Of Boston Goodbyes
: Arafat Kazi

1
When I woke up, the sun had set
Across the Citgo minaret.
And then I slept (the sun a rose)
Along the winding varicose
Streets of Landsdowne, where they dance—
Fools with monkeys in their pants.

The tedious bassdrum booms and thumps
To students seeking weekend humps.
(The night was young to chicks and dudes;
They floored in college plentitudes.)

Comm Ave was lonely, fraught with Christ
In architectural poltergeists,
With gargoyles and postmodern books
Crammed behind their tenured nooks—
Academic tenterclaws.
(The epidemic shops at Shaw’s).

2
We walked down those streets, you and I,
Under a numbing, starless sky.
I missed the ether of the Bangladeshi fable—
Elemental storms, and flooded city streets,
Pakistani retreats,
Restless couplings in cheap brothels,
Vendors selling jewelry and sea-shells,
Urchins following you with piteous argument
(Provoking vague discontent).
I was led to my overwhelming memories.
Oh, do not ask “How is it?”
You don’t know you care when you kiss it.

(The Victorian British came and went,
Left Holmes and Plum and Arthur Dent.
The American god will come and go,
This caged bird sing Maya Angelou.)

3
Falling in love with you
Was falling in love with me.
I bled royally purple, bred royal brown
But this ain’t Dhaka, baby,
No-one wears the royal crown.

The new world, it’s brave and revisited
Redux, re-invented,
Reduced to an opportunity and a duck tour,
And this time around the Jewish joke is Muslim.
I am stern and savage, noble and proud,
Locked in your perspective,
So much emotional baggage.
Poeticizing Comm Ave clouds,
Redefining the cultural repercussion.
Recidivistic, re-pitted against reruns,
Repeated and redundant.

I fell in love, it’s true.
But you didn’t follow it back to me.
I wept, loyal and humble, but I didn’t dare to frown—
This is Boston, my lonely love:
No-one cheers my thorny crown.

(No-one gives a flying fuck in Beantown).

4
I was in fancy (covetousness),
A pickled herring, erring, blessed.
At your behest the wormwood burned;
Red herrings are fickle, my coveted nest.

This was the way the worm was dressed.
Apple-eyed, I applied the rest—
Iambic, foolish, (and a pest),
Weeping silently as the tables turned.

I would have been. (The worm, serpentine,
Squat like a toad, falling). Evil days
Are falling on evil days.
Could I have told you what they mean?

Freed from choice, I rejoiced in learned
Joys too subtle to be described.
I inscribed my scribblings, and imbibed
From fountains spouting alphabets.

I too have heard the gavel ring,
I too my dear have been appraised—
A prize untouched because too near
The bitten apple of my own eyes.

And someday too the grave will sing,
“ Who pries it loose, this chosen ring?”
The earth will ring out with my cries,
Icarian ode unsung. Choice lies.

Hand in hand, my tears applied
Themselves to what I knew was spurned.
My molten verse was scarred and burned,
Molted, jagged. (What once was praised).

My zesty love has burned in wisps
My testicles, down to a crisp.
My soul, my sin has failed your test.
My falling self? Without contest.
My flailing wings flap in my chest,
And my tragic Muse weeps,
crying repeatedly for a rest.

(But at least I have my cigarettes).

5
I walked down Boylston’s slippery street,
My cigarette-tip aglow.
I wished I was somewhere and warm.
Wisps of smoke melted into the snow,
But the winter’s no cause for alarm.
We trap ourselves in cardboard
And turn up the heat.

I wrapped myself in blankets,
Dreaming of sonnets and sunsets,
Feeling very much the glutinous heat
On my brow.
Thinking of storms and tercets,
Contradistinctionary couplets,
Quatrains and alexandrines,
A scansionary prophet
With elemental beats.
But it was hellfire and hardboard,
Rapidly sinking starboard,
My last port of call a hornet’s nest of whores and pimps and cheats.
In formulaic slumbers, falling in blunder,
Awaking to the sound of none-too-distant thunder,
Numbers and measures formulated my beast.

And battlements, entrapments,
Middle class enchantments,
Presumptuous detachments
Rose in my gorge like so much yeast.

And yet once more I look to the east,
A wellspring of dirges and jives.
My Calliope surges, and we get on with our lives.
And when one is bereft,
Martyred, feeble and left
To melt in your seemingly meaningless threats—
I will still have my cigarettes.