1.
Poetry is when the Spectator Meets the Theatre Screen Meets Shirin Meets the Theatre Screen (Within) Meets the Spectator (Within) – Kuleshov Effect
The word looks at the lovers.
The word looks at the war.
The word looks at hunger.
The word remains the word.
The poet looks at the word that looks at everything, and calls it a poem.
The reader looks at the poem.
The reader remembers the poet who saw the word (especially true when the poet is well known).
The reader breathes at the spacing.
The reader looks at the word that poet saw.
The reader looks at the word.
The word looks back at the poem, poet, and reader. (Or, so it seems.)
Zoom effect is implied on the human eye.
Art waits for humans to lift themselves to a deeper look.
The human, attempts and fails.
Art, attempts and fails.
Word remains and continues looking –
as love, war, and hunger continues.
2.
Poetry is when the Washroom Looks at the Man for 35 Years – Jump Cut
INT. DAY. WASHROOM
In a POV shot of the shower,
the first grey pubic hair.
If the first brush
of the lush black pubes
in the school loo
meant the rise of love,
does the first grey signal
the beginning of its fall?
So, did the films get it all wrong?
Is it the fiery days of flashback
that deserves the red tint,
and the present, B&W?
FLASHBACK (EXT. NIGHT. PUB)
Pinky and I share the same
hand rolled joint
in the smoking zone
and say, only real people fag,
and all that means is,
what we need tonight is a bit of love
after drowning the last of shots,
after hearing the gate chains clanking,
after seeing the last of taxis pass by,
after seeing both our mobiles drain out,
after crawling through the night streets,
after realizing there is nothing like the last taxi.
We kiss in the back seat as the cab driver
plays a random tune [SONG].
It doesn’t matter.
All tunes are peppy that night,
as we pull each other close in my room,
and become the violin and the bow,
the finger and the piano,
the heart and its wing.
Against the backdrop of our intertwining
black pubes that looked like a cloudy dark sky,
we say without saying –
I’ll do anything to wake up with you in the morning.
MONTAGE.
Does grey mean mature love?
The soulfulness of bluegrass
replaces the energy of heavy metal,
watching the rain replaces squirting,
scared thought replaces the good sweat.
Renting a stadium to propose gives way
to quietness of courtroom divorce files.
Renting an open roof convertible sedan
gives way to calculated monthly MPV EMIs.
The Facebook status transitions from
single and excited in Bangalore
to
married and settled in U.S..
Even after upgrading to a mobile with
better specifications,
the camera refuses a good DP –
the selfie itself becomes the selfie death.
The masters of the French new wave (Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard) wait outside. No, not just them. It’s all of us, outside all frames, waiting to insert an edit.
In that shot, the dark clouds clear. The sky is white.
Aditya Shankar is an Indian poet, flash fiction author, and translator. His poems, fiction, and translations have appeared or is forthcoming in After Happy Hour Review, Kitaab, Unbroken Journal, The Ghost Parachute, MoonPark Review, Canada Quarterly, Indian Literature, Modern Poetry in Translation, Anti Heroin Chic and elsewhere. Books: After Seeing (2006), Party Poopers (2014). He lives in Bangalore, India.