Taken from: Fulcrum: an annual of poetry and aesthetics
Poetry and Truth: Indian Poetry in English. no.4 2005

H. Masud Taj was born in 1956 in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. He was educated in Bombay and in Panchgani (at the same school as Manohar Shetty). He recites poems by hear, in sequence, the recitation a return to an early Urdu tradition; and he has only lately begun to collect his poems in print. He lives in Ottawa and works as an architect and calligrapher.

Note: Taj also teaches at Carleton University School of Architecture.

The Travelling Nonvegetarian

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said wisdom was hydrogen peroxide,
Wore a white wig of fibre optic cables,
And dentures that were pure African ivory.
When he smiled, elephants burst into tears.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said homing pigeons were edible pagers
And grey parrots that spoke too many languages
Tasted no better than those that were dumb,
And all birds on TV were cyber-tandooris

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said the onion was the final package
That packed the process of packing itself,
Which explained the missing mass of the universe
And the tears onion-peelers and stargazers shed.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said the banana skin was a continuum of zippers,
And all coconuts were neo-colonials
Smashed on occasions of celebration;
All brown outside, all white within.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said neckties were nooses, wristwatches handcuffs,
And honest heroes who wore underpants outside
Were neurotics packaged in designer masks
Which they removed only to eat.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said brinjals were boiled with equine eyeballs,
Applied gold glitter-dust to horses’ eyebrows,
And powder-coated his finger and toe nails.
He ate candle-lit dinners in fireproof stables.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said hunchbacks were born-again backpackers,
And slim briefcases made of crocodile skins
Were chromium-plated mouths to snap off space
To declare at the last border crossing.