LAS VEGAS
Ashok Niyogi
Dealing blackjack
From plastic boxes;
Dwindling chips, multicolored, signifying degrees of disaster;
Occasional loud orgasms from neighbors.
Discrete ashtrays and tall drinks
Besides slot machines;
Parking five floors above;
Taking travelators into tropical forests.
Acrobats
With white tigers and lions
That play like kitten.
Waitresses’ skirts showing dimples.
Shriveled breasts inside sequined holsters.
Facelifts amongst brand-names strewn like confetti.
This perpetual party of
Acrobats.
Tramcars from King Arthur’s table to Egyptian pharaohs
And escalators snaking down into roadside strip clubs.
Strobe lights reputed to reach outer space
Or at least clouds.
Magic, music and Andy Warhol.
Van Gogh at the Guggenheim.
Breasts of all colors, shapes, ages, dimensions
And gravitational pulls.
Acrobats
With jackpots in realms of astronomy
Tutoring lessons for games of craps
As the roulette rotates around the sun.
Acrobats.
Complete ethnic equality measured in green.
Cashiers’ grills with extreme expressions.
Vacant eyes going through the motions,
“I will win”.
I will win without emotion.
I learnt how to gamble to the horn of Louis Armstrong
In New Orleans.
When everything was not yet oversized
Like middle aged American breasts and thighs,
Mascara and lipstick and sneakers without socks.
Acrobats
Hanging from pulleys and ropes
Cleaning one-way glass on overpriced windows.
The boardwalk above the strip where
The color is red-
Flashing taillights of cars full of expectation.
Acrobats.
Faces bathed in ever-changing hues of creative neons.
I stare and for a moment I forget
That I am a mendicant monk
Stripped bare of my skin,
Flesh and bones exposed,
Pulse throbbing through blue veins.
Acrobats,
Fortune not camouflaged
But etched in deep lines
On the fractures of my skull,
While frescoes still in their infancy
Stare down at me from ceilings
And people dine at the Stratosphere
Up above the sky so high.
Acrobats.
How do I watch volcanoes erupt
Systematically every fifteen minutes?
How do I stand and stare
With my staff and begging bowl,
Fully dressed in my mendicant’s robes’
Pacing the pavement through throngs of people?
And yet it is people that I crave-
Acrobats.
All the while surveillance cameras blink at me
From chandeliers.
Tricksters through life
Advertise with blinking neons
And are done.
But tricksters with words are
Acrobats.
We are, all of us, acrobats
Juggling rods of fire with baseball bats
And love songs are electronically synchronized with fountains,
Water is on fire.
In the hungry eyes of passers-by
You sense desire-
Upon the boardwalk where senses reign supreme,
I sit, meditate and look back on time
Whilst human searchlights look for God.
On which freeway do I race my juggernaut?
Acrobat in lotus position
On the seat of my meditation.
Such vast multicolored emptiness!
Which poems do I say, that synchronize
With hotel arcades?
Which gondola do I rent
That can serenade a mendicant monk,
An acrobat in the desert?
On shards of salt and volcanic rock
I walk
Bare-foot in my mind.
Because
I am
An acrobat.
