IN HIS MOM's ARMS

Recalling how
my sweet little son smelled
smiled and recoiled:
in your mom's arms
you look his image

--R.K.SINGH

IN HIS AUNT'S ARMS

DELIGHT

You fill us with love
through rooting, sucking, grasping
and your cries for feed
or changing the diaper
smell of nostalgic delight


--R.K.SINGH

In your closed eyes
I read pure poetry
ecstasy in your smile

--R.K.SINGH

Hours pass
holding you in my arms
and cuddling you

--R.K.SINGH

You make me remember
my unremembered babyhood
and joyous parenthood

R.K.SINGH

OUR GRANDSON

With your grandma
I see faces in your face--
God's living grace


--R.K.SINGH

A Haiku sequence published in Lynx, XXIII:3, October 2008 and recorded on the India Saijiki blog. Thank you, Gabi San.

http://indiasaijikiworlkhaiku.blogspot.com/2006/07/r-k-singh.html


LOVE-MAKING
R.K.Singh

Lovemaking
he melts into her
time stands still

Lovemaking
the sound of orgasm:
LaoTzu*"

Making love
she tastes the salt upon
his shoulder

Candling in vein
leaves marks of teeth on her neck
utters holiness

Unclothing
the white night:
lips meeting lips

Writes with strands of
watery hair on her bare back
a love haiku

After the tumble
buried between the sheets
leftover passion

She departs
leaving behind her clothes
over mine

*A great sound is inaudible, and a great image is formless," said Lao Tzu.


http://www.ahapoetry.com/ahalynx/233solo.html

IN HIS GRANDMOM's ARMS

SLEEPING WITH HIS PROUD FATHER

MY GRANDSON ON SEPT 15, 2008

Photo taken on 30 August 2008

MY GRANDSON born on 29 August 2008

FOREWORD by I.K.Sharma

FOREWORD

I was quite surprised when Professor R.K. Singh asked me to introduce his new book of poems, Sexless Solitude And Other Poems, to readers. Instantly I said no. The reason : I had edited, not long ago, a book of critical articles on his poetry. But my pleas didn`t work with him. At last, I persuaded myself to do his bidding.

Well, critics of literature more than once have used De Quincy`s conservative definition of literature i.e. the literature of knowledge and the literature of power, in support of their argument. The function of the first is to preach and that of the second, to move. But where to put the literature that doesn`t like to do either? And, here is a poet who dislikes to preach and who abhors to move, any one. His aim, so it seems, is to make his reader think along with him , to be his co-traveller in the journey of his poetic life.

Well-read in the important literary classics of India, well-trained in the use of English language, well-versed in modern western thoughts, Dr. Singh articulates his perceptions, his experiences, in a very unconventional way. Not at all shy of using words associated with sex , he puts them to different uses in his poems. It makes purists of literature believe that the poet is a shameless hawker of sex in the street of literature. His poems, they think, have soiled the white house (not the White House) of literature. Such persons in fact suffer from agoraphobia. The poet reminds them:

“don’t condemn me if I am not white”

The word ‘white’ as used here is not to be taken literally. It has wider implications in the context of the poem. Asserts the poet again:

“I love Him through the bodies He made”

After all , poets are not a uniform-wearing brigade marching in one direction. They have no love for grooves, they have no reverence for authority. By adopting different literary strategies they attempt to clarify the world around them and also clarify their own attitude toward the world they are in.

A poet of modern sensibility, Dr. Singh has drawn inspiration from diverse literatures of the world, from the English-speaking to the non-English, such as Japan, France, Chile, Yugoslavia etc. Being a literary bastard (as most present-day writers are), he reacts strongly against groups that are reluctant to change themselves despite the changes (paradigm shift) brought about by technology. Illustrative of this fact is the poem “Holi”.

I didn’t keep the fast
there’s no Naw Ruz for me

there’s no Holi either
I ceased to be a Hindu

long ago christians too
doubted my faith and love

moslems are too rigid
to admit a secular

now alone I watch
the tragedy of colours:

I celebrate difference
and freedom of spirit

but they question my birth
call me a hypocrite



Here is the predicament of a modern man who faces medieval psyche in the democratic, technological, age. Despite the persona’s embrace of broad liberal humanism he is not acceptable to any community or group of believers (Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and others) because of their obsession with themselves. This kind of narrow loyalty negates all features of modernity and keeps them chained to obscurantism . ( And obscurantism is nothing but saying no to the spirit of inquiry.) No group allows its secrets or property to be touched or violated by the new culture of science or liberal humanism. In a way, it is a sort of joint declaration of their utter naivety, of their religiosity, and of their provincialism. Put simply: they do not like to see themselves in the larger context of the world.

Under the poet’s lens are all the sins that beset India: politicians who ‘idolize criminals’ and who ‘ritually smuggle power/ to perpetuate wanton rut/of intellectual sodomy/ crying foul after checkmate’ and gurus who ‘can overcome /her migraines making love/lying on top of her partner/ and himself workshops/ with one, two, three devotees. (Note the new use of workshops as verb.)

This apart, the poet-professor is the only humanist in his university where technology and management reign supreme. Woe to a person who doesn’t get infected by these mighty twin forces of our times . He does , and it gets amply reflected in the making of his poems.

Poetry, then, is the art of managing an idea , an experience, a perception with the help of essential words . The wild flow of words is an anathema to it. The ‘spontaneous overflow’ definition of poetry should not work in the high days of technology. Even the great poet who defined it that way did not practice it in the making of his own poetic compositions. A look at the popular poems like ‘The Solitary Reaper’ and ‘Daffodils’ should convince a reader. Inept hands in our land have often used his definition in their defence. As a result, they have given us inferior poems.

Dr. Singh manages to tell his experience , bitter or sweet, mostly bitter, in minimum possible words. He would eliminate all the non-essentials from his composition. He would chiefly exploit, like Hemingway, the vigour of verb in his poems, and avoid the pomp and vanity of adjective altogether. This way of writing makes his poems far different from the poems we often come across in Indian-English poetry magazines .

In contrast to many poets who peddle poor prose cut into lines of poetry, Dr. Singh’s poems are sober, mature, and disciplined. Though written in free verse they are yet compact. Neither the words nor emotions go astray. No cliché exists there. Only the power of plain words on display.


In essence, his poetry is not for the soft-headed. It will scare the puritans and taunt the purists because the poet lifts the so-called unclean words of the street and gives them a new dignity. In the history of Indian English poetry, I guess, it has been attempted for the first time on such a scale. No doubt it has its dangers. But in the borderless world of today many buffers are at hand. And to the one who has chosen the uncommon path in style and language it acts as the air of spring that drives him to the house of his mate, every day, every hour.

I hope the new generation of readers, though lost in the hell of cyber world, will find time to go through the book and celebrate with the poet the freedom of spirit.


--I.K.Sharma

Jaipur, September 1, 2008

A Review of Sexless Solitude and Other Poems by Hsu ChiCheng

From “Fear” To “Sexless Solitude” Hsu ChiCheng

A book review about “Sexless Solitude And Other Poems” by Dr. Ram Krishna Singh, India

All kinds of things around the world can be written into poems by poets. For example, there are many themes just as religion, politics, natural world, seasons, journey, sex, and almost human life etc. among poetry collection “Sexless Solitude and Other Poems” of Dr.Ram Krishna Singh. There are the topics as “God, Sex and The World”, “Shiva’s Third Eye”, “God”, “They Call God Loudly”, “I am No Moses”, “I am No Jesus” etc .for religion, there are the topics as “Raindrop”, “Snake”, “Rainbow”, “River’s song”, “From the Winter”, and “The Bee Won’t Return” etc. for natural world, there are the topics as “The dead too are Restless”, “Death”, “Bliss Through Death”, “I want to Sleep”, “Journey”, “Creation”, “Too Painful”, “pain”, “Wisdom”, “Man or Animal”, “Wit and Soul”, and “Passion” etc. for human life. Above all, the creator prepared so many materials for us poets to write. Thanks god!
I am glad to read in advance the will be publication of Dr. R. K. Singh’s poetry collection :“Sexless Solitude And Other Poems”. It contains 98pieces of his poems. So many good poems in this book! I enjoy them very much. There are two of them “Sexless Solitude” and “I can’t Hide Fears” which actually penetrate through the whole book. I come to set my opinions.
We all human beings always can’t see our future include our age. It’s dim like a man walking in the fog ,or may we say it like a riddle. There are two kinds of men who face the future and the age: fear or no fear. As a fact, all men in fear of the future for it’s uncertain. Dr. R.K. Singh so confess:

The light of my lamp and
The portion of my cup couldn’t
Lift my soul mired in passions
And silence of the morning
The confession couldn’t remove
My anguish of ages
Nor the tears and cries strengthen
Faith, hope, and love-the rock
Slips the grip for enemies
Within don’t halt my body
Glues to the ground seeking
Darkness of the womb and joys
……

And

In verses I can’t hide fears
My face I despise, can’t find
Freedom from the chemicals
Sprayed in the air and the smog
Oppressing my breath, the sun
Fails to keep the covenant
The terrors of death are real

He told the truth. The man who said that he’s no fear must be false. No fear of the future and the age must have some courage to face and conquer it. May be “We raise our heads and overlook, expecting another world/ We raise our heads, expecting another spring”, as I wrote in my poem “Reappearance”. It’s a hard course to conquer it. It’s a spirit thing. It taste bitter. However, the body can hardly change or hold by spirit. It must be go wither away. Then, practice Buddhist teachings is needed. When he accomplishes this practice, we call he is the Buddha. A Buddha is sexless as Dr. R.K. Singh described in his poem “Sexless Solitude”:

She dwells on moon beams
I can see her smiling
With wind-chiselled breast
In sexless solitude
Her light is not priced
But gifted to enlighten
The silver-linings

It’s a higher condition. He walked away from “Fear” to “Sexless Solitude” and finished the practice Buddhist teachings. He is not a vulgar, but a Buddha, a fairy, or in short, a god.

--Hsu ChiCheng