Poetry by Dion D’Souza: ‘I’ll make up another song. / Another doozy screamhowl / or lullaby. Tease / out a plastic tune.’

- Dion D’Souza

Smoke and Mirrors

after the song by Gotye

You’re a topsy-turvy slipper stationed outside a temple.

I’m a shoe tap-dancing at a cul-de-sac, beat-beaten.

You’re a potently bitter pill resisting dissolution.

I’m the foam in crest after crest of crashing wave.

You’re the incriminating evidence that disappears into thin air.

I’m a sore knife stabbing at abstractions.

This is art, fart, talent, dissembling, simulation, discombobulation.

This is anxiety, neurosis, insomnia, paralysis, incoherence, addiction.

Who’s watching –

you?

I’ll make up another song.

Another doozy screamhowl

or lullaby. Tease

out a plastic tune.

My face

pro – lif – er – a – ting

in angled folding doors.

Mirrors lie, and sometimes mothers.

Hauntings by reflections.

*

Je Danse Dans Ma Tête

after the song by Céline Dion

Will they occur,

These people with torsos of steel

Winged elbows and eyeholes

Awaiting masses

Of cloud to give them expression,

These super-people!—

- Sylvia Plath, ‘Brasilia’

I can’t dance anymore:

mindfully or otherwise.

I’m just not mindful to.

I’m out of the groove

and I’ve resigned

even the semblance of rhythm.

Try the robot, you suggest.

Nothing like some new moves sometimes

to reinvigorate you. Hilarious!

And would you

care to look at all these people now?

So many rolling on the floor

in stitches and

slapdashed bandages,

clutching throbbing sides

and jaws

as we thrash and bang our way

to a few thousand less

to another undaunted million...

But these poor wretches...their heads

as if hammered down,

lifted, caterwauling,

up for all the world to see!

That loud thump

just now against the window pane –

a bumbling pigeon or

spandex-clad superhero,

broken winged or

bearing exhausted jetpack

or shot out of a cannon?

If I shut my eyes

I can almost see them,

marching towards us from the horizon,

their movements steel cold and musical.

But no. Excuse my folly.

There shall be neither marching nor shimmying.

What shall be there: weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But is there really no hope at all?

No god that even at this last, late second

would condescend to be lowered into this dismal scene?

Warmly in bed at night

I dream of Ginny or Sunny,

of Tina or Poppy,

her automatic grace and savoir faire,

her eager, high-pitched laughter

at a birthday or Christmas party.

I’ll think of her

even as I f-f-f-fade –

solitudinous,

supernumerary.

*

Agastya Lake, Badami

Each time

washerwomen whack

un-wrung cloth

against cascading steps

lake waters shiver,

ripple.

A heathen dog on the bank

has slept and gone to heaven.

*

A Pig Observed

Lathered in muck –

a child famished after a rainy-

day game of football

tiptoeing into the kitchen –

a swine swings his head

over the rust-nibbled rim

of an open garbage bin.

Sniff-shuddering

his snotty divining snout

burrows through the unguarded

treasure trove of filth,

daily refilled and often overflowing.

Dark plunderer of discarded delights,

frenemy to ravenous crow

and neighbourhood mongrel,

who does not move, does not budge

even when the wiry sweeper girl arrives,

smacks his belly, kicks his behind.

The look of brattish defiance squats

beyond the reach of ordinary reproach

in the primitive blackness of his eyes.

*

The Old Eunuch

She’s almost bald.

Into what hair remains

she has tucked a purplish flower.

She plods as if through a marsh—

bellicose, belly-encumbered prowl

along the divider.

On either side

vehicles stream past

in opposite directions.

She applauds.

*

Mystic

Centuries ago

Blake chanced to glimpse

the vast world

encrusted

on a minute grain of sand,

saw eternity, eroded

by the blast of an hour’s span.

Today

a wild-haired

wizened beggar man

tried to contain

the ocean of a July rain

in the cupped palms

of his grimy hands.

***

Dion D’Souza is a poet and short fiction writer. His work has appeared in journals such as Guftugu, Out of Print, The Punch Magazine, Kitaab and The Dalhousie Review. He is the author of the poetry collection Three Doors (Poetrywala, 2016), and the chapbook Mirrors Lie, and Sometimes Mothers (Yavanika Press, 2021). He lives in Mumbai. You can find him on Instagram: @unequaldistance.

‘Saw Eternity, Eroded’: Six poems by Dion D’Souza