Sunday, August 30, 2009

Painting: Still Life in Oil

Painting: Mixed Media

Painting: Abstract Acrylic 3

Painting: Abstract Acrylic 2

Painting: Abstract Acrylic

Picture: Asoke and Bharati with Sahid Parvez

Picture: Asoke and Bharati with Prakash Karmakar

Picture: Asoke and Bharati with MF Hussain

Picture: Asoke with Stefan Galvanek

Picture: Asoke and Bharati with Krisna Basu, Shuvapeasanna, Ganesh Pyne, Shipra & Swati Gangopadhyay

Picture: Asoke & Bharati with Sunil & Swati Gangopadhyay

Picture: Asoke and Bharati with Shankha Ghosh

Picture: Asoke and Bharati with Shankha Ghosh, Mrs Ghosh & Debesh Roy

Picture: Asoke and Bharati with Shankha Ghosh

Picture: Asoke with Cuban National Poets, Nancy Morejon & Pablo

Picture: Asoke at Krittibas with IFPR

Picture: KRITTIBAS second anniversary with Buddhadeb Dasgupta

Picture: Asoke with Joy Goswami at Shuvaprasanna's home

Picture: Asoke and Bharati entertaining Nancy Morejon & Allison Hedge Coke at their home

Picture: Asoke with Cuban National Poets, Nancy Morejon & Allison Hedge Coke

Picture: Asoke booklaunch with Bejoylakshmi, Debkumar Basu & Sunil Gangopadhyay

Picture: Asoke entertaining Joy Goswami at his home

Picture: Asoke & Bharati entertaining Sunil Gangopadhyay at their home

Picture: Asoke receiving Bookfair-Utsav Award

Picture: KRITTIBAS Group in Bangasammelan, 2008, Toronto, Canada

Picture: Asoke with Tejendranarayan

Picture: Asoke with Shuvaprasanna & Chntamani Kar

Picture: Asoke with Dagar Sahab & Sujata Maitra

Picture: Asoke with the Emperor of Sarod

Picture: Asoke with Krisna Chattopadhyay

Picture: Asoke with Rooshi Kumar Pandya

Picture: Asoke with Suchitra Mitra

Monday, August 17, 2009

Poetry: The Gun and The God:

Now, in this coffee cup
Bush and Putin float to the top.
Heated talk over
Blair's prostitution.
They fly with coffee mist.
We hear lies, we hear bluff.
Middle east will be free
starting from Tigris, Euphrates.
So the bombing is sacred.
Are you a terrorist?
Boys , we are at the doorstep of twenty first century.
The crusade and Jihad are well alive
by guns, by the name of God.
Hundreds of thousands life have been destroyed.
We know for sure, these are the traitors,
war mongers, insurgents, terrorists.
I am America, I am America, I am.
Our men are the leaders of civilization
The most modern people.
We have the peace bomb.
Your bombs are not that peaceful.
By the name of humanity,
our peace bombs kill humanely.
Your bombs are not that humane.
Still, oil pipes travel over countries
piercing the hearts.
Bush, Putin and Rumsfeld
rape our realm of sanity.
In this meaningless coffee cup
raising storm is useless.
The lamb has been sacrificed, long ago.
I shall have my dinner now, delicious fillet mignon.
A Cohiba with scotch after.
It is not the Bush, not the Blair.
We are the bastard children
of the pseudo intellectuals.

Poetry: Waiting

The train passes through the evening
passes through the sound.
This nothingness,
I am sitting with
face to face
alone.
Tranquility,
above my head
a sky, full of baby stars,
quiet.
In the mist, at the doorstep of nature
I ask for forgiveness,
humbly.
May I have a little more time.
Indebted
I wait.

Poetry: The Peace Dove of Picasso

Come oh peace, have a sit.
Here is the easy chair for you on the porch.
Oh peace, Om peace in every household.
Oh peace come with the shower of bombs,
Be indifferent when the virgin girls are raped.
Oh! you clever peace dove
having your nest in Yankiland.
We need oil, need wealth, want to buy the peace.
Oh my guileless, dear dove, the mafioso of peace.
We will distribute it with proper doze
as per country, time and per persons.
We know the mantra of ginning and carding
to seize you by the neck.
Your tummy will make drum beat,
you will realize the sea of tranquility.
The Picasso is on the wall--Jamila khatun.
The murderers are singing peace song.
Let's cover quickly
the painting of Guernica in U.N.O.
Here the peace dove is bloodied. Dead.

Poetry: Pompeii

Dawn.
Cappuccino. Aroma of Amalfitana.
On cobbled path
fishermen talk gently.
Eduardo opens his fruit-stall
a quick brush stroke
of Cezanne.
Old men with cigars and coffee
talk gently on Italy; news.
Behind smoke
they look like frescoes from Pompeii.
The morning arrives.
Birds cry
they have day-long fights ahead
sparrows are busy
to picking at bread morsels.
What's the day today?
Saturday, Sunday?
The sea does not remember these trifles.
Yet, everyday
the sea awakes the sun
the mountain awakes the sun
flowers bloom,
seagulls stand on submerged stone
these stones are waiting there
for millions of years.
They have travelled so far.
From Terre Del Greco
the winding road leads north.
El Visuvio sleeps,
but the people are awake.
The sacred old evenings are
burned to ashes.
The flow of black volcanic rock
sleeps like the spring of death.
By the shadow of the volcano
under the bush
lovers explore
the heat of volcano
from each others body.
El Visuvio may erupt?
Ti amo Ti amo mia cara
Ti amo Ti amo mio caro
Down below they see Pompeii.
Sofia Loren
with huge eyes and teasing smile
calls for the sea.
The Monalisa with real flesh and blood.
The sleepy town waits
under the feet of the Empress
like a puppy.
Sun riped young girls' bodies
caressed by sun for the full day.
They are back to their home.
Those sun-perfumed bodies
learned the whisper of waves
The small boats
on the top of the waves.
They bob.
They deal with sea, in their room.
Together,
the mountain and the sea
rap a light ash color blanket
on the bloody face of the sun.
Somewhere a piano plays
the tune flies to the horizon
like a bat
in the vast opaque darkness.

Poetry: On the Eve of Sixty

The party is just over.
The smell of food and perfume lingers.
A piano solo by Dinu lipatti
in a quiet melodious tone.
Is it Bach?
Who cares; it is good.
Whatever I got the first day,
still I have it.
I don't blame it on that
fast swimming sperm,
who own the lottery.
Neither, do I blame the ova who accepted it.
I don't question, whether I was born
out of love or lust.
I don't blame and I don't thank either.
Thank who?
The birth is just one of the billions of billions
of incidents which happened
sixty years ago;
I didn't have any control.
Does life has any meaning?
It is a stupid question,
because life has no meaning.
Seventy, eighty, or ninety years
over twelve billion
is a pitiful fraction.
We exist, by chance,
that is a miracle by itself.
We exist because the Big Bang
happened at a precise moment;
with a precise velocity.
The rest are chains of incidents,
I didn't control them.
Life has no meaning.
We do not exist.
Yet we do.
Tomorrow I will be sixty.
"You look amazingly healthy...
Gosh! You don't look your age".
Myrna said, before she parted.
As if it is almost a sin to look amazing.
Maybe I will conjure some
sophisticated wrinkle on my face,
to make me look dignified.
A little sad and complaining face.
It might make me more acceptable to her.
Hell no, what I am I am.
I don't control ninety percent
of the incidents around me.
It is like an organism, keeps happening.
The rest of it is my own creation;
I claim it, because it is mine.
This, by itself is a hundred percent me.
Life has no meaning.
We put a meaning into it.
This is how we exist, justify.
Our ten percent
becomes ninety percent,
This evening, I received a beautiful
bouquet of flowers.
Now it is slightly dry and limp.
The fragrance is still there.

Poetry: Nebuchadnezzar-2007

let there be
an enchanting garden
the great emperor
points his almighty finger-
a hanging garden,
unreal but true
a lake with swans.
those hanging gardens
of Nebuchadnezzar
almost forgotten,
with dust over time
now a living fossil,
long gone
the birds and the trees..
for hundreds of years
tear-flow of Tigris, Euphrates,
took comfort
from the salted sea
dead sand, merciless
yet hot
a remnant of love and pain,
labor and mistakes.
well below, beneath the sand
there flows a bloody river.
cold, black and mindless
under the sky
arrogance collides
with greed and power
our humanity
compassion and love
bow to those wishes
in the kingdom of
impossible hanging garden
a drama unfolds
mocks the civilization
of the twenty first century.

Poetry: God is deaf and dumb

Iraq (2003....)

The innocent eyes of the child
rebuke God.
He has no hand,
daisy flower snatched them.
Never will he touch a woman's body.
Never will he know
what softness, what warmth means.
His both legs are lost;
he has no sole.
From under his feet,
the earth has run away.
He will never make his footprint
on the grass in morning dew.
Don't look into his eyes,
you will be ashamed.
Spellbound, they pose chilly question,
surpassing his pain.
God is deaf and dumb.
Before his death,
he bowed to the boy,
asked forgiveness.
The children of God,
laugh easily
after burying God.

Poetry: Don't drive in the Nail

( St. Andrew's air base, 2003...)

Why are you draping the coffin
with a national flag?
Oh, please, please do not drive in the nail.
Inside the coffin it is dark and damp,
no light, no air.
Jimi is prone to cold.
He called two days ago,
"I'll be back in a few days
saved some money."
Before he left,
I kissed the scar on his forehead.
"Take good care of yourself,
and call me often,
or I will be worried sick."
Jimi laughed and said, "Don't worry mom,
I'll be back in a few months
when the war is over."
Jimi turned twenty two last March.
Oh, please, please don't drive in the nail.
I know, Jimi is alive.
Startling me with bombshell kisses
he will say, "Mom, I love you"
and laugh.
I am sitting,
waiting on the porch,
alone,
to smell his sun-drenched body.

Poetry: Come

come, eat yourself
drink your own remorse
your rainfall
when the heart inflates
like a distressed frog.
why wait?
why wait for rainfall ?
look inside
there are streams
not barren
not yet
this is the landscape
want an umbrella ?
how do you escape a flood ?

Poetry: Autobiography 2

Frequently, a train passes by
through my head.
I never know where it goes
I feel the vibration lingers.
Someone flies a kite inside me.
I don't recognize his face
but I see the kite
is kissing the blue sky.
A kind blacksmith wants
to shape my heart.
He makes it red-hot, to forge.
The anvil melts,
he tries to quench it
the heart breakes into pieces.
She boasts
she has eleven vaginas.
Confused, I question.
Just in case- she confirms,
to preserve my chastity.
I notice a hole
on the crown of her head.
I peek through it
sure enough, way down
there is an owl's nest .
I meet a cat here and there.
Sometimes it chases butterflies,
licks it paw, rolls on the grass,
plays with a delicate saffron sun,
then catches the darkness.
Like tiny woolen balls,
sprinkles them all over
I invite the cat to come in.
It smiles and sits outside
looks at its tail.
Intently.

Poetry: Autobiography

I am fifty nine
my first gray hair, twenty.
my nervous system,
stratified memories,
three million years old.
My friend melancholy
hides under my rib cage.
Once I asked him
hey, how old am I ?
Perplexed, he answered, why?
You are seven hundred years old
'cause troubled and distressed
Dante wrote
La Divina Commedia
with his own blood
in thirteen hundred six.
Against arrogance and sword
not me, I am almost like a creeper;
anyone could stump on me, anytime.
Against arrogance and sword,
not me, but a daring young man
rises headstrong
like cannon and gun
from inside me.
I met this man
in seventeen eighty nine
in front of Bastille
during the reign of
Louis the Fourteenth.
I am fifty nine
my love is only eighteen.
Sky and the blue stars
are always eighteen.
Pretty women, eruption and
moonlight
remain eighteen.

Poetry: Chichen Itza

The Cenote, with gaping mouth
awaits.
Deep down
pitch-black still water
hides myriad memories.

Silent Pyramids
of the sun and the moon
all around.
On the top
the Chaakmool
half inclined.
A sacrificial altar
on its stomach.

Those Mayans
from the top of the temple
ruled their subjects
in the name of
religion and animals.

These are almost forgotten.
A faint trace is left
on the stones.
El Caracol thinks
of those old days,
sighs, shakes its head
frustrated.

Cold, musty and dark
Balancanchen cave
lies nearby, unperturbed.
A tiny creek sleeps
without flow.

On its small pebbled beach
A row of clay lamps, still lit.
As if someone just slipped away
after his evening prayer
went back home.



These lamps
know much about
old days’ mystery.
Sacrificed on the altar
the high priest
reaped the heart
of young women
still throbbing.
Drank the blood.
They knew.

Witnessing this
the lamps shivered
dipped
in the cold of the creek
to quench fire,
to quench anger.

These monuments
of thousands of years
still bow to the sun
without any condition.

The light and shadow
play as usual
in the temple, on the stones.

Everyday in Chichen
the sun still rises
in search of life
in the Cenote
it never reflects.

Painting: Warmth


Painting: Thaw


Painting: Shaman and the T Bird


Painting: Faces


Painting: Dusk


Painting: Dancers


Painting: Chaos


Painting: Birds


Painting: Thunderbird