Yada Yada Yada

Hemang Desai

When the tongue of a yokel
Uttering globalization got twisted
A sharp stab shot in the gash
 I cut this morning with tongue cleaner
American accent is a juicy candy
Desi tongue should be thoroughly cleaned to suck it
The capitalism of language
May not be easy to swallow
But it reaches straight down stomach
The accursed lackey of hunger blabbers
At the brothel of languages
            -Good morning madam. What can I do for you madam?
            -We’ll give you thirty percent discount on our deluxe products.
            -Special Diwali bonanza…Awesome Christmas offer
-Valentine Day: A day to express your love to that special one in your life with a secret gift.
-You bloody Gujjus, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
Do visit the seconds market of my mother tongue, sir.
Look at my marvelous bust and fleshy thighs
Dry-cleaned cunt and manacled limbs
Fuck me the way you want
Buy me at throw-away prices
Money back if you don’t have fun
Completely original stuff, no China bazaar, sir.

I doubt whether your updated system would
Decipher the outdated code language
Of my private feelings
Still I’m sending this SMS to you
Forward it to seven others if you like it
And you’ll have good news in next seven births.
To express, to be expressed, to be unexpressed
What do these usages really express?
Do we express through language
Or language expresses through us?
The language of the unexpressed is
More meaningful than the language of the expressed
That truth was hidden in the stony eyes
Of a Nepali girl worth five hundred bucks
Lapping her anemic tongue, I got exhausted
But couldn’t figure out her tale
Everything except man is subject to pollution here
Religion, caste and of course language
The seeds of letters sown in the soil
Of my hybrid tongue do not sprout
Not a fruit of word or a flower of verse
They even don’t burrow down
To dissipate in flesh and blood
They just spawn gigantic scales
Stomach reaching nether world in one container
Layers of tongue skin in the other.
I’m not the Bali scapegoat getting crushed under
The cosmic feet of stubby linguists and
Strapping eunuchs who lift up their ghagharas
At slightest provocation, I’m sorry.
Graves of Marathi manoos, vibrant Gujarati or Bengali babu
Would not fit me.
Now you’d hear live telecast from radio Babel
            -May all languages turn on heat
            -May the sty of languages overflow a bit
The theory of free sex was conceptualized by a polyglot
In his doctoral research he categorized hunger in three types
Hunger of stomach, hunger of body, hunger of soul
Where did this hunger of language buzz in from?
State the difference between the hunger of tongue
Of those impotents who banished him
And my own tongue of hunger
Those who haven’t qualified even for grace marks
In languages call out loud with me
Yada yada yada

Untitled

The tomcat of night tiptoes
Through half-ajar windows of eyes
Smoldering moon scurries in panic
To clutch at dying straws of bright
In fist-sized alcove
Fingers of blood seek the scan of biometric eye
Lamps of dark blaze over pools of light
I dip my finger and write the name of dark
On the canvass of sky as
Sleepwalking worms blink
Towards the black hole

Tongue craves frozen glow
Of blood Of woman Of coal
Melting shadows that flow
In bone In dream In halo
Malodorous moonlight’s trickle
Thrill grayish grass
Sooty spring bloom in autumn’s armpit
As raven crows perch on expectant eyebrows

Wind-chilled love retraces
My door on inverted steps
Seeking seven-layered awareness inside-out
Crumbled ribcage crippled name
I blush like a naked lamp on senile threshold

And see through half-ajar window
The backless back of a she-ghost
-No one can claw its sensuous dark-
Disappear in crepuscular delight
Insomniac dogs bark
In miragiac distance.

Song of Slippers

Beaten into precise shape
By a callused master who must have
Bit the dust of godawful places
Before he finally decided
To bring me home in a bargain
He must’ve clinched below the break-even point
I can hardly complain of a relationship
To have started on a wrong foot
As I am heel over heads in love

You slip yourself in my ebbing libido
My overstretched muscles cling to you
In a frenzy of over-delayed climax
Until you get fed up and withdraw
To crack your dazed knuckles
Consummation is not an issue
Until you keep coming to me religiously
To wear me from inside and out
Until you get so madly used to me
That you shudder at the thought of losing me
Outside temple to a discriminating pick-spouse
On the rail-track while getting aboard a local train
Or in a busy market blown up by suicide bomber

Time is a massive turner of all tables
You doddering dotard
You’d tighten your grip on me then
As I’d let loose and
Sweep you off your feet on a rainy day
To justify my name or
Pull you along as I get sucked up in rotting mud
Inducting you to the destiny you scripted underfeet
Or else without doing anything silly
I’d keep growing bigger and bigger
Than your shriveling puny form
Finally make off with a mangy dog
Inebriated with my sexy core odour
Who’d escort me most respectfully
To his most private den
To pay well-lubricated tongue-service
Until he dozed off
Out of post-ecstatic exhaustion
Later to be worn on sinuous hands
Of a cut-legged curbside crooner
Or simply immolate myself
For the cause of decemberish backs
Of sleepy road-washers

Leaving you to find a new
Headstrong bitch for yourself
Who would scrap off your sagging skin
Forcing you to bite the dust again.