Abhimanyu Kumar Singh- Three Poems

The Right Kind of Talent

All I get these days from editors

Is rejection slips.  All

Of them do the exact same thing:

To tell me that my work is not good enough.

I wonder what has changed suddenly-

The newly acquired flab on my ribs post the marriage?

The lush red carpet on the living-room floor?

The micro-wave oven (a most wonderful invention tho) ?

Or is it the hack work?

Meanwhile, poets with MFAs who pontificate about the

Structures of their poems

And publish in fancy literary journals that only accept

Solicited work

Go to exotic tiny countries to receive awards.

With the right kind of talent,

One can scam everything.

Insomnia

I

I have not had a drop

 For the last two days.

Drank too much at a party before,

Sick of the wanton snobbery,

And tried to piss on the bedroom floor, sleepwalking

 Till my wife

Screamed at me.

As usual, I can’t sleep tonight.

The kitten

Gives me company,

Curled up on the

Chair opposite me – she just 

Left.

Tomorrow I shall again

Offer myself to be gobbled up like a modern-day sacrifice to

The Great Machine,

 Moving through the bowels of the city

With the insouciance of a hardened piece of shit

And come out

Like a rat startled out of its hole and

Mingle with the great unwashed

And make my soul pure again

By breathing in the sweaty aroma of an avalanche of arm pits.

(During the monsoons, the Yamuna looks lush

Like a politician’s poll-time promise when you look out the

Glass.)

II

The ghosts

May exit. 

Poets should keep away

From ventriloquists, however talented.

The party

I went to a party

Last night.

There was a guy,

A film director.

His film had opened

A European festival recently.

He talked on and on

About not liking

Epic acting,

Leonardo DiCaprio,

And the Iraq war.

 He spoke in a falsetto sometimes

And his wrist went limp from time to time.

He was an artiste and he wanted it

To be known – he would leave you

In no doubt about that.

He told a lot of stories

Featuring a lot of famous names  and

Cracked a lot of jokes with sexual innuendos.

It was all great fun. I had a lot of Biryani,

And thought of

The Intelligence Bureau.

They are sinister, I tell you.