Poetry | Abhishek Singh
Part 1: Fernweh
All set?
We leave at night,
run like detached kites,
run until we find something
to fix our lives,
Chances are —
we are going to lose sight,
end up deserted, and starve,
to death,
while chasing mirages,
our bodies to be never found
left even by scavengers,
we keep galivanting
until we start questioning our existence
and only questions will exist.
The bar is open
Come on in,
leave your skin behind
for the dogs to devour.
Let's have a drink – you and I
You tell me your lies,
and I'll tell you mine.
We found a friend in the woods —
she can't catch her breath
without her arms around her neck.
Together we move to the ocean
to pick the pieces of meat
out of our favourite shark's teeth,
it's bitter, but we are starving
for blood.
To Greece —
Carrying our human condition
in our tinted hearts,
dancing with drunk cats
singing to the wild animals and
to the half-dead in graveyards.
Warheads of maniac missiles
army of psychopaths and murderers
living but dead,
all fighting for
whose heart would stop beating first.
Alas, the empire falls
on Achilles' back and he crawls,
beneath the sheets of mud
to the grave of Patroclus.
We saw the wind carrying the faces
of the people we have loved
while we run through the boulevard,
turning stones to renegades
with boiling water and some shades of the facade,
We sang a chorus about the dark times
with the mountains of Missouri
and the caravan of hillbillies.
We knew we were not the ocean
or the sky,
We are barely humans
we are ghosts
who lost their souls
at bar mitzvah, and now
we roam this earth
like ghouls —
robbing our father's grave
for the childhood lost.
Part 2: Hiraeth
Smell of blood
on my forehead,
ghosts of my father and mother,
their screams,
oh, my sweet dreams.
I saw my friend
peeling her skin,
I remember
reveries falling from her teeth,
I remember
our bodies shivering
in the summer heat,
I remember
our bodies entwined
in my own private Idaho
like sheath.
Half born beggars,
homeless shepherds,
holding hand in hand
singing songs of Kabir,
on the roads of Banaras —
and in the face of religion,
I knew I was doomed
with the unbearable human condition.
Sound of lambchop
in the naked streets
of Chandni Chowk,
Beggars and kings
all walking the same streets,
all wearing the same clothes —
with their outward folded hands
and inwardly tilted hearts.
O' Ghalib, are you there?
watching these madmen?
I am one of them now,
Can you see the flowers
I planted over your tomb,
why are they not singing
love songs?