"An Exploration of Human Shape and Light" by Siddharth Dasgupta
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I turn this pain into
a continent. A tumor
is only a tumor, in
as much as you let it,
some of it the blossoming
within my brain, much
of it the proliferation
of ghosts and animals
that don’t growl, they
speak. You’ll have
to believe me, when
I speak to you of unwashed
love affairs, and Aquarius
and Aries, washed in the light
of midnight television
screens, and oceans awash
with starfish. In this
continent of mine,
I’m immune to form,
and time, breaking bread
with Gandhi, and just
as easily, slipping into
the slipstream of something
being painted by Tamara de
Lempicka, my eyes
now settled within
the octaves of a howling
moon. I vanquish
the dissident, some of
it still lingers, like the kiss
of a weeping star,
but it stands vanquished,
burnt, erased, the erasure
of my found poetry.
The healing is a continent
too. It is the tissue
of human faith, the ache
of animal longing. It is
the monk, on a distant,
bequeathed hilltop, awaiting
Nirvana or whatever
comes closest to it.
Radiation, within the cosmos,
sounds like terrible German
techno. I’ve never ever
been into techno, don’t you
see the irony? The release
occupies its own continent.
I’m human; I’ll falter.
These continents never will.
Dark whiskey and a light
kiss. Treat it with gentleness.
With sparseness. I turn
the morning into a song,
Nina Simone and Farida
Khanum. Coltrane and the
whisper of a Bombay breeze.
Treat it with bourbon. Treat
it with poems. Gratitude,
and a flourishing continent.
Siddharth Dasgupta is an Indian writer of poetry & fiction. His literature is fed, among other things, by the ethnicities of desire and the pull of cities both known and foreign. Siddharth has written three books thus far. His words have appeared in Kyoto Journal, Lunch Ticket, Poetry at Sangam, The Bosphorus Review, Cha, nether Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has read in places like Mandalay, Bombay, Galle, Lucknow, and Istanbul. Occasionally, Siddharth explores fragments of travel and culture for a smattering of global publications. He lives within the swirling nostalgias of the city of Poona, where he is finessing a novel and two collections of poetry.
