HANUMAN
I first mentioned Hanuman, the Indian monkey-god in the first poem in this collection, Fallen On Deaf Ears. We had been in Bali where we visited the so-called Monkey Forest. Here a pack of rhesus macaques preyed on tourists, relieving them of bananas and peanuts. The little ones were quite cute, but the big male leader of the band was an impressively dangerous looking ape. He chose to jump onto my back and proceeded to rifle through all my pockets. The guide was obviously a little concerned and cautioned me to let him have his way.
Later when I joined a poetry website called Eliteskills, I needed a nom de plume and my chosen one of Shaman was taken, as was my second choice, Herne, so I decided to use the word Hanuman. I became known to one and all as such and in a way Hanuman seemed to represent the blend of wisdom and mischief in my poetry really well.
For a couple of poems I actually assumed the persona of Hanuman. In 2005 at the age of 61 I wrote more poems as Hanuman than I had in the whole of my life previously.
Fallen On Deaf Ears
O Shiva, perceiver, many armed deceiver,
Why has thy charm left me, bereft me?
I hoped to be kept from harm,
My karma cherished in thy care.
You were where, when Hanuman
Worked monkey mischief as he can?
That rhesus piece of simian faeces
Leapt onto my back quasi-modo.
Thump he landed, parasitic hump.
My rabbit’s foot, my shamrock – it
Filched with long fingers
All talismans from my pocket,
My baby hair and locket, my caul,
My third eye from its socket.
He whispered in my ear to wound me,
To deafen and dumbfound me.
Hamlet hemlock in the orchard;
Worm in the apple eats my brain,
Ear pain, tormented, tortured.
Shiva of manifold embrace,
Enfold me in your healing grace.
Shiva, show thy shining face.
I had been submitting poems to the Eliteskills website for quite a while and assumed that my readers had formed an opinion of the sort of man I was. On St. Valentine's Day I sent all my female acquaintances on this website a love poem I had written in my youth. One young lady thought I was a dirty old man propositioning her! I left Eliteskills in disgust, but several of the members begged me to come back, in particular Kanupriya Das <kanu108@hotmail.com>, who sent me this poem he wrote about me and my poetry.
The Stories of Hanuman.doc
Hanuman Makes a Curry.
He asks forgiveness of the goat
And cuts the throat with a sharp blade,
Red sacrificial hands displayed
As he marks your brow with scarlet,
And opens your third eye,
That the angel of death might pass you by.
Only those that share this guilt of man
May share the meat of Hanuman.
The flesh is flensed, hands cleansed.
The muscle sliced and diced.
The bones are cracked for marrow fat.
Bone, gristle, marrow, sinew
All grist to the mill of Hanuman’s menu.
They will slowly simmer in an iron pot,
To render tender, jellify, intensify
The flavour of the savoury stock.
Hanuman grinds his spices,
The sour, the sweet,
The aromatic and the hot.
With lingam pestle and yoni mortar,
One grind for a son, one for a daughter.
He unwinds the yellow saris,
To reveal the onions’ pale beauty,
As he weeps to dismember them.
He peels and pares the pink ginger,
Strips the velvet from the antler root.
He breaks the white paper hymen of the garlic
And frees the sticky, hand-tainting bulbs.
He stirs and sautées them in ghee,
Mouthwatering expectancy.
All essentials in the frying pan
Turn to soft melting gold
In the alchemy of Hanuman.
And now he adds the spices
And bubbles and starbursts
Of odiferous aromatics pop
And illuminate our nasal passages.
Streaks of red and yellow lava twirl,
In the Charybdis caldera swirl,
In the frying pan of Hanuman.
The meat is added, seared,
Coated and crusted
With the spices, juices, essences.
The sounds and meanings
Synthesized in sentences.
Burnt offerings scraped and stirred,
Each element becomes a word,
Tossed and turned, integrated,
With association impregnated.
Hanuman now adds the stock,
A concentrate of experience.
The meat and spices seethe and swim
In a milky sea of memories,
In an ionic solution of problems,
In a colloidal suspension of disbelief.
A long slow reminiscing,
A stewing, a chewing of fat
That absorbs the soluble pigments,
The salient moments, the highlights
And iridescences of life.
And now the moment of truth.
Hanuman adds a handful
Of fresh green coriander leaves,
The love of growing things,
And a squeeze of sharp lemon juice,
The zest for the here and now,
And hopes to see his curry flavour
Please his guests and curry favour.
The Village Troupe
Langurs can be languorous indeed,
Only stirring to mate, eliminate and feed.
He stretches out each sleek grey limb
That his family might pick fleas off him.
The alpha male does his horizon scan
On habitual watch for Hanuman.
The sycophantic females groom at leisure,
Present their rumps to give him pleasure.
This is the troupe of the local village
Who enjoy all rights of loot and pillage.
Out in the desert is the bachelor clan,
The hooligan band of Hanuman.
The stuff of nightmares comes to town
To tear the former despot down.
The langur fangs are sharp and strong.
A new voice sings the victor’s song.
This is not a time for sentiment,
The massacre of the innocent.
Each offspring of the former khan
Is ripped apart by Hanuman.
Peace is restored that order reign.
The fickle females fealty feign.
Hanuman squats on his callouses,
Master of the monkey terraces.
Another of the Eliteskills members, who was a Buddhist found it difficult to believe that I was an atheist, so this poem was written to tease him.
The Monkey and the Monk.
Hanuman went walkabout
In the Indian dreamtime,
Stopping to rinse a handful of rice
In the Andaman Sea.
A technique he had learnt
From Japanese macaques,
Causing thereby tsunamis
Over most of the sub continent.
When once he trod the Deccan Traps,
Lakes of lava had flooded his footsteps,
Possibly the contributing cause
To the demise of dinosaurs.
But now he stepped gently on the land.
He walked to where India pushes
With her outstretched fingers
Against the protesting hand of Tibet.
One foot on Kachenjunga
And the other one on Everest,
He surveyed the high Himalaya
To notice everywhere small moving flecks,
Fly-dirt on the white-washed wall.
Sherpas staggered under loads.
Alpinists linked in piton-anchored loops.
Wild tahr and yak grazed the slopes.
One reddish blur resolved itself
Into a cousin from his evolutionary past,
Abominable yin-yang yeti man.
With his saffron robe and shaven skull
On one lone peak a monk, key figure
In our tale squatted like a baboon,
Freezing his balls into submission,
Subjugating all carnal desires.
On a rock a body sat, valiant
In meditation as he tried in vain
To forget the breast shaped mountain,
Keep phallus from phalanges,
Nor scent the secret source of the Ganges.
Curiosity is the middle name
Of any self-respecting monkey god.
Hanuman had not a whiff of shame.
He covered neither ears nor eyes,
But scratched his genitals in surprise.
Most Hindu Gods are aceydeecy
Or even plain hermaphrodite
And like his randy cousin bonobo,
He certainly had the appetite.
Instantly he assumed the guise
Of a voluptuous temple girl,
Extremely bas relief
From temples in Khajuraho.
Gentlemen, please insert at this point
Your favourite fantasy.
Our acolyte was already tense
From weeks of undue abstinence.
His will wilted but not his willy.
Avalanches rolled down the valley.
Lightning leapt from peak to peak.
Guerilla warfare broke out in the Congo
And Gibbons rewrote the Fall of Empires.
Later when the monk donned his robe
And contemplated the stained snow,
He was more puzzled than enlightened.
Had he espoused the monkey in each man,
Or was he led astray by Hanuman?
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