Space cake, Amsterdam and other poems from Europe and America
EMPLOYING A SURREALISTIC BLEND of Asian mystic and worldly Beat adventurer — worthy of a Ginsberg, a Corso, or a Tom Wolfe — Yuyutsu RD Sharma invades\ the lowlands of Amsterdam with its concentric circles of SpaceCake consciousness, then sojourns through Europe and back to the United States, romping like a Hindu gargoyle
spreading poetry and passion wherever he alights. Sharma’s poems celebrate mind-altering perspectives on politics, social foibles, riotous living, and the hopeless giddiness of depraved and damaged humanity in the urban sprawl of tanking economies. In Sharma’s stanzas, the melancholic shadow of a shaman living life towards its ubiquitous
overflow passionately unfolds. In lines concealed by humorous overtones, the dark truth of decaying squalor is suspended like the husk of a fly in the spiraling web of conflict created by the Lost spinning smoke rings around tales of their past glories. Like Diogenes peering through a glass darkly, he seeks out garrulous men and beckoning women straight from the plays of Synge—their souls dead, their teeth chattering, plated in fools gold. Sharma writes,
“Later in the bar as I stretched / folds of her skin back on her luscious face // years receded
into / the faint drawers of my age, // time stepped down / the ladder of my lifespan, // a monkey-thief / in my youth’s backyard. …
Her tongue curled like a dry leaf in my ear / and crackled, ‘How much did you take, / just a piece? I took thirty-eight grams once. … / You can pat my back, /tickle my belly or stroke my breasts / for awhile, if it comforts you … // it can be heavenly, / licking the rim of the forbidden frontiers of human life.”
The surreal tension of a man from the highest point on earth reveling through the eros and addictions of those from one of the lowest produces poetry that captivates and compels the reader to transcend the moment of spiritual impact like a lotus exploding from a lion’s heart. Sharma’s poetry frees us from the mundane tribulation of karmic oppression of day by day struggle, elevating us to view the world with the third eye of the shaman, to find the 10,000-eyed serpentine Buddha laughing in the midst of psychological pandemonium.
HOWLING DOG PRESS, 2009, POETRY, $18.95, 6”x 9”, 109 pages, softbound with
double covers, black inner, full color outer; color endsheets; Designed & edited by
Michael Annis. Artwork by Henry Avignon & Michael Annis.
ISBN: 978-1-882863-95-2. Reviewers contact publicity@howlingdogpress.com.
Ordering: www.howlingdogpress.com/Publications/Pub
review copies by e-mailing, or by regular mail on publication letterhead.
For radio, television, internet, and print interviews, contact Michael Annis at
970-231-8106 [in USA], or by e-mail at publicity@howlingdogpress.com
EMPLOYING A SURREALISTIC BLEND of Asian mystic and worldly Beat adventurer — worthy of a Ginsberg, a Corso, or a Tom Wolfe — Yuyutsu RD Sharma invades\ the lowlands of Amsterdam with its concentric circles of SpaceCake consciousness, then sojourns through Europe and back to the United States, romping like a Hindu gargoyle
spreading poetry and passion wherever he alights. Sharma’s poems celebrate mind-altering perspectives on politics, social foibles, riotous living, and the hopeless giddiness of depraved and damaged humanity in the urban sprawl of tanking economies. In Sharma’s stanzas, the melancholic shadow of a shaman living life towards its ubiquitous
overflow passionately unfolds. In lines concealed by humorous overtones, the dark truth of decaying squalor is suspended like the husk of a fly in the spiraling web of conflict created by the Lost spinning smoke rings around tales of their past glories. Like Diogenes peering through a glass darkly, he seeks out garrulous men and beckoning women straight from the plays of Synge—their souls dead, their teeth chattering, plated in fools gold. Sharma writes,
“Later in the bar as I stretched / folds of her skin back on her luscious face // years receded
into / the faint drawers of my age, // time stepped down / the ladder of my lifespan, // a monkey-thief / in my youth’s backyard. …
Her tongue curled like a dry leaf in my ear / and crackled, ‘How much did you take, / just a piece? I took thirty-eight grams once. … / You can pat my back, /tickle my belly or stroke my breasts / for awhile, if it comforts you … // it can be heavenly, / licking the rim of the forbidden frontiers of human life.”
The surreal tension of a man from the highest point on earth reveling through the eros and addictions of those from one of the lowest produces poetry that captivates and compels the reader to transcend the moment of spiritual impact like a lotus exploding from a lion’s heart. Sharma’s poetry frees us from the mundane tribulation of karmic oppression of day by day struggle, elevating us to view the world with the third eye of the shaman, to find the 10,000-eyed serpentine Buddha laughing in the midst of psychological pandemonium.
HOWLING DOG PRESS, 2009, POETRY, $18.95, 6”x 9”, 109 pages, softbound with
double covers, black inner, full color outer; color endsheets; Designed & edited by
Michael Annis. Artwork by Henry Avignon & Michael Annis.
ISBN: 978-1-882863-95-2. Reviewers contact publicity@howlingdogpress.com.
Ordering: www.howlingdogpress.com/Publications/Pub
review copies by e-mailing, or by regular mail on publication letterhead.
For radio, television, internet, and print interviews, contact Michael Annis at
970-231-8106 [in USA], or by e-mail at publicity@howlingdogpress.com
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