© Rochelle Potkar | Powered by On non-poetry Wednesdays, this window of my new Hong Kong house in Kennedy Town keeps me busy
. It changes every other time with the slightest tweak of mist, sunlight, cloud, and rain… leaving me spell-bound for the whole day.
Today I glimpsed a rainbow, strawing from the sea, my heartbeat stilling…
Yesterday I saw three planes orbiting this sky at three different altitudes – needles pin-pricking the haystack of clouds.
Only Nature can shut us up and out. | I will miss this window in June when I leave for India.
And then comes the poetry in Hong Kong, every Wednesday. Fringe club or Peel Street.
I’ve realized wherever I go (few places: Europe, S. Korea) I don’t search for people of my skin or nationality, but mad people or writers and poets. They are my biradhari – however moody, crazy, bi-polar, funny, serious, kinky, smoky they might be. | Literature and madness is religion. The word is god and prayer.
And so yesterday I walk around Central – supposed to be the main junction – the pot where everything climaxes and culminates – I walk its lanes to find Orange peel half-expecting rinds at my feet.
Dark is this alley, glistening with young flesh, – stars of the night rendering in goosebumps – comedy night invitations, music, clinks of drinks at the brinks of outdoor restaurants, people in black: shimmering or plain… I walk higher asking for Orag…ange peee…eel. Half a mind saying I am not going back if I don’t find it in time amidst Orange free and Hong Kong House, pubs, and restaurants.
Then it happens –a door, a pathway, a stairwell, an elevator. Orange peeled into soft mute glitz and treasure of treasures – sheer pleasures – a bunch of poets lacing the rectangular glass of a tiny, cozy room. Everyone has a drink in their hand.
And Henrik, and Rama, and Blair, Akinsola, and Vishal, Andrew, Malini and Laura… – and such a crackling variety of poetry packed into one night, I’m stunned. High on wine and the discovery of the craziest lot with energy, verve, joie de vivre they will take a glass room levitating on the hallucinate of comic camaraderie alone. | It’s nice to see serious poets reading serious stuff, but lovelier to see crack-us-by-the-minute poets reading serious stuff, soul-searching stuff, hilarious stuff, riveting stuff. | I am charged like a bulb. I too add voice to this with three poems of which Golden city was appreciated the most.
And I come away smiling all the way through the MTR – an inner smile under a poker face. And then grinning once I reach home.
[Sorry no photos of this event.]
But me reading my poetry at Cyberport, a Wednesday earlier.
