The Dream

Kalugin fell asleep and had a dream that he was sitting in some bushes and a policeman was walking past the bushes.

Kalugin woke up, scratched his mouth and went to sleep again and had another dream that he was walking past some bushes and that a policeman had hidden in the bushes and was sitting there.

Kalugin woke up, put a newspaper under his head, so as not to wet the pillow with his dribblings, and went to sleep again; and again he had a dream that he was sitting in some bushes and a policeman was walking past the bushes.

Kalugin woke up, changed the newspaper, lay down and went to sleep again. He fell asleep and had another dream that he was walking past some bushes and a policeman was sitting in the bushes.

At this point Kalugin woke up and decided not to sleep any more, but he immediately fell asleep and had a dream that he was sitting behind a policeman and some bushes were walking past.

Kalugin let out a yell and tossed around in his bed but couldn't wake up.

Kalugin slept straight through for four days and four nights and on the fifth day he awoke so emaciated that he had to tie his boots to his feet with string, so that they didn't fall off. In the bakery where Kalugin always bought wheaten bread, they didn't recognize him and handed him a half-rye loaf.

And a sanitary commission, which was going round the apartments, on catching sight of Kalugin, decided that he was unsanitary and no use for anything and instructed the janitors to throw Kalugin out with the rubbish.

Kalugin was folded in two and thrown out as rubbish.

-------Daniil Kharms

Cinema and truth 

Syzygy

I notice headlights out the living room window
then catch the bass in a pickup as it drives by.
I am shocked to learn that doctors collected
the urine of menopausal nuns in Italy to extract
gonadotropins. And is that what one draws,
in infinitesimal dose, out of a vial?
I remember a steel wool splinter in my finger
and how difficult it was to discern, extract
under a magnifying glass; yet—blue mold,
apple dropping from branch—it is hard to see
up close when, at the periphery, the unexpected
easily catches the eye. Last Thursday night,
we looked through binoculars at the full moon,
watched it darken and darken until, eclipsed,
it glowed ferrous-red. By firelight, we glowed;
my fingertips flared when I rubbed your shoulders,
softly bit your ear. The mind is a tuning fork
that we strike, and, struck, in the syzygy
of a moment, we find the skewed, tangled
passions of a day begin to straighten, align, hum.
------ Arthur Sze

Cops and Robbers –S .Diwakar

Always

some are policemen,

others thieves.

Thieves steal the moon and hide it.

Policemen hunt for the thieves and hunt for the moon;

they catch the thieves and nail

the moon back into the sky

Thieves steal the heart of a girl.

Policemen hunt for the thieves and hunt for the heart;

they catch the thieves and take

the heart to the girl.

"I don’t need that heart," cries the girl.

But the policemen shove it down her throat,

they tell her it’s their duty.

Thieves steal the sparks from the waves

and hide them in their hearts.

Policemen hunt for the thieves and hunt for the sparks;

they catch the thieves and pour

the sparks back into the waves.

When the sparks fade, the policemen say,

"What can we do? We have done our duty."

Thieves steal whatever they can lay their hands on:

dry leaves, threads of a rainbow,

pieces of smiles, whispers of seasons,

footprints on water…

Yes, they steal whatever they can lay their hands on.

Policemen always chase the thieves.

Sometimes they catch them, sometimes they don’t.

When they don’t catch the thieves,

they sit and polish their boots,

they nail up posters everywhere

that declare, ‘Theft is evil’.

Yet, policemen cannot understand

that whatever the thieves steal

will grow back,

and whatever they snatch from the thieves

will not fit in their places.

Whoever hears of this will immediately become a thief

as some tired thieves

become policemen.

Always

some are policemen,

some are thieves.

Translated from the Kannada by Christopher Merrill

  
  S. Diwakar is an award-winning Kannada poet and fiction writer. He lives in Madras
(Coutesy: Litlemag.com)

      

Love Story

On his first train journey in London he falls in love with a beautiful girl with black hair and blue eyes. While he is lost in his thoughts about the nationality of the girl and the ways to approach a new girl in a new place, the love story comes to a jerky ending when the girl gets down at a station called Euston. He continues his journey thinking how stupid his thoughts were. On his arrival at the destination he meets his friends. The friends treat him with good Indian food; discuss mundane things. Later in the evening when he is returning to his place he takes a train in which he occupies the same seat that he took in the morning. He even wonders if it was the same train and same compartment that he travelled in the morning. As the train moves in the underground piercing the darkness, a flash of bright light wakes him up to reality. The reality is the Euston station with large flashy advertising banners and loud music from a street Guitarist. While the doors of the train open to commuters to exit and enter, his small eyes widen with a great expectation. Through the rush of passengers entering and exiting the train he moves hither thither expecting a miracle.

And it was a miracle.The girl from the morning train, with the same black hair and blue eyes is back in the same train, same compartment. Strangely she sits at the same seat which she occupied in the morning. He is once again lost in his thoughts about the nationality of the girl and the ways to approach a new girl in a new place. More than anything he is excited about this coincidence, but only for a short while. As the train reaches Maidenhead, the place where he lives, he exits from the train with a heavy heart and the love story comes to a jerky ending twice in a single day.

One day. One train. One girl. One heart but twice broken. As he walks out of the railway station he walks towards his flat thinking how stupid he was.

Life

Life was a collapsed illusion
He was a witness to the disorder
Life was a war with the soul
He was a defeated soldier

Life was an unmeaning sentence
He was a person ordering words around
Life was a street with out light
He was a dark shadow in the dark

Life was a sad truth
He was an ambiguous lie
Life was a demanding logic
He was an illogical bedlamite

Life was a journey to where the end begins
He was a lonely traveller; a dead man walking
Life was a Walk through the oblivion
He was a nobody who disappeared into a poem

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I have always felt isolated. I believe that any good artist feels isolated. And I must think and I beg your pardon for taking the liberty of believing this: if someone wants to direct a film, he must think he is good. A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
 

Haiku

Blossoming lotus
The Unclean water beneath
Purity exists 

Legends-K.Balachandar

The Balachandar Story

Confessions of a dangerous mind

"We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Reasonable....

…the chance of a man's finding his own Vindication, or some perfidious version of his own, can be calculated to be zero.
—Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel”

.....

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
- Mark Twain