Ignatius Hirudayaraj

 My Father doesn't exist on the Internet.

I google his name expecting to see some rare snippet of lost information about him

As if the ghost of his passed life will somehow emerge

In the memory of someone who was so inspired to enter it into:

a post/ a comment/ a reflection/ a reference...

For me to see

And to know that

His life made a difference to someone somewhere,

Other than me.

My Father doesn't exist on the Internet.

That's because he died in 1987

A few days after my 9th birthday

During the same week when a much-loved and much-loathed political man in our city died too.

So, there was a public mourning,

And much wailing and gnashing of teeth...

For me to ponder

That I knew that the people around me were not mourning for him or anyone like him

But for themselves and the void in them for now so to co-exist with mine.

My Father doesn't exist on the Internet

He's not there for me to look up or follow or stalk

He's not there for me to sound off to about war and regret

And failure, and the shape of clouds.

My Father doesn't exist on the Internet.

I saw John Pilger's Utopia today

I saw John Pilger's Utopia today.
After I had argued with an Aboriginal girl about who was blacker - she or I.

I saw heaven reflected in the face of a child.
I thought about leaves and the setting sun and the full moon.

I read about refugees committing suicide.
And then I read about refugee-suicide (with the dissociative hyphen included prominently).

I dreamt about knights and minarets and sailing ships.
I saw the dreams of the subaltern rendered helpless,
Lost in the waves of a metal storm.

I learnt about the First Industrial Revolution, and then the Second, and what if the Third?
I felt the land under us sundered dry in a chemical deluge.

I experienced pain and retribution and shame
I also know redemption and love and the forgiveness of sins

I try to be a good person
When all I can do is be less bad than I ought.

I saw John Pilger's Utopia today.
And I exoticised the Red Earth of the First Nations.
And imagined the riches under the graves of the Frontier Wars.
And forecast the rise of the untethered soul,
Dismissing country and home and connection,
For an existence dictated to by the Next Great Experience.

Which exploits, first, the luckless and gun-less
Then the topsoil, and the water, and the beasts and birds
And becomes the New Age Guru
Of Loss and Consequence, in that order.

I saw John Pilger's Utopia today
And then I argued with a white girl about privilege - hers and mine.

Finding a fit

The tail of the dragon is long,
Bearing ridges, serrated edges, the marks of a thousand vanquishings.
Would it covet the length of its appendage so much as reflect on its provenance?
But the dragon is unfeeling, we know... and unthinking
Didn't I read today about dinosaurs
And their inability to recognise, from sight or smell,
The toxicity of the flowers that would bring about their demise.

Are we better off
In the now, then, and forever more,
When we barely ward off the danger of our potency
While we revel in the puzzle of our mortality?

Why do I see the mentally ill, the psychologically wanting, the pathologically inclined
In every little morsel of 'content' that I consume?
Are we becoming better at recognising the germ of our own self-destruction
And describing it... in song, dance, and animation
A little too vividly for anyone's cultivated comfort?

After all we are creatures of the gag reflex...
How else would we have survived
The terrifying exigencies of war,
The stark emergency of grief,
The lonely abyss of existence,
The narrow, stifling fact of form?

What is normal, anyway?
The usual and comforting facade of fear?
The car in the driveway, the bloodied knife at the butcher's
Hidden from the prying eyes
Of children who tallied too long at their first dissection?

Would I the luxury of perpetual arrival
In foreign lands at the dead of night
Staring down a forked road whose outlines barely to discern
One way to defeat
And the other, to a benumbed despair.

2018...

What would you have me write about?

Perhaps of an immutable substance meeting an unstoppable force,
Or the unchanging injustices of the world.
Commentary on the good fortunes of some of us, maybe?
And the bad fortunes of others...
The changing climate or the worsening weather,
The cyclical nature of our collective misfortune,
The widening gap between what we know to be true and what we believe is the truth,
The systemic and structural nature of our disadvantage,
The inhumanity of our policies, the surreality of our goals, the entrenchment of our privilege, the colour of our sins...
Maybe I could write about youth and beauty and poverty and disability...
Or about missing: the forest for the trees, the wind for the windmills, gravity for the falling apple.

But whatever I do decide to write about, I'd like you to know this...

That nothing is changing for the better,
That that arc of progress or that rainbow in the clouds,
Isn't bending towards justice or leading us to the promised land.
That they are, in fact, mired in a thousand disgraces,
That every day pile on the indignity... the perversion...
Of an unmired thing, a fitful beast, a false positive orbit
Of the triumph of hate over passion,
Of transactional pride over peace,
Of visceral, perpetual, envious longing...
Over fulfillment.

Memory

Oh Memory, What are you?
Just the glimpse of the corner of a wall
Or a bush or a pattern in the air
Bringing on a rush of longing for a feeling
Long swept aside or so I thought
On a terraced wave of suppressed anxiety.

Can you not intrude on my present, please?
When all I want is not to cringe and berate myself and lie awake
When I am engaged in relating to the here and now
Completely uninterested in the then and there
And the who and how.

Oh Memory, If I could so much as resist a whiff
Of the better times
And the warmer people
And the unalloyed love
And the greater passion
Of times past that should remain there
And not in the now.

Modern Horror

Drumming up hidden resolve,
From the depths of a recondite nihilism,
Each catch preying upon the next,
Before its own turn arrives,
In a particular wash of self-awareness,
That is cold to the breath,
And rancid to the nose,
A slow drum roll,
Anxiety ebbing and waning with each beat,
For a terrifying climax that never arrives.

Verbal Malevolence on Adjectival Dominion

Driving the desert dry,
like,
Beating the weather down,
like,
Spraying the lamp off,
like,
Singing the blues away,
like,
Eating to forget or
Drinking to desire,
like,
Remembering a curse well spent.

La Haine

To take a premise,
And multiply it by,
Many times scorn and invective,
Throwing easy banter out the window,
And, verily, caution to the winds.

To plant a wicked laugh,
At varying degrees of Self-Importance,
and Self-Inflation, and Self-Seriousness, and Self-Promotion.
And take a pencil to them,
Underlining their Self-Farce.

To build on a grand tradition of,
Indulgent farts at the Great Table in the Great Hall,
And the cutting jarb at a Dictator at a democratic fundraiser,
And the face-graffiti on drunk and passed-out friends,
And other assorted tom-fooleric absurdity,
That arrives, like it or not,
Straight from the heart.

I sadly am not,
But I wish I was,
Charlie.

Topical and contextual commentary by:
Adam Gopnik
Teju Cole
Slavoj Žižek

Untitled

Driven to desire,
by a contretemps compulsion.
Dreamt fanning the embers
of a passion's last hurrah.

Silent, leaping, boundless carcass.
That tooketh thine own mirror,
and shineth upon,
thou sparkling reflection.

Where the Mind is Forever Fearful

The cold winds blow,
Fast and strong from the West,
to where I am,
And from the East,
to where they will be felt.

An idea is about to be upended,
An idea come upon in darkness, debauchery and deliberation.
About a hundred years of them,
Each one colder than the last.

But now the cold winds do blow,
down the edifice,
the structure, the frame,
of a dream - many men's and women's,
and of those long dead and of those yet to come.

Did the dream ever really come to pass?
In some little corner,
In one or more many little countries?
I wish I knew, and I wish I could tell you,
Who I really am.

But now, perhaps,
I will forever forget.
Like the ancient leaf scrolls,
Of wisdom inherited,
And then turned to dust.


For the historical contextual counterpoint to this poem, please click here

The Afflicted

What would it mean to me,

should life and love be separated at birth -

A stone, a claw, a clasp of affection? 

Dangerously do I see the leaven shadows 

of a depth undug, 

clinging to the areas lit, 

blindly so,
does the great bird fly. 

Is it a king, a cult, an inexpressive regret?

Third-World-conditioned acquiescence

"Do you see it?", he suddenly asked.
"See what?"

"Do you see it now?"
"See what?"

"Do you really not see it?"
"See what?", he was answered.

Untitled (23rd Sept 2000)

The Master woke to the sunlight,
And knew that today...
Today, he must set out.

And at once he sprang up,
And ran out,
And was oblivious to the heat and light,
that swiftly engulfed him from everywhere.

And the Master ran over hill and glade,
Village and town,
City and country.
And the onlooker saw that,
His feet never touched the ground.

And in the sea,
Where the onlooker could not sight land,
Try as he might,
This way and that,
There, the Master met his muse.

His muse, the boatman,
Splendid in solitude,
Saw him coming,
But doubted his vision.
Time had taught him of:
Mirages, human nature and the dangers of hope.

But he could not doubt his senses any longer,
As the Master came before him,
And he realized that,
That he could smell, hear and watch the Master.
And could touch and talk to him,
If he so wished.

Driver

The world blurred,
In space and time progressively.

Until nothing was left,
But his hands,
The steering wheel,
And the continuous pressure of his right leg
On the accommodating pedal out of sight.

The road was bathed in light,
But only until its outer limits,
Even the air seemed rarefied,
As if not willing to intrude,
On the complete consummation,
Of  Driver and Machine.

Until nothing was left,
But the pleasure at a memory.

When Mountains are again Mountains, and Rivers again Rivers

The Truth at all levels,

Is suddenly much sought after,

As if it is a revelation.

A new phenomenon, just born.

A cry of pain, intense suffering,

Longing... Is that it?

A whistle - short and sweet,

From the trees... Is that it?

A shooting star,

In a glorious,

Moonlit night sky?

And so the phenomenon just born,

Already dies a sudden death.

A victim of,

An impossible illusion.

Five bags of Flax

A conditioned view,

That of an Observer -

Never taken out of context,

In a world compartmentalized.

But now and then,

Can he still remain aloof,

When the observed,

Overcomes its own Observatory.

When Worship Meets Prayer

The crowd is hushed,

Deep silence in anticipation,

Of an event –

The event of Reconciliation.

The scene is now tranquil,

Aided by the prophet's voice -

Rendering a calm,

A surety on Reason.

The mind wanders,

Looking for shadows not there,

The moon looks on emotionless.

Isn’t it strange

How he decides to show himself,

Whenever the soul gasps for air?

The body is repositioned,

Now guided by the desires

Of the restless eye.

The eye encountering the ritual,

Transmits nonsensical messages,

To the hopelessly inadequate brain.

Some scenes are thought, ‘Timeless’,

But the term has never transcended the intellect,

Until now,

When Worship meets Prayer.

The Wretched Deity

Are we as Sons of Heaven,

When we let Anger

Fester like a boil?

When we take counsel

From men of the same blood,

Because they are men of the same blood?

When we are consumed with self-doubt,

And manifest it on those

Whose fortunes are dependent on our own?

When we assume petty, cruel commands

To be the signs of great assertion.