The Poetry Issue 2022: Abstract Oralism and other poems

Jan 22, 2022

An attempt towards devolved Aristotelian poetics

Abstract Oralism is a result of seven years of research both oral and epistemological. There is a blurred line between poetry, prose, journalism, myth and public opinions resulting in enjambed and non-metrical lines to arouse a sense of thirst signifying the land it represents. The lyrical element is the protagonist

that weaves in and out of verses sewing them abstractly. Every section is a topographical variation which begins with a flash fiction that initiates the reader with Kachchhi words dialogically while inverting the politics of italics. This research poetry collection is an attempt towards devolved Aristotelian poetics.

Abstract Oralism

Rickshaw driver thanked

in mother tongue, “Achija”.

Public domain shifted.

Pocketing oral chronicles

antique got encaustic

talks turned to fables

words from atypical faces

formed sentences

with aloof attention,

witness consciousness,

expanding awareness,

towards a

shared illuminism

heard what lip-sync

left behind.

Dotting a Dhadki

of abstraction from memory

signs got symbolic,

truths — a belief,

for I listened and

entreated names, at the end.

Chhakdo Tours and Travels

Loudly announces its arrival

and reaches much later.

The view does not become pointillist

but rather a surreal imagery and

larger than life realism painting.

Thoughts don’t go zipping past,

allow you to stay,

Ponder.

Speed that does not thrill

but eases, loosens

and lets you be.

Slowly ticking

drift down Daliesque,

jolting at bumps

only to momentarily

rise in a Romanesque twist,

mirroring the clock tower at

Prag (UE) Mahal.

Till you arrive at an

indiscreet landmark

only to be ushered in by a fatfatiyo

while you are left

as a trailing paleontologist.

“…body-style

minus

aerodynamics

lends itself to be

steered into any

tapering alleyway”,

says a bystander.

Rock-solid

Characterized by

an undercurrent of bedrock,

oldest conglomerate of basalt,

a tray of reliquiae

for Ichnology

standing on pre-Cambrian rocks

full of faults

that know

what it is,

to rise.

Frequency

1314 KHz didn’t hammer it,

instead verbal interchange

between dramatists

planted

Water literacy

via loud music

because Rann didn’t echo,

only absorbed.

Rann of Kachchh

Bromide extraction pinkify,

camel hooves the distances

for an unbridled sunset.

Exhibits line military borders,

handiwork hung on clothesline,

Kachchhi-folk inclined

circle aligned.

Sealant Rannutsav

leaks in unseasonal rain

and wet housecoats reclaim their place.

Sprezzatura

I roamed around to find it

but all was carefully crafted.

Each sequence painstakingly placed

lauding legacy and tradition,

in a small heap of salt soddened

and taking on colour.

READ.

(i.b. ‘Woman Holding Plait’ and ‘Paying the Bill’ by Sudhir Patwardhan)

Tan is a season, body or colour?

wore it,

swaggered with a scuff

in careworn and half-worn chappals.

Cracked feet and cracked earth

fit in unhurt.

Slipping the cloth handle around her wrist

clutching mouth of bag in her forefingers.

Grip.

Muddled vision:

bus on unmetalled road,

and arriving.

Fist tightens,

scrunching of eyes and uncrunching of knees.

Hoping languages/scripts/graphemes

were pictorial hieroglyphs.

Oil-anointed, pirate fringed, embroidery collared,

outline-toothed, gravity-balancing Devji,

stepped inertially down.

pulling her plait unseen

yet keeping her head straight

softly enquired: where will it go?

Asquint to the aerial and anterior

strap-hanging bus, he replied:

Rapar.

It turned left instead of right.

Glossary:

: An alphabet from the Khojki script, the contested origin of Kachchhi dialect, pronounced as ‘C’, ‘see’ or ‘sea’. Here, it is a linguistic abrogation of ‘she’ to unsettle the readers from English fluency and dive into Kachchh, semantically.