Three Poems by Sinchan Chatterjee
AI vs Sunsets
I pity and hate those who can still keep their eyes shut—
to the half-trampled heads poking out of the sand
the wild arms flailing out for help from the center of the desert,
the eyeless sockets that sprout cactus thorns—
and block their ears to the shrieks and screams of the flaming tongues.
I am trapped in a burning house with ghosts that cannot feel or fear the fire.
Once again I am dangerously surrounded
by no one, consumed by the black ocean of nothingness—
the impending doom of the robot-teeth nibbling away at the flesh of humanity,
making our lives so easy we find it hard to find anything to struggle for,
stealing our jobs, driving our cars, replacing our friends,
storing our secrets, pleasing our wives and kids, re-
placing us insidiously in the center of the black ocean.
The ocean swallows and spits me out and half-molten, I wade my way
across the waves to the shore. I wonder if I have seen through
too many shadows and know more than I should. I ask myself if
I am being paranoid or if the world really is going to shit, if our planet
is being bartered and pimped out to fund voyages to seek
new civilizations in space while we sit comfortably on our porches
and drink our beers on Friday afternoon
belching out for help because we could not cry,
watching the painted orange star
sink promisingly before our golden eyes.
***
Zelle or Paypal?
This one is on me: please, let me p(r)ay
for your sins.
9 to 5 to 5 to 9 to 5 to 9 to 5
every breath a blasphemy
every word a sacrilege
every sigh a puzzle unto itself.
Lonely lights lonely nights
lonely streets lonely planet
cold and lifeless bubbles
in a celestial star
bucks cup
sucks to hear that I’m sorry but
can you like Zelle me your soul real quick
oh sure we accept Paypal too
please just get in the queue
here, you can like scan this q(uee)r code.
They have polished the art
of holding
our oxygen mortgage
a lien bitten off of our alien dreams
until we have settled
the blood debt
with the last drop
dripping down
our grandchildren’s cheeks
jaws smiles eyelids dropping lower
with each instalment
sinking below
the down
payment.
There are no keys to these locks
guarding us from us
these chains we were born with
the luminous voice of this vo
luminous
voracious vortex
di vorcing
us
(twice)
from us (from us)
I from I, you from you
the unhappy marriage of text to
con
text
the untethering of the body
from the mind
the skull that holds no brain
the thoughts buried frozen
the a-lien ness of a lioness’s nest
all in alliance, trust
no one
but the frozen clocks
waiting for vengeance
waiting
to melt
to jam the gutters
to flood the guts
to burst the banks.
***
Immigrant Math
There is a silent abacus going zig and zag
in my head I am deathlessly haunted by ghostly figurines of numbers high like skyscrapers,
my soul stretched out on a multiplication table,
every digit stabbed with eighty five point three five knives,
I’ve spent the prime of my youth hanging ropes across my room to dry my laundry.
My brain pushes me to avoid eye contact with digits and measures,
this glass wall between me and the world too thick for my bleeding knuckles,
each price tag in this alien land hanging like a curse
looming like a milestone on the side of a highway, a traffic signal eternally red
mocking my wallet’s overarching ambition to reach for a slice of bread.
I am always only one storm away from being garrisoned into a tent,
a blank journal page scribbled with monthly scars of rent
dent-
ed into my skin
as I watch my brother’s wrist grow too thin
for his watch
pouring the last dregs of milkless coffee to douse the hunger flame,
I am sick of this daily game of throwing up at the same
smell of the last spoon of instant noodles from ten nights ago.
When the doctors took their oaths they did not pledge to save our lives.
There is no hospital to go to when your soul is catatonic
and on our daily pilgrimage to the large mirror downtown
we roam the streets mumbling hymns in praise of the devil
muttering lullabies our insomniac mothers taught us
and no one looks inside the vortex in our eyes or smiles at us.
In the churches they ask us to thank the heavens for the bounty
but our rain clouds above had been long sucked dry
before they were forever torn from our sky and
it is hard to pray when your throat is parched.
When we go to sleep we all have the same dream,
that we are all cows in a green grassy meadow
with no fences or faces,
without numbers or souls
filling our stomachs with nothing but the hope
of tomorrow’s sunrise.
