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.
art
Tomorrow
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.
Tick Tock
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 brin
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.
There Will Be Wounds
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
Goal.
The Port of Sports
Candles on the wind
Lighten the Godly passage to Sindh
Where the pains of Spanish ladies
Contour the refrain of deranged grading.
The garden of the grades
Where the blossom is fair in the shade
Of a Serpent’s seditious glare
To fathom a woman’s tressles and hair.
“This is where it will be for me!”
He says under the ignorant Sycamore Tree
With a word as strong as Oak
About his right to fuck hard after a toke.
A token gesture and a reverent remission of cancer’s permission
Cancer’s commission from the Pharmeceutical derision
That the body is his to fatten and flee from
After the farts from Depakote and Deepthroat from Gazprom.
Dark into the night when the oceans crash against the shores
Is the fittest thing, the sexiest Blonde, the holiest Hindu whore
More! Why not sell me your mother to travel on the shared Earth
With wild seas and a few little more than ships from the past
To tell of the wide birth
Beyond the Yugas
Above the Togas
Far from the sticky tobacco and the wives with their stockings and pull overs.
Over and far and fair from the wettest wind
Carrying onto the decks the crouching of shivered boys
Lost to the Port of Spain and the knees that know pain
Travelling men : Back again.
Lost in time : Responsibility is an offered crime.
Crimes that are for me : Crimes that are for you.
Language was thus shared : It spoke of negotiations and upmarket Poo!
Pooh Pah’ing the bandits of the brain
Who mentioned commotion and sold the strain
Of cloth and cupboards and style of Art and affairs
To keep up Consummate Actions so that sexuality had it’s lustful lair.
Proof that Kama Sutra was legal tenacity
And contracts of somatic housing was legality –
They had known us when he had been with her,
So that we could be above this as ours was not theirs…
…
…
… On and on
What a story!
The commotion of The Locomotion
And the trade of The Mona Lisa.
Hey! It’s hay and we have the same bale to make on the shipping
Sell to me your facts and I will fax you some returns.
Burning with the lust to get to the bust from the back bras
And the open bare minimalism of hairs that stand apart from afar –
Show me your Hindu and I will bare a brave resolve
To drink whet and alongside your Islands
Where the unloading is seeing long and Ceylon is my Ramayana song!
Jay Siya Raam!
Ahoy there Hanuman!
You’re my mate with that karma
Since Romantics knew my bonds.
They sold it to me fair
I don’t see why it needs to be sold out late
Now that records speak of the devil
And The Beatles have no first mate!
Still the demons and demonstrate for me awhile, So I can see : —-
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This is the Spirit of the Age
Again.
{Again is the pain}
And far away is the brain I cannot see on the sea.
These are ships that told of the three line whips
And how Majesty knew to address the dress line
For one or two poetic and rude linearity healthy quips.
The International Mama
There are times in the solid room
There is a okay Heraldry in the plastic tomb
Here and there is a fractured glass of a sonic boom
When the ships in the night are frightening.
These are the times when my teeth need whitening
And the lazy Sunday deserves an extra half hour in bed
After a week of working and washing the clothes
So far and so long that the measurements are not dead.
Something for me and something for them
The next thing they ask for is going to be too much.
There is not a bedroom that couldn’t do without a Rabbit Hutch
And more life for my kids stuck in a rut in England on a couch.
Married or unmarried it has to be the way
That Islam is Brick Lane when Hindus like Stoney Lane:
This eases the paths so that wires can be their heads
As Darth Vaders playing Space Invaders when I am gone and dead.
Halo boys on the angelic tip looking for some ink wells to laugh and dip
Their erectile problems fathoming centuries of God,
Because of schools and computers
That told of Blake’s Thel and her encounter with a Clod.
Something for me and something for them,
At least I will be back here again!
With their rotten spoilt karma to wile away the time
And think of good demons who give Satan all their crimes.
Nothing
Everything
Commanding things
Washing things again
These are the ways
Those are not the ways
DO this
DON’T DO that
What a prat
My son is a part prat
Because of Rat a Tat Tat
And all the stocks went splat
Breasts that are flat
Moments that I say “Drat!”
Who says “Drat!”?
When the movies are over after 96 minutes, some Nachos and some cheese.
pLeAsE
AcCePt : My Sons without regret
And let them finish some sand, sex and some sandwiches
So that Sanghrias could help them forget,
The war of Mahabharata 78004
Or whatever is at the door,
When I am not separate from you
Like the Heavenly liar and the Holy Jew.
Albion’s Wheel of Suffering and Liberation
I. The Turning of the Wheel
The pilgrim walks with all who spin,
Bound by craving, loss and sin,
The wheel revolves, desire and fear,
~ Estrangement whispers, ever near.
II. Brigid’s Hearth – Ignorance to Flame
From childhood’s school, the fire is lit,
Ignorance breaks as wisdom sits,
Her Celtic hearth, a spark of sight,
The wheel turns slowly into light.
III. Lima’s Lantern – Aversion to Calm
Where sorrow bends, her lantern glows,
Aversion yields, compassion flows,
The pilgrim learns through Lima’s hand,
The wheel turns turns gently, makes a stand.
IV. Burial Grounds – Desire to Release
Among the graves, desire is stilled,
The pilgrim sees what time has killed,
Yet every name, a seed of peace,
The wheel turns onward, chains release.
V. Cathedrals and Castles – Pride to Humility
High articles fall to humble knees,
Grey towers bow to Albion’s seas,
The pilgrim learns that pride must fade,
The wheel turns soft, the path is made.
VI. Shree Geeta Bhawan – Dharma’s Song
Krishna’s chant, the mantra flows,
The pilgrim hears what Dharma knows,
The wheel turns true, the song is one,
Albion shines with India’s sun.
VII. Gabriels’s Door – Confession to Renewal
Estrangement hurled, a bitter stain,
Yet thresholds break, and doors can gain,
Confession seeds the pilgrim’s song,
The wheel turns right, estrangement gone.
VIII. The Djinn – Shadow to Insight
The Djinn may haunt with dear and night
But chanting breaks their shadow’s bite,
The pilgrim sees through darkness thin,
The wheel turns clear, the light within.
IX. Buddhist Dharma – Suffering Shared
The Buddha’s light turns Albion’s wheel,
Through suffering’s fire, the wounds can heal,
Estrangement bends, yet Dharma sings,
And Albion walks with liberated kings.
X. EnlightenNext – Evolutionary Awakening
Not mine alone, the path is shared,
A future calls, a world prepared,
Collective chant, the soul’s ascent,
The wheel turns forward, EnlightenNext.
XI. Liberation – Albion’s Chant
Through suffering’s fire, compassion grows
Through emptiness, the river flows,
The pilgrim walks, the wheel turns still,
Albion chants: the Dharma’s will.
XII. The Masters in English – Knowledge to Vision
Through Oxford’s halls the pilgrim read,
Texts of fire, words of bread,
The Masters’ ink, the scholar’s page,
Turned estrangement into sage.
XIII. The PhD – Depth to Circle
The wheel descended, deeper still,
Research carved by patient will,
Yet every thesis, every line,
Was Albion’s soil, a mythic sign.
XIV. The Return – Autobiographer’s Song
From scholar’s desk to pilgrim’s stage,
The circle closed, the mythic page,
No longer study, but living lore,
Albion speaks – estranged no more.
Our Lady of St Lima
In Northfield’s quiet heart she stands,
A lantern in the Midlands air,
Our Lady of St Lima calls
The weary pilgrim into prayer.
Her walls are stitched with whispered hymns,
Her alter breathes the green of spring,
And every candle lit within
Becomes a star, a living wing.
She gathers silence, folds it whole,
And offers it as healing balm,
Her voice is liturgy of soul,
Her presence is a steady calm.
O Lima, mother, saint, and guide,
You root the mythic soil of land,
Through you the estranged are sanctified,
Through you the broken learn to stand.
Constellation Poem
Ben Wright the Chronicler,
Paul Ready the Actor,
Bryan Dick the Performer,
Amal Clooney the Advocate,
Rishi Sunak the Steward,
Robin Clark the Merchant,
Andrew Ornitharis the Producer,
All acquaintances by my side,
Guru Nanak the Guide,
Devi the Flame,
Wanderer the Father,
Unicorn the Brother –
Together they form my constellation,
Each a star in Albion’s sky.
I walk among them,
Not as seeker,
But as guru,
Bearing light through rupture,
Chanting renewal into England’s soil.
Poetic Fragment
In the 2000s I walked with freedom,
Journalists carried truth through fire
Governments pressed silence,
Yet the word endured.
My testimony was prophecy,
Their reporting was witness,
Both flames of the same light.
Wild Stage 