This is a poem written to G Surya Prakash Rao, the founder and managing editor of Muse India, an online literary magazine, in regards to their rejection and criticism of Nithish’s poem “Paradise Things With Lyrics”, which was submitted to their online forum Your Space, not to the literary magazine itself. A Twitter/X photo-poem of mine would give more details: “Where Were the Ones That Felt?”

And the poem below was submitted to Muse India for publication, not through their regular channels, directly to the managing editor, as we were having a brief email conversation regarding the boy’s poem. I would gather he doesn’t want to publish the poem below, and that in itself I find remarkable, and you will have to read the poem to find that remarkable too, but the fact that he won’t even bother to tell me, I find that absolutely incredible.

Human civilization is a world apart.
I grab you by the poetry today.
The overhead music,
the overhead town,
some suggestions for your
unmanageable poetry scheme sir.
I speak poetry to your sense of self,
and that’s a long ride,
half-religion,
in the carnival of God.
Do you wear zeitgeist on your sleeve,
offended
if I grab your ass and smile?
Man I tell yah
where we put poetry today,
in the hullabaloo.

You give me 40 lines to tell.
How people don’t know it,
tellin’ poetry to be quiet
is sexual reassignment surgery,
cuts its dick off.
Well foreign he’s brave.
That room is shocked.
That room is sorry.
This one here,
what do you do?
Do you publish a poet,
Donny Lee Duke?

Teacher of the day master of the poetry.
Who says that’s prayer
or insightful?
That’s a line from the movie
Beat Kids.
I’m throwin’ at you rabbits
to know the meaning of the word,
its symbolizing form.
Rabbits are a dictionary,
and they fecund.

How do I open poetry in your heart
that’s not a diction model,
phrased put?
But I’m putting sound down
as a vehicle of meaning,
categorically put.
Imagine we lived in a rose,
and we petaled differently,
the speaker said.

You’re not huntin’ meaning.
You’re all about sound rose
a churppin’ model
with words you can cut your finger on,
your personal stuff
that sees the corners of things,
gets at feeling and taste,
ode to a green jar
and supposin’.

I wrap you around wood
in a different kind of glory.
I laugh-loud you
to go get greater silk
to stand your life,
because I’m sittin’ here strandin’ mine,
where it hurts,
where it counts,
and that’s bubblin’ up poetry.

That’s not it
I’m listenin’ to myself speak,
here I am on the table
the thought of London,
Batman in robes,
lyrical put.
A new generation of poetry,
a new thought of poetry,
here I am and you
chase me down this mountain
you tin can.
I’m a dormitory of words.

Is that bowl I’m missing
let’s listen to Tennyson?
Grab your evolution by the poetry sir.
Blast your pillars of salt.
Blast your shadow kings.
Don’t look back
at some exam of poetry
Orpheus.
Grab your poetry by today.

To the editor of Sky Magazine:
change Orpheus into a pillar of salt.
Lay down your lines
you’ve surrendered to poetry.
Can you hear that?
Muse India
a scolding.
How sad.
You hear that?

The tops of teas
lyrical ballads.
Where am I at?
I don’t think you’d recognize me.
I’m poetry fits the day,
sudden splendor.

Can we get to the top of that mountain?
I offer you a chair.
It’s closer than you think,
a morph of Orpheus,
of your kind.
You open it
binoculars.

Peace is a drug that you get from the upper store.
[above line Nitish’s muse, my 12-year-old grandson]
Nithish’s smile.
Your anthology papers,
post my letters,
it is very change.
I’m not lookin’ forward to the new ghost story.
Oh man, do your ignore me?
A new music,
a flute overhead,
we need that to survive.
Things are not going in our direction,
and can we just change the tunes?
What a poetry says
a culture does.

You’re not playin’ around with smithereens.
Come on don’t groupthink
and let poetry rock.
I don’t understand you sir.
Does it have to be highfalutin?
You stuff shirt,
come out in the world and see.
Am I wrong?
Do we need something more out of poetry
that we’re not getting?

Come out of your damn ivory tower
and touch the world.
Is that so hard to listen to?
What are you doing that you can’t see
this is poetry?
And I will haunt you for the rest of your life
a poetry gun,
a poetry speaker,
a poetry man.

I don’t think you realize the power of poetry,
the muse today.
It will be inevitable
we dance along the Thames
putting it out like Shakespeare.
It will come out of its bottle
and change the world.
Too strange driven,
you think it just needs to be thrown away,
like this email’s cut off here.
Are you kiddin’ me?