Namdeo Dhasal- Man You Should Explode (1972)

Man, You Should Explode
Man, you should explode
Yourself to bits to start with
Jive to a savage drum beat
Smoke hash, smoke ganja
Chew opium, bite lalpari
Guzzle country booze—if too broke,
Down a pint of the cheapest dalda
Stay tipsy day and night, stay tight round the clock
Cuss at one and all; swear by his mom’s twat, his sister’s cunt
Abuse him, slap him in the cheek, and pummel him…
Man, you should keep handy a Rampuri knife
A dagger, an axe, a sword, an iron rod, a hockey stick, a bamboo
You should carry acid bulbs and such things on you
You should be ready to carve out anybody’s innards without batting an eyelid
Commit murders and kill the sleeping ones
Turn humans into slaves; whip their arses with a lash
Cook your beans on their bleeding backsides
Rob your next-door neighbours, bust banks
Fuck the mothers of moneylenders and the stinking rich
Cut the throat of your own kith and kin by conning them; poison them, jinx
them
You should hump anyone’s mother or sister anywhere you can
Engage your dick with every missy you can find, call nobody too old to be
screwed
Call nobody too young, nobody too green to shag, lay them one and all
Perform gang rapes on stage in the public
Make whorehouses grow: live on a pimp’s cut: cut the women’s noses, tits
Make them ride naked on a donkey through the streets to shame them
Man, one should dig up roads, yank off bridges
One should topple down streetlights
Smash up police stations and railway stations
One should hurl grenades; one should drop hydrogen bombs to raze
Literary societies, schools, colleges, hospitals, airports
One should open the manholes of sewers and throw into them
Plato, Einstein, Archimedes, Socrates,
Marx, Ashoka, Hitler, Camus, Sartre, Kafka,
Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Ezra Pound, Hopkins, Goethe,
Dostoevsky, Mayakovsky, Maxim Gorky,
Edison, Madison, Kalidasa, Tukaram, Vyasa, Shakespeare, Jnaneshvar,
And keep them rotting there with all their words

One should hang to death the descendents of Jesus, the Paighamber, the
Buddha, and Vishnu
One should crumble up temples, churches, mosques, sculptures, museums
One should blow with cannonballs all priests
And inscribe epigraphs with cloth soaked in their blood
Man, one should tear off all the pages of all the sacred books in the world
And give them to people for wiping shit off their arses when done
Remove sticks from anybody’s fence and go in there to shit and piss, and
muck it up
Menstruate there, cough out phlegm, sneeze out goo
Choose what offends one’s sense of odour to wind up the show
Raise hell all over the place from up to down and in between
Man, you should drink human blood, eat spit roast human flesh, melt human
fat and drink it
Smash the bones of your critics’ shanks on hard stone blocks to get their
marrow
Wage class wars, caste wars, communal wars, party wars, crusades, world
wars
One should become totally savage, ferocious, and primitive
One should become devil-may-care and create anarchy
Launch a campaign for not growing food, kill people all and sundry by
starving them to death
Kill oneself too, let disease thrive, make all trees leafless
Take care that no bird ever sings, man, one should plan to die groaning and
screaming in pain
Let all this grow into a tumour to fill the universe, balloon up
And burst at a nameless time to shrink
After this all those who survive should stop robbing anyone or making others
their slaves
After this they should stop calling one another names white or black,
Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, or Shudra;
Stop creating political parties, stop building property, stop committing
The crime of not recognising one’s kin, not recognising one’s mother or sister
One should regard the sky as one’s grandpa, the earth as one’s grandma
And coddled by them everybody should bask in mutual love
Man, one should act so bright as to make the Sun and the Moon seem pale
One should share each morsel of food with everyone else, one should compose
a hymn
To humanity itself, man, man should sing only the song of man.

Namdeo an activist poet passed away on Wednesday 15th January 2014 , a man who broke the rules of traditional poetry

steps to a mocking truth

my shoes have grown
as my heart and eyes have seen
they walked with me,
since those first inaccurate stumbles
seeing surface and texture
slipped on,
tied,
buckled
leather formed about the feet,
or thrown in disgust
at a politicians head,
they walk with us
mutely seeing and interacting
as the  animal they once where
to a human misery,
without shoes connecting to earth
and nature of earthen creation,
ski hardening
to dust
stone
and blacktop,
miles witnessed
to a freedom attained
toes as extremity population
encounter first and enjoy
what was once an overall entrapment
thorns may spike
stones may pierce
batons beat
and electrodes burn,
washed and anointed
our shoes are needed
protect
shelter
enable
and keep away the awful pains,
shoes see more
than we think

dversepoets.com

 

geometrics and some physical optics

he woke
he pissed
he smoked,
sat at the desk as others
before him,
heavy oak resonance,
with politicknife would cut policy
it had become about color,
the blue the yellow
strove to adjust to each other,
the red the green
so incompatible,
clarity was needed in misdirection
politicknife more palette than blade
scraped bluntly over canvas
to portray the country
texture and relief,
some of it muddied
stained like shit on a public toilet,
he spoke on TV
bright suited as a clown
body language and gestures
seen and felt as colors of betrayal
it was beyond functionalism
and wider knowledge
colors bled
every perception was not upheld,
people took to tree lined avenues
beneath autumn auburn,
held poster paint placards
chanting,
colors adjusted
all attitudes changed,
again at his desk
looking at errors of doctrine,
the religious confined to sunday
men of friday peace,
zealots who ranted for any god
they where unifying
he felt afraid,
colors that should never combine
on palette or canvas,
became alive,
betrayed inside government halls,
closed eyes so that the brightness
would not be visible,
humanities noose
had underwritten his future,
rainbows can be clutched
in eager hands and each strand
peeled apart
scattered
like shotgun pellets,
reflected refracted
no more distinction
it was over,
slashing the canvas
pissed over it
pouring gasoline
it burned,
defeat knew a cell door
and he was content,
within gray and bleak darkness
color could not and would not intrude
now he felt alive

Gyorgi Petri – Hanging Question

Here I’m sitting on the bed,
I can see all the way out to the doorway,
I can see
my wintercoat, my hat,
my scarf
on the hanger.
Why not
my wintercoat, my hat
my scarf
sitting here on the bed,
and me hanging
on the hanger?

Would they watch me?

secret and vague in austerity

moon in nightspace became silversmith

light hammered over island

catching the nudity

i kept vigil over,

a saddened animal

hunched in an undergrowth habitat

i fed on something that dreams give

as i watched

her polished by tides overwhelm,

i could of been a nation on it’s knees

waiting for that one that comes

and brings a substance,

yet too afraid to show yourself

for fear of spoiling a grand occasion,

damp skin

natures jeweler working diamonds on,

a martyred bird called out

shriek of the night

she turned and i was certain of being seen

my eyes would be vivid in the darkness,

retreating with a tread  so soft,

knowing as you saw swept long hair

i would not possess

despite the urgency of my loins

without satisfaction i would have to wait

as this was not the night

angels at the pagan threshold

landscape seen by standing eye

on wind stripped rooftops edge,

answers pilgrims of nausea

fall as if from the depths of the sky,

horizon alone with forest

sun faced green silk and gold,

tracks of those who journey in faith

into the still of wooded glade,

within voices imagined

brambles pulled by enraged fingers

mess and tangle hide

that place used as a remote hope,

he should be there

pale faced

emotions a fountains stream

pleasure would not be found

with slackened vines,

this horizon embraced him

pulled into its complex afternoon

where time lie down

petal seconds fall,

chaos is not for choosing

sleep will not be heeded

as these files of thought

are put away,

staunched by class,

those in power jailers to tomorrow,

gas would fill indecent blue

and many more would fall,

for the sake

of secrets of kings

wordle

state visit

grand palace of united creatures

stage to the supper of presidents and kings,

finest foods the forest could provide

cutlery shone on butlers jacket

and in their finery they arrived

stoat,

weasel,

ferret,

mole, badger and toad,

to eat and speak confidences made

treaties broken amended and signed,

it would be a glorious affair

trumpets and choir,

long oak table shone,

voices hushed as speaker spoke

in long oration,

nodding and quietly assured

they waited to speak there turn

as fine turnip soup was served

laden with cream and pinch of pepper,

toad wanted to be center of attention

without his contributions all others

would fail,

badger muttered under his breath,

too many times when the others had

been awash he had bailed them out,

mole was pleased with his display

all seemed so merry

without fox who stayed away to

the east snapping grumpily at

his pack,

blackberry wine flowed

differences appeared

it declined as dessert appeared

your just a stoat someone shouted

badger roared overturning table

seed cake rolled

as food fight ensued old hatred emerged

mole hovered in the middle

watched as all crumbled about him

anger consumed as reddened faces

spat angry words,

tomorrow there would be war

someone would be overthrown,

and what of mole

confused in his coalition with

the silent absent owl

should he return to the

underground creatures

that adored him,

not knowing how to stave off

economical collapse

or tidal surge of opposition

meekly snuffling

into a hand stitched handkerchief

knew his days would end in

prison

Helen Ward