Hudson Valley readings

Yuyutsu R. D. Sharma,

one of the most distinguished authors of South Asia,

author of  The Lake Fewa & a Horse;  Space Cake Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America, Around Annapurna,

and five other books of poetry will read

                                                              photo by Patricia Seaton

* at 7:00 p.m. on November 5 at Noble Coffee Roasters, Rte. 207, Campbell Hall,

* at 4:00 p.m. on November 7 at Baby Grand Books, 7 West Street in Warwick,

* and at 7:00 p. m. at Morrison Hall, SUNY Orange, Middletown.

Enemies of Poetry

A monkey’s anarchic

hand tears apart

a weaver-bird’s nest

hanging like an embroidered dream

from the green

core of a bamboo grove.

A critic’s frog

eye dabbles with colors

of a rainbow of a poem

on a cold table of Establishment.

One-eyed baron

what would you prove?

that poetry doesn’t mean anything?

and that like the earth itself it is dying?

How many villages

of silences would you bulldoze

to build

an empire of lecherous tycoons?

How many mantras,

mountains and riverbeds would you

swallow to raise

reeking pyramids of audio-visual cassettes

compact discs and Internet

wherein like an ancient

king’s bejeweled mummy

a wail of poetry shall feverishly

stretch itself

for the restoration of a regime of written words.

A good looking career woman

shall rise out from a showman’s wet bed

and start putting

her makeup on for a bestseller’s blurb.

Enemies of poetry shall

first blast a poet’s

innocent, aerial hand

drawing pure mandalas

of lilting alphabets

on a crisp homemade sheet of paper

and laying the last

flower on the poet’s garve

shall switch

the color T.V. on.