SAMPLE POEM:

Angel loitering among the living dead: a performance poem  dedicated to Sara Shagufta

Prologue: This poem was a part of a performance called Politics of the Pigment. The title of this poem has been inspired from a quote of John Xiros Cooper: And with the disappearance of a favourite building, or space, or the place where you once saw the angel loitering among the living dead, a small part of your memory vanishes, there isn’t some dramatic alteration in your well being. It isn’t one more piece of theatrical distress in a life of sustained self-display. It’s just a bit of an empty feeling, merely a private awkwardness and no more.

Don’t tell me not to be black

because in all fairness I am entitled to be dark and will remain one all my life 

mocking the fairness cream regime

not allowing the two cucumbers touch my bushy eyebrows

Don’t tell me not to black

because

I have almost killed Desdemona

and the director has dropped the curtain robbing me of the innocent pleasure of smothering her death in front of a live audience

she is gasping and alive

Now, that the opportunity is well and truly lost

I am about to kill myself

By the way, I am the unfinished, unflinching, uncouth Othello

stranded alone on-the-stage-not

knowing what to do 

Don’t tell me not to be black

because I am already so

and all the methods of attempted whiteness suck

Because, the black actor in a black play has a democratic right to remain black

and still try to convey a sense of whiteness to the audience

using his

black dictionary

black atlas

black world list

black pocket notebook

II 

The actor playing Iago has long gone back home

leaving traces of bad blood

And I am standing alone on stage

with empty rows of seats in the front trying to figure out

why what and how

III

Marley’s Redemption Song fills up the empty auditorium

The cyclorama plays out black gods

Dark icons

Old cover pages of Ebony

Snapshots of Benin

Stills from Togo

Jumpcuts of Somalia's Civil wars

IV

A blue note from Charlie Parker wafts in and disappears

V

the auditorium is now turning upside down

filled with uninvited jumpcuts of a black and white mysteriously appearing on the screen

Western corporations and their lust-for-oil tales

Lullabies of Steve Biko slowly becoming a scream

Blinded Uncle Tom searching for a cabin in Darfur

Smells of Addis Ababa

Mugabe’s deceit

AIDS orphan holding my hand in Burkina Faso

Frames of oppression that haunt the old banana republics

Whispers of the Pickscale massacre victim

Paul Robeson's voice booming Ol’ Man River

Killed elephants, blood diamonds

VI

and the lost sailor

with the sunken jaw recollecting

memories of the Mombasa of yore

Pulsating rhythms of Yossou N’dour

The bass notes from Erkaya Badu’s voice

The grim AK-47 in the Mozambique flag flying high 

Hey,

Don’t tell not to be black

Because I am already one

and not that it is too late to change

But I am convinced that I won’t

Don’t tell me to plastic surgery my history

Don’t tell me not to be black

because I am entitled to my darkness 

VII

Don’t tell me not to be black

because my thick black lips are an island

which you want to bite and dig as a memory of the lost lust

because my big black breasts are

where you want to hide your white hangover

because my big black bums dance to your hip hop remixes

much much better than your wide white bums

because it is my turn to tell you

that I am reclaiming

memories, civilisation, mountain, seas, river, angst

and when I open up my black arms

I encompass all the universe

yours and

mine

VIII

Do you see my bloodied resurgence

No, you obviously don’t

You are counting the number of me that you have killed

And then have pulled a white bed sheet over my countless dead bodies

And I am counting all that blood that fell on the floor

And spawn countless immortal Raktabeejs  

Put your head next to those black legs coming

out of the white bedsheets in the morgue and

you will hear the 18th century

Telegu writer Nareyanappa saying:  

look here dear fellow

A new fish has come into the water that sustains us

Drinking our own source of life

Leaving us with this barren wasteland 

IX

The hall is being closed…I, Othello, walk away from the proscenium

into a barren wasteland figuring out all kinds of Africa

All kinds of Desdemonas, all kinds of Iagos

And why I still want to remain

jet-black, pitch black, coal black, charcoal black, pure

black

Pure magic

I have opened up my black legs

Are you game to make love

to my private and public darkness?

X

or you are still confused between your attempted liberation and the omnipresent libido

- Parnab Mukherjee