Professor Alex Class: A Litany

by Shanti S. Tangri

I saw Professor Alex sleeping in his class
I saw his students sleeping in his class
I saw Seth Scheiner grinning in his class
I saw Lenny Lerner brimming in his class
I saw Sue Simmons fretting in his class
I saw Jane Jolly sweating in his class
I saw two lovers smooching in his class
I saw Dick Dooley drooling in his class
I saw some students cheating in his class
I saw his TA peeping in his class
I saw Professor Alex preaching in his class
I saw Ron Ramey weeping in his class
I saw Ruth Riley beeping in his class
I saw this janitor sweeping in his class
I saw Sarah Silver sneezing in his class
I saw Renn Rushdie wheezing in his class
I saw Erik Emmer scowling in his class
I saw Michael Miner growling in his class

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My Class in Poetry

by Shanti S. Tangri

Professor Trinidad, I had been told
Was a good and well known New York poet
I wanted to try my hand at writing
So it was, I took his poetry class
For this class we had to read Ann Sexton,
Elaine Equie, Tim Dlugos, Dorreanne Laux,
Ron Padgett, and Amy Gerstler, and others
Ten weeks have passed and I have learned a lot
But the syllabic verse in English is
Still not my cup of tea by a long shot.
We must write poems in standard form
So that we know a Tanka from Haihu
A Sonnet, Cento, a picture poem
A list, a literary, or a canto
Professors who teach require this and that
Some students resent what is required.

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Conversation

by Shanti S. Tangri

We cannot go on.
Why?
I will tell you…
But not now.
When, then?
Later!

The quiet blue of June
In a Jersey suburb
Drowned out the silence
Of imprisoned words.

July 11, 2010

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Comma Sutra: The Joy of Punctuation*

by Shanti S. Tangri

Sanskrit is East
It has no commas
English is West
It has no Sutras
But East and West
The twain has met
In Patricia T. O’Conner’s
Woe is I
Or should it be
Woe is me
As Ophelia cried
Asks Patricia T
Or shall I say
Patricia ji

August 5,2003

*Title of Chapter 6 in Patricia O Conner, Woe is I: the Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, Riverhead Books, New York, N.Y., 1998.

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Cindy’s Lament

by Shanti S. Tangri

My President called me Mom!
“Your son did not die in vain
in Iraq,” he said.
Mom? Like his Mom?
who said,
The poor folks in New Orleans
had such dreadful lives,
they would be better off
driven by Katrina
to someplace else.

I am Cindy Sheehan
the Mother of War
which may spread
to Iran,
Kurdistan,
or Pakistan.

September 25, 2005

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Camping in Costa Rica

by Shanti S. Tangri

I have long wanted to go to Costa Rica
to see its lovely people, beaches and forests.
But Friday evening
we talked about the Golden Gate,
Berkeley hills, fog, flowers, flower children.
The news was of heavy rains and floods
in Northern California and Nevada.

In the cold Jersey night
as I struggled with my insomniac mind
wandering through the uncertain
trails into the future
and our quests for our golden ponds
I heard the BBC anchor
questioning Costa Ricans
about their policies, practices
to preserve their rain forests.
I could hear the tropical birds
all the way through London fog.
But I could not see the stars.

Was it the tree canopy
or was it a tent?
How did we end up in Costa Rica? Camping?

I like your dream,
you said, the next day.

January 6, 2008

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An Empty Nest

by Shanti S. Tangri

for Bob Welch of the U.S. 1 Poets Cooperative

I had climbed the steps to your cozy nest
A few times, these past years

There were days when I would return
From a gathering of eagles in your nest
Having tried my wings and feeling
I was not an eagle, will never be an eagle
My wings were not strong enough, broad enough
To soar the way the eagles did
I could not see far enough, well enough
The way the eagles did
I could not cleave the clouds, the sky
The way the eagles did

Then I would remember your beaming face
Encouraging words for someone you hardly knew
And I would return yet one more time
To learn the way the eagles flew

I wish I had told you this
On one of those Tuesday nights
Last Tuesday night, after everyone left
To return to their nests
You left yours, for ever

Why do we wait, till it’s too late

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Calling Home

by Shanti S. Tangri

Whenever we called
she would say
Why don’t you ever call
Los Angeles is not that far
from Berkeley or Ann Arbor.

She was not my mother
But mother-in-law is close enough.

Long ago one evening
as the sun was lingering
in the Arabian Sea
I said good bye
to my distraught mother
as she wiped her eyes
on the docks of Bombay
and I sailed away
to a far away place
she did not understand.

Now she lay waiting
a shadow of her past
in the Indian Cancer Institute –
best in the land
in the heart of Bombay
to say good bye to me.

You have changed
she murmured, with an effort.
The mist in her eyes
did not say
if that was a complaint
or a change she liked.

She did not ask
why I never called
those eight long years.

Like most mothers
she did not have a telephone.
My letters, I know,
she could barely read.

She could have asked
why I stayed away that long?
Who is this American I was marrying?
Would she speak her language?
But she had more important things on her mind.

Tell the doctors, she said,
to let me go.

January 3, 2006

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Atheist’s Heaven

by Shanti S. Tangri

In his heaven
there are gods but no God.
The gods come
in all colors,
genders,
sizes,
temperaments,
skills.
Unlike God
who kills everything
everywhere, eventually
his gods
do not kill
(not on purpose anyway)
and take an oath
ABOVE ALL DO NO HARM
and some like Dr. Kevorkian
will help those
who would rather die
in peace and dignity
than live in constant pain.

They give prescriptions,
not commandments.
Both difficult to follow.

September 9, 2007

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Ardhangini

by Shanti S. Tangri

A man is incomplete
without a woman
says Hindu lore.
She is half (ardh)
of his limbs (ang).

Lovers feel that way
with intertwined limbs
each melding into the other
with the heat of passion
and unquenched love
their skins
and limbs soldered
into a throbbing oneness.

But the journey
of ecstasy
into mutual spaces
depends
on their separate existence
and vibrant uniqueness.

January 6, 2008

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An Infidel’s Prayer in a Snowstorm

By Shanti S. Tangri

The thunder said
let there be white
and it was white

All day and all night
it kept coming
piling up, two feet high

The cars, the streets
the telephone wires
the leafless trees
with burdened branches
were coated white
the rumbling sky
was shades of white
connected to the white below
by a quivering, punctuated
sheet of snow
or glistening ice

The rattling windows
of my Jersey home
kept that white
from obliterating
the warmth and colors inside
that February night

Snowbound, I watched
my color TV
with the monochromatic
scenes of the storm
the weatherman said
stay inside, and talked about
the wind chill factor
on New York streets
It made me shiver
in my suburban home

Sharon was dying in Israel
Pat Robertson was saying
God was punishing
the Prime Minister
for giving away God’s real estate
to the likes of Hamas (and Arafat)
Last year the hurricane
hit Orlando, Sodom city
The Mayor of New Orleans explained
the drowning of Louisiana folks
was testimony of God’s anger with sinful people
Katrina and Rita wrecked Mississippi towns

Osama bin Laden
came out of his cave
reminding us once gain
he can run, he can hide
and all the while
blow up Baghdad, and London tubes
or trains full of people in Madrid, Spain
to bring the kingdom of Allah
to the sinning hordes of
the Great Satan’s lands

An American journalist
pleaded for her life
as she sat under banners that proclaimed
God is great
held by people
who beheaded infidels

I saw angry crowds
upset by cartoons
about their prophet
who had preached peace
The banners said
God is great
Death to the infidels
Infidels will burn
forever in hell

A Muslim hell?
A Christian hell?
Hell, any hell will do
I thought

The thought of hell
felt so warm
so heavenly warm

I curled up
under my heathen quilt
and thanked the Lord
for making me an infidel
as I lay humming,

I know where I am going
and I know who is going with me.

March 1, 2006

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An Empty House

by Shanti S. Tangri

When you were not with me
the house felt empty
the furniture, the books, the paintings
the clutter in my study notwithstanding
space overwhelmed me.

When you were there
the house felt full
I wondered why
you said you know the reason.

You leave me in my room
playing, reading sometimes
moments later you hear my voice
from the living room
yet again, I am calling you
from the kitchen downstairs
or the den, your study
Every few minutes you hear me
calling you with yet another question
A four year old
can fill the rooms in any house.

Wisdom, I thought, came with age.

October 5, 2005

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Woodchucks at Camp Kilmer

by Shanti S. Tangri

Woodchucks must be leaping high
in the lilacs tonight
doing their mating dance
she said, let us go and watch.

We stood
breathing
the lilac moonlight.
Heady
with spring moon
and lavender air
we tiptoed across
a log bridge of sorts
over a gully and brush
near the abandoned tracks
of old camp Kilmer
which had sent
a million men to war.

You the freckled angel
with Irish blue eyes
whose baby feet
must have marched
to the rhythm
of a V-8
on the Connecticut shore.

I whose ecstasy grew
with the wondrous thunder
of a steam engine
cleaving wheatfields
on the Punjab plains
a long time ago
with eyes too big
for a child’s face.

I wondered half aloud
how many bridges
will remain uncrossed
as time turns into distance.

I am getting married she said
Next time don’t play so close to your chest.
It was the season for woodchucks,
Not us.

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To Touch a Star

by Shanti S. Tangri

All these years
I yearned
To touch a star
And call it my own
My arms alas
Were shorter
Than my dreams

And then, one day
As the night drew
Its velvet shades
Over my mind’s
Turbulent landscape
Cooling it
And the sizzling earth
With its honeysuckle breath

As I lay watching
The darkness extruded
Billions of tiny lights
Some dim, some bright
Some playing hide and seek
In the folds of the night

Grown up, I am grown up now
I thought
With my yearning gaze
I reached
To touch a dancing star
It broke,
Streaked away,
Got lost perhaps,
Swallowed by the dark
That had given it birth

I wonder
If the star
Will ever come back
While I can still look.
And if it does,
Will I know
Where to look?

November 4, 2002

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The Son of Man

by Shanti S. Tangri

You will find me buried
in the sands of Iran
I had marched once proudly
with a great Macedonian

You will find my bones
in the Hindukush Mountains
I had ridden wild horses
with wilder Mongolians

You will find my blood
coloring cobbled rough roads
the Romans had built
to Londinium town

You will see my ashes
in Hiroshima Japan
and my ghost still wanders
in the island of Bataan

Now I watch TV
and listen to a man
who swings his club
on the golf course green
The reporters have told him
of the suicide teen
who just blew up
some twenty odd lives
in Jerusalem’s streets.

He looked into the camera
and said with great calm,
“Everybody in the world
should stop being violent.”
Then with a pause
he asked that crowd
“Now watch this drive”
as he swung with might.

He is my savior,
my unelected leader.
He has promised to deliver
me and the world
from the axis of evil.

I will follow him to Mesapotamia,
or maybe Iran,
or old Afghanistan
or Musharaff’s Pakistan,
in search of the Taliban
and I will die all over again,
in distant exotic lands.

October 1, 2002

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Stories

By Shanti S. Tangri

His story
Is history
Her story
Has just begun
The children
The children’s story
Will have to wait
Till the grown-ups
All grow up.

September 8, 2002

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On Nearing Seventy-Five

by Shanti S. Tangri

Good memories
I have many
A good memory
I do not have

December 24, 2002

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Trimurti: Three Faces of God

by Shanti S. Tangri

From his holy high
The preacher spoke
All men are equal
Here on earth
As in Heaven
Women, he said
Are not men.

It was then
I went out
Looking for Trimurti
The God with three faces
Male, female, genderless
I had first seen
In childhood
In Elephanta caves
Off the coast of Bombay

Portuguese soldiers
A few hundred years before me
Used this God
And other sculptures
For target practice.

February 11, 2003

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I Wanted to Meet You At Ground Zero

by Shanti S. Tangri

Wise men taught me
To respect my elders
You sure are old
Much older than me

You’ve been there
From the beginning of time
Or may be even longer
You are kind and loving
And watching over me
They all said so

You used to do
Some wondrous things
The holy men say
In melodious tongues
And sacred words
Some carved in stone
In ancient lands

I sang your praises
With folded hands
On bended knees
In Sanskrit and Greek
In Hebrew and Latin
And Arabic too

Did all that singing
Put you to sleep?

When you get that old
Can you see at all?
Can you still hear
When so many call?

I cried for you
In the ovens of Auschwitz
I called your name
From the mile high inferno
Of the towering towers
Of the World Trade Center
Before I jumped
To meet you on
A New York Street
Where were you?

January 30, 2004

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To Love

by Shanti S. Tangri

Where there is conquest
There is no love
Where there is love
There is no conquest
Love is mutual
Surrender.

July 23, 2004

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Haiku

by Shanti S. Tangri

When I was very young
I was upset when she said,
“Gee, you look so young”

Seven decades plus
I am so happy to hear
You are not that old

Last spring she said
I will return in the fall.
Forsythia blooms alone.

On Juhu beach
We sang to the moonlit sea
The sea forgot us

When I was your age
I had been two years dead
Why complain my son

I went to pick some
Cherry blossoms from the sky
But it snowed all day

March 21, 2001

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A life has ended; life goes on

by Shanti S. Tangri

On June 11, 2003
I rushed down from New Jersey
To Washington D.C.

As I waited for him
My son pulled up
Driving her car
And stepped out
To the adjacent spot
I have bad news
He said
Mom died this morning
At 1:30.

We stood there
Locked in bonded grief
Conscious of the futility
Of words, all speech
At moments like these.

A car waited behind him
The driver staring at me
Wondering perhaps
Why two grown men
Stood in frozen silence
In a public parking spot
She needed so bad

Her looks were were insistent.
I pulled him away.
He wondered why.

I said something hoarsely
As we got out of her way
So she could have
Her parking space
And we could grieve
Some other place.

I write this today
On his 34th birthday
Remembering the coincidence
My mother died too
Around my 34th birthday
In far away Bombay
Of the same dreaded disease
Afflicting humanity.

June 19, 2023

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Follow me

by Shanti S. Tangri

He said
I will give you bread
The very life of life
I followed him
And I died

Follow me
He said
For I am the truth
And eternal light
I will deliver you
From evil
And evil doers
I followed him
And I died

Follow me
He said
I will give you liberty
And the joy of happiness
I followed him
And I died

September 30, 2002

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Isaac’s Complaint

by Shanti S. Tangri

Mother, did father tell

where he took me this morning?

Did he tell you why

we went to the mountain top?

Why did he not want me

to wake you up?

Why did he slip out

of the back door tip toe?

Did you see the kitchen knife

he took with him?

Mother, are you listening?

From this day on

I am never going to go

anywhere without you.

May 6, 2006

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