Category: Excerpts from The Dänikbharata

the grids of the leakless metal hidden in the walls now;
they’re his domain — the pipes of a hundred thousand homes
in the greater metropolitan area; his servants
are many, and each armed with shining steel:

monkey wrenches. That rhymes for him with vanara¹,
which brings old Rama to mind, and his lovely Sita.
He wonders, over a cold beer and lunchbag curry,
whether their love has grown clogged or enjoys good drainage.

His own runs latterwise, for Lakshmi does the books,
still that magnet of prosperity. She picked his vocation,
now orders parts, cuts deals with hardware stores.
She is as pretty as ever, though ninety pounds moreso.

He thinks of how many times the world has spun
since he first stepped onto it, with each turn round
of the bolt gripping the pipe, like a gopi girl her lover’s
flesh, or good old Krishna his songpipes back in the day.

And on his pipewrench it is inscribed, in stately
Sanskrit, a motto for the war against errant pipes
and sumps: Yato Dharma Stato Jayah:
“Where virtue is found, there too is victory.”

^{1. The vanara are monkeys, specifically in this case those with whom the hero Rama was forced to ally in order to win back his bride Sita in the epic Ramayana.}

Sits on a the Star Chambers of a Hundred Worlds, on the War
Councils for dozens of planets. Galactic soldier-king.
Well, that’s what he fancies he would be, if he could.

Lives in Wimbledon, because, as he will tell you,
London’s the only place to get decent Indian food anymore.

Reads magazines like International Bounty Hunter,
Looks down at his paunch with misgivings, and at night
he goes out to try and score some soma at a club.

Indra didn’t used to be this way. He could have
told you the sites of hundreds of battles, those
he rained down on, hollered into via the wind, could’ve
described the shape and texture of each shield on
each soldier, its material and the color of its paint.

Now, it’s all he can do to make an effort to watch
those monkeys in the Pentagon, in Beijing, and sometimes call
down a little downpour down to trick some totty into a cab.

– 2001, Montreal

Oh, yes. There’s something that just tugs at him, knowing
she’s had kids already, screamed and birthed them out
one by one. Not that he would ever admit to it.
Sure, the idea of her having eaten them turns his stomach.
Yet what does he do? He picks up the phone, and calls.

A few hours later, her knees press against his hips,
the black leather of her thighs bouncing with the road’s
contours, her hands misbehaving dangerously
as he tries to steer her Harley through this distraction.

When they get where they are going, she will smoke.
She will drink the sorts of things his brothers don’t dare guzzle,
and then, with a frightening look of hunger in her eyes,
she’ll pull poor Thoth down onto her, her belly already
swelling, making temporary room for the meat
of their sudden, miscegenate child.

– 2001, Montreal

Lives in the south of France now. They don’t
seem to notice his nose, or else they act
as if they don’t. Maybe because his accent is
perfect? There’s something about the French, alright.

He is an connoisseur at wines. A professional
gourmand, he wears the most delicate bifocals.
Not much else to be said. He’s studying
Basque for interest’s sake. Reads Mallarmé
and Verlaine, perhaps a little Rimbaud. Writes
the odd poem in his spare time, too. Sings
along to Brassens’ milder tunes. Dates occasionally.
Loves the countryside. Never been happier.

At least, that’s the story his friends tell these days.

– 2001, Montreal

by Gord Sellar

No more chariotside lectures for Krishna. He’s ridin’ high.

Coat scruffed with mantric sequins, pinned by lights
and screeching guitars to the wall, a sort of rock’n’roll insect;
forget rivers and fiery oblation. Forget statues bleeding milk.

He’s done his time in limos, in flower-decked tour buses,
once kept George Harrison awake all night as he drove
from somewhere in Italy all the way to the Western coast of France.

He gets fan letters from teenaged girls, smeared throughout with cheap perfume.

“If you’re not willing to fake it, you know, act a little,” he says,
“then you need to find another line of work. If you can’t
stand a little crappy music and bad breath, you’d better forget it!”

Lately, he’s cutting in on the Devil’s market, swapping record deals for souls.

Worst of all, he hates it. The music is crap, and nobody talks
to him straight anymore. They figure him for a con man. But he’s
never been other than what he is now. His own hair stirs his abhorration.

But what’s he supposed to do? Business is business is business.
It’s the fashion. And he’s damn good at it. If only it weren’t for all
those annoying bald kids making noise in all the bloody airports.

Must do something about that, he resolves… they could give a fellow a bad name.

— 2001 (from The Dänikbharata)

“The Elvis of the Ganges, at his Height (in 1968)” was published (under the title Shivaji”) in Matrix 59, Fall 2001, along with “Shivji”, as “Poems from The Dänikbharata” (for more about which, see below).

The Dänikbharata was a series of poems I worked on in 2000-2001, in which the gods of various historical pantheons turned out, as Erich von Däniken had suggested, to be aliens who had been stranded on Earth. The tale was to focus on the gods who ended up in India, and what they had gone on to do in their long wait for rescue; the epic was to mainly concern the war between the various gods and pantheons when a rescue ship arrived, but only limited seating was available. The project is currently incomplete.