My new Chap book of poems from Virgogray Press

Shopping Mall

Here is the LINK for the poem Shopping Mall up at THE CAMEL SALOON.

The Season of Murder

Another poem up in Nostrovia! Poetry,here is the LINK

GrandLapin sent his signed photo

Twelfth Man

I do not remember it anymore
I do not remember the date anymore
but still April is the cruelest month
and on someday in April
my friend Subhash died of a heart attack
without treatment suffering at a free hospital
for eight long hours
the twelfth man who has no rights or claims
who comes and vanishes
falls on the way to be replaced immediately
by another.

Some-fucking-day I will drop dead here and nobody
will know, Subhash paused, his right hand up in mid air
and his fingers playing on an invisible piano.

Subhash was a writer who danced with
other little men in this
stark naked local hooch shop and melted
in thin air asking for a glass of drink
for he was all dry.

I do not remember the date
but still April is the cruelest month.

Another Ordinary Day

My new E-chap book of poetry Another Ordinary Day is now available from Ten Pages Press as their 31th offering.

Here is the link.

Pic taken in a cafe in Plaka, an old poetical neighborhood under the holy rock of Akropolis, in Athens.

Recent Works

My recent works


Horror Sleaze Trash


Carcinogenic Poetry


Full Of Crow's Quarterly Poetry


Danse Macabre


Graffiti Kolkata Broadside

Once More In Favor Of Lucy And All Radio Stations

[ I just found this long lost translation of my poem done by Basant Rungta during a rooftop poetry reading I did for his organization Srijan on May 29, 2003.]


At least you know Lucy,
How dangerous was our morning
When our veins were bursting, as if yanked out
Lips were not just grazing but delving,
discovering mysteries of each other
Like water discovering water
You were a face, Lucy
and a lot of clouds
And it would be unfair to call them all just water
They were smoke which had frozen
And houses upon houses
How shadows – walked up to you, readying themselves
All that searching all the waters of the morning
On our florid and blushing skins
Which, if burnt by rain,
colors will cover again
But even then, all those life-long angers
might talk of that burning, that arson
and to master that burning, harness its powers
The blood flowing in streams
on guitar-strings
would have to be licked clean
All those clouds, their lumps
have now lifted their veils and fled
Such is the fun of staying alive
Which means
that the mile-long nets woven by the veins,
have not learnt to fly
Are tied to keys of the guitar
And from out of the stomach emerges that very tree
Its roots and shoots
From the mouth grow branches
which peep out and look
From the eyes, pour leaves – exalted in glory
It would be unfair if they are called just water
Maybe all these are words – not flesh and bones
Maybe these are births, being born
Which cannot be sent to you
through broadcasts from a radio station

getting late

I hate this telephone ringing
in the morning,
either it is some agents calling for
repayments of unpaid bills
or news of some little man
jumping out of the window.

I was waiting for the tube
when this girl comes up
and asks me what time it was.
The train was running late by 5 minutes.
I am getting so late she said
and walked away towards a
huge standing fan.

Her hair flying dancing
and I could hear the rumbling
of the train approaching.
When it was a few yards away from us
she jumped
trying to reach for the third rail.
The train screeched to a halt
but by then it was too late.

I came out of the station slowly.
It will take at least an hour
before everything becomes normal again.

Canton Chalk Walk and Street Poetry Readings, July 1st, 2011 and more...

It all started last year when poet Christina Brooks started chalking some poetry outside her house in Detroit and this idea caught on and finally became Canton First Friday's CHALK THE WALK event. A group of poets assembled as a street team gathering at the offices of Citizen X (publisher of BRsq.org) at 2:00 on July 1st, 2011 to collect chalk and poems and then heading out to cover the art district sidewalks with lines of verse!

It is a great honor for me to be able to join this group for this event, though physically I was on the other side of the world but I could still share my poems with them and support this venture. Cheers !!!!






let the phone ring
i am not getting up
let the sun burn my legs
i am not pulling the shades down
trying hard to finish this dream


For more photos of the event click here.

Animal Farm 2 — Remixed

New poem up at Horror Sleaze Trash

A city all alone

My new poem up at The Camel Saloon
The Bangla version of the poem will be in the new issue of Prathamata, a Bangla Little Magazine from kolkata.

From Poland With Love

Life is not full of rejections only, a few acceptance also helps. Like this photograph from Poland with love made my day.
I have a few poems up in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum
Nothing. No One. Nowhere.
Guerilla Pamphlets

Foucault’s Pendulum

How are you
Are you still a bird
Or a deer of the dawn
Jumping the red blue signals
I search for my forest
Thickets, under woods, nook and corners
Are flushed with the sun
The forlorn noonday of the city
Are so far away from me
As if they are crossing the border everyday
I put the shadows and a tiny piece of memory
Of this sea afloat


A sms like this an emptiness in this stark sunshine
Just cannot take it anymore
Just think a whole sea or a bunch of dry bindweed
Drying up on the table
Which the deer’s might come some day to eat
Flaring up and down red blue of the city
Maybe are casting their shadows
Images of dry sweat and the salt of the water
Of naked chaotic lane by lanes getting stuck
While trying to make way brushing past
 The continuous prattle of other memories
And a safety pin of a time of split-colours
Dangles like a pendant


......................................

Now in Italian translation

Grassy Days and Nights

This city will never see the birth of a forest.
I am sitting baffled keeping the picture in front
that you painted on a ruled sheet of paper
with your first blood chants.


How should I stay like grass without being a lover?
How would I press a soft pillow? How would I
drill in wild rock notes into my brain and ears?
Cigarettes would burn out with dreams, existence and solitude,
At one go all will die and sleep down in my guts
without protest.


This is the only bit of memory and rest of the fragments
the loves between the arteries and veins
the glory of the foliage have disappeared,
or everything fell off, rotten and putrid
those sunny days those softness of the little warmth.
I hid the water and those few days which I found by chance.
I have nailed those on my breast in fear of losing them,
And this city, the city’s wrong doing and
rehearsals of life and all those shades and shadows,
our pretension to live.


This city will never see the birth of a forest.
Probably it was born like a day stuck
to a finger like the fragments of a dream
the inevitability of a long sleep
which had no beginning and end.
Life surely will hunt you down one day.


Subhankar Das

The Streets, The Bubbles Of Grass # Reviews

The Streets, The Bubbles Of Grass by Subhankar Das

The Orange Spotlight: Subhankar Das
jason - Posted on 15 December 2010
WHAT TO WEAR DURING AN ORANGE ALERT?

“No routes are left open except to swell the ranks”

Receiving and reading through this collection has been an advanced exercise in the importance of experiencing and understanding other cultures. It is vital to reach out beyond your basic circle, beyond your state, beyond your situation, and beyond your country to discover what you are missing. It may be a buzz phrase, but it is important to be culturally aware. Subhankar Das has been an advocate for and thriving member of the Bangla poetry scene in India since the late eighties. To my eyes, his words are fresh and urgent, foreign but familiar, and an education in culture with every line.

In his latest collection, The Streets, The Bubbles Of Grass, Subhankar uses his craft to all at once subdue and insight. He conjures up images of street life, of nature, of a life filled with living and dying for the word and what it represents. The collection is both personal and universal. I feel this is most clear in the poem “Distance”.

“My wings. Wings. My wings. Because there is fire in the wings- the bones of the featherless wings are flying in the wind. Just now, they would lie on this paper. Side by side. My wings, my bones, my hair.”

The piece begins with this line “Does not matter whether it Subhankar or no Subhankar. Carrying my own corpse like this.” For me it does matter, and I am thankful that Subhankar has traveled this distance and his papers and thoughts and troubles and dreams have landed on my desk.





Dye Hard Press Review
POSTED BY GARY CUMMISKEY


The Streets, The Bubbles of Grass is the latest collection of poems by Subhankar Das and is published by Graffiti Kolkata.
While Das may have abandoned the Burroughsian cut-up techniques of his earlier work and embraced an indigenous approach to language - turning more to the influence of Jibanananda Das - there is still an unmistakable post-modernist approach at play, whether in prose poems such as That Boy, Old Rust and Sailor's Song, the mixed forms of City Blues, or the longer verse works such as A Little More Than The River Khorkai.

As Santanu Roy writes: 'Subhankar's style departs from the conventional wisdom of poetry and anti-poetry. All such margins are being challenged and the reader is finally led to the magic stairs of open text.'

Fire Water

Check out my poem which is now up at The Camel Saloon

Poetry Reading, A Photo Collage

I was in Stockholm to read my poems and show our films directed by Sharmy Pandey at Kulturhuset.The Swedish poet Boel Schenlaer read some of my poems, translated into Swedish by Boel and Henry Denander.Photo courtsey and a quick sketch by the Poet Henry Denander.