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FOCUS ON: ISHAN MARVEL
In this segment, we present to you a selection of poems either from talented poets publishing their work for the first time, or emerging poets who we think deserve better exposure. For the Summer 2013 issue, we focus on the poetry of Ishan Marvel. The five poems published here are Ishan's first publications. |
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At present, Ishan Marvel may be found whoring himself for cigarettes at the Arts Faculty of Delhi University. Apart from street food and the word 'sunshine', he likes forests, wooden windows, trysts with higher energies, and Aldous Huxley. When finally tired of playing the idiot, Ishan intends to live on top of a mountain with a rifle and a dog.
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INDIA
an adaptation of Allen Ginsberg's America (Excerpt) "Yoga is rising against me, I haven’t got a chance. I’d better consider my national resources. My national resources consist of twelve cigarettes, Millions of shy genitals, An unpublished private literature that goes 600 words an hour, And eight hundred buffoons at the centre. I say nothing about my schools, or the millions of underprivileged who live in my pubic jungles under the light of Zero-Watt bulbs. I have killed half of Kashmir, the East is next to go. My ambition is to be President due to the fact that I’m useless." Due to formatting concerns, this poem has been published as a pdf file. Click here to read. LOVE-GAMES
“Eternity was in our lips and eyes” Shakespeare; Antony and Cleopatra Tonight, there is a hunger in the air-- a thousand strange faces clawing through twilit eyes. Features melt in a staring pan for assurance and touch, until the moon drips over the curtain, and we catch the moment and die. Look into my eyes again. Tonight, let us dance out these monsters, and in the morning, be one like children-- to look at You and I no more-- a pair of smiles with nothing to hide. MODELS
On the terrace of the fat vested man, a peacock gorges behind a water tank. Why must you look so pretty in my face, smoking in the thick of colour? Tender is the gold of clouds, and tender, the thought brushing you. CIGARETTES
Puff goes the man, and puff goes the world in table-lamp impressions and golden smoke. The gasping mouth lulls the counterpoint. Friends of squalor and scholarism, let us drink off the great teapot? They won’t dare enter your hell, and you won’t dare let them in. Cigarettes are easy, they don’t talk when you hold them-- sterile drags of habit filling gaps in time and action. Comfort between digits and dialogue breaks, when intimacy gets too sharp to bear, and life smoulders through the paper soul. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, lying still are cigarette butts. And you and I, let us walk to a fourth-drag epiphany-- grey labyrinths and swallowed minutes unknown to the blind-- a throat-raping proof of life: a cherry tossed parabolic into the night, half-afraid of falling into a balcony below. LAST RITES
When I’m gone, do not bother the earth, or fire, or water, or the breeze. Leave me to the dogs or the doctors, for I hope the crunching notes shall not reach the great vacuum, and I might do a last good. |
