With an epigraph from a Pears’ Soap advert from 1899: The first step towards lightening THE WHITE MAN’s burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness.

A right savage I was – sozzled
to the nose with sprightly
Muldoon, squeezed into the communal

sweat of a Saturday tube home -
I’m up to p. 388 of his sharp lemon-skinned
Collected Poems

when some scruffy looking git pipes to his crew
Some Paki shit, like,
eee’s loookin into!

My blood rising, especially when my head’s
done in with words like
‘Badbh’ … ‘Cailidin’ … ‘Salah-eh-din’,

I nearly get blunt, as one of them -
Well mate, this Paki’s more British than that inde-
cipherable, impossibly untranslatable

sod of a Paddy -
only I don’t ‘cos I catch my throat gungeing
on its Cromwellian vile, my tongue foaming for soap…

Related poems:

1. At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux
2. Slow as Grass
3. The Cormorant

If someone had said you passed away
this evening at 8, when my watch was still
an hour behind, on a few minutes to seven,
I’d be round for rituals with your loved ones.
We’d sip the last of your lemon tea, taking
turns to embrace you with private words.
Some would simply freeze you
with that wholly unsayable look of love.

In the quickening, we’d fold away your clothes,
close the curtains over the awful pouring
light, but couldn’t do a thing for the beep
& brake of cars, the low hum of a fast
travelling bus as we’d help you to the awkward
angle on your bed, how you’d be found,
then we’d hold back for the aweful way you’d rise
to the almighty challenge of your punctual

heart-stop.

Making our journeys home
we were back in time
strangely prepared
when someone said
you passed away
this evening at 8.

Related poems:

1. she had more friends
2. The Immigrants
3. Follow the Food

Squatted against the bedroom door with left leg
stretched, wiping sweat from my thigh,
I shave hairs to the shape of a passport photo.
Into the good skin, steeling along
the top end of the picture – a straight incision
until blob by seamless blob, over
the Stanley knife, a rivering of blood.

Once under the fold, down to the roots,
nerve-hand holds for slicing
level the parallel lines of a photo.
Leaning deeper so the unconscious,
deeper so the gore geometric be heaped up,
I drop the silvery haft, the leg,
lug back the flap.

I hear a cry from some of myself.
So this is me. This
jameen. This meat
for which I war
myself.
This.

Related poems:

1. The Digging
2. On Edges
3. Translation Workshop: Grit and Blood

Booking Khan Singh Kumar

Must I wear only masks that don’t sit for a Brit
Would you blush if I stripped from my native skin

Should I beat on my chest I’m a ghetto poet
Who discorded his kind as they couldn’t know it

Should I foot it featly as a Punjab in Punglish
Sold on an island wrecked by the British

Did you make me for the gap in the market
Did I make me for the gap in the market

Does it feel good in the gap in the market
Does it feel gooey in the gap in the market…

Will I flame on the tree that your canon has stoked
Will I thistle at the bole where a bull-dog cocked

Should I talk with the chalk of my white inside
On the board of my minstrel-blacked outside

Should I bleach my bile-name or mash it to a stink
Should I read for you straight or Gunga Din this gig

Did you make me for the gap in the market
Did I make me for the gap in the market

Do I need to be good in the gap in the market
Do I need to be gooey in the gap in the market…

As I’ve worn a sari bride and an English rose
Can I cream off awards from your melting-pot phase

Do you medal yourself when you meddle with my type
If I go up di spectrum how far can ju dye

More than your shell-like, your clack applause
What bothers me is whether you’ll boo me if I balls

Out of Indian!

Related poems:

1. Cousin Coat
2. Hamnavoe Market
3. White Vase