Rana Bose has written and performed hundreds of poems, in the Montreal writing and poetry scene. Currently he has settled into what he considers as an absurdist genre.
I Shot a .38
November 8, 2006/Jan 2018 Rana Bose
(or Skylight phobia) Version 2
I shot a 38 through the skylight
A neat hole, no cobweb
left behind.
Just an accident! I said,
No tension, no threat!
The cartouche,
Rose steep, parabolic!
Y=x2,
Reached its pungent peak,
1500 yards up,
Climbed down, slowly
passed a gaggle of geese,
headed south,
Erroneously.
Look, I said,
Confused!
Taking the cue,
From VP Gore,
who I’d just seen,
the day before,
On a group discount
at the Paramount.
It hit a neighbour’s clothes line
Flipped clumsy,
Resting gently
In the pocket of a kitchen bib,
used deftly,
by Ms. Turcotte,
who worked in forensics,
for a company,
She thought,
Could be basis
For a series, dark,
On BBC,
Called CSI, Parc!
Yes, Parc!
That rue they called Bourassa,
for a week, only.
She spied the hole in the skylight
With a telescopic sight
Made in Italy,
Calculated the impact and velocity
And determined me to be guilty.
She invited me for dinner
Gracious! I said,
But, dubious, mos def’ly.
She made carbonara, horribly,
And pastry, that was pasty
Crusty and oily.
I shuddered mildly
at her hospi-tality.
The blue neon lights,
the quivering maroon lips,
Was brand CSI.
Incredible! I said to her,
Feigning total intrigue.
I found the errant cartouche,
Sitting delinquent,
in an Akhavan sack,
And when she turned her back
I lifted it promptly,
Holding the 38 to her head.
I’m taking my cartridge back. Immediately! I said.
No trace!
She agreed politely
And I left quietly
Knowing she would,
Study my saliva on a plate,
For DNA, left behind.
Traces of skylight phobia,
in the ancestral blood
of my émigré utopia,
My parents arrived
in the dead of night,
in a boat from Sri Lanka.
Cosmology of Beat
July 30, 2005/Nov 2008 Rana Bose
(Beat waits for a revolutionary turn of events)
In the cosmology of beat
There are cars and roads
And curling smoke
Rising from black and grey,
Like Still-shots!
Still Shots of a village messiah,
Standing slouched,
Spouting slowly
On Wooster and Bleeker,
Mumbling!
Mumbling Sanskrit slokas,
Like Leroi Amiri Baraka,
A Lone gunfighter,
Pensive, in a loft up there,
Leans against a piano
That weeps and faints,
That weeps and faints
As he begins to recite,
The tale of his baptism by bop,
in a blackandwhite space.
In the cosmology of beat,
There are black steel stairs below
And there is the twist,
At the end of the martini,
Which sulks,
At the bottom
Of the glassy pit, empty.
In the Cosmology of Beat
The mind sits
Armed only
With a swizzle stick
Swirling the dust
From the Buddhist tantra
That make the cosmos
Sound like physics
gone to shit.
In the cosmology of beat
There is hope,
That the hum and the swirl,
And the chance that
A sound will emerge
and bulbs will sway
And faces will turn,
In corridors
Where whispers and chants
Once did reverberate.
In the cosmology of beat,
It is said that
Beats will come
In technicolour,
in ekta fuckachrome
beats from a bongo, a harp
a piano
and bo-beep
from a sax on the edge of the metro
that will tunnel down
and take you away
in a whoosh, instead of an om!
I Want Winter
2014
At this point I want winter back.
I want the mist above the snow on a river below a bridge.
And nothing else.
I want a lone piano player on a pier
whose end can’t be seen.
I want him to play single notes on a long bridge
with one note for one child
and nothing else.
I want the end of this summer of blood
Of colors, banners, grimaces, anger,
Of coiled, hissing vipers
Spitting on friends
Who stand up alone,
Against militia on 12.5 billion dole.
I want the mirth, the couches with beer,
the lawless in their patio, on a hilltop cheering,
foaming, darting around,
I want them Gone.
I want winter and nothing else.
I want an endless pier, a bridge,
A piano player, a hammer for a finger
playing one note for one child
And nothing else.
SIGH
June 2000
Pages dont turn till flipped,
Sighs dont’ heave, lips quiver first.
Leaves in the sky, flagpole in the mist,
tremble, waft, sail, drift, stutter
to rest at your feet.
I’ve sensed this dilemma,
as you sipped my wine,
sitting on a metaphor,
that was not mine,
that whatever you gave
was only for a time,
and not forever.
Man on a Rocking Chair in San Juan, May 2018
In San Juan I found a man,
rocking on his balcony,
the floors creaked,
the glaze in the gaze,
a daffodil stem
hanging from his lips.
I asked him,
was he truly,
An Independentiste?
He shot me a glance,
red in the eyes,
stopped his rocking,
spat in a can,
just to say
that for now,
all he wanted,
was his libertad,
a free man, with free choice,
that’s it, that’s all!
¿Entendí para nada?
In an ice-bound heaven,
the dream had been
suspended,
hung from a hook,
some years ago,
adjourned, deferred,
a concerto in repose.
An orchestra,
with bows frozen,
icicles hanging.
An epic,
with faces caught,
mouths open,
in a moment of despair,
“A la prochaine!”
With a tilt of the head.
As tears flowed,
it became a still shot
an interim movement
an opus for all.
But, here, in the alps,
in a village called D,
where the snow drifts
where pin-striped bellies
shake, vibrate,
sniggers abound,
decisions count.
GDP per capita goes Y-ways,
fixed,
Growth and debt goes X-ways,
fixed,
numbered accounts
And interest rates,
Z-ways, fixed.
No balconies,
no rocking chairs,
in this castle regal,
no one chews tabac,
limos drive in and out
tinted windows and
shadows inside.
Independence, my friend,
is like Capital sans Labour,
a flippant issue, perhaps,
but worth a note!
that sovereignty today,
Ça n’existe pas.
The polished floors don’t creak,
the daffodils don’t weep
“the wind whispers Mary,
after all the jacks are in their
boxes
And the clowns have all gone
to bed, “
Jimi says, so softly,
“There is nothing to sweep away,
As everything is already swept.”
The man from San Juan,
with the daffodil stem,
hanging from his lips,
the balcony creaks,
The chair rocks,
No man can be seen.