{"id":132,"date":"2012-02-02T07:31:47","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T07:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/?p=132"},"modified":"2013-08-31T11:59:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-31T11:59:11","slug":"shivji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/2012\/02\/shivji\/","title":{"rendered":"Shivji"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Gord Sellar<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The harder they fall, alright.
\nSkin hard like cane reed, he squats low
\nin some alleyway, syringes in his many hands,
\nrubber tourniquet clenched between his teeth,
\nghee boiling hard in filthy spoons. It\u2019s impossible to tell:
\nis that his natural shade? or is the blue his withdrawal?
\nNobody can drag words back past the brink of his accent,
\nnot even in the shadowy corner of Kwality Tandoori
\non West 52nd;\u00a0or is it in Harlem now, where he hangs,
\nrecounting stories of Parvathi\u2019s lush addictions,
\nexplaining the roots of his interest in free-form jazz,
\nthe strange octopus beauty of Roland Kirk, with
\nhis rack of duct-taped horns across his chest, which
\nconvinced Shivji, eight-armed, he could do it, too.<\/p>\n

When he woke at the top of Mt. Kaylash,
\nshe was gone. He searched for eleven years,
\nfound her shacked up with some musclehead
\nHittite, essentially a hit-man for a small
\ncartel of Egyptian demigods, trying to make a comeback.
\nHe left her there, in plastic flip-flops, at Giza,
\nand off he went, to America, to be a jazzman.
\nA tactical error. The death of one saxist Coltrane
\ncame in 1967. Disarray. Sleeping under peoples\u2019 porches,
\nhaving to play tonal in funk bands just to eat,
\nsolos on tunes like \u201cBig Mama!\u201d and \u201cMama Come
\nand Jump Me!\u201d and \u201cRed Hot Big Mama Song Hyunh!\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually he sold his horns, pawned them off
\none by one. Took to drinking, syringe in hand, bitching
\nat his loss of Vedic income to that slick
\nbastard Krishna \u2014 \u201cthat slimy populist\u201d<\/em>, as he says.
\nToo broke for ghee, doing regular unsalted
\nbutter in the darkness of numberless alleyways.
\nSpitting randomly at Hittite-faced cabbies and paperboys,
\nwishing on fire-escapes that he\u2019d never bloody heard
\nof Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Always comparing
\nhimself to Krishna, whose charm was always a little
\nmore glittery, \u201cthe Elvis of the Ganges, he were,\u201d<\/em>
\nAnd Shiva will then point out to you, the name
\nElvis contains within it Evil in the plural.<\/p>\n

— 2001 (from The D\u00e4nikbharata<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n

“Shivji” was published (under the title Shivaji”) in Matrix<\/a><\/em> 59, Fall 2001, along with “The Elvis of the Ganges, at his Height (in 1968)”<\/a>,\u00a0as “Poems from\u00a0The\u00a0D\u00e4nikbharata,”\u00a0<\/em><\/em> a project that remains unfinished, but which I haven’t given up on completely. <\/p>\n

As a member of Dabang Band, I performed the poem as part of our song “Shivji and the Ecstasy of Butter and Fire” on our album “Pig Over Seoul” (2002):<\/p>\n