each night a winner with wounds shared from some poor fella.

Stretch and yoga this way and bend and yoga that way
These were the tests in the past in Maida Vale:
That is the modernism of finding influences in the 2020s
Something light for everyone as the body goes through New Age hell.

There will be wounds when the record is the recovery as well as the victory
Of pain in the particulars when silence was séance and some old man’s Vasectomy
To neuter the gender general for the Nazi, Gypsy, Oik and even the Navaho
So that Ukraine stepped back an equal for a Eurovision and some Ivanho.

Step back and let Dr Zhivago handle something on a Saturday afternoon
Before Hollywood gets banned for handling what a Cancer would not see off too soon
From the ambulance chasers and the cinema queens who vicinity fair the merry go round
And show up in the newsdeals like a telephone money fundraiser and mad go around.

Madness
Madness, I tell you, MAD!
These are the Stardates of the Bon Voyages fair thee well and Ennui.
Inuit and Intuitive will you sell me back my soul
If I have lost my only hope to Obama for Joe the Worker’s droll

AI Summary

The poem reflects on how the future keeps repeating the patterns of the past, especially in politics, war, media spectacle, and the spiritual anxieties of modern life. It moves through references to journalism, yoga culture, global conflicts, and pop‑historical figures to show how public crises seep into private consciousness, turning everyday life into a theatre of dread, satire, and déjà vu. The speaker feels trapped between cultural expectations, geopolitical noise, and the absurdity of contemporary “wellness” narratives, all while wrestling with the sense that society keeps recycling its wounds — from ancient epics to modern wars, from Hollywood myths to political fundraising. Beneath the humour and exasperation lies a deeper fear: that meaning, hope, and even the soul itself are being bartered away in a world where history loops, leaders disappoint, and the ordinary person is left searching for a goal that still feels human.


Goal.