Parfum

Warm, soothing, like baby powder,
or irises that float on delicate
winds, recall her bronzed 
hands, kohl-lined eyes,
flushed lips 

in embrace, 
and how, encumbered 
with tears, both stood on
the curb, with his van filled, 
trapped in that final goodbye.  
 


Verse For Those Who Scale Waterfalls

Ice’s rage reverberates
through the centuries;
it echoes from every carved
beach and cliff.

There is a town which
worships this ice,
which attempts
to conquer this ice.

There is a man who coaxes
this ice with axe and rope,
ascending its rigid grooves,
knifing towards its summit.

And of this ice, he demands submission, 
demands compliance, demands 
shelter, only yielding 
in its remission.  
 
But even he wanders away, 
chastened to the bone;
so one generation weakens,
while the ice grows.

And the years go on,
and the little town 
ponders, while threading 
needles and baiting hooks.

Waiting

For they hardly have the means 
to placate such rage.  
 


Furthest From My Dreams

The bathroom mirror is slick
with steam;
the cold glass 
obscures my face.  

I slip into the bathtub
and imagine coffee on ice,
fire on snow, 
lava on glaciers.

I prop my feet 
against the faucet
as the water slowly cools,
and the minutes pass.

I return,
relishing the darkness
of winter’s end.   




The Fog


When I dream of him,
though he does not dream of me,
the grogginess but barely lifts, 
from this land of somnolence. 

The likelihood of grief,
stalks these waking hours,
stealing, bit by bit, my  
calm competency.

 

Boolean Logic


Say “get” not “equals” is the first thing they tell us—
you need two equal signs for that.  
An exclamation point is not an exclamation point 
but an appendage for denouncing equality.  
“No” does not mean “not” 
but a tilde (never call it a “squiggly line”) does. 
And who knew that a pointy hat 
could be so exclusive?  

“Or” is some sort of pole we need to vault over—
(two “ors” look like the jail that we are in).
If we put two ampersands together, 
will their chubby bottoms let us pass through?  
A comma or semicolon can be treacherous; 
they are rocks that snare our code as it tries to sail away.  
And the fatal opening of a parenthesis 
will sink the ship.        

Recurrent I: Walking to New Mexico in My Sleep

It takes nearly no time at all, this quick jaunt along 
the Oklahoma Panhandle, so long as I don’t stop 
to admire huge temples of fossil fuels: white miles
of pipes bending upon themselves, bathed in a sort
	of perpetual just-past-dusk not-quite-light,

all clean and humming with no one around (at least,
	their acres of well-lit parking are unoccupied.)

I say
		nearly no time at all,

but it is more true to say 
		There is no time to take; 

it is always three in the morning, so that I am 
		eternally up late but never running behind.

I can never get past Clayton when I go this way, 
although I am not sure whether I am supposed to,
	so perhaps it all works out.

The hotel there is far too big for a small town; 
I suspect this is by design. Otherwise, how could
	there be these ingeniously (maddeningly)

laid-out hallways, too narrow to turn around in,
purporting to lead to my room but instead spiraling 
	ever inward for nonexistent miles and hours?

Someone is waiting for me here. If I can only 
remember who, perhaps I will be allowed to arrive.

I would check my watch, but I already know the time.
 

Kansas City Which is Also Overland Park, Kansas: Dream I

It takes a while to place this stretch of street (or rather
streets), with its red-brick antique stores, its hair salons,
its bakery and gallery and anachronous travel agency.

Someone, it seems, has folded the map so as to overlay
45th Street east of State Line and 80th west of Metcalf,
then set it down on a steepish slope, east at the bottom.

Two small white houses, one on each side, sit atop
the street. They are in slight need of paint, but not
so badly as to get letters from either city or both.

This street exists nearly perpetually in early evening;
on rare occasions, you might catch it on a sleepy 
Saturday morning. It is always sometime between
late May and early July, and the air often smells
	of hidden roses and imminent warm rain.

The sidewalks are empty, but there is a sun-faded 
red pickup – a round-fendered Chevy, something 
that rolled off the line in Truman’s only full term –
	parked halfway up the hill on the south side.

Whatever might lie to the west, beyond the hill’s crest,
I have not seen it. I am not sure that anyone has, aside 
from whoever lives in those white houses. Sometimes,
	dark songless birds fly over from that direction.

No matter what time it is, the businesses all closed 
five minutes ago. I will have to come back tomorrow.

 
Third Floor of My Office Building Which is Also the Rec Room in My Old House: Dream I

It all started downstairs, an offhand Nerf ball dunk
on an eight-foot plastic rim; I hung in the air just
long enough to estimate the gap from soles to floor.

Now, with an audience and a high ceiling, I have
decided to give this new ability a full workout.

First rising to tiptoe, as men in my family always
do in times of urgency or strong emotion, I bounce
twice on the balls of my feet, then swing arms back
forward up and rise – less a true leap than pushing
off from the bottom of a pool, letting buoyancy
do the work. I latch on to a rafter by my fingertips,
swaying in the faint breeze of fans electric and human.

A high-pitched sound in my ear; somehow I know –
an instinct born in my late middle age –  that this is
not the ringing born of jamming my head into my 
favorite bar band’s speakers back when that sort of
thing made Coors-Light-and-idiocy-fueled sense.

This is the song of air in my lungs, air lighter than 
itself, and when I release it all and take in new breath, 
I will be floorbound again, and old, and ordinary. 

My landing is slow, soft; I inhale deeply, prepare for
	another takeoff, but all novelty has worn off.

My colleagues disperse, reoccupied by meetings
and deadlines. I should go to lunch soon, I suppose –
but first, let me rise one last time, be more than
what reality allows. (Just one more last time.)

Perhaps I can master a sort of hovering swim, shoot
a game of eight-ball against myself without ever 
touching the floor. Slop counts, or at least until I
get the hang of hanging at the proper height.

What else is one to do on a Friday, the codes of
	dress and gravity both suspended with pay?

Snow Maiden

I am telling you Snow Maiden

You will melt like wax

The wind will lose your scent

The sea will carry your identity

I still love you

I know you won’t be mine

Flocks of seagull will be your companion

Your whiteness will be swayed by catkin

Bedouin will find your address

I will be a nomad like time

The speed will hang on one leg.

I’ll wear your nupur in the dance of memory

Will sell morning and afternoon

I will buy lost night.

Modern Saints

A serious meditation carried out

By seven modern holy saints

A well frog sings the song of Shiva

The mountain walks in the hands of the moon

Darkness lurks every night

A flood of kings in the midst of light

A daughter of two fathers

The illusion of shadow in the shell

May find your body

Timeless action is in the womb of time.

Whose is whose? No religion

The moon forgot her address

Everyone is wandering, the path is unknown.

Lost “again” in translation.

I am adrift again. In this country
The lilting accent of a brook

wrapped around my mahogany skin.
My idioms tumble down like unruly roots.

Dormant in the taciturn stillness
of phantom dreams.



A meditation upon love

People walk through a haboob to get past it. “Humongous”, my child’s
sibilant whisper hangs in the air for someone to retrieve it and carry
in their pocket. The hawkers screech like birds trapped in walls. I put
my fingers in my dead ears.


Once I had dipped my feet in gelid marble, my blush filled the sky with
tones of lilac. The sealed silence of the tomb had echoed so loud. Mouth
Agape, knees trembling, I listened.


I share a birthday with an empress. I had walked the gardens,
blue Polyester sticking to me like a second skin, henna marking
me till my elbows. Demure bride. Now vultures circle over my head
in anticipation of carrion.


There are red letter boxes outside disrupting the pristine alabaster.
It is a post office, they say. I look away, I was never here. One by
one, the sepia toned photographs disappear from the family album
with a broken spine.


A woman with a beehive on her head, saree draped artlessly over
a sleeveless blouse. A young man pretending to touch the spire,
an optical illusion. Father caught in an awkward moment
with a Yashica camera.


This is no longer a story about love at first sight. A forlorn princess
did not sit on a bench here in 1992.Poets never rhapsodized about its grandeur. We don’t know how it came into being.


The sun is in arrant mode; it burns holes in my heart. Tomorrow,
I’ll return and post a letter. Seeking solace in subterfuge for what
never was.



Glossary

Haboob: A wind that brings sand from the desert native to Sudan.


You will disappear…


You will lose a lover and disappear off the face of the earth,
you will squirm in the therapist’s chair and not tell her where
you were.



It has been eight sessions and two hundred dollars for an hour
the seat is still warm from the person before you. An imprint left
on the beige upholstery is oddly comforting.



We are all drowning and the thought
makes you feel not so alone. You have not cried once.
For a whole week after his passing, you told Seema




about the folded shirt and black trousers, he left them on the bed.
He did not want to die, he had just slipped out into the night
for a breath of fresh air, perhaps he needed to clear his head.



You read books on reincarnation, about the afterlife, you meditate
your hair grows white, you wake up screaming even with the night
light on but you don’t shed tears.



Ordinary days can kill you, you have learned
luminous, filled with the chirping of birds, the
chittering of crickets. You will carry your



anguish into your New York apartment
in lieu of luggage, there are no elevators,
the man beneath is a doctor who sleeps during the day.




You hate him because doctors could not save your love, yet you don’t entertain friends with kids anymore. Children are loud and you are fragile like a handheld grenade.


You become a plant mother instead, you never weep,
you pamper your pots with filtered water. And one day there is an Orange



in a pot by the sill, a tree you had bought on a whim at the grocery store.
You marvel at how perfectly spherical it is, how orange
how it grew out of bereavement, you eat it peel and all.


It is sweet and tart and bitter; it bursts and melts on your tongue
and the salt finally pours from your eyes, it trickles past your lips.



A familiar gnawing to devour everything fills your being as you sob.
Your tears drown the whole building, then Manhattan, all of it
but you swim ashore in your aliveness.



Jahnavi Gogoi is a poet who grew up amidst insurgency in Assam, India and lived to tell the tale. She is a writer of children’s fiction and a mother to an assertive seven-year-old daughter. Her debut book of poetry ‘Things I told myself’ can be found on Amazon. Jahnavi now resides in Canada with her family in the picturesque town of Ajax. Her poetry has been published in Inssaei International journal, Academy of the Heart And Mind, Spillwords, Soul Connection by Guwahati Grand Poetry Festival, Mystic Aura magazine, Indian Periodical. She also has words in G plus, The Beacon webzine and others.



 

I'm just concerned about your emotional warfare, and putting the Charlie in Baudelaire 

Not racist, heaps border fears

Bought their ears

That's why your night's in arrears

As for the secret weapon, it's in our pocket

Not timeless, just rock it bored of years

I turn on the tele just for a fix of fears

Here they have the barkeep glitch our beers

Don't snitch on peers

No, put snitches on piers

Treading on thin nice try, left swipe

I don't want to live in a sci fi

Haven't moved in a year, these things moving up me, they say it's not divine

The main attraction, but still got sidekicked

So fishy they had to more real than reel us in

You can call me a wit, man, cos I lilac

You can call me a Whitlam, cos it's time

To get kicked out by the CIA

I mean CI Gay, but don't tell my wifi

I do skylines thru the eyes, chemtrails, clouds

Walk in, all the fems loud

Get the train rail off all its routes

Now when we need it, they just cough up the doubt

We don't smoke green, jist chop up the louts

Can't help, we already shot up the Galts

Why do you think we look so young for?

I've got power you can point at, but you can't dock yours

I've only got six mull in my sock drawer

I only look so I can drop jaws

I won't robocop to you any more

I won't drop you any flaws

Except the price one

A word to the high rise can't be undone

No batman bout the raves, but you can say I'm Robin

Like you don't underline what these dreams be costing

I'm getting plaid by Ryan Gosling

So it's myself on the red

Carpet I'm accosting







So few memories


I chuck myself out the pub was getting too rowdy


Pack up my things say howdy 


Order up a beer relight the bounty


 kindle my ounces and single my prouder


Movements out on TV


Units back from Jon doe ray me


Jumped from hand into my mode de vie


And from there, into my ode to me


And my shadows are irritable again


Can't understand I'm not my friend


sallows my cheeks, second elderhood


But the youth I'm shooting says there's hell to prove


 Only rules I like the ones the dead flout


So I guess that's why you had me at get the fuck out




Queen of Odds


So close to me like the cure

So closed to me like the future 

Closer it gets the looser the thread 

we cut the loser instead - that me

Choose you over life; you make me happy

When skies are out of service

And the winds are getting blabby

Just as we do, and did last night

Are you sure we didn't do this in a past life?

We ask nice and the ocean lets us surfers

Float instead of sink somehow 

shear the shore winks to make us go wow

try to make clouds treetops won't kowtow 

Everything about you is pow wow bow wow 

Just flowers me thinking, like, our souls're grouse foul

you be my perso climate change

Get me glitching all the whys away

With greenhouse gas lines

We need replace, but 

Resources're 

lacking, time too

 Sick coal still too powerful

Must est there; bower's full

Hours neither heat nor cool now

lost compass

meaningless, sour

flip flops clip clop on the way home from the drowse 

I'm deconstructed away from you

Remodernist me, babe

Frack modest

Tee it up - you truly, madly, deeply think these rhymes are proper gay 

But so are you - I got you, bae

And without warning, the coffee plate spins out of control absent of intervention

And we console ourselves with what? Yawning indecision?

Bring bring listenings no bring bring listen

Oh, it's Sly? Tell em I said die

Like the weather changes. Concrete's quicksand 

Whooshes the kitchen back to us

Some kind of catalyst to see what matters to me 

 Say can't cap a way free

But actually, if you and me….

Bloodbath valley, guts to rally, no dilly dally, gashed up alley, one cashed up sally, who taking the tally?

But sometimes, just sometimes, you can be a wee illuminasty

Shut up and farm me 



Am I a terrorist

for planting heroin in the president's office?

For insulting old codgers with my eloquent doctrines?

For inviting riots to decry it all the president's options? 

I'm intelligent often, I'm the resident boffin, I'm selling your coffins, inventive

a god send me down to change the face of rap (crap),

now whenever we play they claptrap back

to the clawing, bored and faded

the drawing board was always awesome jaded

I'm bold and brain-dead

Sold out and tasteless

Must have the language virus

Eating up an anguished iris 

I'm very good at dissection

Highly likely I will die sectioned

On the outside in 

We let the bouncers

Spin them away from daggitude 

You don't have to do with it a dagger, dude

Looks like crazy

Pfft, you should see the streets that staged me

The Drawings

 

The drawings are singing

The wonderful melodious songs are sung with instruments

Enchanting as the painting of Mona Lisa!

The laugh you live in me

For ever and ever.

 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

13 May, 2023

 


Withered Thoughts

 

The cyclone is ready to destroy

People are taking shelter as the birds fly to other

Fear hovers around the coastal area

Fear disturbs the mind

The sun is so hot, the scorching sun

Hinders to pace outside

We are in this turmoil world

Drooping in the furnace and chokes the breath.

 

 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

13 May, 2023

UFO Museum: Roswell, NM


Breaking in was nothing,

For one of my talents,

Ditto for lifting the device I needed

From its glass case without tripping the alarm;

Installing and testing it was a matter of moments.

I was ready to go;

I'd miss Darlene, she'd been good to me:

A loving wife, willing participant

In what must have seemed, at times,

Bizarre activities, but she'd get over it,

And I couldn't give her the children

She so desperately needed,


I needed to get back to my other family,

My other wife

Raising a horde of sprouts on her own,

And I was so tired of the lies:

An only child of fictitious parents

Killed in a “car” crash,

Born and raised in “the Midwest,”

A retired airline pilot.

My only real fear,

That my wife had remarried,

And her husband had, of course, eaten our young,

So I'm on my way back to Aldebaran,

And I really hope that if I have to kill and eat

Her and her lover,

He's not one of my brothers.