art

Exempt

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

Exempt
Exceptional
Sitting at home
Around a camp fire
Gay as the men on the wire
Things aren’t straight
Adjustments
Alignments
What the horror meant (?)
The play book from the shops
Meaning a lot
Delusional and grand
Things the dealer’s planned
Smiling at the door
Leaning in some more
For your friend and his good times
All about the wealth the rest of the time.
How can it be?
This is not for me
Streets of sympathy
For the dope dealer
Runaway kids
Hey new News Anchor! That’s my Raga Id!
Refinements
Definitions
Remonstrations before the brain
It’s always the (medical) same
___ these things are not for the ethnic in me
Striptease city life
Man without a wife
Judgement all around
*Look what he’s gone and found*

AI Summary

Your poem sketches a moment of urban alienation — queer tension, ethnic misrecognition, and the sense of being scrutinised by a world that doesn’t know how to read you. It moves through drugs, danger, judgement and performance, showing how identity becomes a negotiation between fear, desire and survival. The voice feels cornered yet defiant, aware of how society labels, stereotypes and pathologises what it doesn’t understand. Underneath the sharp fragments is a quiet truth: you’re trying to hold onto yourself in a city that keeps trying to tell you who you are.

Baggage Carried

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

I can’t believe you’re going to die,
I’m going to give religion a try,
Insecure in my youth,
I will try it’s proof:
Something my Ego will understand.

Buckling the horses of Arjuna to things I will understand,
Not trying to own every house in the land,
Surprises from Bel Air mansions
Lavish green lawns,
There’s just time left for the lessons on parental viewings of Porn.

I can’t believe you’re not here anymore,
I look around the tremendous respect for temporal vortexes,
Oh indigestion and headaches from energy erections
Parading through my brain
Listening to the non-advice and going insane:
It’s your parent –
You projected,
Why are you trying to get me a Vedic House erected?

Fresh Prince to the king I never was,
The rent I owed you when I was only 12,
And the damnation from society
The clout from the god within me
The monkey in an experiment I never was
The kangaroo and signifying Laws…

Keep coming back and I am an employment hazard,
Someone with such regrets that I am a deep snowy blizzard,
Lost in the Maya of the world of those all knowing Hare Krishnas
They speak English like I know nothing –
Not versed in the Ayur Vedic Samaj
Ignorant
Illusion
Jai Om Namo Shivaya
Why isn’t my Id for hire?
Jai Guru Dev – is there an answer over there?
For how “I am not the body”
Will make me not feel very sorry,
When the time comes to pass
For at last it must come
That both of my parents imbalance my brain a certain way

  • In the meaning of what Death has to say
  • Pills and glorious business day by day

When those intoxicants at Jones Day (Gouldens) never came back my way.

AI Summary

Your poem begins with the shock of mortality — a parent dying, a son trying to make sense of it through religion, myth and the language he inherited. It moves through childhood guilt, cultural pressure, Vedic philosophy, and the confusion of being shaped by parents who themselves were shaped by trauma. The poem wrestles with identity, spirituality and mental strain, showing how grief can distort memory, self‑worth and the search for meaning. Underneath the humour, anger and references is a plea for grounding: a desire to understand how to live when the people who made you are gone or fading.

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

Your poem opens with a question — did you ever believe the world was this way? — and then erupts into a whirlwind of sexuality, media spectacle, colonial memory, celebrity culture, and spiritual confusion. It moves from hotel rooms to Hollywood, from bondage imagery to Krishna’s curtains, from political figures to childhood echoes, showing how desire, shame, glamour, and violence all coexist inside one restless psyche. Beneath the satire and the shock is a speaker trying to understand how the world shaped him — how power, gender, race, and myth collided to form his sense of self. The final line lands like a revelation: when the devil knows you’re lonely, even your mother’s youth becomes part of the story you’re trying to outrun.

Why Do You Like Me?

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

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

Your poem circles the question “Why do you like me?” and turns it into a meditation on desire, projection, cultural fantasy, and the fear of being wanted for the wrong reasons. It moves between fairy‑tale beauty, legal partnerships, Americana, Bollywood, Tolkien, Bruce Lee, and Covent Garden, showing how identity and attraction get tangled in myth, memory, and misunderstanding. Beneath the teasing tone is a real ache: the speaker wants honesty, presence, and reciprocity, not codes, karma, or distance. The final lines land as a confession of exhaustion — trying to keep up with someone who drifts between worlds while you remain rooted in your own.

#WhatNewsHoThereSailor

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

(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

Your poem stages a confrontation between the poet and a hostile, mocking voice that belittles your creativity, your background, your sexuality, and your place in the world. It moves through planets, journalism, Devi imagery, literary ambition, racialised shame, and the grotesque spectacle of inherited prejudice, showing how power and humiliation get tangled in memory. Beneath the insults and the chaos is a deeper wound: the fear that others have stolen your confidence, your friendships, your sense of belonging, leaving you to navigate a world that rewards spectacle over sincerity. The final lines land like a bitter revelation — a reminder of how identity, religion, and colonial history can be twisted into weapons, even in intimate spaces.

Unfinished Business

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

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

Your poem stages a dramatic monologue in which a sharp‑tongued, exasperated voice berates the poet for being too conceptual, too sprawling, too strange — a creature of abstractions rather than edges. It becomes a duel between traditions: Classics vs. modernism, Tagore vs. Betjeman, theology vs. economics, Bollywood vs. the Sannyasi, all refracted through caste, culture, and literary inheritance. Beneath the insults and humour is a deeper wound: the speaker feels overshadowed, displaced, or misunderstood by your imaginative range, yet still longs for camaraderie, recognition, and a shared afternoon of verse. The poem ends with a melancholy flourish — a toast in sherry to the chaos of creation, the ache of rivalry, and the strange intimacy of being shaped by another’s art.

Trypolar

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

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.

Krishna Colouring Books

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

I used to work at the British Heart Foundation and around Christmas time I was in the stock cupboard sorting out the books when I noticed how many Christmas books there were. There were so many books aimed at children that it makes me think how far behind we lag in literary stakes in the Indian community. We have now had a British Asian Prime Minister, so if there are any serious questions about our national identity and heritage we can ask him, or at least point as if we are capable of his merits. But what would it take to have some Krishna colouring books. Native images of Rama and Shiva; to see the delight of children colouring Ganesh? Why stop there? There is Little Krishna at ISKCON and he is playing with white kids; so why can’t they have children books that have imaginative art work and are large scale with the permission given to pass them on. We Hindus suffer from as many health problems as Christians do and may have problem getting access to decent holistic treatments with the onset of western medication lacking roots with which to talk to us about our post-colonial status and really find out how we are doing on a day to day basis. What if we don’t like football or support the Beckhams, does that mean we have to Bend It Like Christmas Karma, the movie? We have problems letting the past go that can not be seen and gaining access to literature aimed at children would be one way of helping this cause. What do you think? Can you think of reasons not to publish cartoon books of Sita and Lakshmi? Does Indian archaeology have a say in the depiction of our glorious Gods and Goddesses? Is it a matter for erotica and are we doomed to hold on to past energies and find ourselves on the receiving end of medical inspections and questions without answers and answers without questions? The publishing industry was fought for in the United Kingdom and we as Indians are still dealing with Shree Book. There used to be a book shop on the Soho Road in Handsworth where Sikh books were priced at up to £100 and over – so what is the catch and where are these discussions being had? Who is deciding what is important about the postcolonial sketch and what are the long term artistic features of integration and holistic meditation on these factors governing the British Asian diaspora, their families and all their friends who work so hard to put their culture on show at weddings, where family is the centre piece of the religion of Hinduism but the children start out life so one sided and emphasising one side of the brain? Social media now hosts Instagram and all those flashing lights and images so there is hope that these stagnant waters can be moved on.

Tomorrow

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

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

Your poem turns “tomorrow” into a ritual space where family life, chores, global politics, spirituality, and mental health all converge. It moves from Sports Day and pizza deliveries to Brexit, self‑help culture, yoga, Kali, Bhagwan, and the long shadow of bipolar episodes, showing how the ordinary and the cosmic constantly overlap in your life. Beneath the humour and the everyday detail is a deeper longing for healing — a hope that tomorrow might bring clarity, relief, or renewal after days shaped by pressure, sorrow, and spiritual fatigue. The final lines reveal how fragile that hope can be: when illness darkens the hours, tomorrow becomes both a promise and a distance.

Tick Tock

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

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

Your poem revisits a friendship that once felt intimate, electric, and culturally mixed — Asian, British, European — but has since dissolved into distance, silence, and the ache of being replaced. Time becomes the poem’s metronome: clocks that don’t speak, streets full of “fretting feet,” concerts, school corridors, and the widening gap between who you were together and who you are now. Beneath the jealousy and the sting of being looked at “because I was brown” is a deeper grief: the loss of a connection that once felt like recognition, belonging, and shared escape. The final image — laptops, widescreens, TV — captures the cold modern distance that swallowed what was once warm, human, and close.