To occupy
Tear gas canister skidding off speed-breakers like warsaw pact skaters shining for the Motherland.
Except they didn’t tread the swamps, half-kneed
or wince at warlords farming shrimp inside fences
invisible
from satellite states.
They circled back: heroes,
cut queue at Mcdonalds
But where were the MoUs signed?
In double entendre:
I am alive, and so must be the lightbulb,
over the dock
flickering convulsions
Bagerhat in cold turkey
And. Pop.
Even if it is not my lightbulb.
To backstroke
Off canons,
even those descended from the mirage.
Chili had paraded back in January from its historic betrayal:
weighing European palettes with jungles,
the base of the tikka masala,
the banana leaf served as platter,
the bamboo timber hollowed for kung-pao.
Menus will spell out the Green Line
pruned from the yoke of the Raj:
Lobster Thermidor; Kacchi Biryani; Aloo Bokhara;
The Palestinian with the rock is the right of return.
The Bangladeshi hurling bricks is the riot begging APCs.
To indigenize
Peregrines at shahbag
Irrawadys at Gonobhaban
At the dais, with a fistful of rubber slugs,
let me repeat:
That,
The Pasur will leak electricity as the estuary peals off Mukti-Joddher Chetona.
The fishermen will be brides at Gaye holuds presided over by transmission towers.
The silt thrown up by dredgers will resurrect the crust of public housing.
The mangroves will have their roots beam entrepreneurial.
And that Humus will be the stepchild of coal.
—
