a poetry collection: LITERARY JEALOUSY

Disclaimer:

 I have lost the ability to write poems long before I could ever write a real one. It feels manufactured now, I feel bitter if anyone comes up with a poem, a real one. If you have ever written a real poem. I HATE YOU

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“Writer’s Block”

I think too much to write down a sentence,
I fear it will go to waste,
The weather forecasts of a stormy week ahead,
The office cubicle remains lit.
I wonder if my boss cried to his sleep last night,
Or anyone in this office did.
Prashiddha shed tears on a corner of a restaurant yesterday,
I listened to his muffles as I ate my lunch,
The patters on the roof start drumming right then,
I realized I had forgotten my umbrella again
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If I tell you about my job,
I write speeches for a five-foot-three-inch millionaire,
I still think too much to write down a sentence.
This week also marks Simran’s one-year death anniversary
I remember it being as rainy as today.
I sighed with relief this morning,
when J’s STD report came back negative
one good news to this gloomy day
the weather reported a 60 percent chance of rain
I swear I didn’t forget my umbrella today,
I just must have left it on the shoe rack while I was slipping out of the house.

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A good poem is Amla Fruit (SO FUCKING BITTER)

A good poem is

not a pebble, not a marble,

But very planet-like, even though tiny

The surface isn’t tough, glassy, cold,

If you bite on it soft enough

like a hickey

it seeps green fluid, a bitter spill

the tongue’s floor rises and then falls

like tide, like disgust

stuck out of the mouth

flipped off

like a finger to a face

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More fucking angst (MFA)

The snap, crack of an ankle

You are then out to a crowd clapping for you

In the last few months, I have figured out that I write extremely long sentences without correct grammar punctuations fuck balls shit and dare I correctly use commas,,,,,,,,,,

Now you’re in one of the book launches

Your jaws are tired of holding a smile or an accent

You are hugging a white girl

Four times in the same conversation

Because you’re glad that she shit on some canvas again

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You lie to people that you have a job

You say things like, “Money isn’t an issue”

You’re hiding something –

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You giggle mindlessly in a conversation

You congratulate people sounding like an orgasm

You correctly pronounce sky-fi as sci-fi

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It’s been a while since you last said sorry

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4

5.

(nosebleed isn’t a skill to be acquired. Doesn’t come to you often, even with practice)

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A good poem is Amla Fruit (Reprise- anecdote of sweetness)

A good poem coats my taste buds, bitter and sour. I’m jealous I’m jealous. The bitter coating awaits for a washout, some water/saliva. My tongue shriveled and colorless longing to feel the presence of not-bitter taste, now flimsy, grainy, ghostly, and translucent.

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When the water washes out this bitterness, I’ll feel it right there, not the wetness of the water, but the aftermath of it, an intrinsic warmth from the alcove of the tongue’s pores. Not the stark foreign taste but a feeble built-in sweetness, like coming home in a dark night, and not missing a step of stairs.

a poetry collection: mr. mortgage lucid dreams

1.

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 Man, I have big dreams

I gnawed on the mango’s pit

It’s sweet yellow hair stuck

Between my teeth

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I stood by the windowsill

A ripening orb in the sky,

measuring the pounce, a somersault-

From the windowsill to the galaxy

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I stared straight into it,

a burning spot on my retina.

I close my eyes and dream

of swallowing the sun.

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Man, I have big dreams

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2  

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Exfoliative Keratolysis: simile, metaphor and analogy

My fingertips are shedding,

Like a snake does-

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Wait, scrap that———-

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I found something else,

A closer fit would be thin potato peels

Scraped off to a smooth potato skin

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But the image I want to create,

The peeling of skin persists

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Unless I say

My life has become the dead skin left,

On the bushes stuck on a few branches

As the snake slithers away

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Mr. Mortgage browses poem

I browse poems,

Poet.org has unlimited of them,

On the search bar

I type, “financial advice”

And click into a poem, an author appears

Black and white, MRP photo

He looks me in the eyes

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A knot appears on my throat

that only goes away from crying.

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Asthma

A deep breath in

and fistful wheezing out,

“your chest is hitting all the high notes”

A doctor said when I was thirteen

The cold metal stethoscope

against my skin

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My parents rushed me to the ER

my chest had tightened like a knot

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The first time I had trouble breathing

I was eight,

But asthma wasn’t the culprit

rather it was a balloon,

I had inhaled the balloon

In an attempt to blow into it,

Immediately blocking airways

An eclipse rolling in my eyes

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The same image recurs,

When I think of my friend

passing away

Her refusal to go to the hospital

despite having a hard time.

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I lay unable to sleep on my bed,

The pale reflection of the ceiling

Marcel Proust was asthmatic as well

In a letter to his mother

He was pressed from embarrassment

to reveal his wheeziness to the guest

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I remember being embarrassed

when a classmate saw the

asthma kit in my pocket

before I could explain, she procured

her kit out of her pocket as well

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She took deep breathes on her wedding altar,

 in and out, perhaps it was nerves

I clutched my blue asthma kit

Inside my pockets, each time she took a deep breath

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I imagine my dead friend

standing on the corner  

pleading with me to go to the hospital

my eyes rolled up as I passed out

My father’s gaunt finger was like a hook

Fishing the balloon out-

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Loosening up the knot in my chest,

A melted balloon on the floor,

I breathe-

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3

Like, let’s abhinaya garau (review- kinda sorta I don’t really know)

Unlike any other rainy Saturday, the blue canvas of my umbrella, prints of periwinkle, dotted and sprinkled over it trickled with rain water, thawing a shallow pit down the steps of the entrance of the Kausi theatre as a crowd lined up (Junu from the crime youtube was also there lol). At the back of the line, a jar was placed on a table against the corner of the wall, a tag on it suggesting that it was designated for

“What’s the hurtful thing you were ever told?”

A girl ahead of me slid a parchment into the jar. A few minutes later I unethically slid my hands inside it, only to get the parchment. When I opened it “LOL” was written on it.

The play by Khathaghera Productions amongst many other things hits this exact sentiment of a Gen-Z or a late millennial right to the nail. If the play is labeled as a deep character study of a generation, then I would like to label it as an observant, relevant, and relatable one. Plagued with dark humor, TikTok, COVID-19, and a massive earthquake, the majority of the young Nepalese generation has somehow turned up for a sub-culture that suspends in-between indifference and immense fear, all cloaked under some kind of humor to cope with the pains of growing.

As a young adult, I found myself sitting amongst the crowd reluctant at first, reserved to laugh loudly at the jokes as the play opened up. On the stage, a group of youth was sprawled across the floor, engaging in a banter so disjointed yet streamlined. It carried the spirit of a conversation found in group chats, jumping on collectively directionless topics, always trying to find a footing, pickled with stupid questions, embarrassing statements, and lots of humor with an unavoidable undertow of sadness. The sadness deepens and visualizes more with poet Milson Rai’s transitions that speak of one getting lost within oneself, as every single character goes to sleep, so does their despair and noise, making one wonder where it actually goes.

The night seamlessly transitions to the morning, Naresh Gajurel on guitar and Shivaraj Joshi on the tabala, the musician duo’s work eerily sneaks up on you the most when it is absent. You realize the flavor, and the intensity it adds to the scene without really taking anything away from it. I would like to call it the right amount of salt to the tarkari!

“Bihana uthne bittikai existence dukhcha”, one of the cast (my friend Samaya) claims in the play as the cruelty and enchantments of habits are shown. The smoking, phone scrolling in the toilet, and bidet spraying, culminate with engaging choreography and movements. As an audience, I almost reached an epiphany on witnessing this mundane ritual we keep doing in our washrooms, the habit of it, and how it remains an allegory of how we go through life. The habit works as an anesthetizer, the flag bearer of “give it some time everything will be okay” which shall translate to habits making us numb towards both sufferings and pleasures of life.

The play picks up its pace after this, successfully being able to emulate the environment of a pickled bus, where the characters shout to khalasi, “Seat khai ta dai?” The chants of khalasi dai, almost sound like a parody rendition of Missy Elliot’s, “Work It”. But that could as well be my tone-deaf ears. The high-pack energy performance ends like a tired day, with the youth turning to pleasures. The sequence of the cast feeling each other doesn’t neglect the wants and desires of these young adults.  The visuals remain reminiscent to me of Camila Cabello’s 2019 AMA performance, with the sensuality and the conviction intersecting between both performances. However, the play managed to come off as an innocent confession rather than vulgar admission. It portrayed a pleading through an individual’s needs with as much clarity and urgency, bringing in a nuanced understanding of touch and loneliness.

The most emotional part of the play must be the exchange of dreams between the cast. Some were outlandish as “Nextflix ko heroine banchu”, some relatable as, “achar ko business garchu”, and most of them necessary as “Bau ama ko rin tirchu”. This particularly I believe was the heart of the show. I admit I myself did shed a fair share of tears during this. The show represents a Nepalese demographic that is often told that they have got it better than the previous ones, it precisely pierces on the experience of going through youth in a third-world country. The transition from a teen to a young adult is a compromising process in itself but with added stipulations of economic and political transgressions, it makes it a lot more complicated and frustrating. The habit of things makes us immune to certain uneasiness like the lines for bureaucratic work, the transport system, and the lack of governmental presence in health, education, and services. But the play is successful in showing how the situation of Nepalese youth suspends between problems that are real but not real enough, not yet. The anxiety of it however feels immensely paralyzing, it portrays the individual suffering that we take upon ourselves both in the form of fear of doing things and guilt of not doing things. What starts off as a commentary on the work culture, political disdain, and low-wage harassment shifts its shape like lucid dreams from observations to commentary and most importantly a hug to the audience.

I and my friend Yoko cried uncontrollably, maybe because the play made us feel seen. Normally these things are exchanged under an indifferent disguise of, “Zindagi jhand cha yaar”, but I feel the play provided a graph and room for these experiences to be indeed very personal but very universal at the same time.

The final acts from the play started to fold off, the cast doing what it does best, banters. (and choirs too) The incorporation of the tiktok dance, “badal barsa bijuli” and punchlines such as, “Is your surname gurung cause my heart does gadang gudung” really shine. One could accuse the play of banking on the relatability and internet culture but the play stripped out completely of it doesn’t stand skeletal either. The strong feeling of getting lost in early adulthood makes the point clear and concise enough to keep the longevity of the play evergreen.

The play is of an hour, which I feel is a highly reasonable timeline for our tiktok time span generation, the overlapped dialogues delivered by the cast and fully packed sequences in between them with choirs and choreo without any use of fancy production really made me cherish the play even more.

Serene fireflies are dropped as the cast sings and repeats,

“ma bhitra ma haraisake”

a testament that stands true for the audience who are equivocally invested in the play.

A day after the play, Yoko and I casually call each other from work and she asks, “Oye play ko name “like let’s abhinaya garum” kina bhayo taha cha?”

I ask her why.

“Because most of what we do bihana dekhi beluka samma is an act in itself”

My bus ride back home remained to be awfully quiet that day.

Go watch Like, let’s abhinaya garau, find new added show schedule here: Kathaghera-shows

a poetry collection: My little kitchen

A missing bird (police report)

Police report

Date of the report:  23/03/2022
Officer’s badge number: 887 
Suspect(s): The fat boy in the kitchen 
Date and time of arrest: 8 am 
Location of arrest: The Little Kitchen  
Nature of incident: Recovery of a dead body  
I responded to a call on March 23, 2022, at approximately 7:30 am. As soon as I heard a chirping sound from the phone call, I directed the call to our linguistic center’s bird language expert’s desk. Upon translating the call, it was found out that two sparrows were suspicious of a fat guy trapping a young bird in the kitchen.

The location given to us was a two and a half storeyed blue house with a red roof. Upon arriving, we met the sparrows leading us in the direction of the stairs and then onto a kitchen on the top floor, right below the terrace. The kitchen had a red roof, and its broad sliding windows were facing a small garden, a possible trap for birds to come by the balcony. The morning sun had yet to ripen in heat, and a feeble light fell onto the small garden, its shrubbery packed full of yam leaves, and foxtail grasses, providing shade to the loose cool black soil beneath, like a soft underbelly of the lizard. The periwinkles and a few roses accessorized dots of pinks and reds on the green shrubbery through and through. A couple of sugar canes and a guava tree over-looked them, climbing towards the full sun exceeding the height of the red roof.

The kitchen was empty, with a tiled kitchen counter, a sink, a dining table, and a kitchen rack. No suspect was found. However, after a few minutes of search, the stiff body of the bird was found right behind the rack, its body stuck and wings clipped in between the rack and the wall. It reminded me of the man who goes on a trek and ends up his arm stuck on a big rock. Entire footage of him, till he cuts his arm and gets out of there. He watches videos of life back in the city, billboards, cafes, and people. I wonder if the bird did think about its nestlings, its babies, the branches, electric poles, pulses, soil, and worms. I felt sick to my stomach, as I thought about soft bird muffles, as life escaped from its beak.    

In the meantime, the suspect was taken out of the shower and sat down for interrogation on the front porch. Officer B presented him with the lifeless body of a bird, the suspect closed his eyes in reflex to the flailing three slender toes across his face. The officer asked, “There was a dead bird there an entire time and you never realized?”   

The suspect nodded blankly.  

Upon his arrest, he asked a single thing, “Do birds have ears?”

6

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7

कुकरको तिन सिट्टी लागिसक्यो (मुर्म हाइक)

रन्थनिएको छेपारोको तालमा रफ्तारिदो एक मुठी स्वास

स्वासको मुस्लो सँगै फुल्लिएको छाती

लटरम्मै फलेका स्याउ जस्तै गाला

र मुर्म गाउँको टुप्पो उक्लने आश

लगभग मेरो कम्मरसम्म कद भएको

तर उमेरमा चाही निक्कै पाखो

रुखको भूतपूर्व हाँगो

बाटोमा गासिएको एकलौटो मित्रता: लौरो

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कठै! लौरो, मेरो ताते जोरमा जसरि तसरी मुर्म टप उक्लियो

ढुंगामा थचार्रिए म, लौरो चाही उभियो

पन्छी-आँखे दृश्यवन, तल बिश्राममा रहेको मुर्म गाउँ

मुर्म वासिन्दा र मुर्मका बालखे गीत मु

र्मका थिचिएका खरका छाना

गाई गोठ र कुखुरे बस्ती

घोक्रिएका बोकाका गायन

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मेरो कथित छुट्टिको बिश्राम

‘अलिक relax गर न,

 बिर्सिदे पिरोल्ने कुरा’ मनको सुझाव

तर आफ्नो नाम कसरी बिर्सु?

न नै बिर्सिए मेरो घरको आवाज

 इट्टे गोरेटोका नेपा-अंग्रेजी गनगन

‘हुन्छ नी like, हैन the thing is, you know नी’

“ओयॆऎऎए अशिम! के बसायिस यो? कुकरको तिन सिट्टी लागिसक्यो”

my mother’s scream cuts through

right here, right now.

कुँजिएका बानेश्वोरका ती गल्लीहरु

राजस्व बिभागमा मेरो टोकन पालो आयो कि?

फोनको टावर आउनासाथ क्रेडिट कार्ड म्याद समाप्तिको call पो आउने हो कि?

मेरो ९-५ जागिर, चाँदी जलपी कपालको बिरामी स्व्याँग

८८४८को बेलानाकार बोत्तल र साथीभाइका ठट्टा

चैत्रको छिप्पिएको घाममा छाले जुत्ताको पोलाइ र अनिदो आँखाको हेराइ

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दाते हिमालका कल्कि तिर

लम्किएको सुन्तले घामको छाया,

निला, शान्त जलाशयको मिठो निन्द्रा,

एक जोर भइ टासिएका बादलको संगठन

र यी विशाल सम्पदाको बीच

म केवल थोप्लो भएको आश्वासन

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मेरो लौरो साथीले म घरको यादमा भएको सोच्दो हो

तर यो लेखाइ, त्यो सोचाइ विपरित

कोरिएको सफल-असफल प्रयास…

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If only mirrors were half as kind as the soup. 

The streetlights are yet to go out,  

Tired from its night’s service, 

The shops around the neighborhood,  

Remains shuttered like a closed eye. 

The chirpings of the morning birds, 

Drown into the whistles of my pressure cooker,  

The white mist is identical to the fog outside. 

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When I take off the lid from the cooker, 

A boiling stew vapors off and settles on the windows, 

It saves me from cruelty, 

That my large side windows reflect-

My large silhouette, 

Stout body broadened and ballooned,

The shape of my face puckered into a puff,

While the thin, weak, un-toned arms dangle,

Unnaturally falling unto unflattering positions.

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I pour the soup into a serving pot,

My shadow is thrown from the kitchen bulb,

onto the soup, onto the pot. 

I pretend I have a flat tummy, a slim face,

Strong arms and thick neck,

I am seven feet in my little soupy world, 

If only mirrors were half as kind as the soup.  

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Russian Satellite

When the bodies fell

I fell too, slumped on my plastic chair,

An evening in my little kitchen.

I was reading a Reddit post,

a man from a war country

His last drink before a battlefield,

Watching over the disappearing streets,

Buildings cut in half, crushed with screams.

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I wonder if he recalls before the flash,

a silent stretching midnight cityscape,

Its lanes- thick, young, and green,

the main road, the swimming pool,

the theatre and the crest of hills.

The roofs and their building

Steaming, and curling for a midnight tea

Their windows level head silver moon,

Gleaning and glistening

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Then a sudden realization

in the midnight sky,

the dotted white portal opening

ungainly spiraling, materializing

a Russian Satellite,

the flash realized into an explosion

A video brims with screams from it,

I could feel it through my kitchen walls

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I wonder about the world’s indifference

Out of the kitchen door,

Whose back remains punctuated

with a metal hook, a hung lapel of

an office bag. It looks at me.

I look back at them with teary eyes

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8.

ch.